30 April 2025
Watch yourself with all diligence, lest the enemy steals near and robs
you, depriving you of this great treasure, which is inner peace and stillness
of soul.
Lawrence Scupoli
The Lord Delights in Us
29 April 2025
Why on earth did the Lord make something like you? There is only one like you—ever has been, ever will be. The Lord multiplies His delight. He doesn’t have the same delight in any hundred of the same. He has a different delight in each unique one of us, and He invites us into delighting with Him in each one. […] What clinched our Lord’s delight in each one of us was His baptizing us. He says you are one of Mine, yes, you. My name I put on you with the water. You are the only one like you, so you can have delight in all My gifts to you as I delight in your crinkly ears, gray hair, funny belly button, and eyes that speak like nobody else’s.
Norman Nagel
Why on earth did the Lord make something like you? There is only one like you—ever has been, ever will be. The Lord multiplies His delight. He doesn’t have the same delight in any hundred of the same. He has a different delight in each unique one of us, and He invites us into delighting with Him in each one. […] What clinched our Lord’s delight in each one of us was His baptizing us. He says you are one of Mine, yes, you. My name I put on you with the water. You are the only one like you, so you can have delight in all My gifts to you as I delight in your crinkly ears, gray hair, funny belly button, and eyes that speak like nobody else’s.
Norman Nagel
The Table
28 April 2025
Friendship, camaraderie, even group dynamics, are all good and enjoyable as far as they go. But they are not yet what the New Testament means by fellowship. The real “Family Table” around which the Christian family gathers is the Holy Supper of Christ. Other tables may be ever so pleasant, but they cannot replace The Table. Let us never rest content with lesser fellowships, but ever draw and be drawn into the full unity of the One Lord, the One Faith, and the One Baptism (Ephesians 4), so that we may openly and honestly act as the One Body in the One Spirit. That is what our entrance together into the New Testament Holy of Holies—the Sacrament of the Bread of Life—means and must mean.
Kurt Marquart
Friendship, camaraderie, even group dynamics, are all good and enjoyable as far as they go. But they are not yet what the New Testament means by fellowship. The real “Family Table” around which the Christian family gathers is the Holy Supper of Christ. Other tables may be ever so pleasant, but they cannot replace The Table. Let us never rest content with lesser fellowships, but ever draw and be drawn into the full unity of the One Lord, the One Faith, and the One Baptism (Ephesians 4), so that we may openly and honestly act as the One Body in the One Spirit. That is what our entrance together into the New Testament Holy of Holies—the Sacrament of the Bread of Life—means and must mean.
Kurt Marquart
The Pax
27 April 2025
The fact that the kiss of peace appears in the conclusion of 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Romans and 1 Peter has suggested that the epistle was read as sermon, and that the Pax indicates the transition to the Holy Communion. Only those who receive and give the kiss of peace are welcomed to the Lord’s Table. The “Didascalia” (early third century) evokes the vivid scene of the kiss of peace, which comes from the altar, coming to a sudden halt as it is being given and received all the way round. The presiding minister leaves the altar and goes to where the kiss of peace is blocked. Only after he has worked reconciliation (pacem facere inter eos [Matthew 5:24; 6:15; 7:6]) does the kiss of peace continue on its way all the way round, and only then does the liturgy proceed. We may regret the loss of the actual kiss of peace. Yet whether by kiss or handshake or words, the Pax is given and received. It comes from the Lord and we receive and embrace it together with our Amen. It is His gift, not something we set going. Lamentable is the disintegration of the liturgy at this point into lots of separate heartinesses. The one so-called Pax, from the Lord, was beautifully expressed by the usage with a piece of wood, metal, or ivory upon which a Calvary was carved. It came from the altar and was kissed by the presiding minister, and then in turn by all the communicants. How little chance for such a usage among us time-pressured people is shown by those instances when even parts of the Holy Communion are lopped off—and this at times for the sake of some cozy pleasantries or program promotions.
