Quotes

He often chooses instruments in order that his power might be manifested otherwise it would seem that the good was done by the clay rather than by the spirit. -- from the archives of the American Catholic History Research Center.

Believe the incredible, and you can do the impossible. It is our want of faith that holds us back, even as Peter.
When did he begin to sink? The Gospel gives us the reason. He took account of the winds, he began reading some surveys; it was established statistically that 99.44% of mankind cannot walk on water. All of the incredulities were in the winds. When he took his eyes off Christ, Peter began to sink.

We become like that which we love: If one loves the material, one becomes like the material; if one loves the spiritual, one is converted into it in his outlook, his ideals, and his aspirations. Given this relationship between love and prayer, it is easy to understand why some souls say: "I have no time to pray."

A higher form of prayer than petition and a potent remedy against the externalization of life-is meditation. Meditation is a little like a daydream or a reverie, but with two important differences: In meditation we do not think about the world or ourselves, but about God; and instead of using the imagination to build idle castles in Spain, we use the will to make resolutions that will draw us nearer to one of the Father's mansions. Meditation is a more advanced spiritual act than "saying prayers"; it may be likened to the attitude of a child who breaks into the presence of a mother saying: "I'll not say a word, if you will just let me stay here and watch you."

Meditation allows one to suspend the conscious fight against external diversions by an internal realization of the presence of God. It shuts out the world to let in the Spirit. It surrenders our own will to the impetus of the divine will.

It silences the ego with its clamorous demands, in order that it may hear the wishes of the divine heart. It uses our faculties, not to speculate on matters remote from God, but to stir up our will to conform more perfectly with his will. It cultivates a truly scientific attitude toward God as truth, freeing us from our prepossessions and our biases so that we may eliminate all wishful thinking from our minds. It eliminates from our lives the things that would hinder union with God and strengthens our desire that all the good things we do shall be done for His honor and glory.

Meditation is not a petition, a way of using God, or asking things from God, but rather a surrender, a plea to God that He use us. (Go To Heaven)

Chistmas

What is Peace? Peace is the tranquility of order...body to sour and of man to God.

There are two births of Christ. One unto this world in Bethlehem, the other in the soul when it is spiritually reborn..both result from a kind of Divine invasion.

What can I Give?
There is only one thin in the world that is really our own--and that is our will...Our will is ours for all eternity. That is why the most precious gift that one can give is another in his will.

There were only two classes of people who heard the cry Christmas night: shepherds and wise men. Shepherds: those who know they know nothing. Wise men: those who know they do not know everything. Only the very simple and very learned discovered God -- never the man with one book.

The Christmas gift of peace was the uncoiling of the links of a triple chain that first unites a person with God, then with himself, then with his neighbor. ("Peace" from Rejoice)

The Christmas secret of peace is giving this secret garden and our whole human nature to God, as Mary gave Christ His human nature. Christmas reminds us that the reason we are not as happy

as saints is because we do not wish to be saints. (Rejoice)

Why is the human heart shaped as it is?

The human heart is not shaped like a valentine heart, perfect and regular in contour; it is slightly irregular in shape as if a small piece of it were missing out of its side. That missing part may very well symbolize a piece that a spear tore out of the Universal Heart of Humanity on the Cross, but it probably symbolizes something more. It may very well mean that when God created each human heart, He kept a small sample of it in heaven, and sent the rest of it into the world of time, where it would each day learn the lesson that it could never be really happy, that it could never be really wholly in love, that it could never be really whole-hearted until it rested with the Risen Christ in an eternal Easter, until it went back to the Timeless to recover the sample which God had kept for it from all eternity.

The temptations of the saints were seen as opportunities for selfdiscovery. They allowed temptations to show them the breaches in the fortress of their souls, which needed to be fortified until they would become the strongest points. This explains the curious fact about many saintly people-that they often become the opposite of what they once seemed to be. (Lift Up Y our Heart)

The essence of prayer is not the effort to make God give us something. Prayer, then, is not just informing God of our needs, for God already knows them. Rather, the purpose of prayer is to give God the opportunity to bestow the gifts He will give us when we are ready to accept them. (Go To Heaven)

Do we not say that a person has a sense of humor if he can "see through things" and do we not say that a person lacks a sense of humor if he cannot "see through things"? But God made the world according to such a plan that we were constantly to be "seeing through things" to Him, the power, the wisdom, the beauty, and the source of all that is. In other words, the material was to be a revelation of the spiritual, the human the revelation of the divine, the fleeting and the passing, the revelation of the Eternal.

(Moods And Truths)

The person who thinks only of himself says only prayers of petition; the one who thinks of his neighbor says prayers of intercession; whoever thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God's will, and this is the prayer of the saints.

