Windows Toward the World

“We are constantly surrounded by advertising in a growing variety of forms. Ads creep into nearly everything we do. And this ramps up even more during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent invites us to take a break from the deluge of ads and seek something deeper and more lasting than the latest electronics or the best deal on that kitchen appliance that everyone needs this year. Advent invites us to seek a sense of peace and wholeness in our hearts and in our daily lives. If we do that even in small ways this year, we will have an immeasurable gift to share with our loved ones and possibly even with our world.”

—from the book Simple Gifts: Daily Reflections for Advent

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“Be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given to us in this world by God for the salvation of the soul. So they are of great merit when they are borne patiently.”

— St. Francis of Assisi

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“Your Lord is seated at the Father’s right hand in heaven. How then is the bread His body? And the chalice, or rather its content, how is it His Blood? These elements are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is perceived by the sense and another thing by the mind. What is seen has a bodily appearance; what the mind perceives produces spiritual fruit. You hear the words, ‘The Body of Christ’, and you answer ‘Amen.’”

— Saint Augustine

“Transitions are tender seasons, not unlike the nine months when a woman gestates a seed prior to the birth of a child. New awareness can be fragile, and our old ways of being have the strength and energy of long-lived habits to give them considerable momentum and power. As the image of being attentive to a seed implies, you have to become more watchful. Care needs to be exercised. Fresh insights and new awareness have not yet been tested outside of your own heart, nor subjected to the gaze of others. It takes practice.”

—from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds As Light

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“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.”

— St. Francis de Sales

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“The experience of the Church and the saints demonstrates a general law: what comes from the Spirit of God brings with it joy, peace, tranquility of spirit, gentleness, simplicity, and light. On the other hand, what comes from the spirit of evil brings sadness, trouble, agitation, worry, confusion, and darkness. These marks of the good and the evil spirit are unmistakable signs in themselves.”

— Fr. Jacques Philippe, In the School of the Holy Spirit

“Advent is far more than just preparation for Christmas. It has beauty and inspiration in its own right. It’s a fresh start, an invitation to enter into the silence and the mystery of whatever is waiting to be born or reborn in our lives. Paradoxically it’s an invitation to slow down, to come away to the quiet, at the very time our daily lives are immersed in activity—shopping, parties, baking, cleaning. It’s a reminder that the promise of Christ is “already but not yet.”

—from the book Simple Gifts: Daily Reflections for Advent

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“The adorable Heart of Jesus is our comfort, our way, our life.”

— St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

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“Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals who have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, ‘I am too great a sinner to change,’ or ‘God would not want me.’ God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a ‘passionless passion,’ a ‘wild tranquility’. A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more than someone on dry land can swim; but as soon as a person takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done that keep one from God; it is present persistence in that wrong. Someone who turns back to God, as the Magdalene and Paul, welcomes the discipline that will enable him to change his former tendencies. Mortification is good, but only when it is done out of love of God. … Mortifications of the right sort perfect our human nature; the gardener cuts the green shoots from the root of the bush, not to kill the rose, but to make it bloom more beautifully.”

— Venerable Fulton Sheen

“Advent begins quietly, with the lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath. As the days grow shorter in the northern hemisphere, we move to a place of increasing light both indoors and in our hearts. Instead of adding more things to do and and more challenges to meet in an already busy time, Advent calls us to rest, to step back, to learn to appreciate the small events and simple gifts that flow through our days.”

—from the book Simple Gifts: Daily Reflections for Advent

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“Be a Catholic: When you kneel before an altar, do it in such a way that others may be able to recognize that you know before whom you kneel.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe

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“‘As God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk.’ No one can do better with his life than that; no one can put it to a better use. Any life must be perfect in proportion as it does what it was made to do. There are many lives that are brilliant failures; they strive after many things that they were never intended to do and fail in that one thing. It seems strange that a reasonable being should never ask himself why he was put upon earth, or that it should not occur to him that the reason must be found in the will of his Creator …  At the end of the day of our earthly life, we have to answer to our Maker whether we have been employed about our own work or about His, whether we have even made an effort to find out what He would have us do. A life that is inspired by such a motive is sure to be a success, for of this we may be absolutely certain: that each of us can fulfill in our life that for which we were created. We cannot be sure that we have the gifts needed for any other purpose … For God, in creating us, equipped us for the work for which He created us. We have every gift of nature and of grace, of mind and body that is needed for this work.”

— Fr. Basil Maturin, Spiritual Guidelines for Souls Seeking God

“We know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life. We know that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty.”

— St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

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“Christ Himself taught humility of heart, and the heart must not remain idle, nor fail to product the necessary acts. And what acts of humility do you make before God? How often do you make them? When have you made them? How long is it since you made them? It would be absurd to hope for the reward which is promised to the humble without being humble, or at least making acts of humility; humility of heart without the heart’s humbling itself—what folly! Are you foolish enough to believe that this can be done? … it is necessary to humble ourselves when we approach God with prayer to obtain some grace, because God does not regard nor heed nor impart His grace except to the humble … When, therefore, you come to ask God for some grace of the body or of the soul, do you always remember to practice this humility? When we pray, and especially when we say the ‘Our Father’, we are speaking to God; and how many times when you are saying your prayers, do you speak to God with less respect than if you were speaking to one of your fellow creatures? How often when you are in church, which is the house of God, do you listen to a sermon, which is the Word of God, and assist at the functions of the service without any reverence? Humility of heart, says St. Thomas, is accompanied by exterior reverence; and to be lacking in this is to lack humility and is therefore a sin of pride, ‘which excludes reverence.'”

