Everything seems to be a heavy burden, and rightly so, because it involves a war against ourselves. But once we begin to work, God does so much in the soul and grants it so many favors that all that one can do in this life seems little.
–Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
The Gospel is a harsh document; the Gospel is ruthless and specific in what it says; the Gospel is not meant to be re-worded, watered down and brought to the level of either our understanding or our taste. The Gospel is proclaiming something which is beyond us and which is there to stretch our mind, to widen our heart beyond the bearable at times, to recondition all our life, to give us a world view which is simply the world upside-down and this we are not keen to accept.
–Anthony Bloom (1914-2003)
The whole teaching of the Gospel is really a teaching about loving. The fact that we fall short of it condemns us, but doesn’t make its declaration less true.
–Anthony Bloom (1914-2003)
Human weakness cannot upset the plans of divine omnipotence. A divine master-builder can work even with falling stones.
–Michael Von Faulhaber (1869-1952)
The greatest security we can have in this world that we are in the grace of God, does not consist in the feelings that we have of love to Him, but rather in an irrevocable abandonment of our whole being into His hands, and in a firm resolution never to consent to any sin great or small.
–Saint Francis of Sales (1567-1622)
The Lord grants in a moment what we may have been unable to obtain in dozens of years.
–Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595)
