The Church is like…
In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life’s different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship but to keep her on her course.
–Saint Boniface (c. 675-754)
A soul abandoned….
A soul abandoned completely to Divine Providence desires only God and is detached from all but him: there is no eventuality that can unsettle her. Nothing so strips the soul and gives it greater dependence on God than the practice of the maxim of our blessed Father Francis de Sales: Ask for nothing and refuse nothing.
–Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)
It is attachment…
It is attachment to creatures and to self-satisfaction that weakens the blessings of love in your heart. You must die to all that, if you wish the pure love of God to reign therein.
–Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)
Detaching your heart…
You see plainly that I do not mean to advise you to perform great austerities, but rather generously to mortify your passions and inclinations, detaching your heart and emptying it of all that is earthly, and exercising charity towards your neighbor and liberality towards the poor.
–Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)
To be poor in spirit is…
To be poor in spirit is to be truly poor at the bottom of one’s soul, truly detached from all things, not only to be truly deprived of material goods, not only not to desire them, but to completely forget oneself, to have a soul empty not only of all earthly desires, but of all desire and absolutely so, whether concerning oneself or others, of self, of material things, absolutely empty of everything, and full of God.
–Blessed Charles De Foucauld (1858-1916)
Be ready for death…
Pray that you may always be ready for death, because you know that it may well come at any moment. Mishaps – a fatal fall, a mugging, a drowning, a heart attack, a stroke of lightning, and other things of this kind – occur every day. If we are prepared, we need not fear death, no matter how and when it comes.
–Saint John Bosco (1815-1888)
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