June 2012
1 post
“That is why it is such a pleasure to see you here. I don’t know how many of you will become parish priests. But I know how welcome you will be. I have mentioned the challenge only to emphasize the opportunities. The opportunity is simply this: that never in history has modern man been in greater need of you, has been more confused about his identity and the meaning of his life. ...
May 2012
1 post
THE MULTITUDE
hello, friends! I’m no longer sure who reads this, if anyone — but whoever you are (you, yes, you) reading this, would you visit this website? The Multitude is a fantastic project currently being started by my incredible friends Gary and Jen. it needs more funding to get off the ground, so please donate if you can, and if you can’t, spread the word! God bless!
August 2011
5 posts
Our soul waits for the Lord, He is our help and shield. Yea, our heart is glad in Him, because we trust in His holy name. Let Thy steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in Thee. — Psalm 33
Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and ...
July 2011
8 posts
Having assumed without argument, at the start, that all emancipation must lead men away from religion and towards irreligion, they have just blankly and blindly forgotten what is the outstanding feature of the religion itself. — G.K. Chesterton, On Two Friars
Laudamus te.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
— Pablo Neruda
how much more than enough for both of us darling. And if i sing you are my voice,
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
June 2011
5 posts
When I am completely united to You, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of You, my life will be complete.
— St. Augustine
I suspected that all the yearnings for I knew not what that I had ever felt — when autumn leaves were burning in the twilight, when wild geese flew crying overhead, when I looked up at bare branches against the stars, when spring arrived on an April morning — were in truth yearnings for Him. For God.
— A Severe Mercy
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
thought its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Selah.
May 2011
1 post
April 2011
10 posts
‘O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgment of the sea, this is your real destination.’
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
— Four Quartets
Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.
— St. Augustine
All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.
— The Road
The Christianity we represented was sunny and joyous, with all the room in the world for humour and gaiety, and yet at the same time rigorous and glorious. So we laughed and joked and poured out the wine but challenged their minds and souls. And the students smiled and abandoned the solemn voices they had been taught to use in speaking about such things, gaily drinking the wine and discovering a...
Glenmerle, he thought, had been a place to come home to, home from Kentucky or Florida or England, home from schools and home from college. He pictured coming home from boarding school, perhaps for the Christmas holidays, perhaps with snow all about — the woods full of snow. It would be a winter dusk with the big blue spruce a-twinkle with tiny white lights like stars, the big car sweeping...
Barcarolle.
listen to this once, watch La vita é bella, then listen again.
For us it is not merely enough to defend the Faith. We have the fortress and, full of trust in our Leader, we go among the enemy hunting hearts to conquer for the Immaculata…. Every heart that beats or will beat on earth until the end of time must become the Immaculata’s prize. This is our aim. And this as soon as possible.
— St. Maximilian Kolbe
March 2011
3 posts
We can be stable, steadfast — planted in one place. So were the monks who lived under Benedict’s rule. Because they were pilgrims, they knew that no one place here could satisfy the heart. So with a free conscience they took a vow of stability, and devoted their earthly attentions to one place, praying there, and clearing woods, draining swamps, tilling fields, and draping the hills with...
These things astonish me beyond words.
— William Carlos Williams
In Heaven there will be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
February 2011
9 posts
Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.
— East of Eden
As for Eden. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’…
— J.R.R. Tolkien
but Thou, O Lord, art my shield, my glory, the lifter of my head.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
…our imitation of God in this life — that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states — must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the...
http://www.mysoulproclaims.com/ →
By her heel is meant her humble slaves, the poor children she will use in her army against the eternal foe. They will be little in the eyes of the world, poor, and humble — like the heel, which is small and humble, and is trodden upon by the body.
However, these little ones who comprise Our Lady’s heel will be rich in the grace of God, which Mary will give them. They will be most...
God of my heart…may my heart faint in its spirit, and may You live in me. May the live coal of Thy love burn in my soul, and may it grow into a raging fire. May it burn constantly on the altar of my heart. May its fervor glow in my inmost being. May it blaze in the hidden depth of my soul. And, in the day of my consummation, may I be found consumed with Thee…
— St....
January 2011
15 posts
One thing has not changed since my own student days at Oxford: the later it gets, the more profound and universal the subject under discussion comes. At nine, perhaps, you are discussing politics, in the form of some currently newsworthy piece of public villainy; by ten, you have got to the principles of political action; by eleven, to the general principles of all human action, and by twelve, to...
Joy is the net that catches souls.
— Mother Teresa
on my knees and out of luck, I look up.
I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me — a stranger. Is this some dream?
I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you...
He loves, He hopes, He waits. If He came down on our altars on certain days only, some sinner, on being moved to repentance, might have to look for Him, and not finding Him, might have to wait. Our Lord prefers to wait Himself for the sinner for years rather than keep him waiting one instant.
— St. Peter Julian Eymard
armor.
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
— the Breastplate of St. Patrick
