8 May 2021

Listening to God

God has things to tell us which will enlighten us — we must wait for Him to speak. No one would rush into a physician’s office, rattle off all the symptoms, and dash away without waiting for a diagnosis. It is every bit as stupid to ring God’s bell and then run away. The Lord hears us more readily than we suspect; it is our listening to Him that needs to be improved.

      Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)
7 May 2021

On Faith

Faith is our light in this life. By it we know the truth without seeing it, we are put in touch with what we cannot feel, recognize what we cannot see, and view the world stripped of all its outer shell. Faith unlocks God’s treasury. It is the key to all the vastness of His wisdom. The emptiness of all created things is disclosed by faith, and it is by faith that God reveals Himself.

       Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
6 May 2021

Trust in God

Continue to trust in God. Do you think that the God who takes care to provide food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth – which neither sow nor reap – will ever forget to provide all that is necessary for the one who trusts wholly in His Providence, seeing that we are capable of being united to God, our sovereign good?

         Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
5 May 2021

On Repentance

To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings, but upwards at God's love, it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness, it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I might yet become.

        St. John Climacus
4 May 2021

The Contemplative Life

The pursuit of the contemplative life is something for which a great and sustained effort on the part of the powers of the soul is required: an effort to rise from earthly to heavenly things, an effort to keep one’s attention fixed on spiritual things, an effort to pass beyond and above the sphere of things visible to the eyes of flesh.

        Saint Gregory the Great 

3 May 2021

Committing Yourself

Commit yourself then to God! He will be your guide. He Himself will travel with you, as we are told He did with the Israelites, to bring them step by step across the desert to the promised land. Ah! what will be your blessedness, if you will but surrender yourself into the hands of God, permitting Him to do whatever He will, not according to your desires, but according to His own good pleasure?

        François Fénèlon  (1651-1715)
2 May 2021

On Watchfulness and Holiness

Watchfulness is a continual fixing and halting of thought at the entrance to the heart. In this way predatory and murderous thoughts are marked down as they approach and what they say and do is noted; and we can see in what specious and delusive form the demons are trying to deceive the intellect. If we are conscientious in this, we can gain much experience and knowledge of spiritual warfare.

        St. Hesychios the Priest