Category: Mystics

Outright Joy

For the “romance” of Clare and Francis has always exuded a warmth and a brightness that cannot be accounted for by the actual events. I believe the source of that fire is partly our own…

A Long Way to Go

Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry…

St. Thomas Aquinas

Sheer intellectual greatness is never so attractive, never appeals so much to the imagination and to the emotions as greatness of a more practical kind. That is why Napoleon, Caesar, and Joan of Arc will…

Today’s One-Liner (#227)

Meditation is concentration, and concentration becomes, finally, consecration. –Sri Eknath Easwaran, Passage Meditation: Bringing the Deep Wisdom of the Heart into Daily Life

Today’s One-Liner (#180)

If you withdraw yourself from unnecessary talking and idle running about, from listening to gossip and rumors, you will find enough time that is suitable for holy meditation.  –Thomas à  Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated…

Today’s One-Liner (#169)

To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that. –Saint Teresa of Avila, quoted in Eknath Easwaran, Love Never Faileth: The Inspiration of Saint Francis, Saint. Augustine, Saint Paul, and Mother…

Boldness

The Sovereign Pontiff lowered his head toward me in such a way that my face almost touched his, and I saw his eyes, black and deep, fixed on me and they seemed to penetrate to…

Small Things

It is this attitude—this unblinking alertness to the meaning of each moment— that probably accounts for the intense compression of Thérèse’s spiritual development. She just didn’t miss a beat. As a novice, she was exerting…