Catholic Spiritual Quotes

Indeed God has spoken. And He has spoken to you and me. But when He says "Christmas", He means Christ and His Mass. When He says "Merry", He not only wishes us to meet His Christ, but wills that we become His members; He not only wishes that we learn about Christ's Mass, but wills that we live it. Unless we have heard all that, we have never heard God's greeting. Unless we do ll that we have never returned it; for we have missed the Gospel, rejected the Gift, and will never attain our goal. ~ M. Raymond

The Lord is much like the air around us. The air is all around us, it is everywhere. Even though we can't see it, it is there, we know it is there, because we are breathing. The Lord is everywhere too, you can't see Him, but He is there, we know He is there, because we are breathing. (Page 183) ~ Raymond D. Reifinger III

Can we listen to each other the way veins listen to blood? ~ Mark Nepo

Heaven is going to be a vast, colorful tapestry of living things. God is a God of life ... Does this seem too childish and silly to believe? I certainly hope so, because that's a sure sign that it's true. ~ Anthony DeStefano

Calumny... gives [Harry] a spiritual purity in the sense that it scours away any outward show, any wish to live by the impression he makes on others. It gives him a lonely independence, so that he is able to act from his own depth. As he goes on to fulfill "his true destiny", which as far as he knows is his death, he is able to walk, hidden from view, past the woman he loves, without speaking, without looking back. This ability to act alone contrasts him with Voldemort, who needs others. That need is apparent in Voldemort's possession of Quirrell.

Voldemort's shallowness is apparent in the way Pettigrew has to do his work for him and then has to carry him to his rebirthing. Above all, it is in his need to be encircled by Death Eaters. Yet Voldemort is not truly in relationship with any of these people. He is connected to them only by magic, manipulation and threats. To be truly in relation with others, he would need, like Harry, to be capable of acting from his own depth. He would need to be able to act WITHOUT them. Voldemort, who wants to be independent, cannot truly act alone. ... Voldemort lives outwardly, in his domination of others; Harry lives inwardly, in the purity of his own being. ~ Luke Bell

Only when we cease to rely on our own strength can we discover that God's strength is always there for us. ~ Scott Hahn

A spiritual life is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How do you live? What's true? How do you respond? It's not about living by beliefs; it's about wanting to know. ~ Linus Roache

Within the church, it is possible for believers to possess a profound unity based on a shared commitment to Biblical truth, an intimate knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and a deep level of spiritual maturity. Paul also adds "sound doctrine" and "growing in Christlikeness" as additional benefits that result from the saints being properly equipped to build up the body of Christ."(Comments on Ephesians 4 vs 11-13) ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

It is not enough to celebrate Christmas. We need to be changed and shaped by what we are celebrating. If our spiritual life is no better in spite of all our praying, fasting, and church services, then we have not yet begun to fully respond to the significance of Advent and of the Nativity. ~ Vassilios Papavassiliou

Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other. ~ Tony Campolo

God is faithful.
God is merciful. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

What you feel spiritually. I think a lot of that has to do with it. If you have no spiritual life, chances are everything is going to aggravate you, you're going to fly off the handle at everything and that's what I did in the past. I've kind of got that under control now. ~ Mike Ditka

Lovers feel a certain burning in their hearts. A deep longing and desire to meet with the beloved creates that burning. To love God is bound to create a very great fire in you. You will be on fire because you have chosen as your love object something impossible. You will have to weep and cry, and you will have to pray, and you will have to fast, and your mind has to continuously repeat and remember the beloved. ~ Osho

The Catholic schoolgirl in me was scandalized by the thought; I told her we'd been thrown out of Catholic school so she should shut up. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

In the midst of the awfulness, a touch comes and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. The right hand not of restraint nor of correction nor of chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it is ineffable peace and comfort, the sense that "underneath are the everlasting arms," full of sustaining and comfort and strength.
My Utmost for His Highest: Classic Edition ~ Oswald Chambers

Straight away, remove yourself from the field of spiritual progression , stay away from contemplation and skillful discourse, do not do research or meditate on the divinities, and stop concentrating and reciting textbooks! Tell me, what is the absolute nature of reality which allows no room for doubt? Listen carefully! Stop holding on to this or that, inhabit your true absolute nature, and peacefully enjoy the essence of what it is to be alive! ~ Abhinavagupta

[...] if he then should wish to perform rites belonging to many different forms, claiming to use them concurrently as means and 'supports' of his spiritual development, he will not really be able to combine them except 'from the outside', which amounts to saying that what he accomplishes will be nothing else than syncretism, which consists precisely in this kind of mingling of disparate elements that nothing really unifies. [...] This situation is similar to that of someone who, hoping to secure his health the more effectively, makes use at one and the same time of many different medicines the effects of which neutralize and destroy each other and sometimes even provoke unforeseen reactions harmful to his organism. There are things that are efficacious when used separately but that are nonetheless radically incompatible. ~ Rene Guenon

Spiritual development requires the freedom to connect with different parts of reality in order to understand them more fully. The more you're able to explore, the more connections you can form, and the greater your spiritual growth will be. When you feel a strong desire to connect with something in your reality, listen to your intuitive guidance, and make the connection. ~ Steve Pavlina

Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I was kind of feeling a spiritual need all those years. My wife Geraldine and I went to an Episcopalian Church for a while. Oh, it just seemed very political to me that a guy so liberal was talking about opposing the war in Vietnam and I didn't want to hear that when I went to church. I wanted something spiritual. ~ Robert Novak

I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Determination Determines Your Destination ~ Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

Then the soul, freed from vice, purged by studies of true philosophy, versed in spiritual life, and practised in matters of the intellect, devoted to the contemplation of her own substance, as if awakened from deepest sleep, opens those eyes which all possess but few use, and sees in herself a ray of that light which is the true image of the angelic beauty communicated to her, and of which she then communicates a faint shadow to the body. ~ Baldassare Castiglione

The abuse of power manifests with phony spiritual teachers and phony gurus who tell you how to run your life and what to wear and what to eat, all that sort of stuff. They abuse. People don't realize that, listen to them and ruin their lives. ~ Frederick Lenz

Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit. ~ Guru Nanak

One who walks with God is better than a million who run with the devil. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Spiritual life is not dry, it is also exceuted happily, 'susukham'. The result of that is not just happiness, but bliss, spiritual joy. ~ Bhakti Charu Swami

Houellebecq has created a new genre - the dystopian conversion tale. Submission is not the story some expected of an armed coup d'état, and no one in it expresses hatred or even contempt of Muslims. At one level it is simply about a man who through suffering and indifference finds himself slouching toward Mecca. At another level, though, it is about a civilization that after centuries of a steady, almost imperceptible sapping of inner conviction finds itself doing the same thing. The literature of civilizational decline, to which Zemmour's Le Suicide français is a minor contribution, is typically brash and breathless. Not so Submission. There is not even drama here - no clash of spiritual armies, no martyrdom, no final conflagration. Stuff just happens, as in all Houellebecq's fiction. All one hears at the end is a bone-chilling sigh of collective relief. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Whatever. ~ Mark Lilla

The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. ~ Seneca The Younger

The is no such thing as a coincidence, only Godincidence ~ Tom Herstad

Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this or that want and need. In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production. A marvelously rational mechanism serves one or another demand, always with the same earnestness and precision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself to deal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only those it can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected an edifice wherein everything runs strictly according to plan - everything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by this system of irresistible materiality. ~ Carl Schmitt

Making peace with one's truth is to live in one's own moment, moving passionately forward in joy. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

Love so pure, love so noble! ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The world is not what it appears to be. Behind this surface life, where we experience the play of life and death, there is a deeper life which knows no death; behind our apparent consciousness, which gives us the knowledge of objects and things…there is…pure…consciousness…Truth…is experienced only by those who turn their gaze inward. ~ Swami Prabhavanada

I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal. ~ Mike Birbiglia