Quotes About Sacrifice

there are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast, then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring.

In this sublime hour, therefore, He calls all His children to the pulpit of the Cross, and every word He says to them is set down for the purpose of an eternal publication and an undying consolation.

And any form of philanthropy that forgets the doctrine of the common good for the false principle that society is a new entity for which individuals must be sacrificed, sooner or later will be advocating elimination of the unfit; the murder of defective infants — and then we shall have once more a paganism in which mothers will throw their children from Tarpeian Rocks,4 and in which new Herods will arise to practice birth-control as he did — even with the sword.

The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white Host.

The mystery of the Incarnation is very simply that of God's asking a woman freely to give Him a human nature.

He stands at the door and knocks, but the latch is on the inside, and only we can open it. He has enacted the consecration, but the communion depends upon us; and whether our work will ever be finished depends entirely on how we relive His life and become other Christ's, for His Good Friday and His passion avail us nothing unless we relive it in our own lives.

relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of 'Vanaprastha,' that is, one retired from the household cares.

Sacrifice without love is pain. Pain with love is sacrifice. Pain without love is misery. Love without pain is heaven. Love with pain is purgatory. Pain without love is hell.

Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring.

Pain is sacrifice without love. Sacrifice is pain with love. When we understand this, then we shall have an answer for those who feel that God should have let us sin without pain:

The porter who took my bag said to me: "Everybody knows you; it must be wonderful to be a bishop." And I said to him: "Suppose you had four hundred children and ten were very sick and five were dying. Would you not worry and stay awake at night? Well, that is my family. It is not as wonderful as you think.

Our Lord never spoke of His Heavenly, or Risen Glory without bringing in the ignominy of the Cross.

Close to the Cross was the only Apostle present, John, whose face was like a cast moulded out of love; Magdalen was there too, like a broken flower, a wounded thing. But foremost among all-God pity her!-was His own mother. Mary, Magdalen, John; innocence, penitence, and priesthood; the three types of souls forever to be found beneath the Cross of Christ.

Thanks to the Spirit, though the priest grows older in years, he becomes younger through ascent to the altar of God where youth is renewed.

The communion rail is a place of exchange. They give time and receive eternity, they give self-denial and receive love, they give nothingness, and receive all.

One reason for a long life is penance. Time is given us not just to accumulate that which we cannot take with us, but to make reparation for our sins.

Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.

An unsuffering Christ Who did not freely pay the debt of human guilt would be reduced to the level of an ethical guide;

Judas took the money back to the temple priests. So is it always. When we give up our Lord for any earthly thing sooner or later it disgusts us; we no longer wanted it.

As Our Lord obtained the first elements of His own human Body from a woman, so for the Eucharist He takes bread and wine from the earth. The bread and wine are thus representative of mankind. Two of the substances which have most widely nourished man are bread and wine. Bread has been called the marrow of the earth; wine, its very blood. In giving what has traditionally made our flesh and blood, we are equivalently offering all mankind on the paten.

Only those who die with Him will live with Him.

Why is it that the lover of horror cannot stand the sight of the crucifix? Why is it that the fanatics of murder stories are so cold to the story of the world's greatest sacrifice? The answer is that, unlike all other crimes, the crucifix accuses us.

When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can." When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother.

We give up our time, and get His eternity; we give up our sin, and receive His grace; we give up petty loves, and receive the Flame of Love.