Catholics From Italy

"I want to suffer. This is my desire. (1051, 1995)"

"Keep the crucified Jesus in your heart and all the crosses of the world will seem like roses to you. Those who have felt the pricks of the crown of thorns of the Savior, who is our head, do not feel the other wounds in any way. (III, 827)"

"Only one thing remains my friend: death. (767, 1995)"

"This blessed war will be a salutary purge for our Italy, for the Church of God; it will reawaken in the Italian heart the faith that lay there hidden, as if asleep and suffocated by evil desires; it will cause beautiful flowers to bloom in the Church of God, from soil that was almost parched and dry. But, my God, before this happens, what a harsh trial awaits us. We must go through an entire night covered in the thickest darkness, the likes of which our homeland has never seen before. (583, 1995)"

"My God! What martyrdom is the temptation of vainglory. (314, 1995)"

"Vainglory is an enemy of souls who have consecrated themselves to the Lord and given themselves to the spiritual life. (396, 1995)"

"The sight of Jesus in distress caused me great pain, so I wanted to ask him why he was suffering so much. I received no answer. However, his gaze returned to those priests. But shortly afterwards, almost horrified and as if tired of looking, he withdrew his gaze and when he raised it towards me, to my great horror, I saw two tears running down his cheeks. He moved away from that crowd of priests, with a great expression of disgust on his face, shouting: Butchers! (350, 1995)"

"Here, finally, is the return of the month of beautiful Mommy. (357, 1995)"

"Poor my dear Mum, how much you love me! (276, 1995)"

"I am not worthy to tell you what happened during this period of superlative martyrdom. I was confessing our boys on the evening of the fifth, when all of a sudden he was filled with extreme terror at the sight of a heavenly figure who appeared before my mind's eye. He was holding a kind of tool, similar to a very long iron blade with a sharp point, from which fire seemed to be coming out. Seeing all this and watching this figure violently hurl the aforementioned tool into my soul was all one and the same thing. I barely uttered a moan; I felt like I was dying. I told the boy to leave, because I felt ill and no longer had the strength to continue. (1065, 1995)"

"Oh, how sweet was the conversation I had with heaven this morning! It was such that, even if I wanted to try to tell you everything, I could not; there were things that cannot be translated into human language without losing their profound and heavenly meaning. The Heart of Jesus and mine, if I may say so, merged. There were no longer two hearts beating, but only one. My heart had disappeared, like a drop of water lost in the sea. Jesus was paradise, the king. The joy within me was so intense and profound that I could no longer contain myself; the most delightful tears flooded my face. (273, 1995)"

"But what torments me most are those strong and sharp pains in my chest. At times they cause me such great discomfort that it seems as if they want to break my back and chest. (107, 1995)"

"I seek God, but where can I find him? (1028, 1995)"

"Jesus tells me that in love it is he who delights me; in pain, however, it is I who delight him. (335, 1995)"

"Patience!... I suffer, it is true, but I enjoy it very much. (206, 1995)"

"Even at the altar, my father, God alone knows how much violence I must do to myself to avoid further sins. (278, 1995)"

"I no longer understand anything. I do not know if my prayers are such, or if they are strong resentments that my heart directs toward its God in the fullness of its pain. (1029, 1995)"

"I will never tire of praying to Jesus. It is true that my prayers are more deserving of punishment than reward, because I have disgusted Jesus too much with my countless sins; but in the end, he will take pity on me. (209, 1995)"

"(About the wife of the champion, when they went to San Giovanni Rotondo in 1953; a week later, as widely predicted by journalists at the time, Coppi left his wife to go and live with Giulia Occhini) Mrs. Coppi, be careful not to get hit on."

"Before coming here to see me... go to Monte Sant'Angelo and invoke the help and protection of the Archangel Michael."

"(At the beginning of Giacomo Gaglione‘s book, ’'Allo specchio della mia anima'‘ (In the Mirror of My Soul)) Never let the Passion of Christ leave your mind if you want to share in his triumphs."

"God's omnipotence is not limited to planet Earth alone. On other planets there are creatures and other beings who have not sinned as we have and who pray to God."

"Blasphemy brings God's curse upon your home and is the surest way to go to hell."

"The most beautiful creed is the one that bursts from your lips in the darkness, in sacrifice, in pain, in the supreme effort of an infallible will for good; it is the one that, like a bolt of lightning, pierces the darkness of your soul; it is the one that, in the flash of the storm, lifts you up and leads you to God."

"Is he a saint? Giacomino is a great saint!"

