Christianity is more about our undoing than our pulling it together. It’s the unraveling of our grandiose plans. The collapsing of our defenses. The slow release of the reins in our tightly clenched fists. The seed falling to the ground to die. The failure to build a mighty tower reaching to heaven. For every few steps we progress, God reveals how many miles we have yet to go. So let us persevere in offering a sacrifice of surrender, for the salvation of our own souls and for those around us.

– Anonymous

What does poverty of spirit mean? It is my awareness that I cannot save myself, that I am basically defenseless, that neither money nor power will spare me from suffering and death’¦.Poverty of spirit is my awareness that I need God’s help and mercy more than I need anything else. Poverty of spirit is getting free of the rule of fear, fear being the great force that restrains us from acts of love. Being poor in spirit means letting go of the myth that the more I possess, the happier I’ll be. It is an outlook summed up in a French proverb: “When you die you carry in your clutched hand only what you gave away.” Poverty of spirit is letting go of self and of all that keeps you locked in yourself.
-Jim Forest

Thank you Jesus, for bringing me this far. In your light, I see the light of my life. Your teaching is brief and to the point. You persuade us to trust in our Heavenly Father. You command us to love one another. What is easier than to believe in God? What is sweeter than to love him? Your yoke is pleasant, your burden is light. You promise everything to those who obey your teaching. You ask nothing that is too hard for a believer, nothing a lover can refuse. Your promises to your disciples are true; nothing but the truth. Thank you Jesus, now and always. Amen

– St. Nicholas of Cusa

Into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’ – could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God to make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this: God made us, invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. 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 first degree of humility tells us that the world is not a mirror in which we see ourselves, nor is it a treasure chest filled with gifts for ourselves. Rather, the world is a temporary home where there unfolds hour by hour the truth that God loves us and that we are to live constantly with the awareness that he lives with us and sees us always.

– Father Simon O’Donnell, O.S.B.

If we knew how to listen to God, we would hear him speaking to us. For God does speak. He speaks in his Gospels. He also speaks through life – that new gospel to which we ourselves add a page each day. But we are rarely open to God’s message, because our faith is too weak and our life too earthbound . . . To have faith is not only to raise one’s eyes to God to contemplate him; it is also to look at this world, with Christ’s eyes. If we had allowed Christ to penetrate our whole being, if we had purified ourselves, the world would no longer be an obstacle. It would be a perpetual incentive to work for the Father in order that, in Christ, his kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven. We must pray to have sufficient faith to know how to look at life . . . Grant that I may be big enough to reach the world, strong enough to carry it, pure enough to embrace it without wanting to keep it. Grant that I may be a meeting-place, but a temporary one, a road that does not end in itself, because everything to be gathered there, everything human, leads toward You.

– Father Michel Quoist

Little by little we are able to hear the still, small voice in the hurricane, the earthquake, or the fire. God is hidden in difficulties. If we can find him there, we will never lose him. Without difficulties, we do not know the power of God’s mercy and the incredible destiny he has for each of us. We must be patient with our failures. There’s always another opportunity unless we go ashore and stay there. A no-risk situation is the biggest danger there is. To encounter the winds and the waves is not a sign of defeat. It is a training in the art of living, which is the art of yielding to God’s action and believing in his love no matter what happens.

-Father Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O.

If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God’s coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the discipline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn’t, and our hearts lose their spiritual sensitivity. . .When Paul asks us to wake from sleep, he says, Let us live decently as in the light of day. . .Let your armor be the Lord Jesus Christ and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled(Roman 13:13-14). When we have the Lord to look forward to, we can already experience him in the waiting.
– Henri Nouwen

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Pray, Hope, and Don;t Worry: True Stories of Padre Pio Book 1

You loved us, O Lord, and gave up your only begotten Son for our redemption . . . In this way you have humbled yourself, Christ my God, so that you might carry me, your stray sheep, on your shoulders. You let me graze in green pastures, refreshing me . . . Lord, lighten the heavy burden of the sins through which I have seriously transgressed. Purify my mind and heart. Like a shining lamp, lead me along the straight path. When I open my mouth, tell me what I should say. By the fiery tongue of your Spirit, make my own tongue ready. Stay with me always and keep me in your sight. Lead me to pastures, Lord, and graze there with me. Do not let my heart lean either to the right or to the left, but let your good Spirit guide me along the straight path. Whatever I do, let it be in accordance with your will, now until the end.

– St. John Damascene

Let us make mercy our patroness now, and she will free us in the world to come. Yes, there is mercy in heaven but the road to it is paved by our merciful acts on earth. There is therefore, an earthly as well as a heavenly mercy. Human mercy has compassion on the miseries of the poor. Divine mercy grants forgiveness of sins. Whatever human mercy bestows here on earth, divine mercy will return to us in our Homeland . . . Yes, God who sees fit to give his mercy in heaven, wishes it to be a reality here on earth. What do you wish for, what do you pray for, my dear brothers and sisters, when you come to church? Is it mercy? How can it be anything else?

– St. Caesarius of Arles