'O Lord, keep Thy hand this day over Philip, if Thou do not, Philip will betray Thee.'
St. Philip Neri's morning prayer

Why I love letters & writing them '. . .the one thing I cherish most: his letters. Even when they don’t give me as much of him as I long for, at least I know that at those moments he is writing only to me, and I am getting all his attention. When do we ever get all of someone’s attention anymore? A handwritten letter is a small but priceless gift: the envelope is sealed, the stamp applied, the letter dropped into the dark box. When it arrives, I curl up under my blanket with me tea to read it. It is this ritual that keeps us friends.'
Courtney Rogmans in “The Sun”

'It is a shame that we tell our children that they can grow up to be president of the United States when in reality only one or two of us in every generation could possibly succeed and we do not tell them that they can be saints as if it were the most difficult thing in the world when in reality it is open to everyone.'
Unknown priest homily

'To love God is something greater than to know Him.'
St. Thomas Aquinas

'Our greatest duty and our main responsibility is to help others. But please, if you can't help them, would you please not hurt them. '
Dalai Lama

'To reach the port of heaven,
we must sail sometimes with the wind
and sometimes against it,
but we must sail,
and not drift,
nor lie at anchor.'
Oliver Wendell Holmes

'Prayer doesn't need proof, it needs practice.'
Unknown

'I've been walking the streets of New York in a clerical collar every day for more than forty years. And every day the streets are full of thousands of strangers. "Good afternoon, Father," "How ya doin, Father," "Say a prayer for me, Father." This is routine. Routine also is being stopped and asked for advice on something or the other, and it's not unusual to hear a confession on a street corner. ...In any event, wearing the collar is a way of showing the flag for the Church. During the height of the publicity over the sex-abuse crisis a couple of years ago, some priests were saying that they were ashamed to wear the collar in public. Shame on them. As Paul tells Timothy, "We have been given the spirit not of timidity, but the spirit of power and love and self-control."During that troubled time, I regularly had strangers telling me to hang in there and not be discouraged. I remember one fellow on First Avenue and 19th Street who pulled over to the curb and shouted, "Don't let the bastards get you down, Father." (Actually, he had an unprintable adjective for the bastards.) Catholic piety is wonderful.'
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

A Prayer for the Dying.

May Christ Who was crucified for your sake free you from excruciating pain.
May Christ Who died for you free you from the death that never ends.
May Christ the Son of the living God,set you in the ever green loveliness of His Paradise, and may He, the true Shepherd recognize you as one of His own.
May you see your Redeemer face to face and standing in His presence forever, may you see with joyful eyes truth revealed in all its fullness. Amen.
Unknown.

'But loss is a part of God's plan for us here; without it, we would grow hard of heart and would not love those beautiful but mutable things we should love. With it, we can be moved to love, yet the loss teaches us that the final object of our love, the Selfsame, is not here. We learn to love, and we learn to give away what we love. We learn to die, and so learn to live.'
Anthony Esolen

'There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.' Louis L'Amour

'Any time spent before the Eucharistic presence,
be it long or short, is the best-spent time of our lives.'
St. Catherine of Genoa

'The Saints are the sinners who keep on trying.'
Unknown

'Trust the past to God's mercy, the present to God's love and the future to God's providence.'
St. Augustine

'Read some chapter of a devout book.....
It is very easy and most necessary,
for just as you speak to God when at prayer,
God speaks to you when you read.'
St. Vincent de Paul

'God sees me for what I will become.
God accepts me for who I am today.
God forgives for what I have been in the past.'
Victor M. Parachin

'If you put all the love of all the mothers
into one heart it still would not equal the love of the Heart of Mary
for her children.'
Saint Louis Marie de Montfort

'Work as if you were to live a hundred years, pray as if you were to die tomorrow.'
Benjamin Franklin

'If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.'
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

'Desire to see God, be fearful of losing Him, and find joy in everything
that can lead to Him. If you act in this way, you will always live in great
peace.'
St. Theresa of Avila

'If you ate only one meal a week would you survive? It is the same for your soul.
Nourish it with the Blessed Sacrament.'
Blessed Brother Andre Bessett

'Everything that the Son asks of the Father is granted.
Likewise, everything that the Mother asks of her Son is also granted.'
St. John Vianney

'I am probably not getting anythingout of the rosary
because I am not putting anything into it.'
Brother Juniper (A. Goukassian)

'We need to find God,
and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.
See how nature - trees, flowers, grass-
grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun,
how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.'
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

'She (Mother Mary) is an echo of God, speaking and repeating only God.
If you say "Mary" she says 'God'.'
Saint Louis Marie de Montfort

'Tell Jesus everything.
If you have some troubles,
if your heart is full of hope....
confide even those worries that
you date not say to anyone.
Tell Jesus everything.'
Blessed James Alberione

Little headaches, little heartaches
Little griefs of every day
Little trials and vexations.
How they throng upon our way.
Yet all life is formed of small things.
Little leaves make up the trees.
Many tiny drops of water blending
Make the mighty seas.
Asking him for grace sufficient
To sustain us through each loss
And to treasure each small suffering
As a splinter from His cross.
(parts taken from MARY'S CALL, p.56)

'Christ comes to visit me in the Holy EucharistI repay the visit by going to find Him in the poor.' Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

'I will remember how St. Peter,
at a blast of wind, began to sink because
of his lack of faith,
and I will do as he did:
Call upon Christ and pray to him for help.
And then I trust he will place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas
hold me up from drowning.'
St. Thomas More

'Cast yourself into the arms of God
and be very sure that if he wants anything of you,
he will fit you for the work and give you strength.'
St. Phillip Neri

'God, my God, because you are mine, I lack nothing.'
St. Gertrude the Great

'The Christ of Bethlehem is the Christ of Galilee, is the Christ of the Crucifixion,
is the Christ of the Resurrection, is the Christ of the Eucharist.'
John Cardinal O'Connor

'Do you know how we should read Holy Scripture? As when a person reads letters that have come from his native country, to see what news we have of heaven.'
St. Augustine

'We should live in such a way that in our last hours we will not regret having loved too little.'
Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare movement