QUOTATION: Charity

In the world today there are those whose struggle is for justice and human rights. We have no time for this because we are in daily and continuous contact with people who are starving for a piece of bread and for some affection. Should I devote myself to the struggle for justice when the most needy people would die right in front of me for lack of a glass of milk?

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love.

QUOTATION: Christian Teaching on Sexuality

The validity of Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage is demonstrated in the wounds of those who do not practice it.

--Cardinal George Pell, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good

QUOTATION: Overcoming Hatred

If, then, you bear a hatred toward anyone, overcome it by doing that person a favor.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Jesus is Freedom

Jesus is the Pole Star of human freedom: without him it loses its sense of direction, for without the knowledge of the truth, freedom degenerates, becomes isolated and is reduced to sterile arbitration. With him, freedom is rediscovered, it is recognized to have been created for our good and is expressed in charitable actions and behavior.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 10th, 2006

QUOTATION: Never Deal with the Devil

In a Faustian bargain, the House always wins.

--Mark Shea

QUOTATION: Goodness

Goodness is rightly divided into the virtuous, the useful and the pleasant.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Busy Yourself in Spiritual Things

Persevere in labors that lead to salvation. Always be busy in spiritual actions. In this way, no matter how often the enemy of our souls approaches, no matter how many times he may try to come near us, he’ll find our hearts closed and armed against him.

--St. Cyprian of Carthage

QUOTATION: Confidence in God

The greater and more persistent your confidence in God, the more abundantly you will receive what you ask.

--St. Albert the Great

QUOTATION: Conforming to God's Will

In the first place, we must have this uniformity as regards those things of nature that come to us from without; as when there is great heat, great cold, rain, scarcity, pestilence, and the like. We must take care not to say, What intolerable heat! What horrible cold! What a misfortune! How unlucky! What wretched weather! Or other words expressive of repugnance to the will of God. We ought to will everything to be as it is, since God is he who orders it all.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection

QUOTATION: Worldliness is Incompatible with Holiness

As it is an impossibility, to have our eyes raised towards Heaven and fixed on the earth at -the same time, so is it impossible that a person who is attached to the things of earth should love those of Heaven.

--St. John Climacus

QUOTATION: Politics

Politics is never the main content of Christian faith. It can never provide perfect solutions. But no Christian can avoid the duty to work for more justice and charity in our life as a nation, a task that inescapably involves politics.

--Archbishop Charles Chaput, “There is no equivalence”, CatholicPhilly.com, August 10, 2015

QUOTATION: The Dying

We should be as tender to the dying as we are to little children. We must take great care not to leave them alone; no one fears loneliness more than the dying.

--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

Knowledge of self is very necessary for confession. This is why the saints could say they were wicked criminals. They saw God and then saw themselves, and they saw the difference.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love.

QUOTATION: Dishonour and Persecution

God, to procure His glory, sometimes permits that we should be dishonored and persecuted without reason. He wishes thereby to render us conformable to His Son, who was calumniated and treated as a seducer, as an ambitious man, and as one possessed.

 --St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Hatred

America’s greatest enemy is not from without, but from within, and that enemy is hate: hatred of races, peoples, classes and religions. If America ever dies, it will be not through conquest but suicide.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: The Need for Rest

Each one of us needs time and space for recollection, meditation and calmness.... Thanks be to God that this is so! In fact, this need tells us that we are not made for work alone, but also to think, to reflect or even simply to follow with our minds and our hearts a tale, a story in which to immerse ourselves, in a certain sense “to lose ourselves” to find ourselves subsequently enriched.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: False Freedom

Our culture, strongly influenced by the media, almost no longer believes in that deep and enduring love that is the foundation of the family’s stability. It presumes itself to be free and liberating, but it multiplies the phenomena of dependence: drug addiction, pornography, alcoholism, tobacco, superstition, fetishism, satanic cults, etc. We think ourselves free when we make love to any one, but the result is the failure of love and bitter disenchantment, which sometimes causes despair and even suicide. We avoid these ills by the mastery of self, chastity and prayer.

--Cardinal Marc Ouellet, “Rajeunir l’Église” (2003) reprinted in Dieu plus Merveilleux que les rêves, 2004.

QUOTATION: Tribulation

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Love

Love is the measure of our ability to bear crosses.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: The Gate of Heaven

The gate of heaven is very low; only the humble can enter it.

--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

QUOTATION: Why Jesus Suffered

Jesus could have saved us without suffering; but he chose rather to embrace a life of sorrow and contempt, deprived of every earthly consolation, and a death of bitterness and desolation, only to make us understand the love which he bore us, and the desire which he had that we should love him.

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

QUOTATION: Division

Whenever I see a wall between Christians, I try to pull out a brick.

--Pope St. John XXIII

QUOTATION: Sins and Merits

The devil writes down our sins--our guardian angel all our merits. Labor that the guardian angel's book may be full and the Devil's empty.

--St. Jean Vianney

QUOTATION: Praying for the Dead

If you neglect your duty towards the dead, you will be neglected in your turn when you are no more. If you pray for them carelessly, you will be prayed for carelessly ; in a word, you will be treated as you have treated others.

--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

QUOTATION: Advice for Politicians

Someone asked me what advice I had for politicians. I don’t like to get involved in politics, but my answer just popped out, “They should spend time on their knees. I think that would help them to become statesmen.”

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: Our Faith is a Revealed Faith

Ours is not a “lab faith” but a “journey faith”, a historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths.

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

QUOTATION: Sin

There is only one thing to be feared and that is sin. Everything else is beside the point.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: The Truth Must Out

It is better that scandals arise than truth be suppressed.

--Pope St. Gregory the Great

QUOTATION: Freedom

While God has given to each of us the power to act, He has left us free to exercise the power. Why then blame God when we abuse our freedom? God will not destroy your freedom. Hell is the eternal guarantee of our freedom to rebel, or the power to make fools out of ourselves.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Self-Giving

The more the human person gives himself, the more he finds himself.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 2005

QUOTATION: The Contradiction That is Atheism

Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomenon.

--Jacques Maritain