Favourite Qoutes Of The Saints Thread

Onesimus

I think we could do with one of these. Allow me to start with one I read recently. Chilling to think about it. Because if you read it you could most certainly apply it to the state of affairs today.

Our distresses are notorious, even though we leave them untold, for now their sound has gone out into all the world. The doctrines of the Fathers are despised; apostolic traditions are set at nought; the devices of innovators are in vogue in the Churches; now men are rather contrivers of cunning systems than theologians; the wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes and has rejected the glory of the cross. Shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves hurrying the flock of Christ. Houses of prayer have none to assemble in them; desert places are full of lamenting crowds. The elders lament when they compare the present with the past. The younger are yet more to be compassionated, for they do not know of what they have been deprived. All this is enough to stir the pity of men who have learnt the love of Christ; but, compared with the actual state of things, words fall very far short....

Saint Basil the Great
(Letter 90)

Doc Farrell

In fairness Onesimus, things didn't really turn out too bad for Christianity in the 1700 years since?

Here's a more upbeat one.

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Manach

"I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first."
- St. Thomas More

gimmebroadband

'If you truly want to help the soul of your neighbour, you should approach God first with all your heart. Ask him simply to fill you with charity, the greatest of all virtues; with it you can accomplish what you desire.'


St. Vincent Ferrer

*******************************

'Human language cannot express the beauty of a soul which dies in a state of grace.'

St. Philip Neri

lmaopml

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake; we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

Blessed John Henry Newman

I love this guy!

Benny_Cake

She hasn't been declared a saint yet, but surely she will be some day:

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us"

- Dorothy Day

gimmebroadband

massey168 wrote: »

I'm still wondering what a Qoute is. Perhaps it just means the Catholic education system is not what it once was.

......or it could mean that someone is dyslexic, or was typing too fast!

Joke:

Did you hear one about about the athiest who was dylexic and an insomniac?

He was awake all night wondering if there was a dog!

wolfsbane

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.”
Charles H. Spurgeon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon

gimmebroadband

"It is not a unity of religion we seek but a union of religious people. We may not be able to meet in the same pew, but we can meet together on our knees (as Christians)"

Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.

Doc Farrell

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will effect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.
Pedro Arrupe SJ

PDN

“Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, in every place you can, at all the times you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as ever you can.” (John Wesley)

Doc Farrell

Not actually a saint but you get the general idea.

'The Resurrection "produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.'

J.R.R. Tolkien

Run_to_da_hills

"A person who will not take care of the little things will not take care of the big things, for big things are but an accumulation of
little things." Dr. Jack Hyles

"Your faith level is determined by your obedience level." Dr. Jack Hyles

lmaopml

I read this just lately, again not a Saint per say but I thought it was a great little piece all the same....

There is an old story about pilgrims who travelled up a very high mountain to a cave where an old monk lived a quiet life of prayer. ''Help us to find God'' they asked the monk, the monk shaking his head said, ''Nobody can help you to find the place where God is'', ''Why not?'' they demanded. The monk only answered, ''For the same reason that nobody can tell a fish how to find the ocean''.

Also this quote/prayer by St. Richard Chichester which I really liked too..

Dearest Lord Jesus,
Savior and Friend,
Three things I pray:
To see thee more clearly,
To love thee more dearly,
To follow thee more nearly,
Day by Day.

Doc Farrell

The taste of God in contemplation is more precious than everything else; for, no matter what a man might wish for, it is nothing when compared to this. For when the spirit of a man stands before God and sees his happiness and tastes his delights, then in truth he has attained to paradise.

St Anthony of Padua

lmaopml

Doc Farrell wrote: »

The taste of God in contemplation is more precious than everything else; for, no matter what a man might wish for, it is nothing when compared to this. For when the spirit of a man stands before God and sees his happiness and tastes his delights, then in truth he has attained to paradise.

St Anthony of Padua

Doc, did you study or practice Ignation Spirituality ever? I'm so interested in contemplative prayer, and I 'think' I do it anyways in my own little way, but I've never really delved or researched more about it....I'd love to do a good retreat some day

Doc Farrell

Not wishing to derail a thread but I've been reading a lot about how going on retreats and having a spiritual director is the new 'thing' for people who have experienced everything else and find life dry.
I'm certainly in favour of retreats, making them an every day ordinary part of your life might be the ideal in fact, but I'm wary of how they are being sold in our western world.
The question then arises; what do you do with yourself once you have found yourself or 'god', do something useful for others (yes) or just irritate people on the Internet for your own amusement as I seem to do...
I've been thinking of a quote attributed to Karl Rahner, 'the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all', which seems like a very unfair suggestion, but I think what he's getting at and what is obsessing me at the moment is 'experiential knowledge', knowing something is true because one has lived it and not just read about it. If I gather my thoughts on it, I think it could be a fruitful thread, but to answer your question directly, no, I am as ignorant about real spiritual direction as I am about most other subjects!

Doc Farrell

A short piece on Gregory the Great, a fascinating man who lived in a truely tumultuous time.
the following is taken from
http://dominicanes.me/author/tiodennis/


     You cannot acquire the gift of the peace if by your anger you destroy the peace of the Lord.
     True patience is to suffer the wrongs done to us by others in an unruffled spirit and without feeling resentment.  Patience bears with others because it loves them; to bear with them and yet to hate them is not the virtue of patience but a smokescreen for anger.
     True patience grows with the growth of love.  We put up with our neighbours to the extent that we love them.  If you love, you are patient.  If you cease loving, you will cease being patient.  The less we love, the less patience we show.
     If we truly preserve patience in our souls, we are martyrs without being killed.

