As the Eye Needs Light…

To see visible objects we need the eyes of the body. To understand intelligible truths we need the eyes of the mind. To have the vision of divine things we cannot do without faith. What the eye is for the body, faith is for reason. To be more precise; the eye needs the light which puts it in contact with visible things; reason needs faith to show it divine things.

THEODORET The Cure of Pagan Diseases 

Living to Eat?

Some people live to eat, just as the animals do ‘whose life is no more than feeding their stomachs’. But our Teacher exhorts us to eat in order to live. Nourishment is not what we are here for, nor is pleasure our purpose in life. We only use them during our sojourning here as the Word instructs us, and he chooses our nourishment with immortality in view.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA The Teacher

By Your Endurance

If our Savior himself has declared: “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” should it not be a man's great happiness to possess his soul? The more perfect our patience, the more absolutely do we possess it. Let us frequently call to mind that as our Lord has saved us by patient suffering, so we also ought to work out our salvation by sufferings and afflictions; enduring injuries and contradictions with all possible meekness.

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

Mildness

Many appear full of mildness and sweetness as long as everything goes their own way; but the moment any contradiction or adversity arises, they are in a flame, and begin to rage like a burning mountain. Such people as these are like red-hot coals hidden under ashes. This is not the mildness which Our Lord undertook to teach us in order to make us like unto Himself.

ST. BERNARD

Human Reason

Human reason is very deficient in things concerning God. A sign of this is that philosophers in their researches, by natural investigation into human affairs, have fallen into many errors, and have disagreed among themselves.... It was necessary for Divine matters to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them, as it were, by God Himself who cannot deceive.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Who is the Holiest?

It is not those who commit the least faults who are the most holy, but those who have the greatest courage, the greatest generosity, the greatest love, who make the boldest efforts to overcome themselves, and are not immoderately apprehensive of tripping.

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

Hammer or Anvil?

A person who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either rule them, or be ruled by them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

ST. DOMINIC