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“Christian joy lies beyond the realm of feelings and emotions. It is a fundamental disposition and stance toward life. It is the knowledge that having prayed and surrendered, God hears the hopes and desires of my heart and will respond in a timely, appropriate way. God is on my side and I must trust God’s heart. Joy feeds upon the fact that God stands watch over every situation in my life and comforts me with rod and staff. My joy sometimes bubbles up, sometimes surges up, from the rock-bottom certainty that the finger of God is somehow present in the midst of every tragic and trivial event in my life. Joy is the oasis found in the midst of a confident conviction that the waters of God’s loving care and concern never run dry—not even in the desert.”
—from Instruments of Christ: Reflections on the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
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“It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.”
— Pope St. John Paul II
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“Indeed, the glory to which God raises the soul through grace is so great that even the natural beauty of the Angels is as nothing compared with it. The Angels themselves wonder how a soul that was sunk in the desert of this sinful earth and robbed of all natural beauty can be clothed with such a wonderful splendor. But this wonder of the Angels will not surprise us when we see and hear that God Himself considers the beauty of grace with astonishment and rapture. For how otherwise can we explain what He says in The Canticle of Canticles to the soul: ‘How beautiful art thou, my love, how beautiful art thou!’ (Cant. 4:1).”
— Fr. Matthias J. Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace
“Our life is not pure chance or a mere struggle for survival, rather each of us is a cherished story loved by God. That we have “found grace in his eyes” means that the Creator sees a unique beauty in our being and that he has a magnificent plan for our lives. The awareness of this certainty, of course, does not resolve all our problems nor does it take away life’s uncertainties. But it does have the power to transform our life deeply.”
—from the book Believe in Love: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis
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“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.”
— St. Teresa of Avila
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“I realize as never before that the Lord is gentle and merciful; He did not send me this heavy cross until I could bear it. If He had sent it before, I am certain that it would have discouraged me . . . I desire nothing at all now except to love until I die of love. I am free, I am not afraid of anything, not even of what I used to dread most of all . . . a long illness which would make me a burden to the community. I am perfectly content to go on suffering in body and soul for years, if that would please God. I am not in the least afraid of living for a long time; I am ready to go on fighting.”
— St. Therese of Lisieux
“Once we have heard God’s voice, we must rise from our slumber; we must get up and act (cf. Rom 13:11). In our families, we have to get up and act! Faith does not remove us from the world, but draws us more deeply into it. This is very important! We have to be deeply engaged with the world, but with the power of prayer. Each of us, in fact, has a special role in preparing for the coming of God’s kingdom in our world.”
—from the book The Blessing of Family
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“He who wishes for anything but Christ, does not know what he wishes; he who asks for anything but Christ, does not know what he is asking; he who works, and not for Christ, does not know what he is doing.”
— St. Philip Neri
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“Think, dear friends, how the Lord continually proves to us that there will be a resurrection to come, of which he made the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising him from the dead. Contemplate the resurrection that is always going on. Day and night declare the resurrection to us. The night sinks to sleep, and the day rises; the day departs, and the night comes on. Look at the crops, how the grain is sown: the sower goes out and throws it on the ground, and the scattered seed, dry and bare when it fell on the ground, is gradually dissolved. Then out of its disintegration the mighty power of the Lord’s providence raises it up again, and from one seed come many bearing fruit.”
— St. Clement
“The Peace Prayer challenges peacemakers to offer the shade of self-confidence and the refreshment of persistent, God-centered faith to those who walk in the desert of doubts occasioned by their upbringing or the Dark Night. In so doing, they fulfill their vocations as “little Christs” who call the world to faith.”
—from Instruments of Christ: Reflections on the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
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To the extent that we abandon our personality to Him, He will take possession of our will and work in us. We are no longer ruled by commands coming from the outside, as from a cruel master, but by almost imperceptible suggestions that rise up from within. We feel as if we had wanted all along to do those things He suggests to us; we are never conscious of being under command. Thus our service to Him becomes the highest form of liberty, for it is always easy to do something for the one we love.”
— Fulton J. Sheen
“The discovery of a deep wound can become a transformative gift or a wrenching sorrow that opens the heart and soul to longing and realized grace, which is at the core of Christian mystery. No matter who we are, at some time in our life we experience sorrow. We have a choice to either become bitter or become hopeful. Suffering hallows us and invites us to connect with God and others to receive support and care. Sorrow can teach empathy and expand our notion of reality and the world we live in. The potential for spiritual growth in our sorrow and brokenness is found in the detection that it is possible to experience gratitude or even appreciation for what once may have been unbearable.”
—from Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God
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“The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection.”
