Be careful and attentive to all the matters God has committed to your care: since God has entrusted them to you, God wishes that you have great care for them. Do not be worried, that is, don’t exert yourself over them with uneasiness, anxiety and forwardness. Don’t be worried about them, for worry disturbs reason and good judgment and prevents us from doing well the very things about which we are worried in the first place.
–Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
Prayers, too, after reading, find the soul fresher, and more vigorously stirred by love towards God. And that prayer is good which imprints a clear idea of God in the soul; and the having God established in self by means of memory is God’s indwelling. Thus we become God’s temple, when the continuity of our recollection is not severed by earthly cares; when the mind is harassed by no sudden sensations; when the worshipper flees from all things and retreats to God, drawing away all the feelings that invite him to self-indulgence, and passes his time in the pursuits that lead to virtue.
–Saint Basil the Great (330-379)
It is the part of a reasonable man not only to curb his passions to prevent them from coming to light either in word or deed, but also to rule them in such a way that everything is done by reason, nothing on impulse.
–Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
But whoever is without the fear of God is often afraid of his own shadow. Fearfulness is the daughter of unbelief. A proud soul is the slave of fear; hoping in itself, in comes to such a state that it is startled by a small noise, and is afraid of the dark.
–Saint John Climacus (c. 525-606)
For the good Creator made all things good and the Maker of the universe is one, Who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. Of which whatever is granted to man for food and drink, is holy and clean after its kind. But if it is taken with immoderate greed, it is the excess that disgraces the eaters and drinkers, not the nature of the food or drink that defiles them. For all things, as the Apostle says, are clean to the clean. But to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean, but their mind and conscience is defiled.
–Saint Leo the Great (c. 400-461)
If you have any hope of salvation; if you have the least thought of God, or any desire for good things to come; if you have any fear of the chastisements reserved for the impenitent, awake without delay, lift up your eyes to heaven, come to your senses, cease from your wickedness, shake off the stupor that enwraps you, make a stand against the foe who has struck you down. Make an effort to rise from the ground. Remember the good Shepherd who will follow and rescue you.
–Saint Basil the Great (330-379)
