Saints

Saints
Saints We Love

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Waltzing with Charlotte Anne

Last Waltz in 2006 

December 31

Waltzing with Charlotte Anne




I love Charlotte Anne Fenwick so much!  She is just 2 and I introduced her today - to Belle of the Ball - a song by Leroy Anderson - played by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.

I took both of her hands in mine.  I was sitting at my desk chair and the music came from my computer, which has outstanding sound, by the way.   I took her hands in mine, we were almost at eye level . . . it began . . . I moved my hands and arms with the music. I did not look away for a second.  Suddenly Charlotte Anne caught it.  Her eyes were twinkling as she began to lead.  I could feel her body had captured the Belle of the Ball waltz, which is, by the way, the best waltz every played . . .we left planet earth together for all of 2 minutes and 39 seconds.   

Tom must have loved every second of it.  He would have picked her up and danced throughout the house with her in his arms.  Tom always did that with the children but second best, she had me and a few minutes we both will never forget.  

Isn't life wonderful?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtGM0vYqv04&feature=related go here the music . . . on you tube 



Wednesday, March 30, 2011

BE PROUD THAT YOU'RE A CATHOLIC

Be proud that you're a Catholic




Excerpts of an article written by non-Catholic Sam Miller -
a prominent Cleveland Jewish businessman


"Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta on one of the most important
institutions that we have today in the United States, namely the...
Catholic Church?

Do you know - the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students
everyday at the cost to that Church of 10 billion dollars, and a
savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion
dollars. The graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%.

The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 
700,000 students.

The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for 
hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people - not just Catholics - in the United States today.

But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every
way the Catholic Church in this country They have blamed the disease of
pedophilia on the Catholic Church, which is as irresponsible as blaming
adultery on the institution of marriage.

Let me give you some figures that Catholics should know and remember.
For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to
sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other
inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church
41.8% of clergy women reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen 
have been sexually harassed.

Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia.
10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of
pedophilia. This is not a Catholic Problem.

A study of American priests showed that most are happy in the
priesthood and find it even better than they had expected, and that
most, if given the choice, would choose to be priests again in face of
all this obnoxious PR the church has been receiving.

The Catholic Church is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. The agony
that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of
the Church. You have been hurt by a small number of wayward priests
that have probably been totally weeded out by now.

Walk with your shoulders high and you head higher. Be a proud member
of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States ...

Then remember what Jeremiah said:
'Stand by the roads, and look and ask for the ancient paths, where the 
good way is and walk in it, and find rest for your souls'. Be proud to 
speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what 
your Church does for all other religions.

Be proud that you're a Catholic.

Napoleon's Answer to the Question "Who is Jesus Christ?"

 Why I Am Catholic
 Posted by Frank Weathers
 http://yimcatholic.blogspot.com 
Back in January, I reviewed Eric Sammon's book, Who Is Jesus Christ? It is a great book and I highly recommend it to you. Many have asked themselves the same question about the identity of the obscure Jewish carpenter from Galilee.

Last week I shared with you the knowledge that Napoleon Bonaparte died a good Catholic death. Today, as I was reading a selection available on the YIMCatholic Bookshelf, I stumbled across Napoleon's answer to this very question.

I was happily just reading along in Cardinal James Gibbon's book, Our Christian Heritage when the following thoughts of Napoleon's leapt off the page in the concluding paragraphs to chapter XV,

From The Divinity of Christ Attested by Himself and His Disciples

Cardinal Gibbons writes,

The first Napoleon was not a theologian; but he was a great man, and a profound observer, whose vast experience had enabled him to judge what forces were necessary to produce a lasting effect on mankind. When chained to the rock of St. Helena, he had ample leisure to measure the greatness of men and to estimate them according to their true value.

One day in a conversation with Montholon, he put this question to him: "Who was Jesus Christ?" Montholon having declined to answer, Napoleon proceeded:

"I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself have founded great empires. But our empires were founded on force. Jesus alone founded His empire on love, and to this day millions would die for Him. I think I understand something of human nature, and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man. Jesus Christ was more than man."

"I have inspired multitudes with a devotion so enthusiastic that they would have died for me. But to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, my voice. Who cares for me now removed as I am from the active scenes of life, and from the presence of men? Who would now die for me?"

"Christ alone across the chasm of eighteen centuries makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy. He asks more than a father can demand of his child, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart. He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally, and forthwith His demand is granted."

"Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man with all its powers and faculties becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers."

"Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame. This is what strikes me most. This is what proves to me quite convincingly that Jesus Christ is God."

You may enjoy the entire chapter of Cardinal Gibbon's book here.


http://yimcatholic.blogspot.com 

Saturday, March 26, 2011

YOURS IS THE CHURCH - Mike Aquilina

Yours Is the Church!

When People Ask You Why You're Catholic, 
Sit Them Down and Tell Them the Whole Story

By Mike Aquilina
Cardinal John Henry Newman called her "desire of the eyes, joy of the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fullness after many foretastes, the home after many storms."

"She" was his mother, the Roman Catholic Church. And his mother is YOUR mother.

Asked, in the 4th century, how he could ever remain in such a Church full of sinners and scandals, St. Augustine rattled off his reasons:

• "The consent of people and nations keeps me;

•   her authority keeps me -- inaugurated by miracles, nourished in hope, enlarged by love and    established by age;

•   The succession of priests keeps me, from the very chair of the apostle Peter down to the present bishops."

And Augustine's Church is your Church.

Indeed CHRIST'S Church is yours. It is one, holy, apostolic -- and Catholic. It is one through all time and space. By grace, the Catholic Church has preserved Jesus' teaching unchanged through 20 centuries, even as it has delivered the good news to the ends of the earth. The Church carried out this mission for you, as if you were the only one who mattered.

This Easter, join your prayers to Newman's and Augustine's and all the billions who share your faith, on earth and in heaven. Be thankful for all God has given you. And be proud, because even St. Paul found it right to boast of the Church (see 2 Cor 8:24).

Should you ever need a reason to boast, think for a moment. Yours is the Church that has rescued civilization again and again. As the Roman Empire fell into its final decay, it was Christians who constituted the remnant of civilized society. As barbarian hordes swept through Europe and Africa, it was Christian monasteries that secreted away the treasures of classical learning, copying documents faithfully for centuries. And it was conversion to Christianity that kept the barbarian tribes from establishing yet another culture of death. Instead, Europe was born again in a golden age of universities and cathedrals.

Yours, too, is the Church that, centuries later, roused the West to its successful defense against Muslim invaders. And, closer to our own time, your Church is the only institution, Albert Einstein said, that dared to defend German Jews against their Nazi oppressors. "Up to this time," he testified, "I had no interest in the Church, but today I profess a great admiration and a great attachment for the Church which alone has had the unfailing courage to battle for spiritual freedom and moral liberty."

Yours is the Church that has nourished culture down through the ages. The great works of art and literature of the last two millennia are those imbued with a Catholic spirit. Open your eyes to the color and glorious form illuminating canvases, chiseled in stone, cast in bronze. Yours is the Church of  Giotto, Duccio, Cimabue, Michelangelo, El Greco, Rubens, Bernini, Rouault, Yousuf Karsh, and even M.I. Hummel and Andy Warhol.

Yours is the Church that inspired The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales and The Quest for the Holy Grail. Yours is the Church of Dante, Cervantes, Chaucer, Richard Crashaw, Alexander Pope, John Dryden and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Your Church has hymned God's glory in the melodies of the great composers, her children: Palestrina, Vivaldi, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and, in our own day, Messiaen, Part, Gorecki, Brubeck, Marylou Williams, John Michael Talbot. Yours is the Church of Gregorian chant and "Faith of Our Fathers."

Yours is the Church, film critics say, that inspired the cinematic masterpieces of Franco Zeffirelli and Alfred Hitchcock.

And yours is the Church that continues to nurture the art of Western culture. Consider the Catholics Nobel prizewinners: Sigrid Undset, Francois Mauriac, Heinrich Boll, Czeslaw Milosz. Think of the poets: Francis Thompson, Coventry Patmore, Allen Tate, Robert Fitzgerald, John Frederick Nims, Paul Claudel, Edith Sitwell. Dame Edith, on her conversion, told the news magazines that she needed "the zeal, the fire and the authority of Catholicism."

Then there are the novelists: Flannery O'Connor, J.R.R. Tolkien, Walker Percy, J. F. Powers, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Julien Green, Shusako Endo. In science fiction, Catholic themes constantly re-emerge, as they have since the time of Robert Hugh Benson. One of the undisputed classics of the genre is Walter M. Miller’s Catholic epic, “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” And so, too, with mystery novels, from G.K. Chesterton to Ralph McInerny.

Ponder philosophy, then, and again you must confront your fellow Churchmen: Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Anselm, Ockham, Descartes, Marcel.

