Quest

 

"The quest of invulnerability, the search for a comfortable life beyond interference, the refusal to be put out by anything or anybody:  these will not bring comfort but misery, because their end is isolation and death of  soul.  You will be undisturbed if this is your object, oh, yes;  and unless you are so dead as to have no feeling left to you, you will cry out for someone..."

--Father Gerald Vann in The High Green Hill

Birdsong

"The soul cannot live without love.  All depends upon providing it with a worthy object."

Saint Francis de Sales

Flowers

"Flowers are words which even a babe may understand."

--Bishop Coxe

Infinity

 "We have our being in God as birds have theirs in the air, and fishes in the sea; and if only we make the effort to realize it, if only we try to accept this God-given destiny, then our horizons stretch to infinity."

--Reverend Gerald Vann, O.P., in Awake In Heaven

The source of love

 "When the heart is pure it cannot help loving, because it has discovered the source of love which is God."

--Saint John Vianney

Reverence

“Kill reverence, and you have killed the hero in a man”

--Edward Rand

Attempting the deep

"Those few of you who from your youth have raised your eager mouths in search of angels' bread...always hungering, you may, indeed, allow your boat to sail the high seas..."

--Dante in Paradiso

Perseverance

"It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last."

--from Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby

To behold the sun

 "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun..."

--The Book of Ecclesiastes

Holy Eucharist

 

The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on."

--Josiah Gilbert Holland

Good Shepherd Sunday

"No man can follow Christ and go astray."

--William H.P. Faunce

Nobly done

 "Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost."

--Charles Dickens

Poppies

 "Through the dancing poppies stole 
A breeze most softly lulling to my soul."

--from John Keats' Poppies

Faithful

"It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds."

--Saint Augustine

Real love

"In real love we can hardly distinguish giving from getting: each is indistinguishably both. The lover's giving is his getting: that his gift should be lovingly accepted is itself a gift to him, and the gift he values most."

--Reverend Gerald Vann, O.P. in The Heart of Man

Perfection

  

 "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Proverb

  “A proverb is no proverb to you until life has illustrated it.”

 

--John Keats

Christ the Lord is risen

"Now let the heavens be joyful,
Let earth her song begin:
Let the round world keep triumph,
And all that is therein;
Invisible and visible,
Their notes let all things blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen,
Our joy that hath no end."

--John of Damascus

Baptized in Christ

 "All you who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ, alleluia."

--from the Mass of Easter Saturday

Easter Friday

"Without love, everything is painful, everything is tiring, everything is burdensome.  The Cross, taken up hesitantly, is crushing;  taken smilingly, by free will, and with love, it will carry you much more than you carry it.  Love makes time eternal by giving a divine value to everything."

--Father Jean C. J. d'Elbee in I Believe in Love

His marvelous light

"Ye people whom God hath purchased, declare the virtues, alleluia, of Him Who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, alleluia."

--from the Mass of Easter Thursday

Easter Wednesday

Awake, thou wintry earth -

Fling off thy sadness!

Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth

Your ancient gladness!

Christ is risen!

--Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Love

 
"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself."

--Jean Anouilh

Easter Sunday

 

 "Brethren, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God: mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.  For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory."

--Epistle for the Mass of Easter Night

May Almighty God grant you and your loved ones, dear readers, a holy and happy Easter;  and may Our Blessed Mother protect you always.  

Holy Saturday

Good Friday

"Popule meus, quid feci tibi, aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi. Ego ante te aperui mare: et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum."

"O My people, what have I done to thee? Or wherein have I offended thee? Answer Me. I opened the sea before thee, and thou hast opened My side with a lance."

--from the Improperia (Reproaches) of Good Friday

Holy Thursday

"The vacuum which humiliation makes in us when we receive it rightly is an emptiness which attracts Him irresistibly.  He bends over the soul who loves its littleness and nothingness;  He bends over it with an unspeakable love."

--Father Jean C.J. d'Elbee in I Believe in Love