Dread Nothing So Much

Charity is the highest virtue, even above obedience. But obedience to God’s laws is necessary for salvation. Dread nothing so much as following your own inclinations.
~From Miniature Life of Mary, Virgin and Mother, 1880

Making Friends with Our Trials

“Make friends with your trials, as though you were always to live together. You will see that when you cease to take thought for your deliverance, God will take thought for you. When you cease to help yourself so eagerly, He will help you.”

~St. Francis de Sales

Introduction to the Devout Life

Secrets of the Saints: Conformity to God's Will

"...if we have any natural defect either in mind or body - a bad memory, slowness of apprehension, mean abilities, a crippled limb, or weak health - let us not therefore make lamentation...Who can tell whether, if we had had a larger share of ability, stronger health, or greater personal attractions, we should not have possessed them to our destruction?"

"...thus let us ourselves rest content with that which God has given us. But one thing is necessary. Beauty is not necessary,  nor health, nor sharpness of intellect; that which alone is necessary is our salvation."

~St. Alphonsus de Liguori

The Way of Salvation and of Perfection

Do or Do Not; There is No Try

Learn from Mary Immaculate of the holiness which God requires in those whom He chooses as His own. In your prayers ask Him to cleanse your more and more from the least stain of sin, and add your own endeavors to this request...

Be not content with now and then wishing to be holy, but kindle and renew your desires each day. You will thus not only intend, but do.

~From Miniature Life of Mary, Virgin and Mother,1880

A Few Steps from Sanctity

It is almost literally true, though it sounds like a paradox, that many good ordinary Christians are only a few steps from sanctity. If they would be but a little better, they could enter the ranks of the heroic servants of God and be numbered among His intimate friends.

It is, indeed, one of the tragedies of the spiritual life that there are so few great lovers of God, when to love Him greatly is so easy, so plain and so simple an achievement. And the reason why the number of God's great and devoted servants is not greater is precisely this, that so many of us refuse to become just a little better than we are.
~From Your Soul's Salvation, 1920

The Remedy of Pain

There are few who are great enough of soul to bear entire prosperity without becoming selfish and worldly. It needs the goad of pain and the sting of adversity to start the soul out from its earthly nest and send it winging towards heaven. The cauterizing fire of grief and of physical pain is the most powerful cure for worldliness and sensuality.

Many a soul has been ruined by too much pleasure and prosperity, and many a heart has been cured of its worldliness and brought back to God by the remedy of pain.

  ~From Your Soul's Salvation, 1920

Secrets of the Saints: How to Inflame Charity

The secret of the saints, the heavenly alchemy by which they turned sorrows into joys, (and) trials into blessings is the great burning eager love of God which filled their hearts. Spiritual reading will inflame our souls with a like charity. For the writings of the saints are text-books of the Love of God.

~ From Your Soul's Salvation, 1920