                                            –Gregory the Great, Defensor Gramaticus

I found this bit of wisdom in the reading for today in a wonderful little book, Drinking From the Hidden Fountain:  A Patristic Breviary.  Pope Gregory I wrote the reading for today.  The Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox faith, the Anglican Church and some Lutheran churches recognize Gregory as a saint.  The first pope to spring from the monastic tradition, he is the patron saint of musicians, students and teachers.

Gregory was born around 540 A.D., and lived in very tumultuous times for the Church which included the defeat of the Roman Empire by the Goths, famine and a plague that killed over a third of the population.  The papacy was virtually forced on Gregory, who longed for the monastic life.  Although he was deeply interested in and involved with the liturgy, Gregory probably had no substantial involvement with Gregorian chant which bears his name.  (Gregorian chant was first written down in the early 9th century.)  He made extensive use of the title servus servorum Dei (servant of the servants of God) in official documents, revealing a deep and abiding humility.

In this short little selection from Gregory, we see a hint of his humility and catch a glimpse of why he was so deeply loved and revered.  Gregory points out how deeply our anger undermines the peace we so desperately long for and need.  Yet although we want peace in our lives, we just aren’t willing to let go of our anger and resentments.

He encourages us to turn to the ancient Christian virtue of patience.  St. Paul recognized patience as one of the gifts of the Spirit.  Gal. 5:22.  St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:  “Patience is one of the humble, workaday virtues; but it is, in a real sense, the root and guardian of all virtues, not causing them, but removing obstacles to their operation. Do away with patience and the gates are open for a flood of discontent and sin.”

Long before psychology taught us about passive/aggressive behavior, St. Gregory described it:  “Patience bears with others because it loves them; to bear with them and yet to hate them is not the virtue of patience but a smokescreen for anger.”  Most anger arises from a lack of patience.  In fact, many of our intemperate statements begin:  “I’ve just about lost my patience with . . . . (insert the object of our rage here).”

Our impatience usually carries with it either an implicit message of our moral superiority or wrongs that we cannot or  will not release. We are so anxious to claim the moral high ground that we forget that Jesus blessed the poor in spirit and the meek rather than the righteously indignant. Patience requires the understanding that although our brothers and sisters may not yet be the people God intends them to be, neither are we.

St. Gregory correctly showed us the link between patience and love.  Again, Paul had noted this link in Scripture, writing:  “Love is patient; love is kind.”  Learning to love means learning and practicing patience.  Admittedly, it’s not my strongest gift, but I know that if I want to create a peaceful life and a peaceful world, that path begins with patience.

Pax Christi,

James R. Dennis, O.P.

gimmebroadband

Remember Dear Christian:

You have but
One soul to save,
One God to love and to serve,
One eternity to expect.

Death will come soon,
Judgment will follow and then
Heaven or Hell forever!

Therefore, O Child of Jesus and Mary,
Avoid sin and all dangerous occasions of sin.
Pray without ceasing.
Go frequently to Confession and to Holy Communion.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori.

HamletOrHecuba

"A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us.'"

St Anthony the Great.

HamletOrHecuba

“A small but always persistent discipline is a great force; for a soft drop falling persistently, hollows out hard rock.”

“Why do you increase your bonds? Take hold of your life before your light grows dark and you seek help and do not find it. This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it in vain pursuits.”

“O wonder! The Creator clothed in a human being enters the house of tax collectors and prostitutes. Thus the entire universe, through the beauty of the sight of him, was drawn by his love to the single confession of God, the Lord of all.”

St Issac the Syrian.

HamletOrHecuba

"For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire."

St Athanasius the Great.

HamletOrHecuba

"The first thing which kindles ardor in learning is the greatness of the teacher. What is greater than the Mother of God? What more glorious than she whom Glory Itself chose? "

St Ambrose of Milan.

gimmebroadband

Mary is called "The Gate of Heaven" because no one can enter Heaven but through her means.

St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Onesimus

If God had drawn the world from preexistent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows His power by starting from nothing to make all He wants.

-- Saint Theophilus of Antioch

Onesimus

''Only struggle a little more. Carry your Cross without complaining. Don't think you are anything special. Don't justify your sins and weaknesses, but see yourself as you really are. And, especially, Love one another. ''

- Father Seraphim Rose -

totus tuus

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

St. Francis of Assisi

Onesimus

When your brother attacks you, whatever the insults are, if you get angry at him, you are getting angry without cause. Even if he were to pull out your right eye, and to cut off your right hand, if you get angry at him, you are getting angry without cause. Yet if he were to try to take you away from God, then get angry!

-Saint Poemen

Onesimus

"If we really loved the good God, we should make it our joy and happiness to come and spend a few moments to adore Him, and ask Him for the grace of forgiveness; and we should regard those moments as the happiest of our lives."

- St. John Vianney (on Adoration of Jesus in the Most the Blessed Sacrament)

Baggio1

a simple but powerful line from God's greatest champion and most powerful saint of all, and the start of war in the heaven's after Lucifers refusal to serve:

"Who is like unto God!!??"

St.Michael The Archangel.