'Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.'

James Thurber

"Dear God, please catch me in your
landing net to take my final sleep;
And then, Oh God, may I be judged as big enough to keep."

Pearl Nodge

'We can believe what we choose.We are answerable for what we choose to believe.'

Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman

'Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have you present so that I do not forget you.
Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need your strength, that I may not fall so often.........'

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

'The whole world is indebted to Jesus for His Passion.
Similarly, all of us are indebted to our Lady for her compassion.'

St. Albert the Great

'Everyone, no matter how humble he may be,has angels to watch over him.They are heavenly, pure, and splendidand yet they have been given usto keep us company on our way;they have been given the taskof keeping careful watch over you.'

Pope Pius XII

'Let me get through today, and I shall not fear tomorrow.'

St. Philip Neri

'My God, you have given me all; behold the little that I give You. Give me the strength to give more.'

St. John Vianney, Cure' D'Ars

'The best things are nearest:
breath in your nostrils,
light in your eyes,
flowers at your feet,
duties at your hand,
the path of God just before you. '

Robert Louis Stevenson

'The body dies when the soul departs; but the soul dies when God departs.'

St. Augustine

'Every one should try to have his heart always occupied and filled with God, to love Him and think of Him only, and whether alone or with others never to be out of His presence.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

A bow breaks if it is bent too much, but the soul is lost if it relaxes itself.'

St. Ignatius of Loyola

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson: to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

Fulfillment does not lie in comfort, ease, and following one's inclinations, but precisely in allowing demands to be made upon you, in taking the harder path. Everything else turns out somehow boring, anyway. Only the person who recognizes an ideal he must satisfy, who takes on real responsibility, will find fulfillment. It is not in taking, not on the path of comfort, that we become right, but only in giving.


Pope Benedict XVI

Making the decision to have a child -- it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body.

Elizabeth Stone

You must keep your eyes on the risen Christ at all times, or life will seem to be just a bitter joke.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel

Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

Pearl S. Buck

“At a Christian table, everyone must be supplied with a weapon. “Any of you who do not have a sword must sell his cloak and buy one,” we are told on Holy Thursday. There is also the arrangement of the table, following rigid hierarchical rules, with a head and foot, and places between these. The head is reserved for the father, and within this hierarchy, those at table pass bowls of food following a formal ritual of “please pass” and “thank you.” The centerpiece is the cooked carcass of a dead animal. After grace, the father carves the meat – not to be served, but to serve – and each person is singled out and given individual recognition.”

From David Bereford’s, “Suppertime” in Gilbert Magazine

“Lay this body anywhere and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you. That you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.”

Saint Monica

That does not mean we shouldn't enjoy ourselves. But rather that the universe has put us here for higher purposes than watching television reruns."

Duane Elgin

“That’s the thing about dogs. There isn’t a human being in the world worthy of a dog’s welcome.”

From Richard Power’s, “The Echo Maker”

"Sometimes we must give up the life we planned in order to live the life we have."

Donna Shaw

'One single day of devotion is preferable to a thousand years of worldly life.'

St. Francis de Sales

'The best preparation for death is a perfect resignation to the will of God, after the example of Jesus Christ, who, in His prayer in Gethsemani prepared Himself with these words, "Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

St. Vincent de Paul

God be in my head, and in my understanding; God be in my eyes, and in my looking; God be in my mouth, and in my speaking; God be in my heart, and in my thinking; God be at my end, and at my departing.

From a Medieval Primer

'If of necessity I had to choose between sin and the torments of hell, I had rather plunge head long into hell, than give sin the mastery over me; I had rather enter hell pure from the stain of sin, than reign in heaven a prey to its pollutions.'

St. Ambrose of Milan

'Without prayer it is impossible to resist temptations and to keep the commandments.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

'The plans of men, beginning with mine, tend to be exclusive and close-minded: to reach a peace that sometimes is the peace of a cemetery. The plans of God, instead, ask us to risk and try an adventure. All of us, when we start on a new path, have human plans, natural ones, and even beautiful ones. But we are witnesses that, in carrying out our own plans, we fail. God is enlarging our horizons. However, what we are experiencing now is not a human plan, but rather, we are abandoning ourselves to the plans of God, we are entrusted to him who wants to save his children at any price. There are people who drink at a fountain of immense richness, that is true life, real and true peace, and have security for the future, but they are content to take the water using a tiny glass with which they can never quench their thirst ...'



Mother Elvira Petrozzi





'I was reading recently the story of the famous convert of the 19th century, Hermann Cohen, a brilliant musician, idolized as a the young prodigy of his time in the salons of central Europe: a kind of modern version of the young Francis.After his conversion he wrote to a friend: "I looked for happiness everywhere: in the elegant life of the salons, in the deafening noise of balls and parties, in accumulating money, in the excitement of gambling, in artistic glory, in friendship with famous people, in the pleasures of the senses. Now I have found happiness, I have an overflowing heart and I want to share it with you. ... You say, 'But I don't believe in Jesus Christ.' I say to you, 'Neither did I and that is why I was unhappy.''



Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa





'Art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see.'



Paul Klee





'The power of obedience! The lake of Gennesareth had denied its fishes to Peter's nets. A whole night in vain. Then, obedient, he lowered his net again to the water and they caught "a huge number of fish." Believe me: the miracle is repeated each day.'



St. Josemaria Escriva





'All our difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.'



Teresa of Avila



'Yesterday is gone; tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.'



