Joy does not nullify suffering. On the contrary it transforms suffering. Joy shines bright, takes the power away from evil, and laughs in the face of deception and turmoil. "You will not take me!" joy says, shaking its fist. Because joy comes from outside oneself. It does not come from ourselves but from an act of surrender. Joy comes from surrendering oneself to God.Shemaiah Gonzalez, Undaunted Joy
This was my second favorite book of last year. This quote shows you why. Truth in joyfulness.
Help is humiliating when it appeals to men from below, taking heed only of their material wants. It humiliates when there is no reciprocity. When you give the poor man nothing but bread or clothes, there is no likelihood of his ever giving you in return.
But help honors when it appeals to him from above. It respects him when it deals with his soul, with his religious, moral and political education, and with all that emancipates him from his passions. Help honors when, to the bread that nourishes, it adds the visit that consoles, advice that enlightens, the friendly handshake that lifts up flagging courage. It esteems the poor man when it treats him with respect, not only as an equal but a superior, since he is capable of suffering what we perhaps are incapable of suffering. After all, he is the messenger of God to us, sent to prove our justice and our charity and to save us by our works.
Help then becomes honorable, because it may become mutual. Every man who gives a kind word, good advice, a consolation today, may tomorrow need a kind word, advice or consolation The hand that you clasp, clasps yours in return That indigent family whom you love, loves you in return and will have largely acquitted themselves toward you when they shall have prayed for you.Frederic Ozanam, 1848, "De l'Aumône" (On Almsgiving)published in the newspaper L’Ère Nouvelle.Quoted in Voices of the Saints by Bert Ghezzi
This is the heart of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. It can't be better expressed how we are benefitted by our neighbors while they are being helped by us. Truly, this is something of the Lord. It is also the heart of our founder, Frederic Ozanam. The more I read about him, the more I admire him.
Why was John the Baptist eventually killed?
It wasn't because he preached about God.
It wasn't because he said a Messiah was coming.
It was because he told people to reform their lives.
It was because he told Herod he shouldn't have married his half-brother's wife.
John was preaching a touch message of personal and moral reform.
No one will kill me or get angry with me because I say, "I believe in God." But if I start talking about how the teachings of Jesus should change the world, or how the teachings of Jesus should change the way we live—for this people could get mad at me.Little Blue Book, Advent 2025
If you know that whatever you're worried about would be resolved tomorrow, would you still let it spoil today? If not, then why let it spoil right now?Father Mike Schmitz
This is the thought that makes it possible for me to go back to sleep in the middle of the night when I wake up with something on my mind. I'll let Jesus handle it. And face it tomorrow morning. (To be fair, it calms me in the middle of the day also.)
Bitterness is believing that God got it wrong. Worry is believing that God got it right.Timothy Keller
I don't struggle with bitterness but I am a bit of a worrier. This is solid gold for helping me relax and trust.
It takes readers as well as writers to make literature.Flannery O'Connor, Catholic Novelists and Their Readers
Simple but profound.
In order to allow dexterity and slimness for actions such as piano playng, the finger contains no muscles; tendons transfer force from muscles in the forearm and palm. In all, seventy separate muscles contribute to hand movements.Dr. Paul Brand, Fearfully and Wonderfully ...
This blew my mind. Which is pretty much what the whole book did anyway.
You first loved us so that we might love you — not because youneeded our love, but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving you.William of Saint-Thiery, On the Contemplation of God
I've seen this expressed before but never so well.
When my father had been extravagant, he used to say gaily in self-defense that "one owed something to one's ancestors." Certainly,if it had not been for several of his ancestors, he would not have owed so much to his contemporaries.C.N. and A.M. Williamson, The Motor Maid
This light, fun book was one of my top reads of 2025. This bit gives you a sense of the humor throughout.
Mary, you are the vessel and tabernacle containing all Mysteries.
You know what the Patriarchs did not know;
you experienced what was not revealed to the Angels;
you heard what the Prophets did not hear.
In short, everything that was hidden from preceding generations was made known to you;
even more,
most of these wonders depended on you.St. Gregory the Great, Marian prayer
This is simply a lovely reflection and also something that hadn't occurred to me before.
It must once again be stressed that no human being is closed in upon himself or herself and that no one can live of or for himself or herself alone. ... Human beings are relational and they possess their lives — themselves — only by way of relationship. ... Sin is loss of relationship, disturbance of relationship, and therefore it is not restricted to the individual. When I destroy a relationship, then this event — sin — touches the other person involved in the relationship. Consequently sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it.
Cardinal Ratzinger, In the Beginning ...
That point about us possing our lives only by way of relationship is revelatory. How do we see ourselves in relation to others? How do they touch our lives and what does that mean to our journey through the day, the month, the year, to the end of our days?
People today know of no standard; to be sure, they do not want to know of any because they see standards as a threat to their freedom. ...
Thus sin has become a suppressed subejct, but everywhere we can see that although it is suppressed, it has nonetheless remained real. What is remarkable to me is the aggressiveness, always on the verge of pouncing, which we experience openly in our society — the lurking readiness to demean the other person, th hold others guilty whenever misfortune occurs to them, to accuse society, and to want to change the world by violence.Cardinal Ratzinger, In the Beginning ...
This was a superb, thought provoking book and it should have been on my Best of 2025 list. However, you can enjoy this bit in the fullness of the times in which we live. It was written in 1995 and, sadly, seems even more applicable now than then.
I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
Charles Dickens
I'm a theological novice, but I simply assume that the Christian prism tends to inform Christians, whatever they are reading.Amen, amen. It's why I recently found support for my faith in a couple of parts of a space opera I was reading. I don't think that Sharon Lee and Steve Miller put those bits into Carpe Diem and Plan B in order to inspire but it worked out that way anyhow. Because the prism focused on those bits.William F. Buckley, 1977 interviewBooks and Culture
The best sitting room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark-paneled room with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which you could have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all. At the upper end of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and evergreens, were the two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all Muggleton. In all sorts of recesses, and on all kinds of brackets, stood massive old silver candlesticks with four branches each. The carpet was up, the candles burnt bright, the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, and merry voices and light-hearted laughter range through the room.
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.
The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.
The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.
Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven’s towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven’s King.
Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.
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| The Nativity, 1858, Arthur Hughes |
This poem was published in the 1936 Annual of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, Tolkien’s “Noel” was unknown and unrecorded until scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull discovered it while searching for another poem in June 2013.
It is, indeed, the season of regenerated feeling--the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving, Old Christmas
It comes every year and will go on forever. And along with Christmas belong the keepsakes and the customs. Those humble, everyday things a mother clings to, and ponders, like Mary in the secret spaces of her heart.
Marjorie Holmes
Do not be shy of the contest, if you truly love the prize. Let knowledge of the reward set the mind on fire to accomplish the work. What we desire, and wish for, and seek, will be hereafter; but what we were ordered to do, for the sake of that which will be hereafter, must be now.I need to be reminded of this, of the big picture instead of getting bogged down by the worries of the moment. God's bigger picture does set my heart on fire. I need to let those flames drive me toward him and his work.St. Augustine