"Better a mouse between two cats than a sick man between two doctors."

"Circumstances make the hero, but everyday courage makes the righteous man."

"Where there is more sacrifice, there is more generosity."

"(About Giacomo Gaglione) With Jesus on the Cross, with Jesus in holy Paradise."

"Bless the hand that strikes you, for it is always the hand of a father."

"Every holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know. It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the holy Sacrifice of the Mass."

"Desirous that our venerable city be preserved in its dignity and splendor, we must attend to its care with the greatest vigilance. Not only the basilicas, churches, and religious sites, in which many relics of the saints reside, but also the ancient buildings and their ruins should be handed down to posterity, as these confer upon the city its most beautiful adornment and its greatest charm; they attest to ancient virtues and encourage us to emulate their glorious example."

"You ask a thing ill-suited to my years, to yours both offensive and disgusting. For how can it become me, who am near forty, to write of love, or you, that are in your fifties, to read of it. That is a subject which delights young minds, and demands a tender heart. Old men are as fitted to tales of love as young men are to tales of prudence. Nor is there anything uglier than old age pursuing love, but lacking strength. Certainly you will sometimes find old men in love,—loved again, never; matrons and girls alike despise old age. No man’s love will hold a woman, but his whom she has seen in the flower of his youth. And if you hear aught to the contrary, there’s a lie behind it. Indeed I know, to write of love does not beseem me, who have already passed the noonday of life and am carried on towards evening; but it dishonours you who ask no less than me who write."

"For what, in all the world, is more common than love? What state, what little town, what family lacks examples? Who, that has reached his thirtieth year, has not endured some villainy for love’s sake? I conjecture from myself whom love has sent into a thousand perils, and I thank the Gods above that I have a thousand times escaped the ambushes prepared for me; more fortunate in my star than Mars whom Vulcan took with Venus, and caught them in an iron net, and displayed them, as a laughing-stock, to the other Gods."

"In cases which concern private revelations, it is better to believe than not to believe, for, if you believe, and it is proven true, you will be happy that you have believed, because our Holy Mother asked it. If you believe, and it should be proven false, you will receive all blessings as if it had been true, because you believed it to be true."

"If one over the age of seven takes a prepubescent wife of less than seven and transfers her to his house, such a contract gives rise to the impediment of public propriety."

"Not with violence, but with words."

"Kindness of speech, in word, in advising conquers everything and all."

"If young people are educated properly, we have moral order; if not, vice and disorder prevail. Religion alone can initiate and achieve a true education."

"I'll wait for all my young people in heaven."

"Be cheerful, do good, and let the sparrows chirp."

"With the works of charity we closed the doors of hell and open ourselves to the sky."

"Those who pray take care of the most important of all."

"Serve the Lord joyfully! [Servite Domino in laetitia!]"

"Great art, for those who insist upon this rather philistine concept (as if un-great art were unworthy of even their most casual and ill-informed attention), makes us stand back and admire. It rushes upon us pell-mell like the work of Rubens or Tintoretto or Delacroix, or towers above us. There is of course another aesthetic: the art of a Vermeer or a Braque seeks not to amaze and appal but to invite the observer to come closer, to close with the painting, peer into it, become intimate with it. Such art reinforces human dignity."

"Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject. ... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause."

"In that Renaissance (Cellini, Tintoretto, Titian..) there was an explosion of unique truthfulness, a love of painting and form.. ..Then come the Jesuits and everything is formal; everything has to be taught and learned. It required a revolution for nature to be rediscovered; for Delacroix to paint his beach at Etratat, Corot his roman rubble, Courbet his forest scenes and his waves. And how miserable slow that revolution was, how many stages it had to go through!.. ..These artists had not yet discovered that nature has more to do with depth than with surfaces. I can tell you, you can do things to the surface.. ..but by going deep you automatically go to the truth. You feel a healthy need to be truthful. You’d rather strip your canvas right down than invent or imagine a detail. You want to know."

"Invadat animum sacra quaedam ambitio ut mediocribus non contenti anhelemus ad summa, adque illa (quando possumus si volumus) consequenda totis viribus enitamur."

"O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simul atque nascuntur id secum afferunt (ut ait Lucilius) e bulga matris quod possessura sunt. Supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt, quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia planta fiet, si sensualia obrutescet, si rationalia caeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria Patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit."

"Nec potest ex omnibus sibi recte propriam selegisse, qui omnes prius familiariter non agnoverit. Adde quod in una quaque familia est aliquid insigne, quod non sit ei commune cum caeteris."