ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. ST. TERESA OF JESUS 

It is possible to be aware of the full dimensions of sin and imperfections only to the degree that one overcomes them or, rather, to the degree that one is delivered from them. It is not the sinner who knows the most about sin; it is the saint. It is the hero who has the greatest appreciation of what mediocrity really is, not the person who is himself mediocre. What we must become is only progressively revealed to us; as that occurs we will be ashamed of having believed that we already had the Christian spirit. YVES DE MONTCHEUIL, SJ

Be agents of communion, capable of breaking down the logic of division and polarization, of individualism and egocentrism. Center yourselves on Christ, so as to overcome the logic of the world, of fake news, of frivolity, with the beauty and light of truth.   POPE LEO XIV Address to Catholic digital missionaries and influencers, 7/29/25

“No one can say that ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” These words of St. Paul, simple as they are, open up a whole perspective on God’s plan of loving kindness for us. The whole purpose of Pentecost is to fully reveal what God has planned for us from all eternity, namely, to become sharers in the divine nature; to realize the profound mystery hidden in the proclamation that Jesus is Lord; and to live in the same Spirit as the Father and the Son.   Jesus is Lord! These are the words that the Father wants on the lips of all his children. They are a confession of faith in the great love that the Father has for us by sparing not even his own Son for our sake. At times we can forget just how alienated our human race is from God. It began with the disobedience of our first parents in paradise and has spread to the ends of the earth. But our Father is well aware of this alienation and our rejection of his plan. But precisely to overcome this alienation – and only God could o...

Let us approach it with burning desire and with our hands folded in the form of a cross let us receive the body of the Crucified, and applying our eyes and lips and forehead let us partake of the divine coal, so that the fire of the desire within us might receive the heat of the coal and burn up our sins and illuminate our hearts so that by partaking of the divine fire we might be set on fire and deified. JOHN OF DAMASCUS On the Orthodox Faith: Vol. 3 of the Fount of Knowledge

You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea: the more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you. You are insatiable, you in whose depth the soul is sated yet remains always hungry for you, thirsty for you, eternal Trinity, longing to see you with the light in your light. ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA The Dialogue

The goal of Eucharistic communion is a total recasting of a person's life, breaking up a man's whole ‘I’ and creating a new ‘We”. JOSEPH RATZINGER Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to Spiritual Christology

Spiritual awareness teaches us that the soul has only one natural sense… shattered in consequence of Adam’s disobedience. But it is restored to unity by the Holy Spirit… In those who are detached from the lusts of life, the spirit, because it is thus freed, acquires it's full vigor, and can experience in an ineffable manner the divine fullness. It then imparts its joy to the body itself… “In him,” says the psalmist, “my flesh has blossomed afresh’. DIADOCHUS OF PHOTIKE  Gnostic Chapters, 25

    I n the Acts of the Apostles St. Luke describes the departure of St. Paul from Ephesus after Paul had spent some years there as a very sad farewell from the Christian community who gather on the shore to hug and kiss St. Paul and to cry and lament that they will probably never see him again.    Yet, w hen St. Luke writes in his gospel about the definitive departure of Jesus into the heavenly real m , he describes the disciples as returning afterward to Jerusalem filled “with great joy.”     How could this be ?     In a general audience in 2013, Pope Francis asked and answered this question . He said, (quote) “Precisely because , with the gaze of faith they understand that although he has been removed from their sight, Jesus stays with them forever. He does not abandon them and in th e glory of the Father supports them, g uides them and intercedes for them .” ( unquote) Today’s gospel of Matthew affirms thi...

When a tool controls someone, that person becomes a tool: a commodity on the market and, in turn, a piece of merchandise. Only genuine relationships and stable connections can build good lives. POPE LEO XIV   Jubilee of Youth, August 2, 2025

To know how to display our miseries before God is to draw down grace; never forget that. If a soul, even one far advanced in virtue, ceased to regard her own misery and to take complacency in the gifts she has received, she would infallibly fall. For you, my dear child, learn to say with Saint Paul, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION Union With God

It is better to keep silent and to be, rather than to speak but not to be. One who truly possesses Christ's words can also hear his silence in order to be perfect… nothing is hidden from the Lord but our very secrets are close to him. Let us do everything in him who dwells in us so that we may become his temples. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH Epistle to the Ephesians, 15

Continue to pray as you feel drawn, but do not worry about it, for worry comes from self-love. You must abandon yourself to the leading of God with no other intention than that of pleasing him, and when you know that you have this intention deep in your heart, you must not waste time and reflecting about yourself and about the degree of virtue you have attained; occupy yourself with him whom you love and bother very little about yourself. ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Letter 135

Reading one and the same word of Scripture, one person is nourished by history only, another looks for the typical meaning, another by means of this same meaning reaches towards the contemplative meaning. Most often, these three dimensions are found there at the same time… In this way the words of God advance at the pace of the reader. GREGORY THE GREAT Homilies on Ezekiel, I

No one can see God and live. It is true: I saw him and died. Nothing could again satisfy me except that interior wilderness where life is simply God to me and I to God. SR. MAUREEN McCABE, OCSO I Am the Way