He Comes for the Lost Ones

"I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."  Those were strong people who taunted Christ's disciples because their master entered the homes of the sick and ate with them.  Why, they asked, does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?  O you strong ones who do not need the doctor!  Yours is not the strength of health but of madness!  God grant that we may never imitate that kind of strength.  We should dread the possibility of anyone wanting to imitate it.

The teacher of humility, who shared our weakness and gave us a share in his own divinity, came to earth in order to teach us the way, even to be the Way himself.  It was his humility, above all else, that he impressed upon us.  He willingly submitted to baptism at the hands of one of his servants, so that we might learn to confess our own sins and to become weak in order to be truly strong, repeating with the apostle:  "When I am weak, then I am strong."

-Augustine of Hippo

Saint Augustine (430) is called the Doctor of Grace.

Acting on Christ's Words

I long to see you set afire, swallowed up and consumed in his blazing charity, for we know that those who are set afire and consumed in that true charity lose all self-consciousness.  That is what I want you to do.

I am inviting you, in this blazing charity, to plunge into a peaceful sea, a deep sea.  I have just rediscovered the sea - not that the sea is new, but it is new to me in the way my soul experiences it - in the words, "God is love."  And just as a mirror reflects a person's face and as the sun shines its light on the earth, so these words echo within me that everything that is done is simply love, because everything is made entirely of love.  This is why he says, "I am God, Love."

This sheds light on the priceless mystery of the incarnate Word, who, out of sheer love, was given in such humility that it confounds my pride.  It teaches us to look not just at what he did, but at the blazing love his Word has given us.  It says that we should do as a loving person does when a friend comes with a gift: not looking at the friends hands to see what the gift is, but looking with the eyes of love at the friend's loving heart.  And this is what God's supreme, eternal, more tender than tender goodness wants us to do when he visits our soul.  So when he comes to you with his incalculable blessings, let your memory open up at once to receive what your understanding has seen in his divine love, and let your will rise up in blazing desire to receive and gaze upon the burning heart of the giver, the good gentle Jesus.  In this way you will find yourself swallowed up and clothed in the fiery gift of the blood of God's Son.  And you will be freed from all suffering and grief.

-Saint Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena (1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, a stigmatist, and papal advisor.  

Words and a Wisdom

The words that divine Wisdom communicates are not just ordinary, natural, human words; they are divine, "truly the words of God."  They are powerful, touching, piercing words, "sharper than a two-edged sword," words that go from the heart of the one through whom he speaks straight to the heart of the listener.  Solomon is referring to this gift of Wisdom he himself had received when he said that God gave him the grace to speak according to the feelings of his heart.  These are the words which our Lord promised to his apostles, "I will give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist..."  Eternal Wisdom, besides being the object of the eternal Father's delight, and the joy of the angels, is also the source of purest joy and consolation for man who possesses him.  He give to man a relish for everything that comes from God and makes him lose his taste for things created.  He enlightens his mind with the brightness of his own light and pours into his heart an indescribable joy, sweetness, and peace even when he is in the midst of the most harrowing grief and suffering, as Saint Paul bears witness when he exclaims, "I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulations" (2 Cor 7:4).

-Saint Louis de Montfort

Saint Louis de Montfort (1716) was a great French missionary preacher especially renowned for fostering devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

What Kept the Widow's Heart Open

We know that even our nearest friends enter into us but partially, and hold intercourse with us only at times; whereas the consciousness of a perfect and enduring Presence, and it alone, keeps the heart open. Withdraw the Object on which it rests, and it will relapse again into its state of confinement and constraint; and in proportion as it is limited, either to certain seasons or to certain affections, the heart is straitened and distressed. If it be not overbold to say it, he who is infinite can alone be its measure; he alone can answer to the mysterious assemblage of feelings and thoughts which it has within it...

Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the sense decay, the world changes, friends die. One alone is constant; One alone is true to us; One alone can be true; One alone can be all things to us; One alone can supply our needs; One alone can train us up to our full perfection; One alone can give a meaning to our complex and intricate nature; One alone can give us tune and harmony; One alone can form and possess us.

-Venerable John Henry Newman

Venerable John Henry Newman (1890) established the Oratory in Birmingham, England, and was a preacher of great eloquence.

Why Christ Cleansed the Temple

It is ordained by human and divine law, my brothers and sisters, that we should obey God rather than follow those braggarts who through their loathsome jealousy would plunge us into confusion. We shall incur no common harm, but great danger, if we recklessly deliver ourselves to the whims of people who by rushing into strife and discord try to seduce us from what is right. Let us rather be kind to one another, in harmony with the compassion and sweetness of him who is our Maker.
For Christ belongs to the lowly of heart, not to those who exalt themselves over his flock. He who is the scepter of God's majesty, Jesus Christ our Lord, came not in pompous ostentation or arrogance (though he might well have done so) but humbly even as the Holy Spirit had foretold of him...
You see, dear friends, what a model we have been given. For if the Lord was so humble of heart, what shall be our course, who thanks to him have come under the yoke of his grace?

-Saint Clement of Rome

Saint Clement of Rome (97) was the third successor of Saint Peter.

Saint Cecilia

The catacombs, too, left a deep impression on me. They were exactly as I had imagined them when reading the lives of the martyrs. After having spent part of the afternoon in them, it seemed to me we were there for only a few moments, so sacred did the atmosphere appear to me. We had to carry off some souvenir from the Catacombs; having allowed the precession to pass on a little, Celine and Therese slipped down together to the bottom of the ancient tomb of Saint Cecilia and took some earth which was sanctified by her presence. Before my trip to Rome I didn't have any special devotion to this saint, but when I visited her house transformed into a church, the site of her martyrdom, when learning that she was proclaimed patroness of music not because of her beautiful voice or her talent for music, but in memory of the virginal song she sang to her heavenly Spouse hidden in the depths of her heart, I felt more than devotion for her; it was the real tenderness of a friend. She became my saint of predilection, my intimate confidant. Everything in her thrilled me, especially her abandonment, her limitless confidence that made her capable of virginizing souls who had never desired any other joys but those of the present life. Saint Cecilia is like the bride in the Canticle; in her I see "a choir in an armed camp." Her life was nothing else but a melodious song in the midst of the greatest trials, and this does not surprise me because "the Gospel rested on her heart," and in her heart reposed the Spouse of Virgins!

-Saint Therese of Lisieux

Saint Therese (1897) was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997.