Franciscans

"Faith! Have Faith! God is both doctor and medicine."

"Nascondiamo tutto, anche quello che può avere apparenza di dono di Dio, affinché non se ne faccia mercato. A Dio solo l'onore e la gloria! Se fosse possibile, noi dovremmo passare sulla terra come un'ombra che non lascia traccia di sé."

"Be at peace; place everything on my shoulders. I will take care of it. I give my penitents only small penances because I do the rest myself."

"To me it is really beautiful and it really expresses the catholicity of the Church, that the people have embraced the faith as something that is truly theirs, something that is truly meaningful to them. They don't look upon it as something foreign, as something coming from the outside."

"The Catholic Church, and our Catholic faith, is the answer to this darkness and bringing people into relationship with Jesus and teaching the dignity of the human person are the best ways of changing people’s attitudes and changing their behavior"

"I would tell Catholics in the West and in the world: Show them your fraternal attention and pray to God for their intentions; finally, contact and bond with them as much as possible."

"It is time to face conflicts with courage and transparency. Only through authentic encounter with the other can the spark of fraternity emerge in our common home, which God, made love, has entrusted to us. by walking together, despite our differences, we can be true witnesses of peace. Let us not limit ourselves to dreaming about it: let us build it with concrete actions of reconciliation and unity."

"وقال رئيس أساقفة طهران للاتين الكاردينال دومينيك ماتيو عبر "آسي مينا": "لتتوقف الأسلحة، ولتَعِش القلوب بسلامٍ وعدالةٍ وطمأنينة، وفق ما يريد اللهلأبنائه". (Let the weapons stop, and let hearts live in peace, justice and tranquility, as God wants for his children.)"

"We also represent this pilgrim Church, which is made up of different people and which brings us all together. Along the way, we have the most diverse experiences: joy, suffering, beauty, hospitality and poverty. All this pushes us towards the most important quest of all: that of our mission as individuals and in our communities. Here, the Lord brings us closer to different communities in Kazakhstan, which are a tangible sign of his presence."

"There are always differences that can be brought to the fore and provide reasons for disagreement. But it seems to me there's nothing insurmountable now – no sharp conflicts and confrontations, thank God."

"It concerns not only the Catholic Church but all believing citizens (and even non-believers), adhering to any religious denomination present in the United States, because this governmental action could make it clear that, with the pretext of the implementation of legislation of social and health interest, it can act at any moment against the religious liberty of any citizen."

"It is obvious that wise, strong and prophetic moral leadership is needed in Papua New Guinea in order to bring hope to a people that has lost its way in many areas of life. Parish priests, especially indigenous Papua New Guinea priests, motivated by a genuine and humble love for their flock, true and dedicated pastoral charity, should provide such leadership for the people entrusted to them by their bishop."

"Many of the Dioceses of Papua have been gifted with an old evangelization: the Christian population has grown and has received an excellent education. Today, in the new social and cultural context, opportunities to transmit the faith have decreased and new roads and new ways to bring the Gospel to children, youth and families are needed."

"If the purpose is not carried out, Jesus is conceived but not born."

"Maria is the only one who believed "in the contemporary situation", that is, while it was happening, before any confirmation or validation by events and history."

"From the investigation into Jesus, one gets the impression that it sometimes turns into gossip about Jesus. However, there is an explanation for this phenomenon. There has always been a tendency to dress Christ in the clothes of one's own era or ideology. In the past, however questionable, these were serious and far-reaching causes: the idealistic, socialist, revolutionary Christ... Our age, obsessed with sex, cannot conceive of him as anything other than grappling with emotional problems. I believe that combining an avowedly alternative journalistic vision with a historical vision that is also radical and minimalist has led to an overall result that is unacceptable, not only for people of faith, but also for historians. Upon finishing the book, one asks oneself: how did Jesus, who brought absolutely nothing new to Judaism, who did not want to found any religion, who performed no miracles and did not rise from the dead except in the altered minds of his followers, how did he, I repeat, become "the man who changed the world"?"

"“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus said at the Last Supper (John 15:13). […] The word “friends” in the active sense indicates those who love you, but in the passive sense it indicates those whom you love. Jesus calls Judas “friend” (Matthew 26:50), not because Judas loved him, but because he loved Judas! There is no greater love than giving one's life for one's enemies while considering them friends; this is what Jesus meant by his statement. People can be—or act as though they are—enemies of God, but God will never be the enemy of any human being. That is the terrible advantage children have over their fathers and mothers."

"There is a “diaspora,” a dispersion, even within ourselves. If Jesus were to ask me, as He did that poor demoniac in the Gospel: “What is your name?” I too would have to reply: “My name is legion, for there are many of us” (Mk 5:9). There are as many of us as there are desires, plans and regrets which we harbor, each one different from and contrary to others which pull us in opposite directions. They literally distract us, drag us apart. Virginity is a powerful aid to progress toward interior unity, in virtue of the fact that it enables us to live united to the Lord, and able to devote ourselves to Him “without distractions.”"

"...Though His Passion sufficed for all, yet all would not profit from it, for some would be reprobate, hard-hearted, and impenitent."

"For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God."

"The virtue of gratitude is extremely commendable and pleasing in the sight of God, as its opposite is a detestable vice before him. Of which subject, thus speaks St. Bernard: Learn to be thankful for every grace received. Consider diligently the favors heaped upon you, that no gift of God be defrauded of the due return of gratitude and thanksgiving you ought to make, whether the gift be great, middling, or little."

"But the soul cannot have any virtue if God is not loved with all the heart; for from that love flows the fulness of all grace, and without it no grace can flow into the soul, nor can it abide in it."

"Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom."

"He would confidently affirm that the grace of prayerfulness should be more desired than all others by the religious man, and, believing that without it no good could be wrought in the service of God, he would stir up his Brethren unto zeal therefore by all means that he could. For, whether walking or sitting, within doors or without, in toil or at leisure, he was so absorbed in prayer as that he seemed to have devoted thereunto not only his whole heart and body, but also his whole labor and time."

"Though a superior is rather to be loved, yet by the insolent he ought to be feared."

"Contemplation deepens the more we feel the working of God’s grace within our hearts, and the better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves."

"Christ’s death on the Cross should live in our thoughts and imagination, for frequent thought on the Passion of Christ keeps aflame and brings to intense heat the fires of earnest piety."

"It will avail a man little to have been a religious, to have been patient and humble, devout and chaste, to have loved God and to have exercised himself in all the virtues, if he continues not to the end. He must persevere to win the crown. In the race of the spiritual life all the virtues run, but only perseverance “receives the prize” (1 Cor. 9:24.) It is not the beginner in virtue but “he that shall persevere unto the end that shall be saved” (Matt 10: 22.) “What is the use of seeds sprouting if afterwards they wither and die?” None whatever!"

"The world is like a book in which the creative Trinity shines, manifests itself in sensible forms and is read."

"The Life of Christ translated and edited by William Henry Hutchings, 1881."

"The Journey of the Mind into God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993."

"Life of St Francis of Assisi, TAN Books, 2010."

"It happens that they put on a heathen and abominable dance or fiesta; if the Christian who is present refuses to participate in that vile diversion, they mock him and laugh at him and persecute him until he gives in."

"It is evident that a nation (Referring to native Californians) that is barbarous, ferocious, and ignorant requires more frequent punishment than a nation which is cultured, educated, and of gentle and moderate."

"On one of these occasions to some of those greedy people (Native Californians) who requested permission to go to the woods (To hunt for food) I answered with certain annoyance: "Well, you make me realize that now that, although you were given a steer, a mutton, and a fanega of grain every day, you would, despite all this, long for your woods and your shores." Then the keenest-witted Indian of those who had heard me replied, somewhat shamefacedly, "It is so Father, as you say, it is so.""

"There had been implanted along through the ages germs of another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of an evolution of the universe out of the primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out of the earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the neighbors and pupils of the Chaldeans—the Hebrews; but its growth in Christendom afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find, by the more powerful influence of other inherited statements which appealed more intelligibly to the mind of the Church...In the minds of Ionians like Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first of these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of processes of evolution, and the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning, and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development recognized in modern science. ...Aristotle sometimes developed it in a manner which reminds us of modern views. ...Lucretius caught much from it extending the evolutionary process virtually to all things. ...Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of this ancient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe. ...In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano Bruno... but with his murder by the Inquisition at Rome this idea seemed utterly to disappear."

"loquimur de materia "circa quam" est scientia, quae dicitur a quibusdam subiectum scientiae, uel magis proprie obiectum, sicut et illud circa quod est uirtus dicitur obiectum uirtutis proprie, non subiectum. De isto autem obiecto huius scientiae ostensum est prius quod haec scientia est circa transcendentia; ostensum est autem quod est circa altissimas causas. Quod autem istorum debeat poni proprium eius obiectum, uariae sunt opiniones. Ideo de hoc quaeritur primo utrum proprium subiectum metaphysicae sit ens in quantum ens (sicut posuit Auicenna) uel Deus et Intelligentiae (sicut posuit Commentator Auerroes.)"

"I say that some things can be said to belong to the law of nature in two ways: One way is as first practical principles known from their terms or as conclusions necessarily entailed by them. These are said to belong to the natural law in the strictest sense, and there can be no dispensation in their regard... But this is not the case when we speak in general of all the precepts of the second table. For the reasons behind the commands and prohibitions there are not practical principles that are necessary in an unqualified sense, nor are they simply necessary conclusions from such. For they contain no goodness such as is necessarily prescribed for attaining the goodness of the ultimate end, nor in what is forbidden is there such malice as would turn one away necessarily from the last end, for even if the good found in these [precepts] were not commanded, the ultimate end could still be loved and attained, whereas if the evil proscribed by them were not forbidden, it would still be consistent with the acquisition of the ultimate end."

"sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia". Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis."

"He has not lived in vain who learns to be unruffled by loss, by gain, by, joy, by pain."

"If thou dost love a Something, Man, Thou lovest naught that doth abide. God is not This nor That—do thou Leave Somethings utterly aside"

"The Cross on Golgotha Thou lookest to in vain, Unless within thine heart It be set up again"

"Though Christ a thousand times in Bethleham be born And not within thyself, Thy soul will be forlorn"

"The World doth not imprison thee. Thou art thyself the World, and there, Within thyself, thou hold'st thyself Thy self-imprisoned Prisoner."

"The Wise Man is that which he hath. The precious Pearl of Paradise Wouldst thou not lose, then must thou be Thyself that Pearl of greatest price."

"Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem A thousand times his Mother bore, Is he not born again in thee Then art thou lost for evermore."

"Travel within thyself! The Stone Philosophers with wisest arts Have vainly sought, cannot be found By travelling in foreign parts."

"All Heaven is within thee, Man, And all of Hell within thy heart: What thou dost choose and will to have, That hast thou wheresoe'er thou art."

"Ah, were men's voices like the wood-birds' melody— Each happy note distinct, but all in harmony!"

"Naught ever can be known in God: One and Alone Is He. To know Him, Knower must be one with Known."