True spirituality

If we wish to live a fully Christian life we should not think in terms of mastery or independence, or rigid self-control... A Christian spirituality is one which is asking for support and a willingness to be hurt, to feel rejected and even betrayed. Vulnerability lies at the heart of any authentic spirituality.

(Daniel Dorr, Time for a Change)

Patronage

Patronage enslaves and insults.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas

Gratefulness

"For happiness is not what makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy." 

David Steindl-Rast

God and man

The glory of God is man fully alive. The life of man is the vision of God. 

St. Irenaeus

A perfect day

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

John Wooden

Filling the void

When we ignore the Creator and follow our own selfish desires, we end up hurting ourselves. God can live without us, but we can't live without God.

 Bob Rice, "A 40-Day Spiritual Workout for Catholics"

Making peace

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

Thomas Merton

Thy will be done

"Thy will be done." What a comfort those four little words are to my soul. I have repeated them until they are softened to the sweetest harmony. We are in darkness, and must be thankful that our knowledge is not needed to perfect thy work.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Criteria

In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.

Pope John XXIII

Sing

To sing a song is to possess one's soul.

Fulton Sheen

Problems

The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally unsolvable. They can never be solved, they are only outgrown.

Carl Jung

Mercy

First, there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God 

Julian of Norwich

Truth

"What is truth?"
The truth is a transcendent virtue which enters into all well-ordered human affairs and, according to the diversity of these, assumes different names. In the schools it s called science, in speech veracity, in conduct frankness, in conversation sincerity, in actions righteousness, in business dealings honesty, in giving advice freedom from prejudice, in the keeping of promises loyalty, and in the courts of law it has the noble title of justice.

From the English translation of Blessed Pope John XXIII's "The journal of a soul", quoting the text of Fr. Segneri

Pain

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"

Trust God

Hold out to God everything that is calculating and impure! Trust that in you, too, lives pure love, that you really do want to love other people just as they are, that in you there is a deep longing to love God with all your heart. Even if you do not often feel love for God, even if pure love seems a very distant reality, there is within you at least an intuitive grasp of, and a genuine longing for, this love - a love which makes your life truly worth living. Trust your longing! Trust your love!

Anselm Grun, "Taste the Joy of Easter"

Mission

God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

Blessed John Henry Newman

Goodness

God's will

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.

Elisabeth Elliott

You and God

Related-ness

This new feminine spiritual consciousness will help us recognize that humans, having special abilities, are responsible to the rest of the earth, not superior to it. We will realize that everything here has a purpose all its own, that its value lies in its own "beingness," not in its usefulness or how well it benefits humankind. This means something dramatically new - that the rest of creation is here to be related to, not dominated.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Be happy for no reason

Achieving sainthood

The best way to become a saint is to live life to the fullest- to have an Eternally fulfilling and wildly rewarding life here on earth, doing the things you are most passionate about and doing them in a way that brings satisfaction and true joy to you and those around you, while also bringing glory to God.

From "Answer your call"

Those who love never burn bridges

God is patient with us because he loves us, and those who love are able to understand, to hope, to inspire confidence; they do not give up, they do not burn bridges, they are able to forgive. Let us remember this in our lives as Christians: God always waits for us, even when we have left him behind! He is never far from us, and if we return to him, he is ready to embrace us.

Pope Francis

Journey

Our earlier lives aren't wrong, they are just preconstruction, that's all. Our lives are meant to unfold, to evolve, and that's good. The only wrong thing, perhaps, is permanently hesitating on the verge of courage, which would prevent this process from taking place. It's a process that doesn't really end. That's why after eight years on the journey, I cannot write an ending and the story I told Sandy in the car keeps forming. I am still waking up, still crossing thresholds, still healing, still grounding, and always scraping up the bravery to plant my heart in the world. Nothing happens neatly on journeys such as this. There is no one-two-three program. There are no guarantees, and no two journeys unfold the same way.

Sue Monk Kidd, "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter"

Christian

To be truly Christian means to see Christ everywhere, to know Him as all in all.

