Quote for the Night

[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]

'It is folly to leave your goods where you can never return, and to send nothing to that place where you must remain for ever.'

Ven. Louis de Granada

[Shin]

'We must never lose sight of the fact that we are either saints or outcasts, that we must love for Heaven or for Hell; there is no middle path in this.'

St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars

[Shin]

'Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, "let us die for the holy laws of our fathers," so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them.'

St. Boniface

[Shin]

'May God console you! . . . What saddens you . . . is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises - but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle - the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith?'

St. Athanasius

[Shin]

'It is characteristic of God and His angels to bring to the soul, when they occupy it, true happiness and spiritual joy; and to drive from it the sadness and trials which the enemy incites in it.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

[Shin]

'I may not have many books, nor much time to read, but, strangled with thoughts, as if with thorns, I come into the common surgery of the soul, the church; the luster of the painting draws me to vision and delights my sight like a meadow and imperceptibly introduces my soul to the glory of God. I have seen the perseverance of the martyr, the recompense of the crowns, and as if by fire I am eagerly kindled to zeal, and falling down I venerate God through the martyr and I receive salvation.'

St. John of Damascus

[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]

'I give thanks to God that He deigned to provide such a master for me, for had he not been so severe with me I should never have been able to acquire the virtues of humility and patience.'

St. John of Capistrano

[Shin]

'The devotions we practice in honor of the glorious Virgin Mary, however trifling they be, are very pleasing to her divine Son, and He rewards them with eternal glory.'

St. Teresa of Jesus

[Shin]

'Only the person who becomes irate without reason, sins. Whoever becomes irate for a just reason is not guilty. Because, if ire were lacking, the science of God would not progress, judgments would not be sound, and crimes would not be repressed.'

St. Thomas Aquinas

[Shin]

'And thus this blessed Soul, illuminated by the divine ray, said: "Would that I could utter so strong a cry that it would strike all men with terror, and say to them: O wretched beings! why are you so blinded by this world that you make, as you will find at the hour of death, no provision for the great necessity that will then come upon you?

"You shelter yourselves beneath your hope in the mercy of God, which you unceasingly exalt, not seeing that it is your resistance to his great goodness which will be your condemnation. His goodness should constrain you to his will, not encourage you to persevere in your own. Since his justice is unfailing it must needs be in some way fully satisfied.

"Have not the boldness to say: 'I will go to confession and gain a plenary indulgence and thus I shall be saved.' Remember that the full confession and entire contrition which are requisite to gain a plenary indulgence are not easily attained. Did you know how hardly they are come by, you would tremble with fear and be more sure of losing than of gaining them.'

St. Catherine of Genoa

[Shin]

'A most excellent means of learning how to pray, is to acknowledge ourselves unworthy of such a benefit, and to put ourselves entirely into the hands of the Lord.'

St. Philip Neri

[Shin]

'Something is given as an example that the wrath of God may be known. . . "Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is near: it shall come as a destruction from the Lord. For behold the day of the Lord shall come, a cruel day, and full of indignation, and of wrath, to lay the land desolate, and to destroy the sinners out of it." And again: "Behold the day of the Lord comes kindled as a furnace, and all the proud and all the wicked shall be as stubble; and the day coming shall set them on fire, says the Lord." The Lord prophecies that aliens will be burned and consumed, that is, aliens from the divine race, and the profane, those who have not been reborn spiritually and have not become sons of God. For in another place God says that only those can escape who have been reborn and signed with the sign of Christ; when sending His angels to lay waste the world and to destroy the human race He threatens more seriously than the last time, saying: "Go ye and slay and do not spare your eyes. Do not have pity on the old or the young, but slay the maidens and the women and the children that they may be blotted out. But everyone on whom the sign has been written you shall not touch."'

St. Cyprian of Carthage

[Shin]

'Trust to the goodness of our Lord in the crosses which He sends you; He will never abandon you, for He knows how to draw good from our ills and His glory from our trials.'

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

[Shin]

'Remember also that for you certain useless books, though not bad, will be pernicious; because they will make you lose the time that you can employ in occupations profitable to the soul. In a letter to his disciple Eustochium, St. Jerome stated for her instruction that in his solitude at Bethlehem he was attached to the works of Cicero, and frequently read them, and that he felt a certain disgust for pious books because their style was not polished. He was seized with a serious malady, in which he saw himself at the tribunal of Jesus Christ. The Lord said to him: "Tell me; what are you?" "I am," replied the saint, "a Christian." "No," rejoined the Judge, "you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian." He then commanded him to be instantly scourged. The saint promised to correct his fault, and having returned from the vision he found his shoulders livid and covered with wounds in consequence of the chastisement that he had received. Thenceforward he gave up the works of Cicero, and devoted himself to the reading of books of piety. It is true that in the works like those of Cicero we sometimes find useful sentiments; but the same St. Jerome wisely said in a letter to another disciple: "What need have you of seeking for a little gold in the midst of so much mire," when you can read pious books in which you may find all gold without any mire?'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori