Silence is the…
Silence is the beginning of purifying the soul.
–Saint Basil the Great (330-379)
Being alone with God’s Word…
Being alone with God’s Word is a dangerous matter. Of course, you can always find ways to defend yourself against it: Take the Bible, lock your door – but then get out ten dictionaries and twenty-five commentaries. Then you can read it just as calmly and coolly as you read newspaper advertising. With this arsenal you can really begin to wonder, ‘Are there not several valid interpretations?’ And what about the prospect of new interpretations? Perhaps there are five interpreters with one opinion and seven with another and two with a strange opinion and three who are wavering or who have no opinion at all. So you calmly conclude, ‘I myself am not absolutely sure about the meaning of this passage. I need more time to form an opinion.’ Good Lord! What a tragic misuse of scholarship that it makes it so easy for people to deceive themselves!”
— Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Penance, penance…
Our Holy Mother Church calls this Season before Easter a ‘penitential season.’ One of the main messages of Our Lady of Lourdes was: ‘Penance, penance, penance.’ This means: we must try to make up for our sins. With every sin there is a punishment as part of justice (break a window, fix it; sin, do penance); and not everyone has fulfilled this (including possibly ourselves!). So: it is a heroic act of mercy; love and wisdom to help the world to help atone for its sins.
— Fr. John Lombardi (1960-
Spirit of penitence…
Someone who is elated with wine speaks the truth on all subjects, even without meaning to. In the same way, anyone who is inebriated with the spirit of penitence will never be able to tell lies.
–Saint John Climacus (c. 525-606)
A perennial Pentecost…
The Church needs a perennial Pentecost. She needs fire in her heart, words on her lips, prophecy in her outlook.
–Blessed Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)
The Catholic Church…
The Catholic, or universal, Church gets her name from the fact that she is scattered through the whole world from the one end of the earth to the other, and also because she teaches universally and without omission all the doctrines which are to be made known to mankind, whether concerned with visible or invisible things, with heavenly or earthly things. Then again because she teaches one way of worship to all men, nobles or commoners, learned or simple; finally because she universally cures and heals every sort of sin which is committed by soul and body. Moreover there is in her every kind of virtue in words and deeds and spiritual gifts of every sort.
–Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-386)
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