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“Pope St. John Paul II said that we don’t find ourselves until we lose ourselves in Christ. In other words, true happiness only comes from commitment and self-sacrifice. Throughout the Bible, we see what is a contradiction by the world’s standard spelled out over and over again. When we lose our life for love’s sake, we gain it back tenfold. That’s the heart of the Christian message, and it’s the only way we will reach our true destination: heaven.”
–from the book Beyond Me, My Selfie, and I
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“Where there is no love, put love — and you will find love.”
— St. John of the Cross
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“What words, can, alas, express the deep grief of the Blessed Virgin? Her eyes closed, a death-like tint overspread her countenance; unable to stand, she fell to the ground, but was soon lifted up, and supported by John, Magdalen, and the others. She looked once more upon her beloved Son—that Son whom she had conceived by the Holy Ghost, the flesh of her flesh, the bone of her bone, the heart of her heart—hanging on a cross between two thieves; crucified, dishonored, condemned by those whom He came on earth to save; and well might she at this moment be termed ‘the Queen of Martyrs.'”
— Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich
“Nothing and no one can take us from the hands of Jesus, because nothing and no one can overcome his love. Jesus’s love is invincible. The evil one, the great enemy of God and of his creatures, attempts in many ways to take eternal life from us. But the evil one can do nothing if we ourselves do not open the doors of our hearts to him, by following his deceitful enticements.
The Virgin Mary heard and obediently followed the voice of the Good Shepherd. May she help us to welcome with joy Jesus’s invitation to become his disciples, and to always live in the certainty of being in the paternal hands of the Father.”
–from the book Mother Mary: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis
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“We are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has worked, we too have but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do his work, we must rejoice in ours also.”
— St. John Neumann
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“When he was younger, St. Martin of Tours dedicated himself to military service. When he heard the call of Christ, he realized that his call was to fight a spiritual battle. His armor and weapons were vitrue and a life guided by the Spirit of God. Do I consider my spiritual life to be a type of battle against the forces of evil?”
— Rev. Jude Winkler
“A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by giving Jesus to her.”
–from the book Thirsting for God: Daily Meditations
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“The blessed lady, Mother of our Savior, may well be called a morning, since before her there was none without sin. After her, the most clear sun Christ Jesus showed his light to the world.”
— St. John Fisher
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“I call upon you, my God, my mercy, who made me, and did not forget me, although I forgot you. I call you into my soul, which you prepare to accept you by the longing that you breathe into it. Do not desert me now when I call upon you, for before I called upon you, you went ahead and helped me, and repeatedly you urged me on by many different words, so that from afar I would hear you, and be converted, and call upon you as you called to me.”
— St. Augustine
“By embracing our human condition—in everything but sin—Jesus revealed the new dignity and the surpassing worth of our human condition and the need in love to care for the human person. He tied and linked himself to us forever—to each one of us—by taking on our human flesh. He ennobled the human condition and raised it to the level of his divinity.”
–from the book Meeting God in the Upper Room: Three Moments to Change Your Life
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Helping a person in need is good in itself. But the degree of goodness is hugely affected by the attitude with which it is done. If you show resentment because you are helping the person out of a reluctant sense of duty, then the person may receive your help but may feel awkward and embarrassed. This is because he will feel beholden to you. If, on the other hand, you help the person in a spirit of joy, then the help will be received joyfully. The person will feel neither demeaned nor humiliated by your help, but rather will feel glad to have caused you pleasure by receiving your help. And joy is the appropriate attitude with which to help others because acts of generosity are a source of blessing to the giver as well as the receiver.”
— St. John Chrysostom
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“Teresa [of Avila] is as insistent as [St. John of the Cross] that there is no prayer development unless it be accompanied by purification from faults. Given what a love communion with utter Purity demands, one could not conceive the matter to be otherwise: only the pure can commune deeply with the all-pure One. Obvious as this is to the saint, the lesser of us have difficulty in understanding that we have many defects that need to be rooted out. … In working actively at rooting out what is amiss, we are to be guided by the principles of revelation, not by a naturalistic common sense. There are people, says Teresa, who desire penance that they may serve God the better, but they are overly careful about not injuring their health. ‘You need never fear that they will kill themselves . . . their love is not yet ardent enough to overwhelm their reason.’ Going on ‘at a snail’s pace . . . we shall never get to the end of the road . . . So for the love of the Lord, let us make a real effort.'”
