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

Saint Quote: Saint Gregory of Nazianzen

Let us not esteem worldly prosperity or adversity as things real or of any moment, but let us live elsewhere, and raise all our attention to Heaven; esteeming sin as the only true evil, and nothing truly good, but virtue which unites us to God.

--Saint Gregory Nazianzen

Saint Quote: Blessed Emilian Kowcz

With the exception of heaven, this is the only place I wish to be. Here we are all the same: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians. I am the only priest. When I celebrate the liturgy, they pray for all, each one in his own language. Doesn't God understand all languages?

--Father Emilian writing to his children from the concentration camp