We should be displeased at what displeases God

We should be displeased with ourselves when we commit sin, for sin is displeasing to God. Sinful though we are, let us at least be like God in this, that we are displeased at what displeases him. In such measure then you will be in harmony with God's will, because you find displeasing in yourself what is abhorrent to your Creator.

St. Augustine, Sermon

I do not have to win the world ...

I do not have to win the world, even for Christ: I have to save my soul. that is what I must always remember, against the temptation of success in the apostolate. And so I will guard myself against impure means. It is not our mission to make truth triumph, but to testify for it.

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith

When people forget to worship God

When people forget to worship God they begin to worship human beings, and from there it is but a short distance to tyranny.

Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption

Do not free a camel

Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

G.K. Chesterton

Anyone who has truly known God

Anyone who has truly known God can never be cured of him.

Francois Mauriac

James Bond and Texans

[James] Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and most of them seemed to come from Texas.

Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities ...

The vessel was just comfortable for two people; there was room only for necessities, and Flambeau had stocked it with such things as his special philosophy considered necessary. They reduced themselves, apparently, to four essentials: tins of salmon, if he should want to eat; loaded revolvers, if he should want to fight; a bottle of brandy, presumably in case he should faint; and a priest, presumably in case he should die.

G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown,
The Sins of Prince Saradine

Creation and the Creator

If creation is beautiful, how much more beautiful must its Creator be?

St. Augustine

The tea-party, an extraordinary meal

Another novelty is the tea-party, an extraordinary meal in that, being offered to persons that have already dined well, it supposes neither appetite nor thirst, and has no object but distraction, no basis but delicate enjoyment.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

Genesis is truth as story

Genesis is Judaism's foundational work, a philosophy of the human condition under the sovereignty of God.

This is a difficult point to understand, because there is no other book quite like it. It is not myth. It is not history in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events. Nor is it theology. Genesis is less about God than about human beings and their relationship with god. the theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a deliberately non-philosophical way. ... To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system. Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode ...

Judaism is about the democratization of holiness, the creation of a whole society in which everyone will have access to religious knowledge. Hence the importance of stories which everyone can understand.

Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis

Why was man created last?

As the rabbis put it: "Why was man created last? In order to say, if he is worthy, all creation was made for you; but if he is unworthy, he is told, even a gnat preceded you."

Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis

The glue that holds a person together

The glue that holds a person together is either vanity or values.

Stephen Tobolowsky, The Tobolowsky Files,
The Wager with Freddie

Celebrating the Paschal Mystery in the Liturgy

From that time onward [of the apostles] the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery, by reading what was written about him in every part of Scripture, by celebrating the Eucharist in which the victory and triumph of his death are shown forth, and also by giving thanks to God for the inexpressible gift he has given in Christ Jesus, to the praise of God's glory.

Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Second Vatican Council

I always think of the first and second readings as being there to open up and eludicate what comes in the Gospel reading. I somehow never thought of it in the words used above — that these readings are seen as being specifically about Jesus. 

On the one hand, well duh! On the other, well I never! I love how there is always more to learn that opens our eyes and hearts. And how deeply the Church gives us opportunities on every level to encounter Christ.

My little children in Christ, my joy and my crown

I speak to you who have just been reborn in baptism, my little children in Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church, gift of the Father, proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who stand fast in the Lord are a holy seed, a new colony of bees, te very flower of our ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. ...

St. Augustine, Sermo 8

I love how tenderly this is expressed.

I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

"It's the same thing," he said.”

A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Do away with counting the cost

When we perform an act of kindness we should rejoice and not be sad about it. If you undo the shackles and the thongs, says Isaiah, that is, if you do away with miserliness and counting the cost, with hesitation and grumbling, what will be the result? Something great and wonderful! What a marvelous reward there will be: Your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will rise up quickly. Who would not aspire to light and healing?

Gregory of Nazianzen, sermon

Easter Friday: Here are the beginnings of creatures newly formed

Here, then, is the grace conferred by these heavenly mysteries, the gift which Easter brings, the most longed for feast of the year; here are the beginnings of creatures newly formed: children born from the life giving font of holy Church, born anew with the simplicity of little ones, and crying out with the evidence of a clean conscience. Chaste fathers and inviolate mothers accompany this new family, countless in number, born to new life through faith. As they emerge from the grace giving womb of the font, a blaze of candles burns brightly beneath the tree of faith. The Easter festival brings the grace of holiness from heaven to men. Through the repeated celebration of the sacred mysteries they receive the spiritual nourishment of the sacraments. ...

Easter homily by an ancient author,
via the Liturgy of the Hours

I loved this because it took me back to when I, too, was newly formed and coming into my new life in the Church.

The most perfect of prayers

The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect of prayers ... In it we ask, not only for the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

The Lord's Prayer Contains It All

Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture] and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained in the Lord's Prayer.

St. Augustine

The summary of the gospel

[The Lord's prayer] is truly the summary of the whole gospel.

Tertullian, De orat