Following Jesus

What keeps you from following Jesus as you should? Almost anything can come between us and God; the devil will make sure of that. But Jesus’ call has not changed: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Rejecting Your Mother

Rejecting the Catholic Church because she is riddled with corrupt and sin-sick members is rather like rejecting your mother because she is riddled with cancer.

The Passion of St. John the Baptist

O God, who willed that Saint John the Baptist should go ahead of your Son both in his birth and in his death, grant that, as he died a Martyr for truth and justice, we, too, may fight hard for the confession of what you teach. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

St. John the Baptist, pray for all victims of lies and injustice. Amen

St. Augustine of Hippo

O Lord my God, I believe in you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Insofar as I can, insofar as you have given me the power, I have sought you. I became weary and I labored. O Lord my God, my sole hope, help me to believe and never to cease seeking you. Grant that I may always and ardently seek out your countenance. Give me the strength to seek you, for you help me to find you and you have more and more given me the hope of finding you. Here I am before you with my firmness and my infirmity. Preserve the first and heal the second. Here I am before you with my strength and my ignorance. Where you have opened the door to me, welcome me at the entrance; where you have closed the door to me, open to my cry; enable me to remember you, to understand you, and to love you. Amen. ~Attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo

Saint Bartholomew

Almighty Lord and Father, strengthen us in that faith with which Saint Bartholomew gave himself wholeheartedly to Christ your Son. Grant, at his intercession, that your Church may become the sacrament of salvation for all the nations of the earth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Self-love

“Self-love is the root and cause of all evil; it snatches away all that is good and all that is perfect. Therefore if the soul is to know God, it must also forget itself and lose itself. For as long as it sees itself, it will not see and know God. But when it loses itself for God’s sake and leaves all things, then it finds itself again in God because God dawns upon it – and only then does the soul know itself and all things in God.”  ~Meister Eckhart

God is the Source of Life

“God is the source of life. On him and through him our common life is built up and led time and again through cataclysmic struggles to final victory. It is an exceedingly dangerous way, a way of deep suffering. It is a way that leads straight into the struggle for existence and the reality of a life of work, into all the difficulties created by the human character. And yet, just this is our deepest joy: to see clearly the eternal struggle—the indescribable tension between life and death, man’s position between heaven and hell—and still to believe in the overwhelming power of life, the power of love to overcome, and the triumph of truth, because we believe in God.” ~Eberhard Arnold, excerpt from Why We Live in Community

St. Pius X, pope

“Nothing would please us more than to see our beloved children form the habit of reading the Gospels – not merely from time to time, but every day.” ~Pope Pius X

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

O God, who made of the Abbot Saint Bernard a man consumed with zeal for your house and a light shining and burning in your Church, grant, through his intercession, that we may be on fire with the same spirit and walk always as children of light. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.