"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul."

~Saint Augustine

"The loveliest masterpiece of the Heart of God is the heart of a Mother."

~Saint Thérèse de Lisieux

"May each one of us
glorify the Lord with the soul of Mary and
rejoice in God
with the Spirit of Mary!"

~Saint Ambrose

"The glory of God is the human person fully alive."

~Saint Irenaeus

"Without love, deeds - even the most brilliant - count as nothing."

~Saint Thérèse de Lisieux

"In loving and serving, we prove that we have been created in the likeness of God, for God is Love and when we love, we are like God."

~Saint Mother Terese of Calcutta

"Let us love, since that is all our hearts were made for!"

~Saint Thérèse de Lisieux

"Perhaps someone will say:
'Had she not known before the He would die?' Undoubtedly.
'Did she not expect Him to rise again at once?' Surely.
'And still she grieved over her crucified Son?' Intensely.
Who are you and
what is the source
of your wisdom that
you are more surprised
at the compassion of Mary
than at the passion of Mary's Son?

For if He could die in body,
could she not die with Him in Spirit?
He died in body through a Love greater than anyone had known.
She died in Spirit through a Love unlike any other since His!"
~Saint Bernard, Abbot

"Suffering in itself has no value. The greatest gift we can enjoy is the possibility to share Christ's passion."

~Mother Teresa

Today's Daily Revelation

December 24

December 24, 1936. During Holy Mass today, I was united in a particular way with God and His Immaculate Mother. The humility and love of the Immaculate Virgin penetrated my soul. The more I imitate the Mother of God, the more deeply I get to know God. Oh, what infinite longing envelops my soul! Jesus, how can You still leave me in this exile? I am dying of longing for You. Every touch of my soul by You wounds me immensely. Love and suffering go together; yet I would not exchange this pain caused by You for any treasure, because it is the pain of incomprehensible delights, and these wounds of the soul are inflicted by a loving hand.

Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 843

Christmas Eve 1937. After Holy Communion, the Mother of God gave me to experience the anxious concern she had in her heart because of the Son of God. But this anxiety was permeated with such fragrance of abandonment to the will of God that I should call it rather a delight than an anxiety. I understood how my soul ought to accept the will of God in all things. It is a pity I cannot write this the way I experienced it. My soul was plunged in deep recollection all day long. Nothing could tear me away from this recollection, neither duties, nor the business I had with lay people.

Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1437

http://marian.org/popups/revelation.php

He knows what He is about

"God has created me
to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for nothing. I shall do good, I shall do His work!

Therefore, I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am. I cannot be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;

in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;

if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain.
He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends;
He may make me feel desolate,
make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me - still He knows what He is about!"

~John Henry Newman

"Christ's Love is
the very death of death.
Hence it is said: O death! I will be your death! I will be your sting, O hell!
Our love for Christ is as strong as death, because
it is itself a kind of death:
destroying the old life,
rooting out vice,
and laying aside dead works."

~From a treatise by Baldwin, bishop of Canterbury

Dear Stragglers, please pray for all who have died recently!


My daughter, encourage souls to say the Chaplet which I have given you. It pleases me to grant everything they ask of Me by saying the chaplet.
~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska 1541

Through the Chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for is compatible with My will.
~Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1731


Pray the chaplet Stragglers!!

Pray for each other!

When you get no applause on earth, your work will be all the more welcome in Heaven!
~Saint Josemaría Escrivá - taken from "The Forge" - # 962


Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. It is not necessary to always be meditating, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice this would be. What matters is being with him, living in Him, in His Will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to love the poor, is a twenty-four-hour prayer!
~Mother Teresa of Calcutta