Quote for the Night

[Shin]

'"In the company of the innocent, you will be innocent; in the company of the elect, you will be elect; and in a crooked man's company you will go wrong." [Ps. 18:26,27]

Let us, then, follow the innocent and the upright. They, it is, who are God's elect.'

Pope St. Clement I of Rome

[Shin]

'When the body is urged by the senses to indulge its own desires and pleasures, the corrupted intellect readily succumbs and assents to its impassioned fantasies and impulses. But the regenerated intellect exercises self-control and withholds itself from them. Moreover, as a true philosopher it studies how to rectify such impulses.'

St. Maximos the Confessor

[Shin]

'Come, return! Was all thy method of living honest? Come, return unto every good act that thou hast forsaken!'

St. Bernardine of Siena

[Shin]

'My admonition to thee, whom in spite of thy weakness and poverty I have chosen with such generous kindness as my disciple and companion, is this: that thou strive with all thy powers to imitate me in an exercise, in which I preserved during my whole life from the very first moment of my birth, omitting it on not a single day, however how full of cares and labors it might have been.

This exercise was the following: every day at beginning of dawn, I prostrated myself in the presence of the Most High and gave Him thanks and praise fore His immutable Being, his infinite perfections and for having created me out of nothing; acknowledging myself as his creature and the work of his hands, I blessed Him, and adored Him, giving Him honor, magnificence and Divinity, as the supreme Lord and Creator of myself and of all that exists. I raised up my spirit to place it into his hands, offering myself with profound humility and resignation to Him and asking Him to dispose of me according to his will that day and during all the days of my life, and to teach me to fulfill whatever would be to his greater pleasure. This I repeated many times during the external works of the day, and in the internal ones I first consulted his Majesty, asking for his advise, permission and benediction for all my actions.'

The Blessed Virgin, to Ven. Mary of Agreda

[Shin]

'To use the members of a religious order for the service of God, to the violation of the rule, is to throw down a tree to gather its fruit.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

[Shin]

'He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his hands.'

St. Benedict

[Shin]

'And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee.'

John 17:5

[Shin]

'Men should often renew their good resolutions, and not lose heart because they are tempted against them.'

St. Philip Neri

[Shin]

'When a man is out of the right way the more quickly and impetuously he advances, the more he errs.'

St. Augustine

[Shin]

'Do not say: "I do not know what is right, therefore I am not to blame when I fail to do it." For if you did all the good about which you do know, what you should do next would then become clear to you, as if you were passing through a house from one room to another. It is not helpful to know what comes later before you have done what comes first. For knowledge without action "puffs up", but "love edifies", because it "patiently accepts all things" (1 Cor. 8:1; 13:7).'

St. Mark the Ascetic

[Shin]

'Say frequently and from your heart, "O holy will of God, I love thee; the food of my Jesus was to do the will of the eternal Father; it shall be my food also ever to do His will."'

St. Paul of the Cross

[Shin]

'One may understand by the nourishment of the swine the false philosophy of the world, the vain eloquence of oratory. Their cadence and harmony, in flattering the ear, possess the mind, and enchant the heart; but after one has read works of this kind with great attention, nothing is left but vacancy and confusion. Let us not delude ourselves by saying we do not put any faith in the fable, with which these authors have filled their writings. This reason does not justify us, since we scandalize others who think we approve of what they see us read.'

St. Jerome, to Pope Damasus

[Shin]

'There is a story to this effect in the "Lives of the Fathers" about a farmer whose crops were more plentiful than those of his neighbors. On being asked how this happened with such unvarying regularity, he said he was not surprised because he always had the kind of weather he wanted. He was asked to explain. He said: "It is so because I want whatever kind of weather God wants, and because I do, he gives me the harvests I want." If souls resigned to God's will are humiliated, says Salvian, they want to be humiliated; if they are poor, they want to be poor; in short, whatever happens is acceptable to them, hence they are truly at peace in this life. In cold and heat, in rain and wind, the soul united to God says: "I want it to be warm, to be cold, windy, to rain, because God wills it."

This is the beautiful freedom of the sons of God, and it is worth vastly more than all the rank and distinction of blood and birth, more than all the kingdoms in the world. This is the abiding peace which, in the experience of the saints, "surpasseth all understanding." It surpasses all pleasures rising from gratification of the senses, from social gatherings, banquets and other worldly amusements; vain and deceiving as they are, they captivate the senses for the time being, but bring no lasting contentment; rather they afflict man in the depth of his soul where alone true peace can reside.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

[Shin]

'Obscure though faith be, it is the infallible guide of holy love. Oh, what delight my heart experiences in this certainty!'

St. Paul of the Cross

[Shin]

'For the love of Jesus Christ, forget the past, like St. Paul, and keep your thoughts incessantly fixed on the great distance yet remaining before you reach the way of perfection.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

[Shin]

'Being Master, He became a servant, and so revealed to the world the depths of His providence.'

St. Thalassios the Libyan