The kind of person God wants you to be, the kind of grace and prayer he is offering to you and desires so much to give you, is to enable you to be a profoundly prayerful person, a genuine contemplative all day long, no less in manual work or in suffering than during the Divine Office or at the Sacrifice of the Mass. Private prayer is essential to this.
–Armand M. Nigro, S.J. (1928-
The story of Jesus is to be proclaimed and celebrated. Some will hear and rejoice, some will remain indifferent, some will become hostile. The story of Jesus will not always be accepted, but it must be told.
–Henri Nouwen (1932-1996)
There is no “formula” for the truly God-pleasing life; anything outward can become counterfeit; everything depends on the state of the soul, which must be trembling before God, having the law of God before it in every area of life, every moment keeping what is God’s in honor, in the first place in life.
–Blessed Seraphim of Platina (1934-1982)
Accept afflictions with patience. Silently endure cold and heat, wind and rain, fatigue and all the other discomforts that God may deign to send you.
–Saint John Bosco (1815-1888)
Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that’s really worth following in this world or the one that’s coming.
–Brennan Manning (1934-2013)
Man bears within himself a witness of all his faults, which he must acknowledge with sorrow either here or before God’s judgment seat, for as the sage says, ‘our conscience knows we have said and even done what harmed others, and knows it, not in order to conceal it, but to bear witness against us. Yet with all this, there are men who stop God’s voice and stifle the remonstrance of conscience, not permitting it to speak.
–Francisco de Osuna (1497-1541)
