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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 18, 2013 13:33:09 GMT
I would be interested to know the favourite (short!) Christian quotations of contributors here. I think such sayings can be good aids to devotion.
I don't mean Scriptural quotations so much, as they are a given. I rather mean quotations from the saints, the Doctors and Fathers of the Church, Popes, devotional writers etc.
Recently I came across the quotation in the Irish Catholic newspaper, "Concepts create idols; only wonder understands anything", from Gregory of Nyssa. I think that is absolutely wonderful.
I also like: "The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love." Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.
"I desire but this one grace, and long to be consumed like a burning candle in His holy Presence every moment of the life that remains to me." St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Any particular favourites of your own?
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 18, 2013 13:38:17 GMT
Try:
The Church without Christ is a body without a head. But Christ without the Church is a head without a body. And Christ without a Church, I can turn into any theological opinion on my own.
(Joachaim Cardinal Meissner, Archbishop of Cologne).
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 20, 2013 18:44:00 GMT
I, once rustic, exiled, unlearned, who does not know how to provide for the future, this at least I know most certainly that before I was humiliated I was like a stone lying in the deep mire; and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up, and raised me aloft, and placed me on the top of the wall. And therefore I ought to cry out aloud and so also render something to the Lord for His great benefits here and in eternity - From the Confession of St Patrick
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Post by rogerbuck on Apr 20, 2013 19:01:37 GMT
Two of mine:
. The vow of chastity means to say the putting into practice of the resolution to live according to law, without covetousness and without indifference. Because virtue is boring and vice is disgusting. But that which lives at the foundation of the heart is neither boring nor disgusting. The foundation of the heart is love. - Valentin Tomberg
“There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.” - Charles Peguy.
On the internet, I have often seen the latter attributed to Leon Bloy, but I really think it is the great Peguy.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 22, 2013 20:54:23 GMT
I'd suggest the Salve Regina as a whole - it takes on a whole new depth when you think of it as the work of someone who was born crippled and sent to a monastery in infancy. (I know its attribution to Bl. Hermannus Cotntractus/Hermann the Cripple is not certain, but it's an intriguing possibility.)
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Post by Young Ireland on Apr 22, 2013 21:00:26 GMT
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy."
-St. Francis of Asissi
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 17, 2013 17:39:56 GMT
"Our Maker and Redeemer... not only willed to become incarnate for us, but also willed to become incarnate at a time when soon after his birth he would be inscribed in the report of a census. For us he put on flesh, so that he might put on us the strength of the Spirit; he descended from heaven to earth so that he might elevate us from earth to heaven; he paid tribute to Caesar so that he might grant us the grace of perpetual freedom. The son of God [in the form of] a human being did service to a king who was ignorant of [this] divine servitude, so that in this way [Christ] might also bestow on us a model of humility, suggesting how greatly we ought to serve each other through charity since he himself did not disdain to commit himself to servitude to one who was unaware of true charity..." St Bede the Venerable HOMILIES ON THE GOSPELS 1.6 for Christmas, on Luke 2:1-14. Book one Advent to Lent, translated by Lawrence T Martin and David Hurst OSB, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Michigan 1991, pp56-57.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 13, 2013 0:42:29 GMT
This quote from St John Chrysostom's treatise on the priesthood (highlighted by Fr Zuhlsdorf) is certainly very reminiscent of the situation in Ireland over the last few decades: wdtprs.com/blog/2013/12/on-fear-of-the-priest/EXTRACT All men are ready to pass judgment on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature, but like an angel, and emancipated from every species of infirmity. And just as all men fear and flatter a tyrant as long as he is strong, because they cannot put him down, but when they see his affairs going adversely, those who were his friends a short time before abandon their hypocritical respect, and suddenly become his enemies and antagonists, and having discovered all his weak points, make an attack upon him, and depose him from the government; so is it also in the case of priests. Those who honored him and paid court to him a short time before, while he was strong, as soon as they have found some little handle eagerly prepare to depose him, not as a tyrant only, but something far more dreadful than that. And as the tyrant fears his body guards, so also does the priest dread most of all his neighbours and fellow-ministers. For no others covet his dignity so much, or know his affairs so well as these; and if anything occurs, being near at hand, they perceive it before others, and even if they slander him, can easily command belief, and, by magnifying trifles, take their victim captive. END
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 24, 2014 0:08:15 GMT
"Must a Christ die in every age for those who have no imagination?" -George BErnard Shaw ST JOAN (in reference to a fictional character who is eager for Joan to be punished as a witch until he sees her actual burning and is so horrified he repents of his previous attitude and spends a lifetime atoning for it). Now I know Shaw was not a Christian, but that little quote cuts very close to the bone, the older I get and the more I remember all the thoughtlessly spiteful or just negligent things I have thought, said and done and the consequences they have had for myself and others. It is also a reminder of the depth of God's mercy and Jesus's sacrifice. This link is appropriate, I think www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/01/22/we-should-be-dying-to-go-to-confession/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 24, 2014 14:23:24 GMT
Shaw was not a Christian but apparently he was an avid reader of the Bible and there were many, many copies found in his home after his death. I think he described himself as a mystic rather than an atheist. Perhaps puckishly as he is the furthest extreme from the stereotype of a mystic. He would conclude his letters to Chesterton with the valediction, "To Hell with the Pope!".
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luke
New Member
Posts: 19
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Post by luke on Jan 24, 2014 14:48:48 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2014 22:51:30 GMT
"Faith depends on reason. People who try to get to religion without using their heads usually wind up believing that some crackpot is God, because he says so." - Fulton J. Sheen quoted in Thomas C. Reeves AMERICA'S BISHOP p.43. See the "Truth or superstition" section of this board for numerous present-day illustrations of the above.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 8, 2014 22:26:10 GMT
This is a real little gem, and has a variety of applications. According to a story which may be apocryphal, the Anglican clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould who wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers" had an evangelical Bishop who suggested to him that the line "With the Cross of JEsus going on before" should be changed as it seemed to approve of the use of actual crosses in worship (many nineteenth-century evangelicals actually regarded this as idolatry). Baring-Gould, who was rather more High Church in his views, suggested that if that was how the bishop felt, a suitable amendment would be "With the Cross of Jesus left behind the door". Would that this amended version was as rarely followed in practice as in words.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 9, 2016 22:21:02 GMT
Cardinal Manning of Westminster and his friend and future successor Bishop Herbert Vaughan are arguing over Manning's co-operation with the charitable work of the Salvation Army, which Vaughan thought might lead to proselytisation of the Catholic poor. (In fairness to Vaughan he did have a social conscience and abandoned great possessions to be a priest, but he was basically a Tory paternalist):
VAUGHAN You see these things too much in purely humanitarian terms. I care nothing for the world apart from the Faith. MANNING Yet God so loved the world... But I suppose that is a detail. [Of course Manning expected Vaughan to complete the quotation - "that He gave His Only-Begotten Son"] [From the contemporary life of Vaughan by Snead-Cox]
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 7, 2016 20:01:47 GMT
If the Gospels had been written in the manner of certain ecclesiastical histories, we would never have been told that Judas was an Apostle - Pope Leo XIII
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