My friends, consider the greatness of this solemn feast that commemorates God’s coming as a guest into our hearts! If some rich and influential friend were to come to your home, you would promptly put it all in order for fear something there might offend your friend’s eyes when he came in. Let all of us then who are preparing our inner homes for God cleanse them of anything our wrongdoing has brought into them.
–Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
Who can be ignorant how much the heron and the hawk surpass all other birds in the swiftness of their flight? But an ostrich has the likeness of their wing, but not the celerity of their flight.nFor it cannot in truth rise from the ground, and raises its wings, in appearance as if to fly, but yet never raises itself from the earth in flying. Thus, doubtless, are all hypocrites, who, while they simulate the conduct of the good, possess a resemblance of a holy appearance, but have no reality of holy conduct.
–Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven. –Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Grace is from God, and works in the depth of the soul whose powers it employs. It is a light which issues forth to do service under the guidance of the Spirit. The Divine Light permeates the soul, and lifts it above the turmoil of temporal things to rest in God. The soul cannot progress except with the light which God has given it as a nuptial gift; love works the likeness of God into the soul.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
He who loves perfection must be filled with humility like a lamp with oil: for lamps are full within and give light without, and their influence makes itself felt in whatever direction they are turned.
–Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
