If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?

If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?

Feast of Michael & All Angels None but the Lord himself can afford us any help from the awful read more

Feast of Michael & All Angels None but the Lord himself can afford us any help from the awful workings of unbelief, doubtings, carnal fears, murmurings. Thank God one day we will be done forever with "unbelief.".

The pure eye for the true vision of another's claims can only go with the loving heart. The man who read more

The pure eye for the true vision of another's claims can only go with the loving heart. The man who hates can hardly be delicate in doing Justice, say to his neighbor's love, to his neighbor's predilections and peculiarities. It is hard enough to be just to our friends; and how shall our enemies fare with us?

Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660 If I mistake, He will read more

Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660 If I mistake, He will forgive me. I do not fear Him: I only fear lest, able to see and write these things, I should fail of witnessing and myself be, after all, a castaway -- no king but a talker: no disciple of Jesus, ready to go with Him to the death, but an arguer about the truth.

God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If read more

God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If God were as wrathful, the world would have been a heap of ruins long ago.

Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we read more

Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.

Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist The law of Christ, which it is our duty to fulfill, read more

Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist The law of Christ, which it is our duty to fulfill, is the bearing of the cross. Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian's duty to bear.

God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because read more

God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, and therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing that it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.

Repentance is but a kind of table-talk, till we see so much of the deformity of our inward nature as read more

Repentance is but a kind of table-talk, till we see so much of the deformity of our inward nature as to be in some degree frightened and terrified at the sight of it... A plausible form of an outward life, that has only learned rules and modes of religion by use and custom, often keeps the soul for some time at ease, though all its inward root and ground of sin has never been shaken or molested, though it has never tasted of the bitter waters of repentance and has only known the want of a Saviour by hearsay. But things cannot pass thus: sooner or later repentance must have a broken and a contrite heart; we must with our blessed Lord go over the brook Cedron, and with Him sweat great drops of sorrow before He can say for us, as He said for Himself: "It is finished.".