— St. Padre Pio
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“Whenever we receive Communion, we enter into communion with the Holy Trinity. Did anybody ever tell you that? With each reception of Holy Communion, we experience, already here on earth, the same divine activity that we will one day experience in all its fullness in heaven—the divine activity of love eternally taking place within the Trinity . . . God wants to live his triune life in us. We are called to be dwelling places for the Holy Trinity and to enter into a personal relationship with each of the persons in God.”
— Vinney Flynn
“As one enters more closely into relationship with God by entering more deeply into relationship with Christ, one becomes a friend of Christ. Just as in human friendship there is a spirit of solidarity, rejoicing together in good times and comforting one another in times of sorrow, so too the one who becomes a friend of Christ through prayer begins to experience solidarity with Christ.”
—from the book Franciscan Prayer
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“To join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.”
— St. Catherine of Siena
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“Often Jesus asks the sick to believe. He makes use of signs to heal: spittle and the laying on of hands, mud and washing. The sick try to touch him, ‘for power came forth from him and healed them all’. And so in the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us. Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’. But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world’, of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.”
— (CCC, 1504-05)
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
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Resurrection Is the Foundation of our Hope
“The Peace Prayer concludes with a stunning reminder that causes the sun to break through the clouds of fear. “For it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” More than a mere summary of the second part of the prayer, the resurrection is the beginning of Christian spirituality, the foundation of our hope, and the imperishable crown waiting for us after we cross the finish line.
—from Instruments of Christ: Reflections on the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
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“O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.”
— St. Augustine
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“The strength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions and desires, all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties, passions and desires are directed by the will toward God, and turned away from all that is not God, then the strength of the soul is kept for God, and thus the soul is able to love God with all its strength.”
— St. John of the Cross
“Healing, hope and promise are generously shared. Our only response in return is generous self-emptying and transformation. There is no other way to joy except through the cross and resurrection. Generous poverty or sacrifice lead us to joy and truth. There is no absence of light in darkness. The dawning sun will always rise. Wounds transform to gifts. God offers salvation and hope to all.”
—from Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God
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“A soul which does not practise the exercise of prayer is very like a paralyzed body which, though possessing feet and hands, makes no use of them.”
— St. Alphonsus Liguori
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“Oh, what awesome mysteries take place during Mass! One day we will know what God is doing for us in each Mass, and what sort of gift He is preparing in it for us. Only His divine love could permit that such a gift be provided for us. O Jesus, my Jesus, with what great pain is my soul pierced when I see this fountain of life gushing forth with such sweetness and power for each soul, while at the same time I see souls withering away and drying up through their own fault. O Jesus, grant that the power of mercy embrace these souls.”
— St. Maria Faustina Kowalska
“The Franciscan path of prayer that leads to peace is a path of transformation and witness. Christ is proclaimed not by words but by the example of one’s life, one’s willingness to suffer or perhaps offer one’s life for the sake of another. Christ lives in that Christ lives in us––in our bodies, our hands, our feet and our actions. This is the challenge for our time with its emphasis on rationality and materialism, the challenge of divine risk, of allowing God to enter our lives and lift us out of the doldrums of mediocrity, privatism and individualism. We are called to be vulnerable to grace so that we may be transformed into the living Christ.”
—from the book Franciscan Prayer
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“The works of God are not accomplished when we wish them, but whenever it pleases Him.”
— St. Vincent de Paul
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“If the soul will analyze the desire it has of happiness, and the idea of happiness that presents itself to it, it will find that the object of this idea and of this desire is only and can only be God. This is the impression that the soul bears in the depths of its nature; this is what reason will teach it if it will only reflect a little, and this is what neither prejudice nor passion can ever entirely efface.”
— Fr. Jean Nicholas Grou
“Your prayer path will be like no one else’s path. You are not the same as any other person. You are uniquely you and God knows this—you were created this way! Therefore, your prayer may appear different from the prayer of a partner or spouse, friend or sibling, monk or nun. Although there are expected, normal patterns and transitions in prayer, the practices that best nurture you will be determined by your personality and temperament, life experience, personal commitments and desire. Your intention and attentiveness is what enables you to pray without ceasing, in good times and bad.”
—from Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God
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“Let all nations know that Thou art God alone, and that Jesus Christ is Thy Son, and that we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture.”
— St. Clement
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“Let us say boldly with St. Bernard that we have need of a mediator with the Mediator Himself, and that it is the divine Mary who is the most capable of filling that charitable office. It was through her that Jesus Christ came to us, and it is through her that we must go to Him. If we fear to go directly to Jesus Christ, our God, whether because of His infinite greatness or because of our vileness or because of our sins, let us boldly implore the aid and intercession of Mary, our Mother. She is good, she is tender, she has nothing in her austere and forbidding, nothing too sublime and too brilliant. In seeing her, we see our pure nature.”
— St. Louis de Montfort
Windows Toward the World 
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