Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

"The struggle of the spirit in this world is never wholly won and never quite lost."

These were his people, and he was their voice, their hands uplifted to God.

"Remember...that we should know as much of our past as we can so that we may not make the same mistakes over again, and that the good that men have won with so much labor should not be lost."

"I always use what I have. If it is something to give, I give it; but if it is something to be asked, I ask it. Poverty is an opportunity to serve the Lord as much as wealth."

"I have dreamed of doing in the eighteenth century what Saint Hugh did in the eleventh. Now I know that I shall not do it. But there is work to be done in Saint Hugh's spirit in the nineteenth century, if not in his house or in his habit, then in a humbler one. This is the work of my generation, and please God, I shall try to do it."

"Romance has fallen on evil days."
"...I don't suppose history has ever been very romantic to its makers, or perhaps, to be more accurate, to its agents....We are not fighting this battle because we wanted to be knights in shining armor or anything else. It is simply something that must be done, and we here in France have the first chance to do it. If we win, it will be for all Christendom...There is no alternative."

"Liberty, equality, and fraternity are still a dream. I think they must be so as long as men try to realize that dream by violence and without regard to God, whose grace alone can give it reality. But sought in the love and the knowledge of God, those three words constitute a great ideal, and with France and the Church working together they can, I believe, be realized."

"when you are as old as I am you will have learned that God gives men and women grace to live harder lives than we should have thought could be borne."

"I suppose it is for the good of our souls, who have been used to knowing to whom to apply when in need of some concession from authority, to have to take our place in the helplessness of the great mass of men who know not where to turn when they feel the pressure of power."

"I do not think the persecution can last forever...religion will be restored not by fighting but by the faith and patience of the people."

"I am a plain main, M. le Curé. I can see only what is before me. For the distant future, you may be right, but I shall be dead then...It is now that I am going to do my duty to my God and my province. He will take care of the future."

when Michel asked her what she thought could be done to revive Christian fervor and form again the ranks of the believers before he must leave them, she smilingly reminded him that martyrdom was a great honor to which no young man should rashly aspire.

It sounds beautiful as you put it that way, but I am sure that the doing of it would be hell. We have hatred and greed and violence now. There is flame enough. What we need is light.

...to throw off the authority of the universal Church on any pretext was not to avoid the weakness of men, for that was wherever men were. It was, rather, to forfeit the strength of the unity of the Church.

Even as he prayed, he smiled to himself. The contrast between the great battlefield and the little was so grotesque.

"...men are so impatient. To right an old wrong, they will not hesitate to commit a dozen new ones. And to get rid of one thing they hate they will destroy a dozen that they had never had any thought of giving up."

"In the end, I suspect that these things that bother us so will be shown not to have mattered very much. Whatever the cards we are given to play the game of life with, it is the playing that counts and not the cards. But one doesn't know that at first. He cries for the thing he was not given, and throws away the cards he could have played to win."

"You are fisherman, and please God, you are good Christians. you are important enough for Our Lord to come and bless you thus each year, and for Our Lady to watch over you. Then, surely, you are good enough to be put into a painting."

"the noble playing at the arts without entering into the stress that goes into their creation makes a toy and a trifle out of what, rightly understood, are the instruments of worship and one of the greatest opportunities for giving God the homage we owe him. that is one of the worst sins of your class, for it is a prostitution of the good things God gave for our labor and our learning."

These poor Mexicans, he reflected, we’re not the first to pour out their love [for Mary] in this simple fashion. Raphael and Titian had made costumes for her in their time, and the great masters had made music for her, and the great architects had built cathedrals for her.

Give people an outlet to express their love in an embodied way!

Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world’s hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman’s tenderness.

The fickle Mexican population soon found as much diversion in being devout as they had once found in being scandalous.

If we are to save their souls, we must make it clear that we want no profit for ourselves…

Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.

“…they [the French] are the best missionaries. Our Spanish fathers make good martyrs, but the French Jesuits accomplish more. They are the great organizers.”

The waters were darker than they now are when the Holy Ghost first moved upon them.

Clerical weakness we shall always have with us, like any other human infirmity, but if we do nothing about it, we can hardly wonder if our enemies say we do not care.

“He had known all along that to try to revive the dream of an heroic heritage in an unheroic age was an enterprise that would test everything that was within him.”

Referring to the medieval monks if Cluny compared to the modern ones (late 18th century)

“One thinks to do so much and he does so little, and that little so strangely compounded of blindness and good intent and much effort and much thwarting, and the end is a watch in the night,“ said Jacomo, suddenly feeling that all the world had melted away…

“But that’s a fool’s way to die, and not a gentleman’s…

So says a young man who would gladly go to war against an enemy but would not go with Jacomo to help the plague victims in Montefalco.