Norman Nagel
The fact that the kiss of peace appears in the conclusion of 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Romans and 1 Peter has suggested that the epistle was read as sermon, and that the Pax indicates the transition to the Holy Communion. Only those who receive and give the kiss of peace are welcomed to the Lord’s Table. The “Didascalia” (early third century) evokes the vivid scene of the kiss of peace, which comes from the altar, coming to a sudden halt as it is being given and received all the way round. The presiding minister leaves the altar and goes to where the kiss of peace is blocked. Only after he has worked reconciliation (pacem facere inter eos [Matthew 5:24; 6:15; 7:6]) does the kiss of peace continue on its way all the way round, and only then does the liturgy proceed. We may regret the loss of the actual kiss of peace. Yet whether by kiss or handshake or words, the Pax is given and received. It comes from the Lord and we receive and embrace it together with our Amen. It is His gift, not something we set going. Lamentable is the disintegration of the liturgy at this point into lots of separate heartinesses. The one so-called Pax, from the Lord, was beautifully expressed by the usage with a piece of wood, metal, or ivory upon which a Calvary was carved. It came from the altar and was kissed by the presiding minister, and then in turn by all the communicants. How little chance for such a usage among us time-pressured people is shown by those instances when even parts of the Holy Communion are lopped off—and this at times for the sake of some cozy pleasantries or program promotions.
Norman Nagel
All Temptations
26 April 2025
The beginning of all temptation lies in a wavering mind and little trust in God, for as a rudderless ship is driven hither and yon by waves, so a careless and irresolute man is tempted in many ways. Fire tempers iron and temptation steels the just. Often we do not know what we can stand, but temptation shows us what we are. Above all, we must be especially alert against the beginnings of temptation, for the enemy is more easily conquered if he is refused admittance to the mind and is met beyond the threshold when he knocks.
Saint Francis de Sales
The beginning of all temptation lies in a wavering mind and little trust in God, for as a rudderless ship is driven hither and yon by waves, so a careless and irresolute man is tempted in many ways. Fire tempers iron and temptation steels the just. Often we do not know what we can stand, but temptation shows us what we are. Above all, we must be especially alert against the beginnings of temptation, for the enemy is more easily conquered if he is refused admittance to the mind and is met beyond the threshold when he knocks.
Saint Francis de Sales
On the Resurrection
25 April 2025
"And the third day he rose again"; what are we to make of that? One thing is certain: If he was God and nothing else, His immorality means nothing to us; if He was man and no more, His death mean nothing more than yours and mine. But if He was really both God and man, then when the man Jesus died, God died too, and when the God Jesus rose from the dead, man rose too, because they were one and the same person.
Dorothy Sayers
"And the third day he rose again"; what are we to make of that? One thing is certain: If he was God and nothing else, His immorality means nothing to us; if He was man and no more, His death mean nothing more than yours and mine. But if He was really both God and man, then when the man Jesus died, God died too, and when the God Jesus rose from the dead, man rose too, because they were one and the same person.
Dorothy Sayers
O Holy Spirit
24 April 2025
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy. Amen.
Saint Augustine
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy. Amen.
Saint Augustine
Our Shared Humanity
23 April 2025
Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.
Henri Nouwen
Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity.
Henri Nouwen
On Earthly Delights and Spiritual Pleasures
22 April 2025
All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
François Fénèlon
All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
François Fénèlon
Given to Us by the Holy Spirit
21 April 2025
It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us.
Saint Seraphim of Sarov
It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is given to us by the Holy Spirit, but prayer most of all, which is always available to us.
Saint Seraphim of Sarov
Persevering Until Death
19 April 2025
Above all, as sanctity does not consist in being faithful for a day or a year but in persevering until death, we must use God as a shield which covers us completely because we are attacked from all sides. God must do everything. All the better; there will be no fear of failure. As for ourselves, we have only to acknowledge our powerlessness and to be fervent and constant in asking for help through the intercession of Mary, to whom God refuses nothing.
Saint Claude de la Colombiere
Above all, as sanctity does not consist in being faithful for a day or a year but in persevering until death, we must use God as a shield which covers us completely because we are attacked from all sides. God must do everything. All the better; there will be no fear of failure. As for ourselves, we have only to acknowledge our powerlessness and to be fervent and constant in asking for help through the intercession of Mary, to whom God refuses nothing.
Saint Claude de la Colombiere
The Paradox of Divine Love
18 April 2025
By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting.
Blessed Fulton Sheen
By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting.
