Eucharist, Page: Quotes, Prayer (how), Quote Topic
Further, one must go to church not inattentively. For, it is always possible that one may go to church not in a way worthy of praise but rather of condemnation, i.e., by going and not receiving any spiritual benefit. Approaching the church, you must leave every care and worry about your affairs at the threshold in order to enter with a serene mind. Entering the church, you must put on reverence like a garment, remembering to Whom we are coming and to Whom we intend to address our prayers. Having taken your place in the church (best of all, the same place each time), you should gather your thoughts and mentally stand before the face of the omnipresent God, offering Him reverent worship in body and spirit, with a contrite heart and in humble reverence. After this, you must follow, without wandering thoughts, everything that is going on — what is being sung and read in the church — all the way to the end of the service. That is all! In this way, we won’t be bored in church, looking here and there and starting conversations, and we won’t be wishing that the service be over soon. Instead, passing from one prayerful feeling to another and from one reverent thought to the next, we will be like those in a fragrant garden, moving from one group of flowers to another.
–Saint Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894)
Abandonment (of self), Discipleship, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
I will attempt day by day to break my will into pieces. I want to do God’s Holy Will, not my own!
–Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother (1838-1862)
Grace, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
The weakness of human means is a source of strength. Jesus is the Master of the Impossible.
–Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
Discipleship, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
As soon as I believed there was a God, I understood I could do nothing else but live for him, my religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith: God is so great. There is such a difference between God and everything that is not.
–Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
Discipleship, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
God calls all the souls he has created to love him with their whole being, here and thereafter, which means that he calls all of them to holiness, to perfection, to a close following of him and obedience to his will. But he does not ask all souls to show their love by the same works, to climb to heaven by the same ladder, to achieve goodness in the same way.
–Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
Contemplation, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)
Remember that the proper result of contemplative prayer is simplicity in the whole life; so that a contemplative is always doing the same thing all day and all night. He is praying, or having breakfast, or talking, or working, or amusing himself; but he is principally conscious that he is doing God’s will.
–John Chapman (1865-1933)
