Inspirational Texts

For Discerning, Following, and Living our Vocation



On Love

To see your brother or sister is to see God. (St. Clement of Alexandria)

Perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God's. (St. Augustine)

What a joy to be able to suffer for Him whom we love! (St. Therese of Lisieux)

Cordial love of the neighbor does not consist in feelings. This love flows not from a heart of flesh but from the heart of our will. (St. Jane de Chantal)


Intense love does not measure... it just gives. – Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. – Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

God has created each one of us, every human being, for greater things-- to love and to be loved. But why did God make some of us men and others women? Because a woman's love is one image of the love of God, and a man's love is another image of God's love. Both are created to love, but each in a different way. Woman and man complete each other, and together show forth God's love more fully than either can do it alone. – Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta

When Blessed John the Evangelist was so old that he had to be carried to Church by the disciples, and was not able to speak much, he used to say nothing other than: 'Little children, love one another.' The disciples, wearied by always hearing the same thing, asked him, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?' John answered, 'Because it is the Lord's precept, and if you do it alone, it is enough.' "   –  Related by St. Jerome

"We are born to love, we live to love, and we will die to love still more." -Saint Joseph Cafasso

"Love is shown more in deeds than in words." - St. Ignatius Loyola

"Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love, and do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie." - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)


The Mission of my Life

God has created me
to do him some definite service.
He has committed some work to me
which he has not committed to another.

I have my mission.
I may never know what it is in this life,
but I shall be told in the next.

I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing.
I shall do good work.
I shall do his work.

He may take me away from my friends.
He may throw me among strangers.
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me –
Still He knows what He is about.

John Henry Cardinal Newman


Service

I don’t know what your destiny will be,
but one thing I know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those who have
sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer


On the Dignity of the Priest

To live in the midst of the world without wishing its pleasures; to be a member of each family, yet belonging to none; to share all sufferings; to penetrate all secrets; to heal all wounds; to go from men to God and offer Him their prayers; to return from God to men to bring pardon and hope; to have a heart of fire for charity and a heart of bronze for chastity; to teach and to pardon; console and bless always. My God, what a life! And it is yours, O Priest of Jesus Christ!

Henri Dominique Lacordaire

On Living Well

"Do not wish to be anything but what you are and try to be that perfectly." - St. Frances de Sales

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise." - Johann von Goethe

Our true worth does not consist in what human beings think of us. What we really are consists in what God knows us to be." - St. John Berchmans


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