Blessed Fulton Sheen
On Unhappiness
17 April 2025
Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
Blaise Pascal
Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
Blaise Pascal
Imitators of Christ
16 April 2025
The Christian who desires to follow Jesus carrying his cross must bear in mind that the name “Christian” means “learner or imitator of Christ” and that if he wishes to bear that noble title worthily he must above all do as Christ charges us in the Gospel: We must oppose or deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow him.
Saint Anthony Mary Claret
The Christian who desires to follow Jesus carrying his cross must bear in mind that the name “Christian” means “learner or imitator of Christ” and that if he wishes to bear that noble title worthily he must above all do as Christ charges us in the Gospel: We must oppose or deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow him.
Saint Anthony Mary Claret
Add to Our Existence
15 April 2025
For what purpose does the Lord add day after day, year after year, to our existence? In order that we may gradually put away, cast aside, evil from our souls, each one his own, and acquire blessed simplicity; in order that we may become, for instance, gentle as lambs, simple as infants; in order that we may learn not to have the least attachment to earthly things, but like loving, simple children, may cling with all our hearts to God alone, and love Him with all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength, and all our thoughts, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Saint John of Kronstadt
For what purpose does the Lord add day after day, year after year, to our existence? In order that we may gradually put away, cast aside, evil from our souls, each one his own, and acquire blessed simplicity; in order that we may become, for instance, gentle as lambs, simple as infants; in order that we may learn not to have the least attachment to earthly things, but like loving, simple children, may cling with all our hearts to God alone, and love Him with all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength, and all our thoughts, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Saint John of Kronstadt
The State of Grace
14 April 2025
The state of grace is nothing other than purity, and it gives heaven to those who clothe themselves in it. Holiness, therefore, is simply the state of grace purified, illuminated, beautified by the most perfect purity, exempt not only from mortal sin but also from the smallest faults; purity will make saints of you! Everything lies in this!
Saint Peter Julian Eymard
The state of grace is nothing other than purity, and it gives heaven to those who clothe themselves in it. Holiness, therefore, is simply the state of grace purified, illuminated, beautified by the most perfect purity, exempt not only from mortal sin but also from the smallest faults; purity will make saints of you! Everything lies in this!
Saint Peter Julian Eymard
Trusting God
13 April 2025
Lay all your cares about the future trustingly in God’s hands, and let yourself be guided by the Lord just like a little child.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Lay all your cares about the future trustingly in God’s hands, and let yourself be guided by the Lord just like a little child.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
Sin and Repentance
12 April 2025
Do not be ashamed when you repent. Pay attention to what the devil did to you. These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine.
St. John Chrysostom
Do not be ashamed when you repent. Pay attention to what the devil did to you. These are two things: sin and repentance. Sin is a wound; repentance is a medicine.
St. John Chrysostom
God is Our Strength
11 April 2025
When God is our strength, it is strength indeed; when our strength is our own, it is only weakness.
Saint Augustine
When God is our strength, it is strength indeed; when our strength is our own, it is only weakness.
Saint Augustine
On the Psalms
10 April 2025
The psalms have also a wonderful power to awaken in our hearts the desire for every virtue. Athanasius says: ‘Though all Scripture, both old and new, is divinely inspired and has its use in teaching, as we read in Scripture itself, yet the Book of Psalms, like a garden enclosing the fruits of all the other books, produces its fruits in song, and in the process of singing brings forth its own special fruits to take their place beside them.’ In the same place Athanasius rightly adds: ‘The psalms seem to me to be like a mirror, in which the person using them can see himself, and the stirrings of his own heart; he can recite them against the background of his own emotions.’
Saint Pius X
The psalms have also a wonderful power to awaken in our hearts the desire for every virtue. Athanasius says: ‘Though all Scripture, both old and new, is divinely inspired and has its use in teaching, as we read in Scripture itself, yet the Book of Psalms, like a garden enclosing the fruits of all the other books, produces its fruits in song, and in the process of singing brings forth its own special fruits to take their place beside them.’ In the same place Athanasius rightly adds: ‘The psalms seem to me to be like a mirror, in which the person using them can see himself, and the stirrings of his own heart; he can recite them against the background of his own emotions.’
