Quotessence
Home / Topics / Catholic Spirituality Quotes

Catholic Spirituality Quotes

Browse 49 quotes about Catholic Spirituality.

Catholic Spirituality Quotes

“Since the basic cause of man’s anxiety is the possibility of being either a saint or a sinner, it follows that there are only two alternatives for him. Man can either mount upward to the peak of eternity or else slip backwards to the chasms of despair and frustration. Yet there are many who think there is yet another alternative, namely, that of indifference. They think that, just as bears hibernate for a season in a state of suspended animation, so they, too, can sleep through life without choosing to live for God or against Him. But hibernation is no escape; winter ends, and one is then forced to make a decision—indeed, the very choice of indifference is itself a decision. White fences do not remain white fences by having nothing done to them; they soon become black fences. Since there is a tendency in us that pulls us back to the animal, the mere fact that we do not resist it operates to our own destruction. Just as life is the sum of forces that resist death, so, too, man’s will must be the sum of the forces that resist frustration. A man who has taken poison into his system can ignore the antidote, or he can throw it out the window; it makes no difference which he does, for death is already on the march. St. Paul warns us, “How shall we escape it we neglect so great a salvation” (Heb 2:3). By the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward. There are no plains in the spiritual life, we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an “indifferent” soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it. The talents that are unused are taken away, and the Scriptures tell us that, “But because though art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).”

MoralityCatholicIndifferenceCatholicismSpiritual WarfareCatholic Spirituality
Book:Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
Create image

“The careless, the lukewarm Catholics should, above all, dread hell, for he is continually walking on the brink of the infernal abyss. He makes little of the precepts of hearing Mass, of the prescribed abstinence from flesh meat, he scruples not neglecting the religious training of his children, he associates with persons and frequents places that are to him an occasion of sin, he yields to impure thoughts, commits sins of impurity without remorse, gives way to his vindictive feelings against his neighbor, indulges in excess in eating and drinking, neglects prayer and the sacraments. Now is the time for him to be aroused from his life of sin, now is the time for him to give up sin and change his life, for if he defers doing so, it may soon be to late. This may, indeed, be the last warning that God gives him.”

GodHellCatholicCatholicismHeaven And HellCatholic Spirituality
Author:Fr. Martin von Cochem
Create image

“Like Saint John, Theresa sees that God, who is Love, and Love alone - "God is Charity" (John iv, 8) - does not will and never has willed our suffering for its own sake. He wills it, indeed, but as it were against His will, with what we theologians would term (but how cold it sounds after the intuitive language of Theresa) His subsequent will. Sin, having made suffering necessary, God wills it, but, even then, He only wills it by Love, as being the necessary means to lead men to love Him, to find their blessedness in loving Him . . . He wills it only in view of something else, in view of man's happiness - a painful remedy, but, man's egoism being what it is, one necessary for the health and happiness of his soul.”

SufferingCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:A Retreat with St. Therese
Create image

“One of the most crushing indictments of Protestantism is that it has rejected the idea of the necessity of penance, and by doing so has out-dated and made meaningless large sections of the Bible. Probably no virtue is more insisted on in the Bible than the virtue of penance. "Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish." His Cross does not dispense us from the obligation of taking up our cross: "Unless a man take up his cross and follow Me, he cannot be My disciple." If Christ's sacrifice made further sacrifice unnecessary, the continuance of pain in the world presents more than a problem, in fact a contradiction.”

SufferingCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:Pardon and peace
Create image

“But I do, Matt. I'm often worried about my ability to take it. Will I be able to measure up when real pain comes?" Father Matt snuffed out the cigarette he had bee smoking and casually said: "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." "Meaning?" questioned Father Lehmann. "Meaning that we are not supposed to borrow trouble. You've answered your own question, Jim, before you asked it." "How so?" "By the past six and a half years. You've taken it as it came along, Jim. You'll do the same in the future - if you have the future." "What do you mean: if I have a future?" "Jim, God gives us one moment at a time - only one. Not days; not hours; just moments. And He gives us grace for the moment at the moment; not the grace for the next moment. He gave you the grace you needed for yesterday, yesterday; what you need for today, today; and if you are to have a tomorrow, God will be faithful." (chapter 6)”

SufferingCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:Your Hour
Create image

“That is the purpose of this book - to make you happy. Its plan is to have you base that happiness on God's own truth as given us in the Gospels. Any other base would be unworthy of God and too weak for you. For yours is a tumultuous and a tottering world; made so by men who love the darkness rather than the light. Stability is to be found only in the unmoved Mover of this restless universe and in His Christ who is "the same, yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8). Fear stalks your land. Crippling anxieties and neurotic unrests swarm about you. But that is only because the highly publicized gospels of Expediency and Efficiency have had too many followers who have been altogether too faithful, while the only true Gospel, and the only Gospel of Truth, has been too hesitantly trusted and too listlessly tried.”

HappinessSufferingCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:Your Hour
Create image

“Sin is a terrible fact, but at least it is matched by the consoling fact that God never rejects the sorrowing sinner. The modern world tries to explain sin away, deny the plain facts, and make vice and virtue synonyms. But it has no pity in its cold soul for sinners and no hope to offer the man or the woman who knows the sadness of sin and looks for comfort. It is left for the merciful, sin-crucified Christ to clasp the penitent sinner to His heart.”

SinCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:Fashionable Sin: A Modern Discussion of an Unpopular Subject
Create image

“Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a “passionless passion,” a “wild tranquility.” A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more that a man on dry land can swim; but as soon as he takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done which keep one from God; it is the present persistence in that wrong.”

SinCatholicCatholicismPassionsCatholic Spirituality
Book:Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
Create image

“A "right" to false worship is as nonsensical as asserting a "right" to theft. In the moral law, freedom and license are distinct. In the usage of English, "may" and "can" are distinct. In conscience, grace received and grace refused are distinct. No one is "free" to reject God anymore than one is "free" to commit grand theft auto - ask souls in hell or prisoners in the penitentiary if their acts manifest freedom. The power to do is not the same as permission to do - Satan rebelled in fact and, by definition, in disobedience; he did not assert his freedom, but reduced his freedom to nothing. The citizen committing a crime, the soul committing a sin, the angels committing rebellion, forfeit their freedom. (page 396)”

FreedomCatholicCatholicismFreedom Of ReligionCatholic Spirituality
Book:Distributism for Dorothy
Create image

“No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s owns self sufficiency.”

GodFaithPrayerCatholicIndependenceCatholicismSelf SufficiencyCommunion With GodCatholic Spirituality
Book:Characters of the Passion: Lessons on Faith and Trust
Create image

“Our Lord Jesus Christ willed to be born into a home. He could have chosen another means than that of coming to earth to save us. That is the way He chose. He willed to have a mother and He willed that mother to have a spouse, St. Joseph. He willed to be born into that home. He willed to live in that home for thirty years out of the thirty-three which He spent here below. What could be the meaning of our Lord's staying such a long time in a family? It is not because He needed it. He is the one who gave all of the qualities to the home of Mary and Joseph. He was God; He had nothing to receive from them. But He willed to remain in that home precisely in order to show the importance of the family, because it is from the family that children are born and that is where they prepare for the mission which they are going to have to carry out in the world; just as Jesus willed to prepare Himself for His mission in the midst of His family. What a great lesson!”

FamilyCatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityHoly Family
Author:Marcel Lefebvre
Create image

“Dearest Jesus, I come with Thee to the alter to offer to God this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I shall offer with Thee and with the priest the bread and wine as gifts to God, my Father. And I shall offer Him my body and my soul with them. God, our Father, loves Thee, dear Jesus. He will accept these poor gifts and change them into Thy Body and Blood. He will give them back to me in Holy Communion. I come to Holy Mass to beg pardon for my sins. I come to ask to ask help for myself and for those I love. How wonderful it is to be able to adore God. How wonderful it is to thank the Father with Thee, my Jesus.”

ChildrenCatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityCatholic Mass
Book:My Mass Book
Create image

“Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a “guilt complex” because He accused them of being whited sepulchers—outside clean, inside full of dead men’s bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, “Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner’s awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers.”

HealingCatholicGuiltDenialCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
Create image

“Many of the images I’ve selected for this book involve the holy angels interacting with people, such as in visions and apparitions to the saints. My purpose is to offer examples of angels as distinct and real beings which have appeared to people.”

