Page: Quotes, Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)
Before reading you should empty your soul of everything. Arouse the desire to know about what is being read. Turn prayerfully to God. Follow what you are reading with attention and place everything in your open heart. If something did not reach the heart, stay with it until it reaches. You should of course read quite slowly. Stop reading when the soul no longer wants to nourish itself with reading. That means it is full. If the soul finds one passage utterly stunning, stop there and read no more.
— Saint Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894)
Page: Quotes, Quote Topic, Silence
You know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there’s often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It’s a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause.
–Karen Armstrong (1944-
Charity, Love (others), Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
It is obvious that words alone are not going to help someone who is naked and hungry. Someone whose faith does not go beyond words is useless. Such faith is dead without works of Christian love that alone can bring it back to life.
–Venerable Bede (c. 673-735)
Discipleship, Page: Quotes, Quote Author, Quote Topic, Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897)
Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.
–Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)
Page: Quotes, Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)
True freedom is found in our loving embrace of the Father’s will. From Mary, full of grace, we learn that Christian freedom is more than liberation from sin. It is freedom for a new, spiritual way of seeing earthly realities. It is the freedom to love God and our brothers and sisters with a pure heart, and to live a life of joyful hope for the coming of Christ’s Kingdom.
–Pope Francis (1936-
Grace, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic
By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: he was absolutely helpless; he could go nowhere but where she chose to take him; he could not speak; her breathing was his breath; his heart beat in the beating of her heart. In the seasons of our Advent — waking, working, eating, sleeping, being — each breath is a breathing of Christ into the world.
–Caryll Houselander (1901-1954)
