Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren’t to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.
–Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
Do not fall into despair because of stumbling. I do not mean that you should not feel contrition for them, but that you should not think them incurable. For it is more expedient to be bruised than dead. There is, indeed, a Healer for the man who has stumbled, even He Who on the Cross asked that mercy be shown to His crucifiers.
–Saint Isaac of Syria (Seventh Century)
We must be firmly convinced that we have nothing of our own, except our vices and sins. We must all be on our guard against pride and empty boasting and beware of worldly or natural wisdom. A worldly spirit loves to talk a lot but does nothing, striving for the exterior signs of holiness that people can see, with no desire for true piety and interior holiness of spirit.
–Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the souls and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.
–Saint John Vianney (1786-1859)
One who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
To all who recognize their own sinfulness, remorsefully acknowledge it, and long to be liberated from it, he extends his hand. But he demands that they follow him unconditionally, and renounce everything that can oppose his Spirit within them.
–Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942)
