Saints

"If the excrement of an elephant should be smeared on skin in which lice appear and left until it dries upon the skin, the lice will not remain on it but will depart immediately. If the fat of an elephant is smeared with it, it is said to cure the pain of one who suffers a headache; it is even said that if an ounce of elephant bone is drunk with ten ounces of wild mountain mint from something which a leper first touched, it does the most for a headache."

"Every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication, whenever such as these are delinquent let them be subjected to severe fasts or brought to terms by harsh beatings, that they may be cured."

"Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ (Matt 16:24; Luke 9:23); discipline your body (1 Cor 9:27); do not pamper yourself, but love fasting. You must relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick (Matt 25:36), and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing. Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else."

"There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence."

"Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience."

"Ignatius, for understandable reasons, is the saint I know better than any other. He founded our Order. … Jesuits were and still are the leavening — not the only one but perhaps the most effective — of Catholicism: culture, teaching, missionary work, loyalty to the Pope. But Ignatius who founded the Society, was also a reformer and a mystic. Especially a mystic. … They have been fundamental. A religion without mystics is a philosophy. … I love the mystics; Francis also was in many aspects of his life, but I do not think I have the vocation and then we must understand the deep meaning of that word. The mystic manages to strip himself of action, of facts, objectives and even the pastoral mission and rises until he reaches communion with the Beatitudes. Brief moments but which fill an entire life."

"Exitus acta probat."

"For those who believe, no words are necessary. For those who do not believe, no words are possible."

"Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man."

"Protestant success, at first amazingly rapid, was checked mainly as a resultant of Loyola's creation of the Jesuit order."

"He said it himself, he sinned long and hard, to quote Luther; his conversion was total, his expiation very long, accompanied by a love of life and works, including the foundation of a Company that after 400 years is still one of the pillars of our Church."

"Out of this crucible of trial, self-examination, and anguished yearning for peace and light there emerged in Iñigo de Loyola that balance of spirit and matter, of mind and body, of mystical contemplation and pragmatic action that has ever since been recognized as typically and specifically "Ignatian," as distinct from the spirituality of, say, St. Benedict or St. Dominic or St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila."

"[Friends of order] are often heard to say that the Jesuits must be reestablished. Without disputing the merits of this order, one must say that this suggestion for their reestablishment indicates a lack of deep reflection. Do they mean that St Ignatius is at hand ready to serve our purposes? If the order were destroyed, perhaps it could be reestablished by some lay brother with the same inspiration that created it originally, but all the sovereigns in the world would never succeed."

"We should always be prepared so as never to err to believe that what I see as white is black, if the hierarchical Church defines it thus."

"The enemy is like a woman, weak in face of opposition, but correspondingly strong when not opposed. In a quarrel with a man, it is natural for a woman to lose heart and run away when he faces up to her; on the other hand, if the man begins to be afraid and to give ground, her rage, vindictiveness and fury overflow and know no limit."

"Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to despatch them into different cities till the whole world is covered, forgetting no province or locality, no class or single individual."

"The picture. A great plain, comprising the entire Jerusalem district, where is the supreme Commander-in-Chief of the forces of good, Christ our Lord: another plain near Babylon, where Lucifer is, at the head of the enemy."

"The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness. So the best way seems to be to scourge oneself with thin cords which hurt superficially, rather than to use some other means which might produce serious internal injury."

"Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison."

"Up to his twenty-sixth year the heart of Ignatius was enthralled by the vanities of the world. His special delight was in the military life, and he seemed led by a strong and empty desire of gaining for himself a great name."

"Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, All I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me."

"I have studied at Barcelona, at Salamanca, at Alcala, at Paris; what have I learned? The language of doubt; but in me there was no harbor for doubt. Jesus came, and my trust in God has grown by the doubts of men."

"One of my favorite phrases that brings me great comfort: We are not on earth as museum keepers, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life and to prepare a glorious future. The Pope is dead. Long live the Pope!"

"From the saints I must take the substance, not the accidents of their virtues. I am not St. Aloysius, nor must I seek holiness in his particular way, but according to the requirements of my own nature, my own character and the different conditions of my life. I must not be the dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, however perfect. God desires us to follow the examples of the saints by absorbing the vital sap of their virtues and turning it into our own life-blood, adapting it to our own individual capacities and particular circumstances. If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become holy in a different way."

"It is with great pleasure that I have learned of your election as Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. I join with other Americans in extending my congratulations on your elevation to this high office. My best wishes for the success of your endeavors are, I am certain, shared by men of good will everywhere."

"[In Pope John XXIII] the novelty did not concern doctrine, but rather the way of expounding it and perhaps sometimes interpreting it, without ever betraying or modifying it. And of applying it to concrete situations. It then concerned, so to speak, the style, in speaking and acting, both inside and outside the Church: a greater readiness to understand the ‘other’; a charge of ‘sympathy’ in endeavouring to evaluate the mentality or attitudes of even those furthest away; an ability to be aware of their objective difficulties and the art of knowing how to create a climate of trust, despite the distance, or even the head-on opposition of reciprocal positions; the care not to offend people while telling the truth."

