Jesus, friend of a lonely heart, you are my haven, you are my peace. You are my salvation. You are my serenity in moments of struggle and amidst an ocean of doubts. You are the bright ray that lights up the path of my life. You are everything to a lonely soul. You understand the soul even though it remains silent. You know our weaknesses, and like a good physician, you comfort and heal, sparing us sufferings. Amen

– St. Faustina Kowalska

To do things for God, to serve him – that willfollow naturally from our love. It is possible to serve Godby reminding ourselves that he is our Creator and we ought to do his will unquestioningly. Or we can serve him by reminding ourselves that he is our King and that anyhomage which we offer to him is only his right. But the best way of all is to serve him because he is our Friend, because we want to profess our love for him by our actions. That is what God made us for, his human creatures, to be his friends, his personal friends.

– Monsignor Ronald Knox

In heaven, everything will be spring as far as beauty is concerned, autumn as far as enjoyment is concerned, summer as far as love is concerned. There will be no winter; but here winter is necessary to exercise self-denial and a thousand other little but beautiful virtues which are exercised at times of sterility.

– St. Pio of Pietrelcina

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. . .Poverty of spirit is letting go of self and of all that keeps you locked in yourself.

-Jim Forest

Only in God is man capable of living fully. Without God he is permanently sick. His sickness affects both his happiness and his capacity for happiness. . .In order to be capable of leading a full life, man must stand in a certain relationship to God and obey certain rules. And the capacity for true happiness and joyful living is also dependent on certain conditions of human life, on a serious attitude toward God. When life does not unfold in communion with God, it becomes grey and sordid, calculating and joyless. How must we live in order to be, or to become capable of happiness? The question is one which ought to occupy us now more than ever before. Man should take his happiness as seriously as he takes himself. And he ought to believe God and his own heart when, even in distress and trouble, he has an intuitive feeling that he was created for happiness.

– Father Alfred Delp, S.J.

The Word of God is sacramental. That means it is sacred, and as a sacred word, it makes present what it indicates . . . When we say that God’s Word is sacred, we mean that God’s Word is full of God’s presence. The questions therefore are: How does God come to me as I listen to the Word? Where do I discern the healing hand of God touching me through the Word? How is my sadness, my grief and my mourning being transformed at this very moment? Do I sense the fire of God’s love purifying my heart and giving me new life? These questions lead me to the sacrament of the Word, the sacred place of God’s real presence . . . When Jesus joins us on the road and explains the scriptures to us, we must listen with our whole being, trusting that the Word that created us will also heal us. God wants to become present to us and thus radically transform our fearful hearts.

– Henri J.M. Nouwen

I am the vine and you are the branches . . . and everyone that beareth fruit, he will purge it that it may bring forth much fruit (John 15:1-2). This purging or pruning action of the Father is what disconcerts us. We see an orchard in full bloom, and what has a more delicate charm? And yet those flowers must disappear if the branches are to bring forth fruit. There are many flowers in our life that seem of great value to us. In God’s sight they are only flowers, and in his mercy, he removes them that we may yield him fruit . . . The whole trouble is that, literally, we do not know what is good for us; and what makes the trouble still worse is that we think we do. We have our own plans for our happiness and too often we merely regard God as somebody who will help us to accomplish them. The true state of affairs is just the opposite. God has his plans for our happiness, and he is waiting for us to help him to accomplish them. And let us be quite clear about it, we cannot improve on God’s plans. Once a man has realized that God wills his happiness andthat all that happens to him is ruled and regulated by God with infinite wisdom and power toward that end, and that all God asks of him is to cooperate with that loving will of his, then that man has found the beginning of peace.

– Father Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.O.

To be enlightened is to know that heaven is not ‘coming to me.’ Heaven is here. We have simply not been able to realize that yet because, like King Arthur and his search for the Holy Grail, we look in all the wrong places, worship all the wrong idols, get fixated on all the wrong notions of God. We are always on our way to somewhere else when this place, the place in which I stand, wherever it is, is the place of my procession into God, the site of my union with the Life that gives Life.

-Anonymous

I will try to find a new way to heaven, quite short and direct. We live in an age of inventions. We need no longer climb laboriously up flights of stairs; in well-to-do houses there are lifts. And I was determined to find a lift to carry me to Jesus, for I was far too small to climb the steep stairs of perfection. So I sought in Holy Scripture some idea of what this life I wanted would be, and I read these words, “Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me.” It is your arms, O Jesus, that are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up. I must stay little and become less and less.
– St. Therese of Lisieux

Padre Pio Devotions Newest Book:
They Walked with God Book 2: St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, St. John Bosco

One doesn’t need to be unhappy when life takes this or that joy away that one thought was indispensable. One doesn’t have to despair when this or that success fails to occur or when our plans are not realized. We become rich through giving, fulfilled through renunciation, joyous through sacrifice, loved through loving. When we become selfless, we become free.

– Karl Rahner