The degree of our devotion and love depend upon the value that we put upon a thing: St Augustine says, "Amor pondus meum"; love is the law of gravitation. All things have their center. The schoolboy finds it hard to study, because he does not love knowledge as much as athletics. Business executives find it hard to think of heavenly pleasures because they are dedicated to the filling of their "barn." The carnal-minded find it difficult to love the spirit because their treasure lies in the flesh. (Go To Heaven)

One can be impolite to God, too, by absorbing all the conversation, and by changing the words of Scripture from "Speak, Lord Thy servant hears" to "Listen, Lord, Thy servant speaks." God has things to tell us that will enlighten us-we must wait for Him to speak.

The Lord hears us more readily than we suspect; it is our listening to God that needs to be improved. When people complain that their prayers are not heard by God, what often has happened is that they did not wait to hear God's answer. . . . (Go To Heaven)

Nothing ever happens in the world that does not first happen inside a mind. When one meditates and fills the mind for an hour a day with thoughts and resolutions bearing on the love of God and neighbor above all things, there is a gradual seepage of love down to the level of what is called the subconscious, and finally these good thoughts emerge, of themselves, in the form of effortless good actions.

Our thoughts make our desires, and our desires are the sculptors of our days. The dominant desire is the predominant destiny. Desires are formed in our thoughts and meditations; and since action follows the lead of desires, the soul, as it becomes flooded with divine promptings, becomes less and less a prey to the suggestions of the world.

There is a moment in every good meditation when the God-life enters our life, and another moment when our life enters the Godlife.

It is never true to say that we have no time to meditate; the less one thinks of God, the less time there will always be for God. The time we have for anything depends of how much we value it. Thinking determines the uses of time; time does not rule over thinking. The problem of spirituality is never, then, a question of time; it is a problem of thought. For it does not require much time to make us saints; it requires only much love. (Go To Heaven)

God sets many angels in our paths, but often we know them not; in fact, we may go through life never knowing that they were agents or messengers of God to lead us on to virtue, or to deter us from vice. But they symbolize that constant and benign intervention of God in human history, which stops us on the path to destruction or leads us to success or happiness and virtue.(Guide To Contentment)

Divinity is always where you least expect to find it. (The Moral Universe)

Though time is too precious to waste, it must never be thought that what was lost is irretrievable. Once the Divine is introduced, the come the opportunity to make up for losses. God is the God of the second chance. (On Being Human)

A sick man who was brought to a hospital said to the good nun in charge, "I haven't prayed in thirty years. Pray for me." She said, "Pray for yourself. Sometimes the strange voice is the one most

quickly heard." (Life is Worth Living)

Prayer after Holy Communion -- My thy body O Lord which I have received, and Thy Blood which I have drunk -- Cleave to my inmost heart and may not stain of sin remain in me whom this most pure and Holy Sacrament has refreshed. Amen

Knowledge is acquired, wisdom is infused. Knowledge comes from the outside; it is learned and absorbed. Wisdom is infused, and comes to us an illumination...We need wisdom to make big decisions, and the right answer comes from God. Who has a destiny for us. God is longing to fulfill it in us for the benefit of ourselves and others. (On Being Human)

God -- He often chooses weak instruments in order than His power might be manifested. Otherwise it would seem that the good was done by the clay, rather than by the Spirit.

Our error has been to separate the sacred and the secular, the natural and the supernatural.....

....It does not take much time to make us saints -- it takes only much love!

Love of enemies is actually the touchstone to prove whether our love is truly divine. (Your Life is Worth Living)

Prayer

Pray to the Holy Spirit that you may know Christ in the fullness of His gospel and the love of the Father that you may understand He is the source of power, the Holy Spirit. Our Lord said, “I will send you power from on high.”. Every day of my priestly life I pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. The power that is not human, not physical, not intellectual; rather a power coming solely from living the Christ life, the power to influence people, the power to impress you with the divinity of the Holy Spirit. We tell ourselves that we are not meant to be saints, yet we know we are. Pray for us. Your Life is Worth Living. (pg 249)

The neighbor is the one who is in need of your esteem. The saints have more of our esteem than do sinners, but on this earth charity must be guided by the greatness o either spiritual or corporal misery. If two are in misery and equally needy , then we can give to the one closest to us either by blood or by friendship. (pg 292) YLIWL

What is prayer? The best definition of prayer is that it is a lifting of the mind and the heart to God. Prayer is a dialogue. Man breaks silence in two ways: a dialogue with his fellow man and a dialogue with God.

“Prayer is a lifting of the heart and mind to God; notice we said nothing about the emotions…… Prayer is in the intellect, in the will , and in the heart , as embracing a love of truth with a resolve and determination to grow in love through and act of the will.” (pg.336) YLIWL

“Often in prayer we do not have a deep sense of God’s presence….but we know He is there….Prayer is an interaction between the created spirit and the uncreated Spirit, which is God. It is a communion, a conversation, adoration, a penance, happiness, a work, a rest, and asking, a submission” ( pg 337) YLIWL

Why should we pray? Why breathe? We have to take in fresh air and get rid of bad air; we have to take in new power and get rid of old weaknesses. We pray because we are orchestras and always need to unte-up. Just as a battery sometimes uns down and needs to be charged, so we have to ve renewed in spiritual vigor. Our blessed Lord said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” (pg 337) (J&n 15:5)