"When he was cardinal and patriarch of Venice, the future pope was talking with a wealthy city resident and told him, "You and I have one thing in common: money. You have a lot and I have nothing at all. The difference is I don't care about it.""

"It is difficult to realize that three years have elapsed since Your Holiness announced that you planned to convene an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church--the first in almost a hundred years. During these three fateful years, millions of my fellow citizens in the United States, including many who do not belong to the Catholic Church, have followed with lively and sympathetic interest the work of the various preparatory Commissions appointed by Your Holiness to draw up the agenda for this extraordinarily important Council. They have also read, with particular interest and with genuine admiration for your all-embracing concern for the welfare of humanity, the several inspiring statements issued by Your Holiness on the background and purposes of the Council."

"Not long after he was elected pope, John was walking in the streets of Rome. A woman passed him and said to her friend, "My God, he's so fat!" Overhearing what she said, he turned around and replied, "Madame, I trust you understand that the papal conclave is not exactly a beauty contest.""

"When a cardinal complained that a rise in Vatican salaries meant a particular usher earned as much as the cardinal, the pope remarked: "That usher has 10 children; I hope the cardinal doesn't.""

"Visiting a hospital he asked a boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. The boy said either a policeman or a pope. "I would go in for the police if I were you," the Holy Father said. "Anyone can become a pope, look at me!""

"John XXIII, when asked "How many people work in the Vatican?" replied, "Probably about half"."

"[Pacem esse] dicimus in veritate positam, ad iustitiae praecepta constitutam, caritate altam et expletam, libertate postremo auspice effectam."

"Catherine of Siena was only six years old when Jesus appeared to her dressed majestically as the Supreme Pontiff, with three crowns on his head and a red cloak, flanked by St. Peter, St. John, and St. Paul. She devoted herself to serving the Church and, in particular, the clergy and the Pope."

"The path to heaven lies through heaven, and all the way to heaven is heaven."

"If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only yonder. (Letter 368 to Stefano Maconi)"

"They are not Angles, but angels."

"Gregory is in a very real sense the last of the Romans. His tone of command, while justified by his office, has its instinctive basis in Roman aristocratic pride."

"Gregory's letters are extraordinarily interesting, not only as showing his character, but as giving a picture of his age. His tone, except to the emperor and the ladies of the Byzantine court, is that of a head master-sometimes commending, often reproving, never showing the faintest hesitation as to his right to give orders."

"The early Christians also extolled torture as just deserts for the sinful. Most people have heard of the seven deadly sins, standardized by Pope Gregory I in 590 CE. Fewer people know about the punishment in hell that was reserved for those who commit them: "Pride: Broken on the wheel. Envy: Put in freezing water. Gluttony: Force-fed rats, toads, and snakes. Lust: Smothered in fire and brimstone. Anger: Dismembered alive. Greed: Put in cauldrons of boiling oil. Sloth: Thrown in snake pits." The duration of these sentences, of course, was infinite. By sanctifying cruelty, early Christianity set a precedent for more than a millennium of systematic torture in Christian Europe. If you understand the expressions to burn at the stake, to hold his feet to the fire, to break a butterfly on the wheel, to be racked with pain, to be drawn and quartered, to disembowel, to flay, to press, the thumbscrew, the garrote, a slow burn, and the iron maiden (a hollow hinged statue lined with nails, later taken as the name of a heavy-metal rock band), you are familiar with a fraction of the ways that heretics were brutalized during the Middle Ages and early modern period."

"Those who do not speak the words of God with humility must be advised that when they apply medicine to the sick, they must first inspect the poison of their own infection, or else by attempting to heal others, they kill themselves."

"Moreover, because the slothful mind is typically brought to its downfall gradually, when we fail to control our speech, we move on to more harsh words. Thus, at first, we are happy to speak of others kindly; afterwards, we begin to pick at the lives of those of whom we speak, and finally our tongues break into open slander against them."

"And let the fear and dread of you be upon all of the animals of the earth.” Clearly, fear and dread were prescribed for the animals, but evidently it was forbidden among humans. By nature a human is superior to a brute animal, but not other humans."

"No one does more harm in the Church than he who has the title or rank of holiness and acts perversely."

"Non Angli, sed angeli."

"In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt."

"The bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they were able to look across the abyss and enjoy the agonies of their brethren in eternal fire."

"There are some so restless that when they are free from labour they labour all the more, because the more leisure they they have for thought, the worse interior turmoil they have to bear."

"Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulchra nostra cognoscimus."

"You desire a preservation of the liberties; it is good, but for God's sake do not spend so much time that a foreign enemy may hazard both liberties and prerogative... Therefore go on without distrust. I must tell you so, and it is for you to believe me that sit at the helm."