Unite yourself with him, then, in all that you do. Refer everything to his glory. Set up your abode in this loving Heart of Jesus and you will there find lasting peace and the strength both to bring to fruition all the good desires he inspires in you, and to avoid every deliberate fault. Place in this Heart all your sufferings and difficulties. Everything that comes from the Sacred Heart is sweet. He changes everything into love . . . Let us belong to him without reserve, because he wants all or nothing. And after we have once given him everything, let us take nothing back.

– St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

We have a God who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. I always thought that he would reduce you to extremity. He will come in his own time, and when you least expect it. Hope in him more than ever; thank him with me for the favors he does you . . . I do not advise you to use a multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God like a poor, paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord . . .One way to recall the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far at other times. You should keep it strictly in the presence of God.

– Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

God is ready to shed his graces upon us as abundantly and as usefully as those he shed upon the first Christians. He does not love us less than he loved them. All the means of sanctification that they had, we too possess; and we have besides, the examples of the saints who have followed Christ to encourage us. But we are too often like Naaman the leper who came to consult the prophet and beg his cure; he was on the point of not obtaining it because he found the remedy too simple. That is the case with some of those who undertake the spiritual life; who are so attached to their own way of seeing things that they are scandalized at the simplicity of the Divine plan. And this scandal is not without harm . . . Why is this? Because all that our human ingenuity is able to create for our inner life serves for nothing if we do not base our edifice upon Christ.

– Blessed Columba Marmion

Let us adore Jesus in our hearts – who spent thirty years out of thirty-three in silence; who began his public life by spending forty days in silence; who often returned alone to spend the night on a mountain in silence. He who spoke with authority, now spends his earthly life in silence. Let us adore Jesus in the Eucharistic silence.

– Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Whatever you possess must not possess you; whatever you own must be under the power of your soul; for if your soul is overpowered by the love of this world’s goods, it will be totally at the mercy of its possessions. In other words, we make use of temporal things, but our hearts are set on what is eternal. Temporal goods help us on our way, but our desire must be for those eternal realities which are our goal. We should give no more than a side glance at all that happens in the world, but the eyes of our soul are to be focused straight ahead . . . If the object of love is what is good, then the soul should take its delight in the higher good, the things of heaven. In this way, if the soul sees that we should have a greater love and a greater fear about what concerns the next life, it will never cling to this life.

– St. Gregory the Great

Wisdom tells us what we cannot know. Wisdom defines the limits of knowledge. Wisdom, however, always points us to a place and a purpose beyond knowledge. Wisdom takes us where knowledge can’t go – to the thoughts of God and the mind of God. The summit of knowledge is to know God’s will. That is the only knowledge we really need. The only knowing that is ultimately worthwhile is to know what God wants in our lives. What God always wants for us is love and the fruits of love . . . Wisdom allows us to know God, as God truly is, the “self” of God, the heart of God, the mind of God. In our world, knowledge is power. We are obsessed with power. Followers of Jesus must be different. We must be obsessed with wisdom.

– Father Harry Cronin, S.C.S.

I can do nothing alone. My own will, however hard I exert it, does not suffice. My own plans, however astutely and systematically devised, all fail. So, there is nothing for me to do but to hand myself over to God, truly and wholly, so that he may use, or for that matter, in his wisdom not use, whatever capacity I possess to serve him.

– St. Francis de Sales

Place all your hope in the heart of Jesus; it is a safe haven; for he who trusts in God is sheltered and protected by his mercy. To this firm hope, join the practice of virtue, and even in this life you will begin to taste the ineffable joys of Paradise.

– St. Bernard of Clairvaux

John’s Gospel tells us that after the Resurrection, the Lord went to his disciples, breathed upon them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit….We can say, therefore, that the Holy Spirit is the breath of Jesus Christ and we in a certain sense, must ask Christ to breathe on us always. . . This means that we must keep close to Christ. We do so by meditating on his Word. We know that the principal author of the Sacred Scriptures is the Holy Spirit . . . and then, naturally, this listening, walking in the environment of the Word, must be transformed into a response – a response in prayer, in contact with Christ.

– Pope Benedict XVI

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

Our present life is given only to gain the eternal one and if we don’t think about it, we build our affections on what belongs to this world, where our life is transitory. When we have to leave it we are afraid and become agitated. Believe me, to live happily in this pilgrimage, we have to aim at the hope of arriving at our Homeland, where we will stay eternally. Meanwhile we have to believe firmly that God calls us to himself and follows us along the path towards him. He will never permit anything to happen to us that is not for our greater good. He knows who we are and he will hold out his paternal hand to us during difficulties, so that nothing prevents us from running to him swiftly. But to enjoy this grace we must have complete trust in him.

– St. Pio of Pietrelcina