Jesus, our Savior, true God and true Man, must be the ultimate end of all our devotions. He’s the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of everything. In him alone dwells the entire fullness of the Divinity and the complete fullness of grace, virtue, and perfection. In him alone we’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing. He’s the only Teacher from whom we must learn, the only Lord on whom we should depend, the only One to whom we should be united, and the only Model we should imitate. He’s the only Physician who can heal us; the only Shepherd who can feed us; the only Way that can lead us; the only Truth that we can believe; the only Life that can animate us. He alone is everything to us, and he alone can satisfy all our desires.

– St. Louis de Montfort

The holy exercise of prayer must be considered one of the chief foundations of Christian life and holiness, since the whole life of Jesus Christ was nothing but a perpetual prayer; which you must continue and express in your life. Neither the earth on which you live, the air you breathe, the bread that sustains you, or the heart that beats in your breast is as necessary for bodily life as prayer is to a Christian . . . Look upon prayer as the first, the principal, the most necessary, the most urgent, and the most important business of your life. As far as possible, free yourself from all less important duties, so you can give as much time as possible to prayer, especially in the morning and evening.

-St. John Eudes

Place your entire physical and spiritual welfare in God’s hands. Abandon to the fatherly concerns of his divine providence every care for your health, reputation, property, and business; for those near to you; for your past sins; for your soul’s progress in virtue and love of him; for your life, death and especially your salvation and eternity – in a word, all your cares. Rest in the assurance that in his pure goodness, he’ll watch with particular tenderness over all your responsibilities and cares, arranging all things for the greater good. Don’t rely on the power or influence of friends; on your own money; on your intellect, knowledge, or strength; on your good desires and resolutions; or on human means. Don’t rely on any created thing. Rely on God’s mercy alone.

-St. John Eudes

I trust in you, Lord, but keep helping me in my many moments of distrust and doubt. They are there and will be every time I turn my eyes, ears or hands away from you. Please Lord, keep calling me back to you, by day and by night, in joy and in sadness, during moments of success and moments of failure. Never let me leave you. I know you walk with me. Help me walk with you today, tomorrow and always.– Henri J.M. Nouwen

We are happy to announce that Pray, Hope, and Don’t Worry: True Stories of Padre Pio Book I has been made into an audio book by Audible: Pray, Hope, and Don;t Worry: True Stories of Padre Pio Book 1

In his ‘Final Testament’ to his brothers, St. Francis of Assisi taught that part of conversion involves ‘leaving the world.’ He said, ‘I tarried for a little while, and then I finally left the world.’ Most of us are still tarrying. We haven’t left the world, and we don’t want to. We’ve partly embraced our Christian vocation, but we really haven’t immersed ourselves in Jesus Christ. In fact, sometimes we belong more to the world than to the kingdom of God’¦Many of us spend a good deal of our lives accumulating stuff. What the ‘stuff’ is will differ from person to person. Yet at the end of our lives, it’s all finally the same junk. It piles up in bookcases, in garages, in boxes in the attic, in the secret places of our souls. As life’s evening sets in, we see the need to begin to detach. The things we’ve accumulated are distractions. They should become less and less important. We need to strip them away – the layers of our life – until, at the very end, all that is left is God and us.

– Archbishop Charles Chaput

Complete freedom from fear is one of those things we owe wholly to Our Lord. To be afraid is to do him a double injury. First, it is to forget him, to forget that that he is with us, that he loves us and is himself almighty, and second it is to fail to bend to his will. If we shape our will to his, as everything that happens is either willed or allowed by him, we shall find joy in whatever happens, and shall never be disturbed or afraid.

– Charles de Foucauld

Jesus has done ninety-nine percent of what is necessary to make us saints. He is quite prepared to do the other one percent, but we will not let him. What did he cry for over Jerusalem? How often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you would not let me(Luke 13:34). That is our trouble. We will not be gathered under his wings. We want to be big fellows. We want to have something big on our tombstone: ‘This man did so and so.’ We will not trust our Lord. We will not accept the truth about our weaknesses and admit that we need our Lord. In every other walk of life, progress is associated with independence. The more competent you are, the more independent you are. The one exception is the spiritual life. The more you progress in the spiritual life, the more completely dependent you become on God.

– Father Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.O.

God stands at the center of our lives just as Jesus stands at the center of the Gospel story. Jesus is the source of the gift of healing, but he is easily forgotten. He does not force himself into the lives of the ten lepers. Only one of them makes the connection between his good fortune and the role Jesus plays in it, and he is the one you would least expect to make it. The story of the ten lepers . . .teaches us that not only do most people forget who they are, but that the one who remembers is . . .someone whom we think can teach us nothing. And yet in the story, he is the only one who shines. He is the only one with real insight into life. God is central to our personal story, but he is easily forgotten. God will not usually overwhelm us. Jesus portrays God as knocking at the door of our lives, waiting to enter. He will not come uninvited.

– Father Brendan Freeman, O.C.S.O.

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

The contemplative life is not a life that offers a few good moments between the many bad ones, but a life that transforms all our time into a window through which the invisible world becomes visible. Contemplative prayer requires that we listen, that we let God speak to us when he wants and in the way he wants. This is difficult for us precisely because it means allowing God to say what we might not want to hear. But if we listen long and deeply, God will reveal himself to us as a soft breeze or a still, small voice; he will offer himself to us in gentle compassion. Without this obedience, this listening to the God of our heart, we will remain deaf and our life will grow absurd.

– Henri Nouwen