Madeleine L'Engle, "Walking on Water"

God is mercy

God never ever tires of forgiving us! ... the problem is that we ourselves tire, we do not want to ask, we grow weary of asking for forgiveness. He never tires of forgiving, but at times we get tired of asking for forgiveness. Let us never tire, let us never tire! He is the loving Father who always pardons, who has that heart of mercy for us all. And let us too learn to be merciful to everyone.

Pope Francis

Night into day

It was dusk on the bank of a river that curved from the sea to the mountain. There, perched in the deep bend of a branch of an oak tree, sat a rabbi, and at his feet were students from nations near and far. As the evening slowly reached up from the horizon and spread across the vast expanse of the sky, the rabbi and his students spoke of the great issues of the day. As they did each night, they spoke of issues of the heart, of humanity, and of hope.
The rabbi peered into the distance and turned to his students to ask, “Tell me – if you can – how we will know when the night is over and the day has begun?”
The students sat back for a minute and gazed at the horizon and witnessed as the deep blue of evening began to blend with the golden canvas of sunset. And they knew that the rabbi spoke neither of timetables nor of the earth’s rotation on its axis. No, the rabbi spoke of larger things.
After regarding the question for a while, one of the students raised his hand and said, “Rabbi, we will know that the night is over and the day has begun when we can see the difference between a goat and a lamb.”
The rabbi shook his head and said, “No, you have made a thoughtful effort, but that is not it either.”
The rabbi paused and said, “No, that is a good answer, but I don’t think that is it.”
Soon, another student offered her hand and said, “Rabbi, I think the night is over and the day has begun when we can see the difference between a fig tree and an olive tree.”
The students seemed confused and were discouraged. Quietly, they gazed upwards where scattered stars and a full moon replaced the sun and brightened the deep dark of the endless sky.
After a moment, a soft voice could be heard from the bank closest to the river. It came from one of the Rabbi’s most reluctant students. Shy and somewhat hesitant, she began . . .
“Rabbi, I think we will know that the night is over and the day has begun when we can see a rich man and a poor man and hear them say, ‘He is my brother.’”
The student continued, her voice growing stronger.
“When we see a black woman and a white woman and hear them say, ‘She is my sister.’ It will be then when we know that the night is over and the day has begun.”
The rabbi nodded his head, pleased with the wisdom of his student and said, “That is right.” 

Masechet Berachot of the Babylonian Talmud

Forgiveness

To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Church on the move

We need to come out of ourselves and head for the periphery. We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a Church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is true that going out onto the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the Church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out onto the streets and a sick withdrawn Church, I would definitely choose the first one.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, later on Pope Francis

The battle within

Guts

The only way I have ever understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity. I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that truth ignited.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Technology

For all women

Only help her to know - help make it so there is cause for her to know - that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.

Tillie Olsen, I Stand Here Ironing

Saved by hope

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Thank you

Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.

Benedict XVI

The joy of being a Christian

If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God who gave his Son for us!

Benedict XVI

Blessed friendship

Friendships are strengthened by our ability to put our friends' needs ahead of our own, and by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in letting others take care of us when we are down.

From "Finding my Voice"

Life's purpose

God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next ... I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons ...

Blessed John Henry Newman

The prayer of abandonment

Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you.
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, o Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you, with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve, and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Fr. Charles de Foucauld

Life's meaning

The meaning of life is to live life.

Jon Blais

Teacher

A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry Adams

Practicing meekness

One of the best exercises in meekness that we can undertake is when the object is within ourselves.
We must never fret about our own imperfections. It is reasonable, of course, to be displeased and sorry when we commit a fault, but we should not get bitter or gloomy or emotional about it. Many people overreact. They get angry about being angry, vexed about being vexed, disturbed at being disturbed. As a matter of fact, this just reinforces the act. More than that, these new imperfections tend to pride, a self-love which is disturbed at being imperfect.
Be sorry about your faults, but in a calm and firm way. A judge who bases his decisions on reason will serve justice better than if he judges with passion and emotion. So, we should correct ourselves by a calm, steady repentance rather than by some harsh treatment.

Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life