Giving up prayer…

No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s owns self sufficiency.
–Blessed Fulton Sheen  (1895-1979)

Mercy is a compassion…

Mercy is a compassion that seeks to unburden the sorrows of others as if they were our own. But if we have no such compassion, then how can compassion ever come back to us? Unless we throw something up, nothing will come down; unless there is an action, there can never be a reaction; unless we give, it shall not be given to us; unless we love, we shall not be loved; unless we pardon evil, our evil shall not be forgiven; unless we are merciful to others, God cannot be merciful to us.
–Blessed Fulton Sheen  (1895-1979)