The Word of God is not a word to apply in our daily lives at some later date; it is a word to heal us through, and in our listening, here and now. 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.
– Henri Nouwen

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

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

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.

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 Nouwen

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

The Lord said, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and appointed you to go and bring forth fruit . . . Then he adds the quality the fruit is to have – And your fruit is to endure. Everything we labor for in this present world scarcely lasts until death. Death intervenes and cuts off the fruit of our labor. But what we do for eternal life remains even after death; it begins to appear only when the fruits of our physical labors cease to be visible . . . Let one who recognizes that he now bears eternal fruit within his soul, think little of the temporal fruits of his labors. Let us work for the fruit that endures. Let us work for the fruit that begins at death since death destroys all others.

– St. Gregory the Great

How should we regard life as we go through it? We are immortal: independent of time and space. This life is but a sort of outward stage on which we act for a time. We should consider ourselves to be in this world as players are in a game; and this life is as different from our real existence as a dream differs from waking. And yet it is a serious dream as we are judged by our actions. And so the spiritual man goes through life doing his actions for God’s sake. It is this view of life that removes from us all surprise and disappointment that this life is so incomplete. . . The one desire which should move us all is the desire to see God face to face.

– St. John Henry Newman

It is only when God withdraws his help and leaves the proud man to his own devices, that it becomes evident what a man is worth without God . . . Humility is a supernatural virtue by which we lovingly recognize our true value in God’s eyes, and are disposed to render him due recognition for all the good we find in ourselves . . . We are the soil in which Christ grows; his roots will only pick out from us what is in accordance with his Father’s will – and therefore it depends upon us to decide whether by doing the will of God we are to be absorbed by Christ and are to enter into life – or to be left by him in the exterior darkness of our own will.

– Fr. Eugene Boylan, O.C.S.O.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: You were bought at a price- and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You who are beyond time, Lord, you know what you are doing. You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men. . .But we must not lose time, waste time, or kill time, for time is a gift that you give us. . .The time that you give me, the years of my life, the days of my years, the hours of my days, they are mine to fill and to offer to you. I am not asking you Lord for time to do this and then that, but your grace to do conscientiously, in the time that you have given me, what you want me to do.

– Father Michel Quoist