Quote for the Night

[Shin]

'Rebukes may be given in malice and self-defense, or out of fear of God and respect for truth.'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Shin]

'My hope is in Christ, who strengthens the weakest by His Divine help. I can do all in Him who strengthens me. His Power is infinite, and if I lean on him, it will be mine. His Wisdom is infinite, and if I look to Him for counsel, I shall not be deceived. His Goodness is infinite, and if my trust is stayed in Him, I shall not be abandoned.'

Pope St. Pius X

[Shin]

'When a sparrow tied by the leg tries to fly, it is held back by the string and pulled down to the earth. Similarly, when the intellect that has not yet attained dispassion flies up towards heavenly knowledge, it is held back by the passions and pulled down to the earth.'

St. Maximos the Confessor

[Shin]

'We depict Christ as our King and Lord, and we do not strip Him of His army. For the saints are the Lord's army.'

St. John of Damascus

[Shin]

'Jesus Christ at His birth: I contemplate Him there with Mary and Joseph. What conditions, though! Lying in a manger where animals feed! Humiliation, privation, suffering.'

St. Bernadette Soubirous

[Shin]

'Moreover, not content with removing religion from public society, they wish to banish it also from private families. For, teaching and professing the most fatal error of "Communism and Socialism," they assert that "domestic society or the family derives the whole principle of its existence from the civil law alone; and, consequently, that on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and especially that of providing for education." By which impious opinions and machinations these most deceitful men chiefly aim at this result, viz., that the salutary teaching and influence of the Catholic Church may be entirely banished from the instruction and education of youth, and that the tender and flexible minds of young men may be infected and depraved by every most pernicious error and vice. For all who have endeavored to throw into confusion things both sacred and secular, and to subvert the right order of society, and to abolish all rights, human and divine, have always (as we above hinted) devoted all their nefarious schemes, devices and efforts, to deceiving and depraving incautious youth and have placed all their hope in its corruption.'

Pope Pius IX, 'Quanta Cura'

[Shin]

'Admit that God deserves to be loved very much, yea, boundlessly, because He loved us first, He infinite and we nothing, loved us, miserable sinners, with a love so great and so free. This is why I said at the beginning that the measure of our love to God is to love immeasurably. For since our love is toward God, who is infinite and immeasurable, how can we bound or limit the love we owe Him? Besides, our love is not a gift but a debt. And since it is the Godhead who loves us, Himself boundless, eternal, supreme love, of whose greatness there is no end, yea, and His wisdom is infinite, whose peace passeth all understanding; since it is He who loves us, I say, can we think of repaying Him grudgingly? "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength, in whom I will trust." He is all that I need, all that I long for. My God and my help, I will love Thee for Thy great goodness; not so much as I might, surely, but as much as I can. I cannot love Thee as Thou deservest to be loved, for I cannot love Thee more than my own feebleness permits. I will love Thee more when Thou deemest me worthy to receive greater capacity for loving; yet never so perfectly as Thou hast deserved of me.'

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

[Shin]

'Many of us feel remorse for our sins, yet we gladly accept their causes.'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Shin]

'In the trials that God sends us we must bow our head in submission, because, if He intended to give us one stroke, and we raise our head in rebellion, He will give us ten of them; whereas, if He designed to give us ten strokes, and we bow our head in submission, He will scarcely inflict one.'

St. Paul of the Cross

[Shin]

'They [the Modernists] exercise all their ingenuity in diminishing the force and falsifying the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight. But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always have the force of law, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind . . . or endeavour by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church; and Catholics will hold for law, also, the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople: We therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV. and Pius IX., ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.'

Pope St. Pius X

[Shin]

'Garrulousness is the platform from which vainglory preaches itself. . . Silence on the other hand is the mother of prayer. It frees the prisoner; it guards the divine flame; it watches over reasoning; it protects the sense of penitence.

St. John Climacus

[Shin]

'Do you see that glass of water or that piece of bread which a holy soul gives to a poor person for God's sake; it is a small matter, God knows, and in human judgment hardly worthy of consideration: God, notwithstanding, recompenses it, and forthwith gives for it some increase of charity.'

St. Francis de Sales

[Shin]

'The sweetness which some experience in prayer, is milk which our Lord gives as a relish to those who are just beginning to serve Him.'

St. Philip Neri

[Shin]

'As God is unknowable in His essence, so is He infinite in His majesty.'

St. Thalassios the Libyan

[Shin]

'By the test of suffering the chaff in the Church of God is distinguished from the wheat: he that humbles himself under tribulations, and is resigned to the will of God, is wheat for paradise; he that grows haughty and is enraged, and so forsakes God, is chaff for hell.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

[Shin]

'O men too slow to listen to the appeal of the poor! It was one of your brothers the angels crying to you. He came to prove you and to assure himself whether you forgot the Saviour in your merry makings. I wish to God you had guessed who it was.'

St. Lydwine of Schiedam