Jesus, Master, sanctify my mind and increase my faith. Jesus, teaching in the Church, draw everyone to yourself. Jesus, Master, deliver me from error, empty thoughts and eternal blindness. Jesus, Way between the Father and ourselves, I offer you everything and await all from you. Jesus, Way of sanctity, help me to imitate you faithfully. Jesus, Way, may I respond wholeheartedly to the Father’s call to holiness. Jesus, Life, live in me so that I may live in you. Jesus, Life, do not ever permit anything to separate me from you. Jesus, Life, grant that I may live eternally in the joy of your love. Jesus, Truth, may you shine in the world through me. Jesus, Way, may I be a faithful mirror of your example for others. Jesus, Life, may I be a channel of your grace and consolation to others.

– Father James Alberione

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.

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 we serve 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 the 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 have begun my work. I believe in the personal touch of one to 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

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

Remember that your soul is a temple of the living God. The kingdom of God is within you. Night and day let your aim be to remain in simplicity and gentleness, calmness and serenity, and in freedom from created things, so that you will find your joy in the Lord Jesus. Love silence and solitude, even when in the midst of a crowd or when caught up in your work. Physical solitude is a good thing, provided that it is backed up by prayer and a holy life, but far better than this is solitude of the heart, which is the interior desert in which your spirit can become totally immersed in God, and can hear and savor the words of eternal life. With great purity of intention, aim in everything to do what pleases God. Always remain faithful to God and genuinely accept whatever he wishes.

– St. Paul of the Cross

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” (Corinthians 2:5-6). 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

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

November 1 – The Feast of All Saints

The saints already with Christ. . .have passed from a state of corruptibility to one of incorruptibility; they have gone from this world and risen again in Christ, exchanging their tent-dwelling for the heavenly Jerusalem. Leaving to us the emptiness of this life, they have attained to the bliss of heaven; leaving to us our earthly worries, they have passed to a land without worry. They have left behind the winds and waves of this world and have anchored in harbors of perfect calm. Yet even while they seemed to be with us, they were not so in reality, for their minds were turned to God. They lived on earth as citizens of heaven. Having here no lasting city, they sought a heavenly one; having no earthly riches, they sought the riches of heaven. They were strangers and sojourners as their ancestors were. Strangers to the world, to the things of the world, and to the ways of the world, their whole heart was absorbed in the things of heaven; these were the things they thought about and were concerned about. . .The saints contemplated, sought, and hastened toward these things, and so at last they attained them.

– St. Anastasius of Sinai

The best preparation I can make for death is to live the reality of the Paschal mystery as fully and as deeply as possible in union with Christ, because Christ will re-live that mystery in me at the hour of my death. If I am following the spirituality of the Paschal mystery, I expect to die and rise again many times in the course of my monastic life, in my daily tasks and duties, in unexpected events and circumstances, and in my life of interior prayer. . .I expect to have to let go and give up again and again, discovering a new richness of life each time. . .I will learn to trust more and more this Father into whose hands I shall one day, freely and gladly, hand over my life. On that day my final act of dying will be inserted irrevocably into the saving death and resurrection of Christ my Lord.
– Father Charles Cummings O.C.S.O.

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

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