Tuesday, February 28, 2017

QUOTATION: The Mystery of Salvation

Blessed John Henry Newman


I have said that there are two opposite errors: one, the holding that salvation is not of God; the other, that it is not in ourselves. Now it is remarkable that the maintainers of both the one and the other error, whatever their differences in other respects, agree in this,—in depriving a Christian life of its mysteriousness. He who believes that he can please God of himself, or that obedience can be performed by his own powers, of course has nothing more of awe, reverence, and wonder in his personal religion, than when he moves his limbs and uses his reason, though he might well feel awe then also. And in like manner he also who considers that Christ's passion once undergone on the Cross absolutely secured his own personal salvation, may see mystery indeed in that Cross (as he ought), but he will see no mystery, and feel little solemnity, in prayer, in ordinances, or in his attempts at obedience. He will be free, familiar, and presuming, in God's presence. Neither will "work out their salvation with fear and trembling;" for neither will realize, though they use the words, that God is in them "to will and to do." Both the one and the other will be content with a low standard of duty: the one, because he does not believe that God requires much; the other, because he thinks that Christ in His own person has done all.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Righteousness not of us, but in us”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5

Monday, February 27, 2017

QUOTATION: Obedience

St. Philip Neri
Force yourself to be obedient, even in the smallest things that appear so inconsequential; this will make it easier to be obedient in the larger things.

--St. Philip Neri

Sunday, February 26, 2017

QUOTATION: The True Catholic

St. Vincent of Lerins
He is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith, above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time.

--St. Vincent of LĂ©rins, Commonitory.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

QUOTATION: Small Things Matter

St. Josemaria Escriva

Let us take a good honest look at our own lives. How is it that sometimes we just can’t find those few minutes it would take to finish lovingly the work we have to do, which is the very means of our sanctification? Why do we neglect our family duties? Why that tendency to rush through our prayers, or through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? How are we so lacking in calm and serenity when it comes to fulfilling the duties of our state, and yet so unhurried as we indulge in our own whims? You might say these are trifling matters. You’re right, they are, but these trifles are the oil, the fuel we need to keep our flame alive and our light shining.
--St. Josemaria Escriva

Friday, February 24, 2017

QUOTATION: Humility

Alice von Hildebrand
Would you like to be in the situation of St. Joseph or in the situation of Mary? St. Joseph had original sin and was a creature. Mary had no original sin and was a creature. And the Child Jesus was God. And Who was subject to whom? God was subject to these creatures. It’s not a comfortable position to give orders to someone who is Divine. Therefore to be subject does not mean to be inferior, but it means simply the supernatural outlook that to accept humiliation is to come very close to God, because that is our way to Paradise.

--Alice von Hildebrand, “The Secular War on the Supernatural.”

Thursday, February 23, 2017

QUOTATION: Human Life

Pope Francis
Here I feel it urgent to state that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being.

--Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 83

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

QUOTATION: Rights

Charles J. Chaput
What God endows, no human being – no judge, no court, no legislator and no executive – can take away. And when governments assume the power to define rights, repression always follows.
--Archbishop Charles Chaput, “The First Freedom - Religious Liberty as the Foundation of Human Liberty”

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

QUOTATION: Nations

Orestes Brownson
Every living nation has an idea given it by Providence to realize, and whose realization is its special work, mission, or destiny.

--Orestes Brownson, The American Republic

Monday, February 20, 2017

QUOTATION: National Demise

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Nations are not often murdered; they more often commit suicide.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

Sunday, February 19, 2017

QUOTATION: Religion and Science

Pope St. John Paul II
The collaboration between religion and modern science is to the advantage of both, without violating their respective autonomy in any way. Just as religion demands religious freedom, so science rightly claims freedom of research.

--Pope St. John Paul II

Saturday, February 18, 2017

QUOTATION: Threefold Hierarchy

St. Ignatius of Antioch
Your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the Apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me.
--St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians, 6.

