Franciscan Quote of the Day

Christ roams through our streets in the person of so many of the suffering poor, sick and dispossessed, and people thrown out of their miserable slums; Christ huddled under bridges, in the person of so many children who lack someone to call father, who have been deprived for many years without a mother’s kiss on their foreheads … Christ is without a home! Shouldn’t we want to give him one, those of us who have the joy of a comfortable home, plenty of good food, the means to educate and assure the future of our children? “What you do to the least of me, you do to me,” Jesus said.

~St. Alberto Hurtado, S.J.

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• We must pray without tiring…
• Only the child-like…
• If you really want to love Jesus…

Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.

~St. Francis of Assisi

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• You have no enemy except yourselves
• While you are proclaiming peace…
• When Necessary

You see, the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be, and somewhere, to love reality and then discover that God is present.

~Jean Vanier, via Pax Christi Facebook Page

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• Regardless of the consequences
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The man who is filled with the Holy Spirit speaks in different languages. These different languages are different ways of witnessing to Christ, such as humility, poverty, patience, and obedience; we speak in those languages when we reveal in ourselves these virtues to others.

~St. Anthony (via Beauty for Ashes)

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• Where there is…
• To be a witness…
• The way of perfection…

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

~C. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

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• Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea…
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• For they are always afraid…

And then I thought: I’ve been getting this all wrong. Christ is not just in the comfortable, familiar places, like my hometown and among my neighbors. He is here, too, amid the roads clogged with traffic, the miles of strip shopping malls and clearance racks. God knows we have to live in a material world. He knows we need to clothe and care for our children. Christ has found a way to show Himself to me, in this present moment, in the shoe department of the East Brunswick Kohl’s.

~Allison Salerno, “Because Christ is Everywhere—Even in the Shoe Department” (on the blog Why I Am Catholic)

Possibly related quotes:

• Only the child-like…
• To be a witness…
• Then discover that God is present

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we did during World War II. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue; it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of thing makes me sick.’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death or torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find, ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it.

~ C. S. Lewis, via a post on the Little Portion Hermitage blog.

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• The Christian ideal…
• Then discover that God is present
• Remembrance of wrongs…

The covetous claim to be Christian, yet they have no trust in Christ. For they are always afraid of want in the time to come, no matter how much they have.

~St Thomas More

Possibly related quotes:

• The Christian ideal…
• Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea…
• Christ roams through our streets…