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March 1, 2025“If anyone laughs at your faith, pray for him. There will be no laughing matter on the day of judgment.” St. John Chrysostom (4th century, Doctor of the Church)
“Even now let us rejoice somehow or other in this hope derived from the promises of One most faithful, until that richest of all possible joys arrives, when ‘we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is’, and our joy nobody shall take from us. Of this hope, you see, we have also received already the acceptable and freely given pledge, which is the Holy Spirit, Who produces in our hearts the unutterable groaning of holy desires...This will be the joy that nobody will take away from us; on the day when we are brought forth into the eternal light from this conception of faith. So meanwhile let us fast and pray, while it is still the day of bringing forth.” St. Augustine of Hippo (4th-5th centuries, Doctor of the Church)
“Nothing is more certain than death. Nothing is more uncertain than its hour.” St Anselm (11th-12th centuries, Doctor of the Church)
"As you know, my son, everything comes to an end, but the good or the evil we do in this life is endless and eternal." St. Teresa of Avila (16th century, Doctor of the Church)
“Christian, what will be your station at the last day, the right hand or the left? If you would occupy the right, you must walk in the way which conducts thither.” St. Alphonsus Liguori (18th century, Doctor of the Church)
“Death, my friends, is to the just man what sleep is to the tired laborer who is glad of the approach of night, which will bring him rest after the hardships of the day. Death delivers the just man from the prison of his body.” St. John Vianney (18th-19th centuries)
“All these evils which I see and in which I partake are the fruit of sin. They would not have been, had we not sinned. They are but the first installment of the punishment of sin. They are an imperfect and dim image of what sin is. Sin is infinitely worse than famine, than war, than pestilence….They all are the effects of it, they are all shadows of it, but nothing more. That cause itself is something different in kind, is of a malignity far other and greater than all these things. O my God, teach me this! Give me to understand the enormity of that evil under which I labor and know it not. Teach me what sin is. All these dreadful pains of body and soul are the fruits of sin, but they are nothing to its punishment in the world to come. The keenest and fiercest of bodily pains is nothing to the fire of hell; the most dire horror or anxiety is nothing to the never-dying worm of conscience; the greatest bereavement, loss of substance, desertion of friends, and forlorn desolation is nothing compared to the loss of God’s countenance.” St. John Henry Newman (19th century)
“I know, my beloved sons, that you love me; let not this love, this affection you have for me cease after my death but continue to pray for the eternal rest of my soul. I request that you offer prayers, good works, mortifications, Holy Communions in reparation for my negligence in doing good or preventing evil. Let your prayers rise to heaven, that I may meet with mercy and forgiveness at the very moment I shall appear before the awesome majesty of my Creator.” St. John Bosco (19th century)
“I have nothing to leave or give but my life, and this I have consecrated to the Sacred Heart to be used as He wills. I have offered my all for the conversions to God of non-Catholics in Virginia. This is what I live for and in case of death, what I die for. Death is not unpleasant to me, but the most beautiful and welcome event of my life. Death is the messenger of God come to tell us that our novitiate is ended and to welcome us to the real Life...Since I was a child I have desired to die for love of God and for my fellow man.” Servant of God Frank Parater (19th-20th centuries)
