QUOTATION: Why the Abortion Holocaust?

Over the years I have been telling one audience after another, one of the main reasons for the worldwide homicide of millions of innocent unborn children is because Catholics are not living up to practicing their faith.

--Fr. John Hardon

QUOTATION: True Faith

True faith does not covet comforts.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Worship, a Preparation for Christ's Coming,” Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5

QUOTATION: Faith

Faith is not believing that something will happen, nor is it the acceptance of what is contrary to reason, nor is it an intellectual recognition which a man might give to something he does not understand or which his reason cannot prove, e.g., relativity. Faith is the acceptance of a truth on the authority of God revealing.

Faith is a supernatural virtue, whereby, inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe as true those things which He revealed, not because the truth of these things is clearly evident from reason alone, but because of the authority of God who cannot deceive nor be deceived.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Hell

As fulfilled love, heaven can always only be granted to man; but hell is the loneliness of the man who will not accept it, who declines this status of beggar and withdraws into himself. 

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Liberals

No one is as illiberal as a liberal

--Alice von Hildebrand

QUOTATION: Statism

There is now a false idealism of turning government into God by a vague notion that it gives everything to everybody.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: The Discomfort of Christ in the Womb

Consider the painful life that Jesus Christ led in the womb of his Mother, and the long-confined and dark imprisonment that he suffered there for nine months. Other infants are indeed in the same state ; but they do not feel the miseries of it, because they do not know them. But Jesus knew them well, because from the first moment of his life he had the perfect use of reason. He had his senses, but he could not use them; eyes, but he could not see ; a tongue, but he could not speak; hands, but he could not stretch them out; feet, but he could not walk; so that for nine months he had to remain in the womb of Mary like a dead man shut up in the tomb: I am become as a man without help, free among the dead.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: God is in Everyone's Life

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in that person’s life. You can and must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

--Pope Francis, My Door is Always Open: a Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change 

QUOTATION: God the Artist

Remember that He is the artist and you are only the picture. You can’t see it. So quietly submit to be painted.

--C. S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Knowledge of Self

Knowledge of the self is also a safeguard against pride, especially when you are tempted in life. The greatest mistake is to think you are too strong to fall into temptation.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: Chastity

In the Christian view, chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or lack of esteem for it: Rather it signifies spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to advance it toward its full realization.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 

QUOTATION: Hard Virtue

Melancholy, taciturn, sour or hard virtue-- one only in name-- is not inspired by the spirit of God, nor does it become a Christian soul.

--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

QUOTATION: Sin and Virtue

Brother, if you commit a sin and take pleasure in it, the pleasure passes but the sin remains. But if you do something virtuous even though you are tired, the tiredness passes but the virtue remains.

--St. Camillus de Lellis

QUOTATION: Faith and Love

Love is the condition of faith; and faith in turn is the cherisher and maturer of love; it brings love out into works, and therefore is called the root of works of love; the substance of the works is love, the outline and direction of them is faith.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Faith and Love”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 4

QUOTATION: Humility

If pride is the great human obstacle to faith, it follows that, from the human side, the essential condition of receiving faith is humility. Humility is not an underestimation of what we are, but the plain, unadulterated truth. A man who is 6 feet tall is not humble if he says: “No really, I am only 5 feet tall.”

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell is wanting only to be oneself: what happens when man barricades himself up in himself.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Skepticism

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: The Sufferings of the Unborn Jesus

When Abraham was leading his son to death, he would not afflict him by giving him notice of it beforehand, even during the short time that was necessary for them to arrive at the mount. But the Eternal Father chose that his Incarnate Son, whom he had destined to be the victim of his justice in atonement of our sins, should suffer then all the pains to which he was to be subject during his life and at his death. Wherefore, from the first moment that he was in his mother's womb, Jesus suffered continually that sorrow which he endured in the garden, and which was sufficient to have taken away his life (as he said, My soul is sorrowful unto death). So that from that time forth he felt most vividly, and endured the united weight of all the sorrows and contumely that awaited him.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Go Forth!