Saint Pius X
Poor Miserable Sinner
9 April 2025
What is wrong with me? I know nothing that is good; I cannot even think of it.
I, a sinner — alas, what can I do? I do not know and cannot even think what will become of me because of my many, many sins.
Oh, where shall I turn, to whom shall I run for help to cover my shameful sins and remove them with repentance?
I will turn back in my heart, return in true repentance to you, God, who have touched my wounds.
Awakened from the sleep of death, I will not sin again in thought, word or deed.
Saint Hildegarde of Bingen
What is wrong with me? I know nothing that is good; I cannot even think of it.
I, a sinner — alas, what can I do? I do not know and cannot even think what will become of me because of my many, many sins.
Oh, where shall I turn, to whom shall I run for help to cover my shameful sins and remove them with repentance?
I will turn back in my heart, return in true repentance to you, God, who have touched my wounds.
Awakened from the sleep of death, I will not sin again in thought, word or deed.
Saint Hildegarde of Bingen
The Holy Spirit
8 April 2025
The Holy Spirit rests in the soul of the just like the dove in her nest, hatching good desires in a pure soul, as the dove hatches her young.
Saint John Vianney
The Holy Spirit rests in the soul of the just like the dove in her nest, hatching good desires in a pure soul, as the dove hatches her young.
Saint John Vianney
Do all to the Glory of God
7 April 2025
Whatever you do, think of the glory of God as your main goal.
St John Bosco
Whatever you do, think of the glory of God as your main goal.
St John Bosco
Seek and Serve the Truth
6 April 2025
No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe
No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe
Plea for Spiritual Cleansing and Guidance
5 April 2025
Almighty and everlasting God, at evening, and morning, and noon day, we humbly beseech Thee that Thou would drive from our hearts the darkness of sin and make us come to the true Light, which is Christ; which is the same Jesus Christ Thy Son.
Gelasian Sacramentary
Almighty and everlasting God, at evening, and morning, and noon day, we humbly beseech Thee that Thou would drive from our hearts the darkness of sin and make us come to the true Light, which is Christ; which is the same Jesus Christ Thy Son.
Gelasian Sacramentary
The End Draws Near
4 April 2025
The end draws near, O my soul, the end draws near. Yet thou dost not care or make ready. The days of our lives pass swiftly, as dream, as a flower. Why do we trouble ourselves in vain?
Great Cannon of St. Andrew of Crete
The end draws near, O my soul, the end draws near. Yet thou dost not care or make ready. The days of our lives pass swiftly, as dream, as a flower. Why do we trouble ourselves in vain?
Great Cannon of St. Andrew of Crete
The Liturgy
3 April 2025
Christian liturgy was a celebration of the presence of the living Christ. It is not the memorial meal commemorating something that happened in the past. As Augustine said on a sermon of Psalm 22, the great psalm of Christ's passion, the liturgy "makes present what took place in time past, and in this way it moves us as if we were watching our Lord hanging on the cross."
Robert Louis Wilken
Christian liturgy was a celebration of the presence of the living Christ. It is not the memorial meal commemorating something that happened in the past. As Augustine said on a sermon of Psalm 22, the great psalm of Christ's passion, the liturgy "makes present what took place in time past, and in this way it moves us as if we were watching our Lord hanging on the cross."
Robert Louis Wilken
Holy Indifference
2 April 2025
Holy indifference is a ceasing of either to desire or to will, except in cooperation with the divine leading. Its desires for itself, as it has greater light, are more completely and permanently merged in the one higher and more absorbing desire of God’s glory and the fulfillment of his will.
François Fénelon
Holy indifference is a ceasing of either to desire or to will, except in cooperation with the divine leading. Its desires for itself, as it has greater light, are more completely and permanently merged in the one higher and more absorbing desire of God’s glory and the fulfillment of his will.
François Fénelon
The spirit of Faith
1 April 2025
It is not the actual physical exertion that counts toward a man’s progress, nor the nature of the task, but the spirit of faith with which it is undertaken.
Saint Francis Xavier
It is not the actual physical exertion that counts toward a man’s progress, nor the nature of the task, but the spirit of faith with which it is undertaken.
Saint Francis Xavier
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