Mother Teresa



'"Prayer" according to one ancient definition, "is keeping company with God." And that really throws us right in at the deep end. Prayer is not another part for us to act, another subject to study for examination: it is a relationship, and a relationship with God. And even in this age of computerized dating, man can only learn to keep company with someone by keeping company with them and accepting the consequences. Any relationship except the most superficial affects and changes us; it challenges us to respect the freedom, the mystery, the otherness of the other, and, perhaps even more disturbing, it will sooner or later bring to light our own freedom, the mystery of ourselves, the unknownness and unpredictability of ourselves. How we respond to such a challenge, to such a bringing to light, will in very large measure decide whether we grow and mature in life, or whether we shrivel up. And it surely is a fact that, while some people are genuinely afraid of the dark, all of us are rather afraid of the light. As the archbishop says in T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."Yet God is truth and his light is infinite. To keep company with him allows finally of no hankering after that safe world of blurred edges and comfortable anonymity. We who have been baptized into the death of Jesus have been taken out of darkness and brought into the light; we have been named. It does not matter very much if, for the moment, our eyes are dazzled, our brains reeling and bewildered, and our hearts thumping with terror. The question is: will we turn and bolt? Or will we give it a try, and make the attempt to be children of the light? If we choose to give it a try, then we have already embarked on the adventure of keeping company with God, the adventure of true prayer.'

Fr. Simon Tugwell, O.P.

'When God inspires someone to pray, the desire to pray is itself due to God. But in prayer itself God works more extensively and more profoundly. What led him to pray was something external, a shell; now comes the inner content, the reality, which is the transformation of the one praying into the person God desires. Initially God takes him just as he is: with his ignorance, hesitations and doubts, his more or less good will, with what he offers and with what he withholds. Then gradually, in a timescale which man cannot calculate, God begins to fill and complete him. The man tries to separate himself from whatever prevents him coming to God, and God takes over every empty space thus made available, filling it with his grace and will. The more a man is to be filled by God, the more he needs to have emptied himself and to have died to all that is not of God, so that the life of God can pour forth and take the place of his dying. God's fullness can express itself in such a way that the person never again lapses from the attitude of prayer. He remains constantly attentive to God, endeavoring to do his will, remaining within God's purposes, trying to perform in a spirit of surrender whatever God shows him and asks of him, in the virtue of the inspiration and strength which he gives him. When God takes things away he does not leave a wasteland behind. Right at the beginning of his prayer-life a man can see in detail how God replaces what he sacrifices to him with something better, something divine. He discovers that what it sterile in him is supplanted by God's fruitfulness, an experience that contains the germ of true humility: he sees that he can do nothing of himself and that God does everything.'

Adrienne von Speyr

'Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.'

James Thurber

Why Go To Daily Mass?
1. It's kind of like facebook with God, the angels, and the saints
2. Breaking in the day to pray tames the craziness better than your Blackberry
3. The local Caf still serves lunch at 12:37pm. No lines either
4. A miracle occurs every. single. time.
5. God wants to hear about your romantic woes more than your Twitter audience
6.Actually, God wants to teach you something about Romance. Think of it as going on a spiritual date
7. Under the (affectionately offered) "if you would just shut up, you could hear God's voice" advice: lots of precious, rare, ear-opening silence
8. It's not for the perfect--that's actually part of the point
9. Did the sun rise this morning? Did you have a good breakfast? Did you get to dress warmly and well? Did you think about giving thanks for all that?
10. Because Jesus is present to us in a particular way--the way he chose as the perfect way--in the sacrament of the altar. (Want to meet him?)
11. Life is mysterious. But being present at this Mystery will make the mystery of your life much more clear
12. Because this act “identifies us with his Heart, sustains our strength along the pilgrimage of this life, makes us long for eternal life, and unites us even now to the Church in heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints.” (CCC #1419)
(...even at your imperfect parish)

from The Ironic Catholic blog

'Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there.'

Clarence W. Hall

'When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.'

St. Jerome

'Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.'

Oscar Wilde

'There is all the knowledge we lost with information?'

T.S. Eliot

'Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.'

Mark Twain

St. Patrick's Breastplate "Faeth Fiada" (Lorica)

I arise today through
God's strength to pilot me,
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to see before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to secure me,
against snares of devils,
against temptations and vices,
against inclinations of nature,
against everyone who shall wish me
ill, afar and anear,
alone and in a crowd. . .

Christ be with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit,
Christ where I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Christ.
May your salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

Prayer for Light and Help by St. Claude la Colombiere

Jesus,I feel within me a great desire to please you but, at the same time, I feel totally incapable of doing this without your special light andhelp, which I can expect only from you. Accomplish your will in me -even in spite of me.


Recite the Salve Regina and Meditate on Death Every Day

"Father, I'd like to straighten out my life. But the temptations are too strong, much stronger than my own self." Saint Philip Neri looked at this young man of good will and softly encouraged him: "Be brave, my child. I recommend to you only two practices: recite the Salve Regina and meditate on death every day. Imagine that your body is buried deep in the ground, half decomposed, both eyes hollowed out, and eaten up by worms. Then ask yourself this question: Is this the reason why I'm chasing after the pleasures of the flesh and wasting my chance to go to Heaven?" Obeying the priest's double-barreled advice, the young man prayed to the Blessed Virgin of mercy, hope and life, and meditated on death each and every day. With the help of God's grace, he succeeded in fighting off his temptations till the very end.

From: 365 Days of Hope with Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan (Ed. du Jubilé)