Reflections

 

If the lungs of prayer and the word of God do not nourish the breath of spiritual life, we risk suffocating
in the midst of a thousand daily cares. Prayer is the breath of the soul and of life.

Pope Benedict XVI

When they (the Magi) saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. (Matthew 2: 10-11)

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.
St Peter Chrysologus (406 – 450)

The Saviour whom we await [at Advent] is able to transform our life with his grace, with the power of the Holy Spirit, with the power of love. The Holy Spirit, in fact, infuses our hearts with God’s love, the inexhaustible source of purification, of new life and freedom. The Virgin Mary fully lived this  reality, allowing herself to be ‘baptized’ by the Holy Spirit who inundated her with his power. May she, who prepared for the coming of Christ with the totality of her existence, help us to follow her example and may she guide our steps to the coming Lord.

Pope Francis, Advent 2017

We never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek – Jesus, her Son.

St Louis Marie de Montfort (1673 – 1716)
Wednesday 21st November is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady

“Let us all remember this: one cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life.”

 Pope Francis

“Quanto plus afflictiones pro Christo in hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro”

‘the more affliction [we endure] for Christ in this world, the more glory [we shall obtain] with Christ in the next’ (cf. Rom 8).

St Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel (1557 – 1595)

Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.

St Therese of Lisieux (1873 – 1897)

 

• Be a Catholic: When you kneel before an altar, do it in such a way that others may be able to recognize that you know before whom you kneel.
• Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.

St Maximilian Kolbe (1894- 1941), Martyr of Charity, Martyr of Auschwitz