Saint Quote: Saint Augustine of Hippo

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

--Saint Augustine

Saint Quote: Saint Apollinaris

We therefore grossly deceive ourselves in not allotting more time to the study of divine truths. It is not enough barely to believe them, and let our thoughts now and then glance upon them: that knowledge which shows us heaven, will not bring us to the possession of it, and will deserve punishments, not rewards, if it remain slight, weak, and superficial. By serious and frequent meditation it must be concocted, digested, and turned into the nourishment of our affections, before it can be powerful and operative enough to change them, and produce the necessary fruit in our lives. For this all the saints affected solitude and retreats from the noise and hurry of the world, as much as their circumstances allowed them.

-- Saint Apollinaris

Saint Quote: Saint Francis of Assisi

Jesus is happy to come with us, as truth is happy to be spoken, as life to be lived, as light to be lit, as love is to be loved, as joy to be given, as peace to be spread.

-- Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Quote: Saint Polycarp of Smyrna

Lord God almighty, Father of Jesus Christ, your dear Son through whom we have come to know you, God of the angels and powers, God of all creation, God of those who live in your presence, the race of the just: I bless you. You have considered me worthy of this day and hour, worthy to be numbered with the martyrs and to drink the cup of your Anointed One, and thus to rise and live forever, body and soul, in the incorruptibility of the Holy Spirit.

--Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, Bishop and Martyr, his prayer before his martyrdom.

Saint Quote: Saint Genoveva Torres Morales

I loved freedom of heart very much, and worked and am working to achieve it fully. It does the soul so much good that every effort is nothing compared with this free condition of the heart.

--Saint Genoveva Torres Morales

Saint Quote: Blessed Father Damien de Veuster

Here I am a priest, dear parents, here I am a missionary in a corrupt, heretical, idolatrous country. How great my obligations are! Ah! do not forget this poor priest running night and day over the volcanoes night and day in search of strayed sheep. Pray night and day for me, I beg You.

--Blessed Father Damien de Veuster (Father Damien the Leper)

Saint Quote: Saint Anthony of Padua

Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak. We are full of words but empty of actions, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found no fruit but only leaves. It is useless for a man to flaunt his knowledge of the law if he undermines its teaching by his actions.

But the apostles "spoke as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech." Happy the man whose words issue from the Holy Spirit and not from himself!

We should speak, then, as the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of speech. Our humble and sincere request to the Spirit for ourselves should be that we may bring the day of Pentecost to fulfillment, insofar as he infuses us with his grace, by using our bodily senses in a perfect manner by keeping the commandments. Likewise we shall request that we may be filled with a keen sense of sorrow and with fiery tongues for confessing the faith so our deserved reward may be to stand in the blazing splendor of the saints and to look upon the triune God.

--from a sermon by Saint Anthony of Padua