— Rev. Cajetan da Bergamo, Humility Of Heart

“She was the first flower in Francis’ garden, and she shone like a radiant star.”
—Saint Bonaventure

On Sunday we begin the Advent season, leading us to the birth of Christ. As we walk this journey, we will be joined by Saint Clare, a holy woman with quite her own journey to Christ. It is one that begins with Clare’s decision to leave behind the comforts of her life, descend to the hills below Assisi, and join Saint Francis in living out his mission. For Clare, Christ was her focus and Saint Francis was her guide to him. Her path, though, was definitely her own.

“Make known to me your ways, LORD; teach me your paths. / Guide me by your fidelity and teach me, for you are God my savior.”—Psalm 25: 4-5

—from the book Advent with Saint Clare

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“Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the most tender of friends with souls who seek to please Him. His goodness knows how to proportion itself to the smallest of His creatures as to the greatest of them. Be not afraid then in your solitary conversations, to tell Him of your miseries, fears, worries, of those who are dear to you, of your projects, and of your hopes. Do so with confidence and with an open heart.”

— St. Damien of Molokai

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“The fullness of wisdom is fear of the Lord, she is present with the faithful in the womb (Sirach 1:14). Fear of the Lord does not mean to be afraid of God. It means to stand in awe and wonder before the greatness of the Lord. When we recognize that God is God and we are creatures, we develop a healthy sense of humility. We acknowledge our need for wisdom and grace, which are both gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

— Rev. Jude Winkler

“Nothing seems tiresome or painful when you are working for a Master who pays well; who rewards even a cup of cold water given for love of Him.”

— St. Dominic Savio

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“The temporal goods are created by the Most High for the sole purpose of sustaining life; having attained this end, the need of them ceases. And as this need is limited, soon and easily satisfied, there is no reason that the care for the immortal soul should be only fitful and temporary, while the hunger after riches should be so perpetual and unintermitting, as it has come to be among men. It is the height of perverseness for man to mix up the end and the means in an affair so important and urgent, that he devote all his time, all his care, all the exertion of his powers and all the alertness of his mind to the life of the body, of which he knows not the duration nor the end, and that on the other hand, in many years of his existence he spare for his poor soul only one hour, and that very often the last and the worst one of his whole life.”

— Venerable Mary of Agreda

“Gratefulness strengthens a sense of belonging. There is no closer bond than the one which gratefulness celebrates, the bond between giver and thanks-giver. Everything is gift. Grateful living is a celebration of the universal give-and-take of life, a limitless “yes” to belonging.”

—from the book The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life

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“If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.”

— St. Clement of Alexandria

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“Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing more generous, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in Heaven or on earth; for love proceeds from God and cannot rest but in God above all things created.”

— Thomas a’ Kempis

“Francis was becoming a happy man, not giddy, but a man whose whole being radiated joy. He had endured hatred and abuse in patience for two years already, and yet his spirit seemed more steadfast with the passing weeks and months and years – and Bernard looked and listened, and then one day he saw. He saw that what was happening to Francis was not madness but a great grace of God—a grace that had begun to draw Bernard himself. He began to see that what was happening was the religious conversion of Francis Bernardone. Bernard remembered the words of the Gospel he’d heard at Mass. The priest said that they were the first words of Jesus. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).”

—from the book Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis

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“If you suffer with Him, you will reign with Him. If you cry with Him, you will have joy with Him. If you die with Him on the cross of tribulation, you will possess the eternal dwelling place in the splendor of the saints. And your name, written in the book of life, will be glorious among men.”

— St. Clare of Assisi

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“The soul, enlightened by faith, judges of things in a very different way to those who, having only the standard of the senses by which to measure them, ignore the inestimable treasure they contain . . . the soul that recognizes the will of God in every smallest event, and also in those that are most distressing and direful, receives all with an equal joy, pleasure and respect. It throws open all its doors to receive with honor what others fear and fly from with horror. The outward appearance may be mean and contemptible, but beneath this abject garb the heart discovers and honors the majesty of the king. The deeper the abasement of his entry in such a guise and in secret the more does the heart become filled with love.”

— Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade

“In one sense, what the Voice said to Francis is what he already knew, that beneath what appears on the surface is the priceless gold of what everything really is: God’s precious creation. And even greater than the created thing is its re-creation in eternity. Everything will be a new heaven and a new earth and it is struggling to be so even now. Humans who join in the sufferings, the birth-pangs, of all creation become transformed through their patience and long suffering and see at once that God’s future kingdom is already being realized in and with them. For everything suffers change, and only human beings who are able to see and understand can embrace that change willingly even when it involves darkness and suffering.”

—from the book Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis

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“If you suffer with Him, you will reign with Him. If you cry with Him, you will have joy with Him. If you die with Him on the cross of tribulation, you will possess the eternal dwelling place in the splendor of the saints. And your name, written in the book of life, will be glorious among men.”

— St. Clare of Assisi

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“The soul, enlightened by faith, judges of things in a very different way to those who, having only the standard of the senses by which to measure them, ignore the inestimable treasure they contain . . . the soul that recognizes the will of God in every smallest event, and also in those that are most distressing and direful, receives all with an equal joy, pleasure and respect. It throws open all its doors to receive with honor what others fear and fly from with horror. The outward appearance may be mean and contemptible, but beneath this abject garb the heart discovers and honors the majesty of the king. The deeper the abasement of his entry in such a guise and in secret the more does the heart become filled with love.”

— Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade