The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
—G. K. Chesterton

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. . . . Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
—Reinhold Niebuhr

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
—Igor Stravinsky

The greatest hindrances to the evangelization of the world are those within the church.
—John R. Mott

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
—1 Peter 2:10

Could a body broken and blood spilled 2,000 years ago restore my own damaged life?
—Frederica Mathewes-Green

The culmination of the Mass is not the consecration, but communion.
—Saint Maximilian Kolbe

In the same way that bread comes from the Earth, after having received the invocation, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, made up of two things, one earthly, one heavenly, so our bodies which participate in the Eucharist . . . have the hope of the Resurrection.
—Saint Irenaeus of Lyons

Mystery of the living God, and of his love for humankind, the Most High sends his Son to us and reveals himself as our Father; Christ exalted in glory gives us his Spirit in whom we praise you, God who is, who was, and who comes!
—Antiphon of Canticle of Mary, Trinity Sunday

If we are right to think that the Father gives and the Son receives the kiss, we do not err in thinking that the kiss itself is the Holy Spirit.
—Bernard of Clairvaux

In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because [God] is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity.
—Hans Urs von Balthasar

At Pentecost . . . . like the limbs of a single   body, the separated members of the human race would be restored to unity by being joined to Christ, their common head, and welded into the oneness of a holy body by the fire of love.
—Augustine of Hippo

I believe in the surprises of the Holy Spirit.
—Cardinal Leo Suenens

What else did the presence of the Holy Spirit indicate at Pentecost, except that God’s church was to speak in the language of every people?
—Sixth-century African Pentecost homily

My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
—Luke 8:21

Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.
—Jacques Ellul

He will provide the way and the means, such as you could never have imagined. Leave it all to Him, let go of yourself. Lose yourself on the Cross, and you will find yourself entirely.
—Saint Catherine of Siena

You will ask me how I know his presence. Because he is living and active: Scarcely had he entered me than he awakened my slumbering soul.
—Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth cannot supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.
—C.S. Lewis

Do not be ashamed to serve others for the love of Jesus Christ and to seem poor in this world.
—Thomas à Kempis

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
—Vincent van Gogh

It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it.
—Latin proverb

Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to be evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.
—Leo Tolstoy

You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.
—Ezekiel 34:31

If . . . I were asked for the most important advice I could give . . . I should simply say: In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
—Leo Tolstoy

God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.
—Thomas Merton