Moving from the library to the laboratory, you’ll note that yours is the Church that made modern science possible. Aristotelian science stalled in Greece till it encountered that particularly Catholic notion of the goodness and order of God’s creation. The rest is history. The astronomer Nicholas Copernicus was a priest. The father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a monk. Biologist Louis Pasteur was a layman, who once wrote, "The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of a Breton peasant. Could I but know all, I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman." The first computer was designed and constructed by the Catholic apologist Blaise Pascal.

The sciences of the mind, psychiatry and psychology, advanced in unexpected directions thanks to the contributions of Catholics such as Karl Stern, Gregory Zilboorg, Conrad Baars and Anna Terruwe. Today, Catholics -- Paul Vitz, Richard Fitzgibbons, William Kirk Kilpatrick, Robert Enright -- continue to produce some of the most exciting work in these professions.

Yours is the Church where comedians Fred Allen and Stepin Fetchit took daily Communion.

You can boast that your Church established institutions that became the pillars of our civic life: the university and the hospital. Alcoholics Anonymous -- the grandfather of all 12-step movements -- built on foundations laid a century earlier by the Irish Capuchin priest, Theobald Mathew.

Yours is the Church in solidarity with the poor. Catholics have worked, for millennia, to bring education, medical care, legal counsel, housing and honest work to those most in need. Think of the selfless work of Las Casas among the Indians, Mother Teresa in Calcutta, Blessed Damien among the lepers in Molokai, Dorothy Day on the streets of Manhattan, St. Martin de Porres, St. Peter Claver.

And what would your country be without your Church? The New World was "discovered" by a Catholic, Christopher Columbus, sailing a ship named for Holy Mary. On arriving, he sang the Salve Regina. Our continent was named for a Catholic, Amerigo Vespucci, explorer and mapmaker. Indeed, no history of the Americas would be complete without telling the contributions of Roman Catholics: Pocahontas, St. Isaac Jogues, Charles Carroll, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy, Blessed Junipero Serra.

Yet, as the saying goes, your Church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners. And the hospital is always fairly full. It was your Church’s crusaders who sacked Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Christianity, in 1204, leaving the city so devastated that it never recovered. Thus, Muslims could take Constantinople with little difficulty in 1453. It was your Church’s conquistadors who visited horrors upon Indians in Spanish America. Catholic treatment of the Jews, down through the years, has often been shameful. And the Church’s Inquisition, for a time, moved beyond zeal to cruelty. All these sins the sinners justified in the name of their Catholic faith.

You should know, too, that it was a Catholic chief justice who wrote the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision on slavery, and a Catholic justice was said to be the "brains" behind the Roe v. Wade abortion decision. A Catholic was commandant of Auschwitz when St. Maximilian Kolbe and millions of others were martyred there.

Still, yours is the Church that owns and repents of the sins of its members. We do not despair of Christ because of the sins of Christians. He promised not to abandon His Church, and we take Him at His word. Rather than found a newer, "purer" Church (which has never been done), we stay with the Lord even as new and improved Judases ever betray Him.

Repentance comes today from none other than Pope John Paul II -- who has pleaded sorrow for Catholics' mistreatment of Jews, for the Inquisition and for other crimes. He invites us all to join him.

But, lest you dwell too long on the sins of a few and forget the virtues of many: Recall that yours is the Church that has long buttressed true liberty and justice. One cannot advance in the field of political philosophy without wrestling with Catholics such as St. Thomas More, Lord Acton and Michael Novak. It is significant that, in the wake of World War II, as the nations sought a way of lasting peace, your Church provided the philosophical basis for the dialogue. The men who established the United Nations say that the only common language they could find for conversation between conflicting ideologies was the natural-law tradition of Catholic philosophy. Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain was perhaps the most important interlocutor. And it was Catholics who made peace work in the postwar European democracies: Konrad Adenauer in Germany, Charles de Gaulle in France.

But not everything, and certainly not the most important stuff, is so utterly this-worldly. Thus, your Church is guardian of the rich Christian traditions of prayer, contemplation and mysticism. And the permutations are as varied as the people you meet: the joyful poverty of Franciscanism, the workaday holiness of Opus Dei, the spirited praise of charismatics, the unifying power of Focolare, the zealous culture of Communion and Liberation, the disciplined subtlety of Jesuits, the prayer and penance of Carmelites, the profound intellect and piety of Dominicans . . . No one can honestly call us monochromatic.