— Fr. Thomas Dubay
“Be brave and try to detach your heart from worldly things. Do your utmost to banish darkness from your mind and come to understand what true, selfless piety is. Through confession, endeavor to purify your heart of anything which may still taint it. Enliven your faith, which is essential to understand and achieve piety.”
— St. John Bosco
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“Souls who spread the honor of My mercy I shield through their entire lives as a tender mother her infant, and at the hour of death I will not be a Judge for them, but the Merciful Savior. At that last hour, a soul has nothing with which to defend itself except My mercy. Happy is the soul that during its lifetime immersed itself in the Fountain of Mercy, because justice will have no hold on it.”
— St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
“Almighty, eternal, just, and merciful God, grant us in our misery that we may do for your sake alone what we know you want us to do, and always what pleases you; so that, cleansed and enlightened interiorly and fired with the ardor of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to follow in the footsteps of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
—Francis of Assisi
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“It is in the company of Jesus that you work for the glory of God.”
— St. John Baptist de la Salle
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“Whenever that sacrifice of Christ is memorialized in the Church, there is an application to a new moment in time and a new presence in space of the unique sacrifice of Christ Who is now in glory. In obeying His mandate, His followers would be representing in an unbloody manner that which He presented to His Father in the bloody sacrifice of Calvary. After changing the bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood: He gave it to them (Mark 14:22). By that communion they were made one with Christ, to be offered with Him, in Him, and by Him. All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion.”
— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
“The “spirit of the world” offers many false illusions and parodies of happiness. There is perhaps no darkness deeper than the darkness that enters young people’s souls when false prophets extinguish in them the light of faith and hope and love. The greatest deception, and the deepest source of unhappiness, is the illusion of finding life by excluding God, of finding freedom by excluding moral truths and personal responsibility….”
–St. John Paul II
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“Almighty God, who gave to the just man from Nazareth, St. Joseph, the privilege of serving as earthly Father to Jesus your Son, through his intercession, watch over our families and guide us in your ways. May this son of David, in whom the shoot from the stump of Jesse has blossomed, guide your people with care and protect your Church from harm. United with Mary his spouse and Jesus our Lord, may we be joined forever in the joys of your heavenly kingdom.”
-from: Saint Junipero Serra’s Camino: A Pilgrimage Guide to the California Missions
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“Reading the Holy Scriptures confers two benefits. It trains the mind to understand them; it turns man’s attention from the follies of the world and leads him to the love of God.”
— St. Isidore of Seville
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“Man was created for a certain end. This end is to praise, to reverence and to serve the Lord his God and by this means to arrive at eternal salvation. All other beings and objects that surround us on the earth were created for the benefit of man and to be useful to him, as means to his final end; hence his obligation to use, or to abstain from the use of, these creatures, according as they bring him nearer to that end, or tend to separate him from it.”
— St. Ignatius of Loyola
“Like the good thief who hung condemned next to the sinless Christ on a cross, anyone who confesses at the end of life may experience the same eternal reward as those who have lived a lifetime of piety and penitence for their sins. Their lives, St. Bernard of Clairvaux says, can be like “a short bridge from the religion of death unto the land of the living.”
-from: The Saint vs. The Scholar: The Fight Between Faith and Reason
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“Go forth and set the world on fire.”
— St. Ignatius of Loyola
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“[Joseph] loved her so exceedingly, with a love like what the heavenly spirits feel for each other, and would have readily given his heart’s blood for her: and as yet he knew not her incomparable dignity! Yes, he loved her exceedingly, and we may hold for certain that Joseph, as he was the first, so was he the most devoted servant of Mary.”
— Edward Healy Thompson
“The courage to live the call to share Jesus with others comes from a hope that gives way to the discipline of prayer. Prayer inspires a life of joyful dependence on the Lord, which allows us to see and recognize him at work in the most surprising of ways. And from a heart focused on God blossoms the thanksgiving that overflows into sharing Christ with a waiting world.”
-from: Who Does He Say You Are?
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“Jesus is the Blessed One. The word benediction, which is the Latin form for the word blessing, means “to say (dicere) good things (bene).” Jesus is the Blessed One because God has spoken good things of him. Most clearly we hear God’s blessing after Jesus has been baptised in the river Jordan, when “suddenly there was a voice from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him'” (Matthew 3:16-17).
With this blessing Jesus starts his public ministry. And all of that ministry is to make known to us that this blessing is not only for Jesus but also for all who follow him.”
–Henri Nouwen
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Windows Toward the World 
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