QUOTATION: What the Shepherd Fights

We are the archenemy of our own salvation, and the Shepherd must fight first of all with us – for us.

--Romano Guardini

QUOTATION: Idleness

Idleness is the enemy of the soul.

--St. Anselm of Canterbury

QUOTATION: No Mary, No Jesus

If we want to be Christian, we must be Marian.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Graces

Our Savior says, if you have not received the graces that you desire, do not complain to me, but blame yourself, because you have neglected to seek them from me.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Unwanted?

You might think you are unwanted; that’s not true. Both heaven and hell want you badly.

--Jason Evert

QUOTATION: God's Love

One of the principal reasons that made the infidels so incredulous towards the mystery of the Incarnate Word is that they could not persuade themselves that God had as much love for the human as Christians claimed. Celsus, in his writing against the Gospels, to which the learned Origen strongly answered, mocks Christians who dared to presume that God himself descended from heaven to come to their aid. They found it undignified for God to have such a special care for human things; and it is for this reason that the Holy Scriptures, in order to establish in hearts the belief in such a great mystery, never ceases to publish the goodness of God and his love for men. It is also what compelled the apostle John to confess in these terms the faith of redemption: “For us, we believe, he said, in the charity that God had for men.” What a beautiful profession of faith, and conceived in such a singular way, but absolutely necessary in order to uproot incredulity.

--Bossuet, Panegyric of St. Peter Nolasco

QUOTATION: How People Stop Themselves from Being Pro-Life

People know that abortion is happening, but they also realize that if they look at it too closely, they will not be able to live at peace with themselves unless they try to stop it. At the same time, they know that if they try to stop it there will be a price to pay. They may lose friends or face other kinds of opposition. They don’t want to make the sacrifice necessary to confront injustice. What, then, is their solution to this dilemma? Ignore the problem altogether. Denial protects them from the pain of the situation.

--Fr. Frank Pavone

QUOTATION: God Loves Us Individually

God does not treat us as part of a collectivity. He knows each one by name. He calls each one personally.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: The Temptation of Those Who Serve God

How does the devil operate on people who are serving God, sincerely trying to do the will of God? - Memorize this for life: Those who want to do God’s will, the devil causes them worries, anxieties, disturbs them, makes them anxious, disquiets their minds. Take this as a law of the spiritual life provided you sincerely want to do God’s will: Consider every anxiety, every worry, every disturbance, every desolation as a temptation. That statement is worth ten million dollars.

--Fr. John Hardon

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

If we knew ourselves well, rather than being flabbergasted to find ourselves on the ground, we would wonder how we manage to remain standing.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Evil

Pain and sadness are not the greatest evil; worse is judging evil to be good and not rejecting it.

-- St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Conception and Transubstantiation

Biological conception and spiritual consecration, or what Catholics call transubstantiation—are the holiest moments in time because God continually creates miracles at those two moments; and those two places—a woman’s body and a Catholic altar—are the two holiest places in the world because that’s where he does it.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Human nature

Christianity puts a high value on human nature, but it does not trust its unaided powers too far. It says that man in his human nature is neither a saint nor a devil; he is neither intrinsically corrupt nor immaculately conceived.

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

QUOTATION: Conversion to the Pro-Life Cause

You must remember that I was converted to the cause of life only because I was converted to the cause of truth.

-- Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

QUOTATION: O Happy Fault

Blessed is the crisis that made you grow, the fall that made you gaze up to heaven, the problem that made you look for God!

--St Padre Pio

QUOTATION: Contrition

If you commit a venial fault, make an act of the love of God and of contrition, purpose of amendment, and forth with resume your wonted, tranquility. To remain troubled after a fault is the greatest fault that a person can commit, for a troubled soul is incapable of doing the least good. If, by mischance, the fault has been grievous, then immediately make an act of contrition (which is sufficient to recover the divine grace), resolve never to be guilty of the same again, and take the first opportunity of going to confession.

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

QUOTATION: Revealing Sins

Would we wish that our own hidden sins should be divulged? We ought, then, to be silent regarding those of others.

--St. John Baptist de La Salle

QUOTATION: Despair

It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.

--St. Peter Damian

QUOTATION: Mistakes

One who makes no mistakes, makes nothing.

--St. Teresa of Avila  

QUOTATION: Chastity

Anyone, then, who desires to live chastely in Christ Jesus, must flee not only the mouse of lust, but even from its very scent.

--St. Anthony of Padua

QUOTATION: Believing

Believing is not an act of the understanding alone, not simply an act of the will, not just an act of feeling, but an act in which all the spiritual powers of man are at work together. Still more: man in his own self, and of himself, cannot bring about this believing at all; it has of its nature the character of a dialogue. It is because the depth of the soul – the heart—has been touched by God’s word that the whole structure of spiritual powers is set in motion and unites in the Yes of believing.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “Faith and Theology”, Address on the occasion of the conferring of an honorary doctorate of theology by the Theological Faculty of Wroclaw/Breslau, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Be Not Afraid!

Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Reason and Religion

Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers.

--G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.

QUOTATION: Humility

God takes an especial delight in the humility of those who believe that they have not yet begun to do good.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Your Vocation

You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you.

 --Dorothy Day

QUOTATION: God Does Not Force Us to Love Him

We cannot escape God’s justice by denying Him, but His friendship is easy to evade. He never forces our love. The surrender of the will to God is all important in conversion because of this: God will not destroy our human freedom. He will not even give proofs so absolutely overpowering as to destroy all choice, for He always leaves a margin for love. Therefore a necessary prelude to conversion is a spirit become docile, teachable, and humble. For if we think we know it all, not even God can teach us.

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

QUOTATION: Hell

A third misunderstanding is that hell does not mean that God tortures people there. He does not want their torture. The Bible says that “God is not willing that any should perish.” But that which He essentially is and cannot change—truth and unselfish love—may torture them there, because they have made themselves into the kind of persons that do not love these things but hate them. But God can’t help that: He can’t turn off his love any more than the sun can turn off its light. Thus, paradoxically, God’s essential, eternal character—truth and love—is both the supreme heavenly foundation for moral goodness and its joyful reward and  the thing that tortures the damned in hell, which is the supreme evil and misery.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Temptation

In temptations trust not to yourself, nor to all the good resolutions and promises which you have made, but rely solely on the divine assistance; and for this reason have immediate recourse to God and the Blessed Virgin. Especially in temptations against purity, the greatest care must be taken not to remain to dispute with the temptation. In such moments some are accustomed to set their will to make acts of the contrary virtue; but they run considerable risk. The best plan to adopt on these occasions is to renew the firm purpose rather to die than to offend God, and forthwith to make the sign of the cross without remonstrance, and to call on God and the divine Mother, making frequent invocations of the most holy names of Jesus and Mary, which have a wonderful efficacy against filthy suggestions, and should therefore be invoked continually till the temptations are over. Of ourselves we have not strength to overcome the attacks of the flesh, our most cruel enemy; but God readily supplies the strength to all who ask him; but he that fails to do so, almost invariably falls a prey to the enemy.

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

QUOTATION: Accepting Church Teaching

He who does not embrace the teaching of the Church does not have the habit of faith.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Perspective on History

You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Socialism

“[T]he fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call ‘his own’, and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 13