Keep safe the gift of prayer…

Page: Quotes, Prayer (problems), Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)

Sometimes it happens that when you start to pray, you find you can pray well. At other times, even when you have expended great effort, you may find your efforts frustrated. This experience is to make you learn that you must exert yourself constantly, for having once gained the gift of prayer, you must be careful to keep it safe.
—Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)

Life has begun…

Church, Page: Quotes, Spiritual (life)

The reign of life has begun, the tyranny of death is ended. A new birth has taken place, a new life has come, a new order of existence has appeared, our very nature has been transformed! This birth is not brought about by human generation, by the will of man, or by the desire of the flesh, but by God. If you wonder how, I will explain in clear language. Faith is the womb that conceives this new life, baptism the rebirth by which it is brought forth into the light of day. The Church is its nurse; her teachings are its milk, the bread from heaven is its food. It is brought to maturity by the practice of virtue; it is wedded to wisdom; it gives birth to hope. Its home is the kingdom; its rich inheritance the joys of paradise; its end, not death, but the blessed and everlasting life prepared for those who are worthy.
— Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395)

I wish to love God…

Love, Page: Quotes, Quote Topic, Spiritual (life)

I wish to love God. I wish always to be with God, and to do everything for the love of God. The center of all love for God consists in giving ourselves entirely to God by being in all things conformable to the divine will, and remaining in this conformity for all eternity.
— Saint Gerard Majella (1726-1755)