As one early Christian said: We live abundantly in this land, even as we are citizens of another. Yours is the Church that has preserved the mystical life from materialism, and material life from spiritualism.

Your Church is a great place to come home to. Every day, new members find their way to the Catholic faith. Your Church has been growing every year for centuries. Today, the Church is witnessing rapid growth in the places where faith is most ruthlessly persecuted: China, North Korea and sub-Saharan Africa.

There's precedent for this. Yours has always been a faith to die for, and millions have -- at the hands of Nero, Diocletian, the Muslim Caliphs, Henry VIII, the Lutheran mobs that sacked Rome, John Calvin, Robespierre, the Spanish Republicans, Hitler’s Nazis, Stalin’s communists, China's Cultural Revolutionaries and Algeria's terrorists.

In lands of peace, too, so many are coming home to your Church. Consider only the non-Catholic clergymen of recent years: Richard John Neuhaus, Walter Hooper, Scott Hahn, John Haas.

Again, this is nothing new. "Within that household," said Hillaire Belloc of your Church, "the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it is the Night." For years, the great have come home to Catholicism: actors John Wayne and Alec Guinness, showman Buffalo Bill Cody, artist Aubrey Beardsley, playwright Oscar Wilde, historian Will Durant, media sage Marshall McLuhan, slugger Babe Ruth, singer Maria von Trapp, journalist Heywood Broun, U.S. Rep. Clare Boothe Luce, commentator Malcolm Muggeridge, philosopher Henri Bergson, composer Erik Satie, poet Wallace Stevens and the giant G.K. Chesterton.

Others wrestled with your Church for much of the lives -- and where they stopped, nobody knows but God: Jorge Luis Borges, Henry James, Soren Kierkegaard, Henry Adams, Charles Peguy, Franz Werfel, James Joyce, Anthony Burgess, Jean Cocteau, Eugene O’Neill, Jack Kerouac, Miguel de Unamuno.

But, then, why not? Yours is the only Church that can accept Jesus' hard sayings (Jn 6:26-59 and Mt 16:18-19, for example) without circumlocutions.

And yours is the Church where Jesus himself dwells -- body, blood, soul and divinity -- in the Holy Eucharist. Yours are the tens of thousands of Catholic churches and chapels worldwide where Jesus waits for you in the tabernacle.

Yours is the Church that traces authority back, generation by generation, to the commissioning of the Twelve Apostles. In 2,000 years, not a single moment is unaccounted for. Your Holy Father today, Pope John Paul II, is a direct successor of St. Peter, whom Jesus himself named to head His Church. And surely John Paul is among the greatest of the 263 popes who have served the servants of God since A.D. 33.

Scholars and experts, including Mikhail Gorbachev, credit the current pontiff with the downfall of world communism. So when this Pope talks -- at the United Nations, in Central Park, on an airstrip in Africa -- people listen. Everywhere John Paul goes, he draws record crowds. At each successive World Youth Day, every other year, he routinely outdraws Woodstock. (That’s right, your almost-80-year-old pontiff is cooler and more electrifying with kids today than Jimi Hendrix was to kids 30 years ago.) In the Philippines he drew the largest crowd in human history -- modest estimates place it at 5 million.

So when people ask you which Church is yours, lift your head up and tell them: It's the one Jesus Christ gave you -- and gave the world. Then invite them in for a visit.





Mike Aquilina is executive vice-president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. He is author of more than fifty books on Catholic history, doctrine, and devotion. Mike is past editor of New Covenant magazine (1996-2002) and The Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper (1993-1996). He and his wife Terri have been married for twenty-five years; they have six children.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

ST AUGUSTINE (quotes attributed to)

St. Augustine was born in Africa to St. Monica. Augustine lived much of his life with materialistc ambitions, following false beliefs. Through his mother's prayers and the preaching of St. Ambrose, Augustine came to realize the truth in Christianity. He made amends for his life of impurity and he began to live in imitation of Jesus. Augustine was baptized, became a priest, a bishop, a Theologian and writer, and the founder of a religious order of priests. St. Augustine was declared a doctor of the Church, and considered one of the greatest saints that ever lived. St. Augustine is the patron of brewers. His feast day is celebrated on August 28.



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"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." 




"Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him." 



"Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies." 

"People travel to wonder 
at the height of the mountains, 
at the huge waves of the seas, 
at the long course of the rivers, 
at the vast compass of the ocean, 
at the circular motion of the stars, 
and yet they pass by themselves 
without wondering. " 







"There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future." 




"Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are." 



"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two." 



"Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. " 




"Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe." 




"If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." 



"Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee." 




"Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?" 




"To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement." 





"I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden." 




"God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination." 



"Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop." 




"Patience is the companion of wisdom." 




"Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all." 




"Take up and read, take up and read." 




"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." 




"God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail. " 



"Sin is Energy in the wrong channel. " 



"Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature. " 



"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like." 




"Love is the beauty of the soul" 




"Hope has two beautiful daughters 
anger and courage: anger that sees things the way they are, and courage to make things the way they ought to be" 



"Lord, make me chaste... but not yet." 




"Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you." 




"Does God proclaim Himself in the wonders of creation? No. All things proclaim Him, all things speak. Their beauty is the voice by which they announce God, by which they sing, "It is you who made me beautiful, not me myself but you." 




"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation." 








"Love God, and do what you like." 




"God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full - there is no where for him to put it" 




"Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness" 




"I have said before, and shall say again, that I write this book for love of your love." 




"Unless you believe, you will not understand." 




"God grants us not always what we ask so as to bestow something preferable." 




"Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce 
the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility." 




"Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer" 




"Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand." 




"Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue. " 




"Really great things, when discussed by little men, can usually make such men grow big." 




"The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)" 




"Love, and do what you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry out, do it out of love. If you refrain from punishing, do it out of love. 





"Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace." 




"Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen." 





"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men." 




"Lord give me chastity and continence, but not yet" 




"Dilige et quod vis fac. (Love and then what you will, do.)" 



"Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls." 



Augustine of Hippo"Our hearts have been made for you, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in you." 




"In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me." 




"Variation on the middle sentence: A thing is not necessarily false because it is badly expressed, nor true because it is expressed magnificently." 




"We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living." 




"What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits." 




"It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud." 





"A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot" 




"God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them." 




"Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he lives so as to make happiness impossible." 




"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand." 




"Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering." 




"Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which iniquity itself cannot blot out. For what thief will suffer a thief? Even a rich thief will not suffer him who is driven to it by want. Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.Behold my heart, O my God; behold my heart, which You had pity upon when in the bottomless pit. Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error— not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction— not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself!" 




"O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet." 




"For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next...They are set up on the course of their existence, and the faster they climb towards its zenith, the more they hasten towards the point where they exist no more." 




"When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship." 




"For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before." 





"The mind orders the body and it obeys, the mind orders itself and meets resistance." 




"la mesure de l'amour c'est d'aimer sans mesure" 




"Always add, always walk, always proceed; neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate; he that standeth still proceedeth not; he goeth back that continueth not; he deviateth that revolteth; he goeth better that creepeth in his way than he that moveth out of his way." 




"My sin grew sleek on my excesses. 




"Love is ever new because it never groweth old." 




"...it is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war." 





"Though defensive violence will always be a ’sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men." 




"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page" 




"Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur." 



"There can only be two basic loves... the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God." 



"Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." 




"The world is a great book; he who never stirs from home, reads only a page. 





"The world is a book.And those who do not travel read only one page." 





"Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." 




"Of his bounty, the Lord often grants not what we seek, so as to bestow something preferable." 




"Watch, O Lord, 
with those who wake, 
or watch or weep tonight, 
and give your angels charge 
over those who sleep. 

Tend your sick ones, 
O Lord Jesus Christ; 
rest your weary ones; 
bless your dying ones; 
soothe your suffering ones; 
pity your afflicted ones; 
shield your joyous ones; 
and all for your love's sake. 

Amen." 




"Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility." 




"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others." 




"He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake." 




"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sigs and sorrows of men. This is what love looks like." 




"For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. " 




"Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. (We are born between shit and piss.)" 




"The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell." 




"Too late came I to love you, O Beauty both so ancient and so new! Too late came I to love you - and behold you were with me all the time . . ." 




"Omnis natura, inquantum natura est, bonum est." 




"i understand that i understand" 




"The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page." 





"By means of corporal and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and the spiritual." 




"What matters it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him too rejoice and say, “What is this?” Let him rejoice even at this, and let him love to find you while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find you." 




"O Lord, make me pure and holy: but not yet" 




"To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow man a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel." 




"In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero." 





"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." 




"God gives where he finds empty hands." 




"Da quod iubes et iube quod vis 
Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt" 




"Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there
are others to be enjoyed and used."  

Two criminals were crucified with Christ.  One was saved; do not despair.  One was not; do not presume."