Let us urge our young people to go forth. Of course, they will make mistakes, but let us not be afraid! The Apostles made mistakes before us. Let us urge them to go forth. Let us think resolutely about pastoral needs, beginning on the outskirts, with those who are farthest away, with those who do not usually go to church. They are the VIPs who are invited. Go and search for them at the crossroads.

--Pope Francis, Homily, World Youth Day, Rio de Janeiro, July 27, 2013

QUOTATION: Persecution of Christians

Today’s persecutions are more subtle than those of the beginning. They don’t necessarily use violence to disperse the faithful or to confine them behind bars. They create a climate of reserve and silence where the believer and even the priest no longer dare to present themselves as such in the public square. They are given the impression that they have a heavy past that they must forget, and that they would be better off keeping quiet rather than to come off too strongly as bearers of an important message for society. The youth suffer from this religious void which leaves them impoverished in terms of values.

--Cardinal Marc Ouellet, “Grande joie”, General diocesan assembly of priests and deacons, May 7, 2003, reprinted in Dieu plus merveilleux que les rêves, 2004

QUOTATION: Doing Our Duty

We shall not waste our time in looking for extraordinary experiences in our life of contemplation but live by pure faith, ever watchful and ready for His coming by doing our day-to-day duties with extraordinary love and devotion.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: Doing God's Will

There are lots of things you can do, but you’ve got to do what God has asked you to do—and stick with it.

--Mother Angelica

QUOTATION: Martyrdom

There are two kinds of martyrs, one in open suffering, the other in hidden virtue of the spirit. For many, enduring the snares of the enemy and resisting all carnal desires, because they have sacrificed themselves in their hearts to the almighty God, have also become martyrs in time of peace, and if they had lived in time of persecution, they could have become martyrs in reality.

--St. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 7, 11.

QUOTATION: Perfection

This is our perfection: to find out our imperfections.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Give of Yourself

Give all of yourself and God will give you all of Himself.

--St. Anthony of Padua

QUOTATION: Pride

Pride makes it impossible to know God. If I know everything, then not even God can teach me anything. If I am filled with myself, then there is no place for God.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell consists in man's being unwilling to receive anything, in his desire to be self-sufficient. It is the expression of enclosure in one's being alone. These depths accordingly consist by nature of just this: that man will not accept, will not take anything, but wants to stand entirely on his own feet, to be sufficient unto himself. If this becomes utterly radical, then man has become the untouchable, the solitary, the reject.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Unlimited Desire

But this width and depth of passion is still more immense in man, because man's intellect grasps universal good and man's will desires that boundless good which is found in God alone. Hence when man's will does not follow the straight road to God, when man seeks supreme happiness not in God but in creatures, then his concupiscence becomes insatiable, because he has unlimited desires for a good that is limited.

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting

QUOTATION: The Unforgivable Sin

If God is totally good, he is not Scrooge. He does not forgive some things; he forgives all things. The only possible sin that cannot be forgiven is not accepting forgiveness, which is why in traditional Christian theology, pride is the worst of sins: “I am too good to be forgiven; there is nothing to forgive.”

--Peter Kreeft, quoted in Socrates in the City, ed. Eric Metaxas, 2003

QUOTATION: The Foresight of the Unborn Jesus

Consider that whatever Jesus Christ suffered in his life and in his Passion, was all placed before him whilst he was yet in the womb of Mary, and he accepted everything that was proposed to him with delight; but in accepting all this, and in overcoming the natural repugnance of sense, O my God, what anguish and oppression did not the innocent heart of Jesus suffer! Well did he understand what he was first of all to endure, shut up for nine months in the dark prison of the womb of Mary; in suffering the shame and the sorrows of his birth, being born in a cold grotto that was a stable for beasts; in having afterwards to lead for thirty years an humble life in the shop of an artisan; in considering that he was to be treated by men as ignorant, as a slave, as a seducer, and as one guilty of death, and of the most infamous and painful death that ever was allotted to the most worth less of criminals.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