Jesus lives in us and suffers in us and through us. He accompanies us through our companionship with one another and reaches out to others through our witness. Jesus knows who I am and who he wills me to be. He knows the secret of why I was created. He knows my sins. He knows how to heal me of them, how to draw me to himself, how to make me the adopted son that I am meant to be in him for all eternity. And so my joys and sufferings are his infinitely wise, uniquely crafted, and tender love through which he shapes my life and leads me to my destiny. . .At the heart of life, of every moment of life, is companionship with the merciful God.

– John Janaro

In all trouble, you should seek God. . .God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this incident or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage, we find God.

-Saint Augustine

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fulfillment that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life. . .It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

– Saint John Paul II

We must be sure that our heart bears no malice and is full of good will to people. All of this demands humility and an intense personal love of our Lord. That is the secret for all of your problems. Instead of tackling our failures directly, the best way is to tackle them indirectly by going to our Lord – reading about him, thinking about him, and talking to him and to his mother. Ask our Lady to give you the grace of close familiar friendship with our Lord. It is good to reflect on why God has called you to monastic life. God brought you to the monastery to love him. You show that love by loving your brethren with a supernatural love based on love for his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

– Father Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.O.

I recommend that you give an hour each day to personal prayer – to being with Him whom we know loves us. It is in this kind of prayer that the Holy Spirit can impart interior peace, which enables us to endure in the face of overwhelming and unsolvable problems . . . And so, in a difficult time we should not forget that the great works of God have been accomplished in darkness. The people fled Egypt in the darkness; they crossed the Red Sea in the darkness; the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the darkness of night; he gave us the Eucharist and the priesthood in the darkness of the Last Supper; he died on the Cross when the Gospel says, darkness covered the earth. He lay in the darkness of the tomb. On the third day, he rose again in the darkness, and the empty tomb was discovered ‘early in the morning while it was still dark.’ God is at work even in the darkness.

– Archbishop John Quinn

May your love draw down upon you the mercy of the Lord, and may he let you see that within your soul a saint is sleeping. I shall ask him to make you so open and supple that you will be able to understand and do what he wants you to do. Your life is nothing; it is not even your own. Each time you say ‘I’d like to do this or that,’ you wound Christ, robbing him of what is his. You have to put to death everything within you except the desire to love God. This is not at all hard to do. It is enough to have confidence and to thank the little Jesus for all the potentialities he has placed within you. You are called to holiness, like me, like everyone. Don’t forget.

– Jacques Fesch

The important thing is not to do a lot or to do everything. The important thing is to be ready for anything at all times and to be convinced that when serving the poor, we are really serving God. . .We all have the duty to serve God where we are called to do so. I feel called to serve individuals, to love each human being. My calling is not to judge t he institutions. I am not qualified to condemn anyone. I never think in terms of a crowd, but of individual persons. If I thought in terms of crowds, I would never begin my work. I believe in the personal touch of one on one. If others are convinced that God wants them to change social structures, that is a matter for them to take up with God.
– St. Teresa of Calcutta

For three days I have been meditating on the story of the prodigal son. It is a story about returning. I realize the importance of returning over and over again. My life drifts away from God. I have to return. My heart moves away from my first love. I have to return. My mind wanders to strange images. I have to return. Returning is a lifelong struggle. . .Even if we return because we could not make it on our own, God will receive us. God’s love does not require any explanations about why we are returning. God is glad to see us home and wants to give us all we desire, just for being home. . .So why delay? God is standing there with open arms, waiting to embrace me. He won’t ask any questions about my past. Just having me back is all he desires.

– Henri J.M. Nouwen

St. Paul teaches that this life of ours is like traveling abroad from our home country. He says, As long as we are in the body, we are traveling away from the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6). Since we are still traveling in a foreign land, we ought to keep in mind what our home country is – that country to which we must hasten by turning our backs on the attractions and delights of this life. This homeland toward which we travel is the only place where we can find true rest because God does not wish us to find rest anywhere else. The reason is simple: if God gave us perfect rest while we were still abroad, we would find no pleasure in returning home.

– St Augustine

We read in Sacred Scripture that our Lord, Jesus Christ, sent on earth for the salvation of the human race, did not begin by teaching; he began by doing. And what he did was to integrate fully into his life every type of virtue. . . Now our little Congregation of the Mission wants, with God’s grace to imitate Christ, the Lord, insofar as that is possible. . . How to do this is learned mainly from what is taught in the Gospels. Christ’s poverty, his chastity and obedience, his love for the sick; his decorum; the sort of lifestyle and behavior which he inspired in his disciples; his way of getting along with people; his daily spiritual exercises; preaching missions and other ministries which he undertook on behalf of the people. . .Christ’s teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will. Christ himself said that this sort of wisdom was like a house with nothing but sand as its foundation, while his own was like a building with solid rock as its foundation. And that is why we should try to always follow the teaching of Christ himself and never that of the worldly.

– St. Vincent de Paul