Quote for the Night

[Shin]

'I will make thee understand that I am a wise and learned director, Who will safely lead those souls who, forgetful of themselves, abandon themselves to Me.'

The Lord, to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

[Shin]

'Prayer attunes us for converse with God and, through long practice, leads us to friendship with Him; with Him Whose love accepts even worthless men and is not ashamed to enter into friendship with them, so long as the love that lives in them gives them daring.'

St. Nilus of Sinai

[Shin]

'The virtues generate good thoughts; the commandments lead us to the virtues; the practice of the virtues depends on our own will and resolution.'

St. Thalassios the Libyan

[Shin]

'Furthermore, while the soul is withdrawn from everything and is turned within, the eye of contemplation is opened and sets itself up a ladder by which it can pass to the contemplation of God. By this contemplation the soul is set on fire for eternal things by the heavenly and divine good things it experiences, and views all the things of time from a distance and as if they were nothing. Hence when we approach God by the way of negation, we first deny him everything that can be experienced by the body, the senses and the imagination, secondly even things experienceable by the intellect, and finally even being itself in so far as it is found in created things. This, so far as the nature of the way is concerned, is the best means of union with God, according to Dionysius. And this is the cloud in which God is said to dwell, which Moses entered, and through this came to the inaccessible light.'

St. Albert the Great

[Shin]

'Often our knowledge becomes darkened because we fail to put things into practice. For when we have totally neglected to practice something, our memory of it will gradually disappear.'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Shin]

'Love for God leads him who shares in it to be indifferent to every transient pleasure and every labor and distress. Let all the saints, who have suffered joyfully so much for Christ, convince you of this.'

St. Maximos the Confessor

[Shin]

'If you want with a few words to benefit one who is eager to learn, speak to him about prayer, right faith, and the patient acceptance of what comes. For all else that is good is found through these.'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Shin]

'Therefore, my beloved brethren, we should not look at these temporal things, but fix our attention on those which are eternal. Though affliction may come, it will have an end, though insult and persecution, yet are they nothing to the hope which is set [before us]. For all present matters are trifling compared with those which are future; the sufferings of this present time not being worthy to be compared with the hope that is to come. For what can be compared with the kingdom? or what is there in comparison with life eternal?'

St. Athanasius

[Shin]

'We ought to fear and fly temptations of the flesh, even in sickness, and in old age itself, aye, and so long as we can open and shut our eyelids, for the spirit of incontinence gives no truce either to place, time, or person.'

St. Philip Neri

[Shin]

'See my children; the treasure of a Christian is not on the earth, it is in Heaven. Well, our thoughts ought to be where our treasure is.'

St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars

[Shin]

'It seems that God is calling you to great perfection. And I perceive it by this, that He takes away from you every tie that might hinder it in you.'

St. Catherine of Siena

[Shin]

'God wills that, like precious stones, you be firmly set in the golden ring of charity. He wills that you be so many victims, so many holocausts, sacrificed to the glory of the Most High in the sacred fire of suffering. He wills that through this sacrifice you may continually diffuse the good odor of virtues.'

St. Paul of the Cross

[Shin]

'The soul's strength is its firm state of virtue; on reaching such a state one may say with the invincible apostle Paul; 'What can separate us from the love of Christ?' (Rom. 8:35).'

St. Thalassios the Libyan

[Shin]

'When we enter ornate and clean Basilicas, adorned with crosses, sacred images, altars and burning lamps, we most easily conceive devotion. But on the other hand, when we enter the temples of the heretics, where there is nothing except a chair for preaching and a table for making a meal, we feel ourselves to be entering a profane hall and not the House of God.'

St. Robert Bellarmine

[Shin]

'We may ask a spiritual alms even corporally, by going first to the church of one Saint, and then to the church of another, to make our petition.'

St. Philip Neri

[Shin]

'He who shall courageously present himself to drink our Savior's chalice will find that a certain divine strength will never fail him in persecutions.'

St. Teresa of Jesus