Friday, February 17, 2017

QUOTATION: Bad Religion

Blessed John Henry Newman

Perhaps the reason why the standard of holiness among us is so low, why our attainments are so poor, our view of the truth so dim, our belief so unreal, our general notions so artificial and external is this, that we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union. We do not probe the wounds of our nature thoroughly; we do not lay the foundation of our religious profession in the ground of our inner man; we make clean the outside of things; we are amiable and friendly to each other in words and deeds, but our love is not enlarged, our bowels of affection are straitened, and we fear to let the intercourse begin at the root; and, in consequence, our religion, viewed as a social system, is hollow. The presence of Christ is not in it.
--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Christian Sympathy”, Parochial and Plains Sermons, Vol.5

Thursday, February 16, 2017

QUOTATION: Hell

Hell is not so much a place of punishment as the guarantor of love. We cannot truly love God unless we can freely choose not to love him. Hell is the choice not to love God. It is the choice to prefer something else to God.
--Scott Hahn, Angels and Saints

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

QUOTATION: Prayer

St. Alphonsus Liguori
All the saints were saved, and came to be saints by praying; all the accursed souls in hell were lost through neglect of prayer; if they had prayed, it is certain that they would not have been lost. And this will be one of the greatest occasions of their anguish in hell, the thought that they might have saved themselves so easily; that they had only to beg God to help them, but that now the time is past when this could avail them.
--St. Alphonsus Liguori, A Short Treatise on Prayer

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

QUOTATION: The Right to Life

Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Courage is required to restate the most essential things : Thou shalt not kill. We cannot dispose of a human being at his birth nor at his death. Life belongs to God. If man arrogates the right to dispose of his brother’s life, we no longer live in a culture where there is equality of rights, we are in culture where the rights of the strongest dominate. The strongest imposes his right, his supposed right, more exactly. What we have defined as the right to abortion is not a true right because it violates another’s rights. We must recall these things, enter into conflict with the dominant culture up to a certain point, at least in certain countries, and thus risk exposing ourselves to criticism. Witnessing to the truth in the name of Christ obliges us to this audacious claim, which must always be spoken with respect.
--Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Actualité et avenir du Concile oecuménique Vatican II

Monday, February 13, 2017

QUOTATION: The Church is For Sinners

Flannery O'Connor
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.
--Flannery O’Connor

Sunday, February 12, 2017

QUOTATION: Theological Errors

Errors on the theological “right” are every bit as dangerous as those on the left, if not more so, because those on the right usually know better and desire to be faithful Catholics, unlike the left.
--Dave Armstrong, “PensĂ©es on Radical Catholic Reactionaries”, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, December 27, 2015.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

QUOTATION: Inferiority

Alice von Hildebrand
It is not true that to be humiliated is to be inferior. It is not true that to be subject to one’s husband is to be inferior. If you read the Gospel of St. Luke when Christ was found in the Temple in Jerusalem and then went back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, it is said “He was subject to them”.
--Alice von Hildebrand, “The Secular War on the Supernatural.”

Friday, February 10, 2017

QUOTATION: Scruples

St. Philip Neri
Scruples are an infirmity that will make a truce with us, but rarely peace; humility alone defeats them.
--St. Philip Neri

Thursday, February 9, 2017

QUOTATION: The Sacrifice of the Mass

Pope Pius XII
In order that the oblation by which the faithful offer the divine Victim in this sacrifice to the heavenly Father may have its full effect, it is necessary that the people add something else, namely, the offering of themselves as a victim.

--Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 98

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

QUOTATION: Persistence in Prayer

St. John of the Cross
Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.
--St. John of the Cross

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

QUOTATION: Marriage

Pope Francis
We need to acknowledge the great variety of family situations that can offer a certain stability, but de facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage.
--Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia

Monday, February 6, 2017

QUOTATION: Political Correctness, circa. 1850


I consider that Christians, certainly those who are in the same outward circumstances, are very much more like each other in their temptations, inward diseases, and methods of cure, than they at all imagine. Persons think themselves isolated in the world; they think no one ever felt as they feel. They do not dare to expose their feelings, lest they should find that no one understands them. And thus they suffer to wither and decay what was destined in God's purpose to adorn the Church's paradise with beauty and sweetness. Their "mouth is not opened," as the Apostle speaks, nor their "heart enlarged;" they are "straitened" in themselves, and deny themselves the means they possess of at once imparting instruction and gaining comfort.
Nay, instead of speaking out their own thoughts, they suffer the world's opinion to hang upon them as a load, or the influence of some system of religion which is in vogue. It very frequently happens that ten thousand people all say what not any one of them feels, but each says it because every one else says it, and each fears not to say it lest he should incur the censure of all the rest. Such are very commonly what are called the opinions of the age. They are bad principles or doctrines, or false notions or views, which live in the mouths of men, and have their strength in their public recognition. Of course by proud men, or blind, or carnal, or worldly, these opinions which I speak of are really felt and entered into; for they are the natural growth of their own evil hearts. But very frequently the same are set forth, and heralded, and circulated, and become current opinions, among vast multitudes of men who do not feel them. These multitudes, however, are obliged to receive them by what is called the force of public opinion; the careless of course, carelessly, but the better sort superstitiously. Thus ways of speech come in, and modes of thought quite alien to the minds of those who give in to them, who feel them to be unreal, unnatural, and uncongenial to themselves, but consider themselves obliged, often from the most religious principles, not to confess their feelings about them. They dare not say, they dare not even realize to themselves their own judgments. Thus it is that the world cuts off the intercourse between soul and soul, and substitutes idols of its own for the one true Image of Christ, in and through which only souls can sympathise. Their best thoughts are stifled, and when by chance they hear them put forth elsewhere, as may sometimes be the case, they feel as it were conscious and guilty, as if some one were revealing something against them, and they shrink from the sound as from a temptation, as something pleasing indeed but forbidden. Such is the power of false creeds to fetter the mind and bring it into captivity; false views of things, of facts, of doctrines, are imposed on it tyrannically, and men live and die in bondage, who were destined to rise to the stature of the fulness of Christ.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Christian Sympathy”, Parochial and Plains Sermons, Vol.5

Sunday, February 5, 2017

QUOTATION: Closeness to God

Pope Benedict XVI
The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people.
--Pope Benedict XVI

Saturday, February 4, 2017

QUOTATION: The Gospel of Life

Pope St. John Paul IIThe Gospel of Life is not for believers alone: it is for everyone. The issue of life and its defense and promotion is not a concern of the Christian alone. Although faith provides special light and strength, this question arises in every human conscience which seeks the truth and which cares about the future of humanity. Life certainly has a sacred and religious value, but in no way is that value a concern only of believers. The value at stake is one which every human being can grasp by the light of reason; thus it necessarily concerns everyone.
--Pope St. John Paul II

Friday, February 3, 2017

QUOTATION: Consciousness

Peter Kreeft
Consciousness, after all, (1) cannot be denied without self-contradiction (that’s Descartes’ point in“I think therefore I am”), but (2) it has none of the properties that characterize that is material (shape, size, mass, etc.), and (3) it has properties that are not material (e.g., “truth”). The existence of consciousness seems to immediately refute materialism.
--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

Thursday, February 2, 2017

QUOTATION: Zeal

St. Mary Euphrasia PelletierZeal does not consist in continual preaching, in giving good advice, in constantly exhorting to virtue, but rather in giving good example. Example impresses much more than words, and through it we often obtain astonishing results.
--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

QUOTATION: Holiness

St. Jean Vianney
Not all saints have the same sort of holiness. There are those who could never have lived with other saints. Not all have the same path. But all arrive at God.
--St. Jean Vianney