Foretaste of hell…
There is no sin or wrong that gives a man a foretaste of hell in this life as anger and impatience.
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Fight courageously…
And of what should we be afraid? Our captain on this battlefield is Christ Jesus. We have discovered what we have to do. Christ has bound our enemies for us and weakened them that they cannot overcome us unless we so choose to let them. So we must fight courageously and mark ourselves with the sign of the most Holy Cross.
— Saint Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380)
Deprivation of consolations…
So then – in the time of labors and persecutions, of insults and injuries inflicted by one’s neighbor, of mental conflicts and deprivation of spiritual consolations, by the Creator or by the creature (by the Creator in His gentleness, when He withdraws the feeling of the mind, so that it does not seem as if God were in the soul, so many are its pains and conflicts – and by fellow-creatures, in conversation or amusement, or when the soul thinks that it loves more than it is loved) – in all these things, I say that the soul perfected by humility says, “My Lord, behold Thy handmaid: be it done unto me according to Thy word, and not according to what I want with my senses.”
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
The way God has given us…
We’ve been deceived by the thought that we would be more pleasing to God in our own way than in the way God has given us.
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Every work of ours…
Every work of ours ought to be done both without and with moderation… for love toward God should be without measure, and that for the creature should be measured by that for God.
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
The soul pleasing to God…
Then the soul, so divested of its every wish and clothed with the will of God, is very pleasing to God. Like an unbridled horse, it runs most swiftly from grace to grace, from virtue to virtue; for it has no bridle that holds or prevents it from running, since it has severed from itself every inordinate appetite and impulse of its self-will, which are bands and bridles that do not allow the souls of spiritual men to run.
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
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