"What does war against the obedient? Insult or injury? No, because they are patient, and patience is the sister of obedience. Are the burdens of the rule heavy for them? No, because obedience makes them observant… They have a most perfect contempt for themselves and they rejoice in patience, exulting in joy and gladness with [...]
"The Venerable Father Alvarez saw Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament with His hands filled with graces, and seeking to whom He might dispense them. Of St. Catharine of Sienna it is related, that when she approached the Most Holy Sacrament, she did so precisely with the same loving avidity with which a child flies to [...]
"The obedient have no desire to obey in their own way, to choose the time and the place; they would rather follow the rule and their superiors." Source: St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Paulist Press, 1980 The Dialogue was dictated by Catherine over a period of five days. Three scribes worked to keep [...]
"The sign that you have this virtue (obedience) is patience, and impatience is the sign that you do not have it. Notice that there two ways of observing obedience. The one is more perfect than the other, but like the commandments and the counsels the two are not separate but united. The one is good [...]
"Obedience has a wet nurse, true humility, and the soul is as obedient as she is humble, and as humble as she is obedient. This humility is also charity’s governess and wet nurse, and she nurtures the virtue of obedience with the very same milk. The garment this nurse gives the soul is self-abasement, the [...]
"The source and companion of obedience is humility. But disobedience comes from pride, which in turn comes from selfish love for oneself and deprives one of humility." Source: St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Paulist Press, 1980 The Dialogue was dictated by Catherine over a period of five days. Three scribes worked to keep [...]
"For those who are receptive this blood bestowed and accomplished all that they need to be saved and made perfect. But since its gift of life and grace is in proportion to the soul’s readiness and desire, it deals death to the wicked. So it gives death rather than life to those who receive it [...]
"To what dangers and sufferings people will submit themselves on land and sea to acquire great wealth, to return later to their own city with pleasures and honors! Yet they neither try not care to acquire the virtues or to suffer the least bit of pain to have them, though these are the riches of [...]
"So among other things I use the way my Truth described when he said, 'I am the true vine, my Father is the vinedresser, and you are the branches.' He is the true vine because he proceeds from me, the Father, and whoever remains in him by following his teaching will bear fruit. And so [...]
"Hunger, thirst, loss of worldly position, nakedness, cold, heat, insults, abuse, slander – all these things I [God] allow people to say and do to you. Not that I am the source of the malice and ill will of those who do these evil and harmful things; I only grant them their existence and time. [...]