Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle

For I think that God hath set forth us apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death: we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honorable, but we without honor.

Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode;  And we labor, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it.  We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now. I write not these things to confound you; but I admonish you as my dearest children.  For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.

 --Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 4:9-16

Saint Thomas, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Edmund, pray for us.

All the other things in the world

 No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world. --Aristotle 

The Tree of Life

 "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life,

the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow.
Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end."

--Mrs. O'Brien in The Tree of Life

Feast of Saint Lucy

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect.

--Mark Twain in Joan of Arc

Saint Lucy, pray for us! 
(Happy birthday, Kris!)

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, pray for us!

Gaudete Sunday

Never neglect any occasion God sends you of doing the good you can. Great charity, like every other great virtue, does not consist in doing extraordinary things, or waiting for extraordinary circumstances; it depends on doing with all our heart the good we have the chance of doing at every moment within our own homes and outside of them.

--Reverend Bernard O'Reilly in The Mirror of True Womanhood

Friendship

Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.

--Alexandre Dumas

True Charity

True charity consists in doing good to those who do us evil, and in thus winning them over.

--Saint Alphonsus Liguori

Messenger

 

Love was meant to be also a sign, a symbol, a messenger, a telltale of the Divine. Love is a messenger from God saying that every human affection and and every ecstasy of love are sparks from the great flame of love that is God.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Joy

Joy is not the same as pleasure or happiness. A wicked and evil man may have pleasure, while any ordinary mortal is capable of being happy. Pleasure generally comes from things, and always through the senses; happiness comes from humans through fellowship. Joy comes from loving God and neighbor. Pleasure is quick and violent, like a flash of lightning. Joy is steady and abiding, like a fixed star. Pleasure depends on external circumstances, such as money, food, travel, etc. Joy is independent of them, for it comes from a good conscience and love of God.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

The Light of Glory

Men seem to overlook the fact that difficulties which are real difficulties to us are no difficulties to God; and that what, in our present state, seems to be hard or even wholly impossible, will appear manifest, clear, and self-evident, so soon as faith gives place to actual vision, and our minds are flooded with the light of glory.

--Monsignor John S. Vaughan in Dangers of the Day 

Feast of Saint Catherine of Alexandria

 St. Catherine, pray for us that we may be bold in testifying to our love of Jesus no matter what the cost — whether it be loss of material wealth or loss of our lives.

Amen.

Feast of Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Mind the present

It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present. 

--George MacDonald

What God wills

Finally we should consider the events which are happening to us now and which will happen to us in the future, as coming from the hands of God. Everything we do should be directed to this one end: to do the will of God and to do it solely for the reason that God wills it... Let us will always and ever only what God wills; for so doing, He will press us to His heart.

--Saint Alphonsus de Liguori

Eternity

Eternity is without succession, a simultaneous possession of all joys. To those who live toward Eternity, it really is not something at the end; it is that which influences every moment of the now.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen 

Fear not

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.

--Saint John Henry Newman

To see the best

Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.

--J. M. Barrie

The miracle

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Love over all

God will not conquer evil by crushing it under-foot-any god of man's idea could do that-but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all.

--George MacDonald

Feast of All Saints

"Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him" (I Cor. 2:9)

Feast of Christ the King

[Insignia of the Vendeans, France, 1793-1796.]

Real love

Real love...wills the good of the one loved, but it knows that that good is to be found in loving obedience to the will of God.

--Rev. Gerald Vann

The blessings of heaven

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

--G.C.Lichtenberg

As the angels give

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

--George MacDonald

A single candle

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.

--Saint Francis of Assisi

A sudden joy

All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming - a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Love is never lost

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

                                                  --Washington Irving 

Remembrance and reflection

Remembrance and reflection how allied! What thin partition divides sense from thought!

--Alexander Pope 

The book of the blind

The rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world
has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more
satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow
of this world, and open on the substance of the next.  The power of the rosary is beyond description.

- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

Queen of the Holy Rosary, pray for us.

Fruitfulness

In order to be a fruitful apostle, begin by being a saint--a soul of love. The only fruitfulness is holiness.

--Rev. Jean C. J. D'Elbee

To trust

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.  

--Samuel Johnson

Goodness

Goodness is love in action, love with its hand to the plow, love with the burden on its back, love following his footsteps who went about continually doing good.

--James Hamilton

True eyes

Those true eyes,

Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise

The sweet soul shining through them.

--Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

 

The measure

We can never have too much hope in God. He gives in the measure we ask.

--Saint Therese of Lisieux

Good nature

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.

--Washington Irving

The ordinary way

There are no short cuts to Heaven, only the ordinary way of ordinary things.

--Rev. Vincent McNabb

Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary

"O sweet name, which gives the sinner strength and blessed hope. We pray thee, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, shine upon us in our distress on the sea of life, and lead us to safe harbor and the ineffable joys of eternity."

--Saint Anthony of Padua

Faithful friends

Words are easy, like the wind;

Faithful friends are hard to find.

--William Shakespeare

Whatever we are

Whatever we are, we are not what we ought to be.

--Saint Augustine

What does love look like?

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

--Saint Augustine 

Happiness and peace

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

                                      --C.S. Lewis 

The glory of friendship

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with friendship.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

These are the gifts

To be rich in admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others, to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence or unkindness - these are the gifts which money cannot buy.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

The habit of being happy

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.

                                                           --Robert Louis Stevenson 

Duty

Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.

                                       --Robert E. Lee 

Love is the emblem

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
--Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Forever

Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.
--Oscar Wilde

Be faithful

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

--Mother Teresa

He who prays

He who prays and labors lifts his heart to God with his hands.
--Saint Bernard of Clairvaux