Quotes About Faith

The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. —Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J. (1675–1751), The Sacrament of the Present Moment

This is the greatest challenge of faith, says Polish, "to live with a God we cannot fully understand, whose actions we explain at our own peril.

To some of us the humiliation of failure seems to open a wide gulf between God and us. We imagine that God turns away from us in disgust. What I discovered was that failure could be a bridge across the chasm that pride had created.

Why had I not understood that this was not simply the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church of his tomb? It was also the Church of the Resurrection.

The multiplicity of desires leads to a multiplicity of paths to God.

Joy] does not ignore pain in the world, in another's life or in one's own life. Rather, it goes deeper, seeing confidence in God—and for Christians, in Jesus Christ—as the reason for joy and a constant source of joy.

Jesus is the most famous victim of capital punishment.

But it is always God who takes the initiative and who surprises us with his presence, as God did with Mary. When

What might our lives feel like if we didn't march through them with a scorecard, keeping a tally of our failures and successes? How would it be to stop pretending omniscience? Can you imagine being able to trust that the outcome of your efforts will be right, whatever the outcome? Even when it looks as though every effort is marked with failure?

basically, we pray because we love God. Father Barry writes, "The primary motive for prayer is love, first the love of God for us and then the arousal of our love for God."3 We pray to come

Finding joy in times of pain begins with understanding that true joy is rooted in God. Thus, keeping one's relationship with God at the center of one's life is essential to discovering areas of joy, comfort and solace.

Don't let anyone take from you the freedom to become who God wants you to be.

Unplanned occurrences are reminders to check your tendency to think that you're the one in control. In reality, it's someone else.... It is a vivid reminder that in ministry, no matter how hard you work, ultimately it's God's work, not yours. All this puts our work in perspective.

The Seven Storey Mountain,

the Portuguese adage holds true: God writes straight on crooked lines.

Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.2

Every Sunday night in the novitiate our community gathered for "faith sharing," which meant speaking to one another about our spiritual lives: where we had experienced God in our daily lives and what our prayer was like. There were two rules. First, everything was confidential. Second, no comments were allowed after someone spoke, unless it was a question asked to clarify something.

GOD COMMUNICATES WITH US in many ways. But prayer is a special time when God's voice is often heard most clearly because we are giving God our undivided attention. Whether in Ignatian contemplation, lectio divina, the colloquy, the examen, or any other practice, the "still small" voice can be heard with a clarity that can delight, astonish, and surprise you. So when you pray, however you pray, and feel that God is speaking to you—pay attention.

Maybe one reason that the work seems dull is because you're not bringing it up before God in prayer,

Real religion," said Macmurray, has a different maxim: "Fear not; the things you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.

Ignatius realized that if you act in accord with God's desires for you, you will naturally feel a sense of peace.

mine what we know about human relationships for ways to understand our relationship with God.

examen." Essentially a review of the day, it helps you see where God is active in your daily life.

Then, when you sit in the chair, you're reminded, often in a surprising way, that God is gazing upon you and is with you in your prayer.