Daily quotes on developing virtue from Saints, Popes and others.
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: 'God so loved the world he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in [...]
"Jesus has always many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who care for trial. He finds many to share His table, but few to take part in His fasting. All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for [...]
"If the piety of our days is so languishing, so shallow, it is because people attach themselves too much to its practices, neglecting the principle. They warm the sentiments, they set the imagination boiling. They do not force themselves to reflect sufficiently, to study, to fathom, and so they fall into the piety of routine." [...]
"So, then, this sacrament benefits recipients by way both of sacrament and of sacrifice, because it is offered for all who partake of it… But to others who do not receive it, it is beneficial by way of sacrifice, inasmuch as it is offered for their salvation… And our Lord expressed both ways, saying (Mat. [...]
"Because when a person regards the height of goodness in his mind, he then builds a high wall of faith by virtue of the work of God. Then he ascends above that rational faith, which shows him God in the power of His Divinity, and on it he builds bulwarks of virtue higher than the [...]
"If a word, we are like the Paphlagonian partridge, which has two hearts; for we have a very tender, pitiful, easy heart toward ourselves, and one which is hard, harsh, and strict toward our neighbor. We have two scales, one wherein to measure our own goods to the best advantage, and the other to weigh [...]
"If sensual affection wants to love sensual things, the eye of understanding is moved in that direction. It takes for its object only passing things with selfish love, contempt for virtue, and love of vice, drawing from these pride and impatience. And the memory is filled only with what affection holds out to it. This [...]
"Love – caritas – will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love… The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very [...]
"To be chaste is to put on the nature of an incorporeal being. Chastity is a supernatural denial of what one is by nature, so that a mortal and corruptible body is competing in a truly marvelous way with incorporeal spirits. A chaste man is someone who has driven out bodily love by means of [...]
"A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed." Source: G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Moody Publishers, 2009.