S G

“LIII

Abbott Palladius said: The soul that wishes to live according to the will of Christ should either learn faithfully what it does not yet know, or teach openly what it does know. But if, when it can, it desires to do neither of these things, it is afflicted with madness. For the first step away from God is a distaste for learning, and lack of appetite for those things for which the soul hungers when it seeks God.”
― Thomas Merton OCSO

“He was showing how marriage is not a contract, involving merely an exchange of goods and services. Rather, marriage is a covenant, involving an exchange of persons. Kippley's argument was that every covenant has an act whereby the covenant is enacted and renewed; and the marital act is a covenant act. When the marriage covenant is renewed, God uses it to give new life. To renew the marital Covenant and use birth control to destroy the potential for new life is tantamount to receiving the Eucharist and spitting it on the ground.”
― Scott Hahn, Rome Sweet Home

“Hence we should all make St. Augustine's prayer our own: "Lord, here cut, here burn and spare me not, but spare me in eternity!”
― Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Uniformity with God's Will & The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ

“Scripture is a record of the same story, told again and again, in different ways but always with the same theme, for more than three thousand years. God loves man. Man betrays God. Then God calls man back to his friendship. Sometimes that call involves some very painful suffering, and for good reason. God respects our freedom. But he will not interfere with our choices or their consequences, no matter how unpleasant. As a result, the struggle in the human heart between good and evil-- a struggle that seems burned into our chromosomes-- projects itself onto the world, to ennoble or deform it. The beauty and the barbarism we inflict on one another leave their mark on creation.”
― Archbishop Charles J. Chaput