The House Of Christmas | G.K. Chesterton There fared a mother driven forth Out of an inn to roam; In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand...
I have found a Physician who dwells in heaven, but who distributes his medicine on earth. He alone can cure my wounds because He does not suffer from them; He alone can take all sorrow away from my heart and all fear from my soul, because He knows me in the depths of...
He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.- St. Augustine
As we have seen, there is sometimes a big difference between what God is actually asking of us, and what we imagine He is asking. We won’t have the grace to do what God is not asking of us. But for what He is asking, He has promised us His grace: God grants what He...
It was due to His own infinite sanctity that God should suspend, in this instance, the law which His divine justice had passed upon all the children of Adam. The relations which Mary was to bear to the Divinity, could not be reconciled with her undergoing the...
When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell...
A striking feature of the angel's greeting is that he does not address Mary with the usual Hebrew salutation shalom - peace be with you - chaíre, which we might well translate with the word "Hail," as in the Church's Marian prayer, pieced together from the words of...
Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving others with God’s own love and concern. - Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta
All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.- St. Francis of Assisi
O King of Heaven! from starry throne descending, Thou takest refuge in that wretched cave; O God of bliss! I see Thee cold and trembling, What pain it cost Thee fallen man to save! Thou, of a thousand worlds the great Creator, Dost now the pain of cold and want...
The charity of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us (Rom. 5:5). He who has a share of daylight has that light from the sun; in the same way he who has charity has it from the Holy Spirit. - St. Thomas Aquinas
What is the meaning of the Coming of the Holy Ghost? What did it accomplish? How did He tell us of His Presence; reveal It to us? By the fact that all spoke in the tongues of every nation. There were a hundred and twenty people gathered in one room; ten times twelve....
One of the errors of Pelagianism was the assertion that prayer is not necessary for salvation. Pelagius, the impious author of that heresy, said that man will only be damned for neglecting to know the truths necessary to be learned. How astonishing! St. Augustine...
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Only wonder can comprehend his incomprehensible power.
Seeds in a pomegranate cannot see objects outside its rind, because they are inside. Similarly human beings who are enclosed with all creation in the hand of God cannot see God . . . Friend, it is through him that you are speaking, it is he whom you breathe, and you...
Most people are enclosed in their mortal bodies like a snail in its shell, curled up in their obsessions after the manner of hedgehogs. They form their notion of God's blessedness taking themselves for a model....
Let us never forget that, for Christ’s disciples, poverty is above all a call to follow Jesus in his own poverty. It means walking behind him and beside him, a journey that leads to the beatitude of the Kingdom of heaven...
When I was in my sins, it seemed a thing too bitter to look on lepers, and the Lord himself led me among them and I showed them mercy. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of mind and body.- St. Francis of Assisi...
My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer, we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows...
The Church reaffirms her great “yes” to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of the faithful and generous bond between man and woman, and her no to “gender” philosophies, because the reciprocity between male and female is an expression of the beauty of...
Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of...
Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that....
Beauty of body attracts the eyes; beauty of soul attracts God. Man sees the face; God sees the soul. Mary's beautiful purity must have been such that it attracted less the eyes than the souls of men. No one would have loved her mind or soul because of the beauty of...