GodSpiritual LifeInspirational LivingBible StudyHealing The Emotional SelfCatholic SpiritualityArchangelsPrayer WorshipCatholic SaintsAngels Everywhere
Book:Prayers to the Holy Angels
Create image

“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the Sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety, and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remains within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic TraditionCatholic SpiritualityExtra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
Book:Unam Sanctam
Create image

“The Sacrifice of Cavalry cannot be transformed, the Sacrifice of the Last Supper cannot be transformed - for there was a Sacrifice at the Last Supper - we cannot transform this Sacrifice into a simple, commemorative meal, a simple repast, at which a memory is recalled, this is not possible. To do such a thing would be to destroy the whole of our Religion, to destroy the most precious thing which Our Lord has given us here on earth, the immaculate and divine treasure which He put into the hands of His Church, which He made a priestly Church . . . (sermon of May 25, 1975)”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic TraditionVatican IiCatholic SpiritualityVatican 2Catholic Mass
Author:Marcel Lefebvre
Create image

“We ought to remember during this entire contemplation of God that we must apply all that is said of God to Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God. We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God. We cannot separate the Christian religion from Jesus Christ, who is God, and we must affirm and believe that only the Catholic religion is the Christian religion. These affirmations have, as a result, inescapable conclusions that no ecclesiastical authority can contest: outside of Jesus Christ and the Catholic religion, that is, outside the Church, there is no salvation, no eternal life. Whoever is saved attains to everlasting life by his adhesion to the Mystical Body of Christ. Another consequence: all of the societies Our Lord created must necessarily work together, in accordance with their entire purpose, to make souls Catholic and to keep them Catholic, in order to procure their eternal salvation, which is the end of all Creation, of the Incarnation, and of the Redemption.”

ReligionChristianityCatholicSalvationCatholicismCatholic TraditionCatholic Spirituality
Book:Spiritual Journey
Create image

“You will recall from the Catechism that the Sacrifice of the alter is truly a Sacrifice, and that it differs from that of the cross only insofar as the Sacrifice of the Cross is a bloody Sacrifice, while the Sacrifice of the alter is an unbloody one. That is the only difference between the Sacrifice of the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Altar, and it is for this reason that as Catholics we venerate the Sacrifice of the alter. It is the essence, the heart of our Faith. Because there is a Sacrifice, the presence of a victim is necessary. There is no sacrifice without a victim. Thus our Lord is present, since He offers Himself as a Sacrifice. To deny this sacrificial presence and to claim the Sacrifice of the Mass is simply a memorial meal, a mere recalling of what our Lord accomplished at the Last Supper is nothing less than a blasphemy against the doctrine of the Church, against all that Our Lord Jesus Christ performed and wished to be continued.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic TraditionCatholic SpiritualityCatholic Mass
Book:I. The Catholic Mass II. Luther's Mass III. The Essentials of our Faith
Create image

“This, of course, is very simple for us who are Catholics. This is our Faith, the Faith we have always been taught, and yet, in our own time, how many Catholics still accept this truth, that salvation comes to all men through Jesus Christ, that outside of Christ there is no salvation? I find it extraordinary that Catholics should question the age old adage, "no salvation outside the Church". This is precisely the most important question facing mankind today, just as it has been in every age. Indeed there is nothing more vital to man than for him to know how he is to be saved, by whom he is to be saved, and in what manner he is to be saved. Can there possibly be a question of greater moment for those who inhabit the earth? Now it is quite certain that when we proclaim today that there is "no salvation outside the Church", many Catholics rise up incredulously and affirm that this is nonsense, that otherwise those not in the Church must be condemned to Hell. The fact is, however, that this remains a crucial tenant to all mankind. As Catholics we are bound to affirm what the Church has always affirmed, because the Church is the repository of all truth; the Sone of God was made man to be crucified for the salvation of all men. Can there possibly be any other source of salvation outside of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ? Can we as Catholics accept that Luther, Buddha, or Mohammed are also means of eternal salvation? Are they also in Heaven seated at the right hand of God? Yet today, despite the absurdity, many Catholics no longer accept that there is "no salvation outside the Church".”

