Quote for the Night

[Shin]

'Time passes, and our pains pass with it; but the glory which follows these pains passes not -- it is eternal.'

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

[Shin]

'Humble me as much as you want. Console me only when it may help me accept suffering and persevere until death. Since the graces I ask are the fruits of your abandonment, bring virtue out of my weakness and glorify yourself in my misery, O my Jesus, the only refuge of my soul.'

St. Bernadette Soubirous

[Shin]

'Rain cannot fall without a cloud, and we cannot please God without a good conscience.'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Therese]

The things that we love tell us what we are.

--Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (1225-1274)

[Therese]

If an angel should come down from heaven and show me any other thing than I have believed all my lifetime past, I would not believe him.

--Blessed John Forest, one of the martyrs of the English Reformation

[Shin]

'This has been the one chief and dearest endeavor of all saints, to desire with their whole heart to endure every toil, all contempt, every pain, in order to please God, and thus to please that divine heart, which so much deserves to be loved, and loves us so much.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori


"Which so much deserves to be loved, and loves us so much."

[James - a humble servant]

Happy those whose trust is
    in the LORD, who turns
    not to idolatry or to those
    who stray after falsehood.
How numerous, O LORD,
    my God, you have made
    your wondrous deeds!
And in your plans for us
    there is none to equal
    you.
Should I wish to declare or
    tell them, too many are
    they to recount.
Sacrifice and offering you
    do not want, but ears
    open to obedience you
    gave me.
Holocausts and sin offerings
     you do not require;
    so I said, "Here I am;
    your commands for me
    are written in the scroll.  
To do your will is my
    delight; my God, your
    law is in my heart!

~ Psalm 40:5-9
(A Psalm of David)

[Shin]

Happy are those whose trust is truly in the LORD!

[Shin]

'Just as smoke drives the bees away and also takes the sweetness out of their work, so bodily ease drives the fear of God from the soul and dissipates all its activity.'

St. Poemen

A quote for anticipation of Lent!

[Shin]

'The Roman Pontiffs, and the other Holy Fathers, our predecessors, when they were pressed in upon by temporal or spiritual wars, or troubled by other trials, in order that they might more easily escape from these, and having achieved tranquility, might quietly and fervently be free to devote themselves to God, were wont to implore the divine assistance, through supplications or Litanies to call forth the support of the saints, and with David to lift up their eyes unto the Mountains, trusting with firm hope that thence would they receive aid. . . Dominic looked to that simple way of praying and beseeching God, accessible to all and wholly pious, which is called the Rosary, or Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which the same most Blessed Virgin is venerated by the angelic greeting repeated one hundred and fifty times, that is, according to the number of the Davidic Psalter, and by the Lord's Prayer with each decade. Interposed with these prayers are certain meditations showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the method of prayer devised by the by the Fathers of the Holy Roman Church. . . Christ's faithful, inflamed by these prayers, began immediately to be changed into new men. The darkness of heresy began to be dispelled, and the light of the Catholic Faith to be revealed. . . Following the example of our predecessors, seeing that the Church militant, which God has placed in our hands, in these our times is tossed this way and that by so many heresies, and is grievously troubled troubled and afflicted by so many wars, and by the deprave morals of men, we also raise our eyes, weeping but full of hope, unto that same mountain, whence every aid comes forth, and we encourage and admonish each member of Christ's faithful to do likewise in the Lord.'

Pope St. Pius V

[Shin]

'Our supreme duty is that which we owe to God, and the next appertains to the soul. And yet these two are such loving correlates, that though every one of the is a duty of supreme consequence, and such as by no means we may presume to neglect or omit, yet cannot we possibly perform any one of them without the other. So that whosoever will serve God doth at the same time provide for his own soul; and he that is careful for his own soul doth at the same time serve God. So that the state of these two sovereign duties in man, is by a certain compendious dependency and co-intention rendered very easy, while the faithful performance of the one is a perfect consumation of both: for by the unspeakable tenderness and mercy of God, the good we do to our own souls is the most acceptable service and sacrifice that we can offer unto Him.'

St. Eucharius of Lyons

[Therese]

"We declare that the greater part of those who are damned have brought the calamity on themselves by ignorance of the mysteries of the Faith, which they should have known and believed, in order to be united with the elect."

--Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758)

[Shin]

'He who has tasted the things for which he hopes will spurn the things of this world: all his longing will be spent on what he hopes for.'

St. Thalassios the Libyan

[Shin]

'The intellect freed from the passions becomes like light, unceasingly illumined by the contemplation of created beings.'

St. Thalassios the Libyan

[Shin]

'The prayers of the Saints in heaven and of the just on earth are a perfume which never will be lost.'

St. Padre Pio

[Shin]

'Prayer is the speaking of the mind to God. What structure does the mind need so that, not looking back, nor hither and thither, it may rise to the Lord and converse with Him, with no intermediary?'

St. Nilus of Sinai