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