CatholicSalvationCatholicismCatholic TraditionCatholic SpiritualityExtra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
Book:I. The Catholic Mass II. Luther's Mass III. The Essentials of our Faith
Create image

“A man remains a Christian as long as he makes the effort to give the central assent, as long as he tries to utter the fundamental Yes of trust, even if he is unable to fit in or resolve many of the details. There will be moments in life when, in all kinds of gloom and darkness, faith falls back on the simple, ‘Yes, I believe you, Jesus of Nazareth; I believe that in you was revealed that divine purpose which allows me to live with confidence, tranquility, patience, and courage.’ As long as this core remains in place, a man is living by faith, even if for the moment he finds many of the details of faith obscure and impracticable. Let us repeat; at its core, faith is, not a system of knowledge, but trust.”

ChristianityChristian LifeCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityPope Benedict XviRatzinger
Author:Joseph Ratzinger
Create image

“Books are the food of the soul. Good and wholesome food given to a hungry body will nourish it, but if the food is poisonous, it will be injurious to the system. The same happens with reading. If people read good and instructive books at regular and proper times, it will strengthen and nourish them greatly.”

ReadingCatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualitySpiritual NourishmentAnthony Mary Claret
Book:The Autobiography of St. Anthony Mary Claret
Create image

“Desirous of placing those who aspire to sanctity - and especially to priestly sanctity - in the best conditions for arriving there, it seemed to me indispensable to evoke the particular action which the Virgin Mary has by the will of God in this effort to attain holiness, and this even before considering the elements and essential steps towards sanctity. If the Word Incarnate who had absolutely no need of a mother to come among us to accomplish the Redemption, wished that His divine person should receive a body and a soul in the bosom of Mary and that, during thirty out of thirty-three years, He should remain subject to His Mother and be, in a certain way, formed by Mary, how can we imagine that we, poor sinful creatures, have no need of the effective aid of Mary to form us into Christians, and priests?”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodOur LadyMarian Devotion
Book:Spiritual Journey
Create image

“The sufferings and death of our Divine Redeemer on the Cross did not satisfy the love of His Sacred Heart. When about to ascend to His Heavenly Father, His infinite power and wisdom invented a means by which He might be in Heaven with His Father and at the same time remain on earth with His beloved children. The Blessed Sacrament is this Divine invention. it was the last and greatest expression of the burning love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus before His Passion. It was His last legacy to us in fulfillment of His promise not to leave us orphans.”

CatholicCatholicismBlessed SacramentCatholic SpiritualitySacred HeartSacred Heart Quotes
Book:Devotion to the Sacred Heart
Create image

“The Heart of Jesus is the mine and treasure house of graces. However, Our Lord promised not only spiritual favors to those who venerate His Heart, but also aid and comfort in all sufferings. No human soul, howsoever disconsolate and abandoned, will fail to find peace and consolation in the Divine Heart. Ho misfortune is so bitter and hopeless but that the Sacred Heart can change and direct it all for the best.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualitySacred HeartSacred Heart Quotes
Book:Devotion to the Sacred Heart
Create image

“The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the boundless ocean of God's love, of God's image, of God's tender compassion for poor sinners. The Sacred Heart contains remedies for all our wants, and It can and will supply all our needs for time and eternity. In our troubles, in our sorrows, in our wants, let us not forget to go to that place where alone we can find peace, consolation and help - the Sacred Heart of Jesus!”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualitySacred HeartSacred Heart Quotes
Book:Devotion to the Sacred Heart
Create image

“The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the boundless ocean of God's love, of God's mercy, of God's tender compassion for poor sinners. The Sacred Heart of Jesus contains remedies for all our wants, and It can and will supply all our needs for time and eternity. In our troubles, in our sorrows, in our wants, let us not forget to go to that place where alone we can find peace, consolation and help - the Sacred Heart of Jesus!”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualitySacred HeartSacred Heart Quotes
Book:Devotion to the Sacred Heart
Create image

“Why did the Holy Ghost descend on the Jewish Pentecost? Because on their Pentecost the Jews celebrated the anniversary of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, and God would show by sending the Holy Ghost on this day, that the Old Law had ceased and the New Law commenced. God also chose this time, that the Jews who on this day came together from all countries to Jerusalem to celebrate the Pentecost, might be witness of the miracle, and hear the New Law announced by the apostles. (Feast of Pentecost)”

