ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Neither Holy Scripture nor the Church’s Tradition of faith asserts with certainty of any man that he is actually in hell. Hell is always held before our eyes as a real possibility, one connected with the offer of conversion and life. The Church’s Confession of Faith: A Catholic Catechism For Adults  

In the Trinity, the ultimate depths of the real and the whole mystery of existence are revealed to us. The Trinity is the principal and the origin of creation and redemption. Ultimately all things are borne back to it in the mystery of worship and adoration. Above all else, it is what gives substance to all things: everything else flows from it or tends toward it. In the light of the Trinity, we discover our true selves. For the essential conversion is the one that leads us from the visible world with its external temptations to the invisible world which is at once supremely real, since it constitutes the ultimate basis of all reality, and supremely holy and admirable, since it is the source of all bliss and all joy. JEAN DANIELOU, SJ God’s Life In Us

If only we really knew Jesus we would not be so concerned with putting on a good show and of how others see us. Instead of concealing our insecurities, fears, secret failings even from ourselves, we would accept the reality that we are, tranquil in the certainty that our Lord looks on us with infinite compassion and love. RUTH BURROWS, OCD Love Unknown

This is what often hinders souls of good will from making progress in prayer. In the morning, they make their prayer well, they receive Our Lord in Holy Communion and are very united to him; then they leave the choir, they go for breakfast, they take up their work; they cast a little glance here, they say a word there, and they lose their recollection. And thus during the whole day, they advance and they fall back. You must accustom yourself to make a little sanctuary in your heart where you will always find Our Lord even in the midst of occupations and distractions; and then as soon as you are alone, as soon as you have a few minutes a fire shall flame out. BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION  

By meditation I penetrate the innermost ground of my life, seek the full understanding of God's will for me, of God's mercy to me, of my absolute dependence upon Him. But this penetration must be authentic. It must be something genuinely lived by me. THOMAS MERTON  

Prayer is offered to a person in two ways: first, as to be fulfilled by him, secondly, as to be obtained through him. On the first way we offer prayer to God alone, since all our prayers ought to be directed to the acquisition of grace and glory, which God alone gives…. But in the second way we pray to the saints, whether angels or men, not that God may through them know our petitions, but that our prayers may be effective through their prayers and merits. Hence it is written that "the smoke of the incense”—namely, "the prayers of the saints”—"rose before God." This is also clear from the very style employed by the church in praying: since we beseech the blessed Trinity "to have mercy on us," while we ask any of the saints "to pray for us.” ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Summa Theologiae  

Science alone cannot discover Christ. But Christ satisfies the yearnings that are born in our hearts in the school of science… Science will, in all probability, be increasingly impregnated by mysticism. PIERRE   TEILHARD DE CHARDIN My Universe, 1924, IX, 83