The contemplative life becomes awfully thin and drab if you go for several days at a time without thinking explicitly of the Passion of Christ. I do not mean, necessarily, meditating, but at least attending with love and humility to Christ on the Cross. For his Cross is the source of all of our life and without it prayer dries up and everything goes dead.
THOMAS MERTON The Sign of Jonas
The eye of the heart must be healed, and all impurities within it cleaned out, if we are to see God. As God humbled himself by becoming flesh in the Incarnation, we must humble ourselves making ourselves available to God, by stripping away the distractions that obstruct us from loving him. In the Incarnation, Jesus Christ shared in the experience of being human, uniting the human and Divine, so that we might return to God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
During the time immediately before and quite sometime after my conversion I thought that leading a religious life meant giving up all earthly things and having one's mind fixed on divine things only. Gradually, however, I learned that other things are expected of us in this world. I even believe that the deeper someone is drawn to God, the more he has to "get beyond himself" in this sense, that is, go into the world and carry divine life into it.
ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS The Hidden Life: Collected Works of Edith Stein
Be careful! Don't make your religion consist only of theoretical things. If a religion is lacking in works, it won't get you into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord has already said it: it is not the one who says Lord, Lord, the one who prays a great deal with beautiful prayers, who will enter the kingdom of heaven. It is rather the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. This is the true religion: not just remaining pure, but visiting widows and orphans. This is a biblical expression that means to concern yourself with those in need.
ST. OSCAR ROMERO Through The Year With Oscar Romero
If only we realized how we complicate life, when in reality it is so simple. All our troubles come from this: that we do not know how to seek God where He is. We seek him far away, and all the while He is quite close to us. In Him we live, and move and have our being. This is true from the natural point of view, but above all from the supernatural. God is the soul of our soul: that is, the Principal that gives it life. It is there that we must seek Him, and it is there we shall find him ‘without end’.
A CARTHUSIAN They Speak By Silences
To give oneself to God, recklessly forgetful of self, not to take account of one's own individual life to allow full room for divine life, this is the profound motive, the principle, and the end of religious life. The more perfectly it is carried out, so much the richer is the divine life that fills the soul.
ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS Thoughts of Edith Stein
God and humanity are like two lovers who have missed their rendezvous. Each is there before the time, but each at a different place, and they wait and wait and wait. He stands motionless, nailed to the spot for the whole time…. The crucifixion of Christ is the image of this fixity of God.
SIMONE WEIL The Simone Weil Reader