CatholicCatholicismPentecostCatholic SpiritualityCatholic Mass
Book:The Church's Year
Create image

“Our Lady pleaded and insisted that men must say the daily Rosary. Reparation holds back the hand of God from striking the world in just punishment for its many crimes. The Rosary is like a sword or weapon the Mother of God can use to cut down heresy and the forces of evil. It is most powerful, and many times has saved the world from situations as bad as, if not worse than, the one facing us today.”

CatholicCatholicismRosaryCatholic SpiritualityMarian DevotionOur Lady Of Fatima
Book:Our Lady of Fatima's Peace Plan From Heaven
Create image

“It was fitting that Jesus Christ should have such a Mother as would be worthy of Him as far as possible; and she would not have been worthy, if, contaminated by the hereditary stain even for the first moment only of her conception, she had been subject to the abominable power of Satan.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodMarian Quotes
Book:Fulgens Corona: On the Marian Year and the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception
Create image

“Just as all mothers are deeply affected when they perceive that the countenance of their children reflects a peculiar likeness to their own, so also our Most Sweet Mother wishes for nothing more, never rejoices more than when she sees those whom, under the cross of her Son, she has adopted as children in His stead, portray the lineaments and ornaments of her own soul in thought, word, and deed.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodMarian Quotes
Book:Fulgens Corona: On the Marian Year and the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception
Create image

“But where, as is the case in almost all dioceses, there exists a church in which the Virgin Mother of God is worshipped with more intense devotion, thither on stated days let pilgrims flock together in great numbers and publicly and in the open give glorious expression to their common Faith and their common love toward the Virgin Most Holy.”

CatholicCatholicismVirgin MaryCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodMarian Quotes
Book:Fulgens Corona: On the Marian Year and the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception
Create image

“When a lull came in the conversation he sat up in bed with vigor and said: "Does not all this explain that mysterious passage in the Gospel which tells how Mary placed her 'firstborn' in the manger? So many have mistakenly believed that that word implies that she was to have other children. We know she was to have millions on millions but not according to the flesh; only in the spirit. Jesus was her only Son in one sense, but all men are her children in the other." "Exactly," said the young scholar. "In one of his encyclicals, Pius X told how Mary, carrying Jesus in her womb, was carrying each of us spiritually; for in carrying the Head of the Mystical Body physically, she was carrying the whole Mystical Body spiritually." (Chapter 2)”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodMarian Quotes
Book:Your Hour
Create image

“On all these grounds it is excellent that after the Heart of Jesus there is nothing among corporeal things either in Heaven or on earth that can be compared in excellence with the Heart of Mary - nothing holier, nothing more precious, nothing nobler, nothing greater, nothing sweeter, nothing more pleasing to God. And if we now go on to consider this admirable Heart in relation to men, to whom it is presented as an object of devotion, where shall we find anything sweeter or more tenderly than this virginal Heart? For it is the Heart of our heavenly mistress, our good Mother, our advocate, our consolation, our refuge; the source and seat of the charity, compassion, mercy and tender love of the Blessed Virgin for us; the centre of those unmeasured sorrows that our Blessed Mother suffered on the occasion of our redemption; finally, the model according to which we should form our hearts, the model of humility, purity, meekness, charity, love, and all other virtues.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityBlessed Virgin MaryMother Of GodImmaculate Heart Of Mary
Book:The Adorable Heart of Jesus
Create image

“The theology of the messages is profoundly Catholic. The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is revealed as the Mediatrix of all graces. So prominent is She in Heaven's designs that "the justice of God condemns" those who commit sins against Her. Moreover, She is authorized to promise salvation to those who practice the First Five Saturdays reparatory devotion. Devotion to her Immaculate Heart is given as the signal remedy to reduce the number of souls who are damning themselves to hell. In the vision at Tuy Mary stands at the foot of the Cross, Her Immaculate Heart crowned with thorns and bursting with flames. The striking image emphasizes Mary's role as Co-redemptrix of mankind.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMother Of GodMarian DevotionImmaculate Heart Of Mary
Book:Fatima in Twilight
Create image

