God calls us to correct ourselves and invites us to do penance. He calls us through the wonderful gifts of his creation, and he calls us by granting time for life. He calls us through the reader and through the preacher. He calls us with the innermost force of our thoughts. He calls us with the scourge of punishment, and he calls us with the mercy of his consolation.
–Saint Augustine (354-430)
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
–Saint Augustine (354-430)
The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by tremendous yearning.
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
When I think of the happiness that is in store for me, every sorrow, every pain becomes dear to me.
–Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
Reading is the careful study of the Scriptures, concentrating all one’s powers on it. Meditation is the busy application of the mind to seek with the help of one’s own reason for knowledge of hidden truth. Prayer is the heart’s devoted turning to God to drive away evil and obtain what is good. Contemplation is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself, so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness.
–Guigo II (d. 1188)
What a great laudable exchange: to leave the things of time for those of eternity, to choose the things of heaven for the goods of earth, to receive the hundred-fold in place of one, and to possess a blessed and eternal life.
–Saint Clare of Assisi (1194-1253)