“Mary was born with an end to fulfill, just as I was. She was created to praise, reverence, and serve God, just as I was; created to save her soul, just as I was. And because of her absolute purity, she understood her end perfectly from the first moment of her existence, and followed it always without swerving. While her mother was offering her to God, she with the full use of her reason (as many hold) offered herself to fulfill the end for which she had been created. She did not know what the particular end was to be - God did not reveal to her till the day of the Incarnation, that she was to be the Mother of God - but she offered herself to do what God wished, she put herself at His disposal.”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMarian DevotionMarian Quotes
Book:Mater Christi Meditations on Our Lady
Create image

“By way of parenthesis, let us remark that Saint Alphonsus says: "It will suffice to keep silent"; he wishes to indicate that it is profitable to do more than fly under Mary's mantle, viz., not only to show our confidence, homage, and love by just being there, but to practice that fourth and perfecting element of Marian devotion: imitation. By rendering homage to Mary we give Her our minds; by confidence we giver our wills; by love we give our hearts. Such is true but . To be perfect we must sell all and follow Mary; we must give Her our whole selves by imitation. Later the reader will see how the Scapular renders this perfection of devotion to Our Lady very easy; he is now concerned with is what is sufficient and we return to the consideration of Mary's Promise only in so far as it is a means of salvation. (chapter four)”

CatholicCatholicismCatholic SpiritualityMarian Devotion
Book:Mary in Her Scapular Promise
Create image

“Do we Catholics adore bread when we pay adoration to the Blessed Sacrament? No; we do not adore bread, for no bread is there, but the most sacred Body and Blood of Christ, and wherever Christ is, adoration is due Him by man and angels. St. Augustine says: "No one partakes of the Body until he has first adored and we not only do not sin when we adore It, but would sin if we did not adore It." The Council of Trent excommunicates those who assert that it is not allowable to adore Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, in the Blessed Sacrament. How unjust are those unbelievers who sneer at this adoration, when it has never entered into the mind of any Catholic to adore the external appearance of this Sacrament, but the Savior hidden under the appearances; and how grievously do those indifferent Catholics sin who show Christ so little veneration in this Sacrament, and seldom adore Him if at all!”

CatholicCatholicismEucharistBlessed SacramentEucharistic AdorationCatholic SpiritualityEucharistic Worship
Book:The Church's Year
Create image

“God has not given us time in order that we may play with it as we please. Time is the vessel with which we must draw from the well of life everlasting. Whoever does not bring it back full is made to feel the questioning glance of the Lord who says: "What hast thou done with those treasures of grace? I have commanded thee to bring this vessel back to me full - and thou hast gone thy own ways, hast forgotten the command of thy God, hast even broken the beautiful, holy vessel. And what dost thou now bring back?" Then the soul sinks down before God; it now lies before the Everlasting Judge. It can no longer run away from His words, as perhaps it did during life. There it lies before the Almighty, returning only fragments to Him - the fragments of so many shattered graces and so much lost time. Then the soul says to God: "Make it whole again!" If the soul was repentant at death, it will say this with great remorse. Then the Savior is merciful and says: "Come here! In Purgatory we will make it whole again." But this cannot be done without suffering; for the soul is softened by repentance, and it is by repentance that expiation must be made.”

TimeCatholicCatholicismPurgatoryCatholic SpiritualityPurgatory Judgment Death Penance
Book:The Secrets of Purgatory: Reminiscences of a Soul in Purgatory
Create image

“Christian marriage is a sacrament of the Gospel symbolizing the ineffable union between Himself and His Church. It is the consecration of human love to a pure and high purpose, namely, the sanctification of man and the extension of the kingdom of God. It is a bond which, whilst linking two baptized creatures to each other visibly, also joins them invisibly to their Creator and Savior by means of the special grace accompanying that bond. It is a path along which , though chequered with light and shade, the fellow travelers mutually supporting each other are enabled to journey the more easily and securely toward the heavenly Jerusalem where "in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." (Mt. 22:30)”

MarriageCatholicCatholicismCatholic Spirituality
Book:The Prophet of Carmel
Create image