Get the Mission Moment!

Mission Moment
October 22, 2001

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 have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons...
- Cardinal John Henry Newman

Mission Moment
October 29, 2001

The secret of the missionary is...I am His, and He is carrying out His work through me.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
November 5, 2001

The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out... The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity... out of the realm of the finite...into the realm of infinite possibilities.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mission Moment
November 12, 2001

....We must carry Jesus in our hearts to wherever He wants to go, and there are many places to which He may never go unless we take Him to them. None of us knows when the loveliest hour of our life is striking. It may be when we take Christ for the first time to that grey office in the city where we work, to the wretched lodging of that poor man who is an outcast, to the nursery of that pampered child, to that battleship, airfield, or camp...
- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
November 19, 2001

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death;
I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life
to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Mission Moment
November 26, 2001

Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls.
- Mother Teresa

Mission Moment
December 3, 2001

For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ...To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting....
-Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
December 10, 2001

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back.... Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
- Goethe's 'Faust'

Mission Moment
December 17, 2001

The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose,
cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.
-Thomas Merton

Mission Moment
December 24, 2001

The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us;
to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love,
to swing the whole world back into the beat of the Music of Eternal Life.
- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December 31, 2001

There is still time for endurance, time for patience, time for healing, time for change. Have you slipped? Rise up. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand among sinners, but leap aside.
- St Basil

Mission Moment
January7, 2002

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved,
in quiet and in trust your strength lies.
- Isaiah 30:15

Mission Moment
January 14, 2002

Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self,
with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
- Henry David Thoreau

Mission Moment
January 21, 2002

We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, and He packs our life with surprises all the time.... Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
January 28, 2002

Talking no longer impresses anyone, especially now with the explosion of information; everyone talks about everything. We must give WITNESS and only in this way will we be able to propagate the Gospel.
- Joseph Ti Kary of Taiwan

Mission Moment
February 4, 2002

There is one and only one possible road to joy: selfless love.
- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
February 11, 2002

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth:
the Blessed Sacrament ... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity,
and the true way of all your loves on earth...
- JRR Tolkien

Mission Moment
February 18, 2002

Unfurl the sails, and let God steer us where He will.
- St. Bede

Mission Moment
February 25, 2002

Jesus, help me to simplify my life by learning what you want me to be and becoming that person.
- Saint Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
March 4, 2002

It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve Him. Serving Him, I add to my own good
and the good of the whole world. Not serving Him, I forfeit my own good and
deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create.
- Leo Tolstoy

Mission Moment
March 11, 2002

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
- C.S. Lewis

To see the miraculous within the ordinary is the mark of highest wisdom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mission Moment
March 18, 2002

Go up to the mountain, go up to the glen,
where silence will touch you, and heartbreak will mend.
- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
Holy Week, March 25, 2002

So the divine love is sacrificial love. Love does not mean to have and to own and to possess.
It means to be had and to be owned and to be possessed. It is not a circle circumscribed by self,
it is arms outstretched to embrace all humanity within its grasp.
- Bishop Sheen

Mission Moment
Easter Week, April 1, 2002

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
- John Updike

Mission Moment
April 8, 2002

See the Face of God in everyone.
- St.Catherine L’aboure

Mission Moment
April 15, 2002

Unless in the first waking moments of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on the wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
April 22, 2002

Maintain a spirit of peace and you will save a thousand souls.
- St. Seraphim of Sarov

Mission Moment
April 29, 2002

God waits patiently for me to wake up, grow up, come to the awareness that
great works take time, that nothing truly worthwhile can be rushed...
How difficult it is not to interfere, to try to take over, to go it alone. But God cannot succeed without me. God needs my whole-hearted cooperation in this work.
- Jean Royer

Mission Moment
May 6, 2002

Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary, use words.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Mission Moment
May 13, 2002

...There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods
with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mission Moment
May 20, 2002

If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze!
- Saint Catherine of Siena

Mission Moment
May 27, 2002

If you think you don't have any time for prayer, and can't find any time, then ask God to forgive you... The Pope isn't too busy for his daily rosary; if you're busier than the Pope, you're too busy.
- Fr. James Peterson

Mission Moment
June 3, 2002

It is always the time of hope, confidence and love. Everything passes; love remains. We will not be disappointed.
- Cardinal Carlo Maria Martin

Mission Moment
June 10, 2002

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
- Oscar Romero

Mission Moment
June 17, 2002

It’s in our blind trust that love will find us, just like it has before.
- Emily Saliers

Mission Moment
June 24, 2002

Be obedient to what is important, not to what is urgent.
- Fr. Steve Dougherty

Mission Moment
July 1, 2002

The most generous choices, especially the persevering, are the fruit of profound and prolonged union with God in prayerful silence.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
July 8, 2002

Think of the enormous leisure of God! He is never in a hurry. We are always in such a frantic hurry. In the light of the glory of the vision we go forth to do things, but the vision is not real in us yet; and God has to take us into the valley, and put us through fires and floods to batter us into shape, until we get to the place where He can trust us.... Let Him put you on His wheel and whirl you as He likes, and as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with the vision. Don't lose heart in the process.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
July 15, 2002

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly and wants to rip to shreds
all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others,
causing the world to weep on too many fine days... The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.
- Hafiz

Mission Moment
July 22, 2002

Do everything calmly and peacefully. Do as much as you can as well as you can. Strive to see God in all things without exception, and consent to His will joyously. Do everything for God, uniting yourself to him in word and deed. Walk very simply with the Cross of the Lord and be at peace with yourself.
- St. Francis de Sales

Mission Moment
July 29, 2002

Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs... It is like being haunted by the Holy Ghost.
- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
August 5, 2002

"In prison the Catholic prisoners divided the New Testament, which they had hidden and taken with them, into little sheets; they distributed them and learned them by heart. Since the ground was earth or sand, when the guards' steps were heard, the Word of God was hidden under earth. In the afternoon, at sundown, each one took turns reciting the part he knew; it was impressive and moving to hear the Word of God in the silence and darkness, the presence of Jesus, the 'living Gospel,' recited with all the soul's strength, the priestly prayer, the Passion of Christ....I wonder...how would it be possible to have a change of mentality, a constant re-evangelization of life, to effect a real conversion?"
- Archbishop Nguyên Van Thuân. Because of his Catholic faith,
he was held for 13 years in Vietnamese prisons. He spent 9 of these in solitary confinement.

Mission Moment
August 12, 2002

In order to find oneself, you must first lose yourself in the service of others.
- Ghandi

Mission Moment
August 19, 2002

God is waiting for the response of our freedom. Our own choice, our own creativity, is essential to the drama, and this makes the world a drama fraught with real peril.
- Stratford Caldecott

Mission Moment
August 26, 2002

If I could turn down the noise of my own will and choice
I could hear the truth of my life in a clear voice.
I will bow down my head to the wisdom of my heart...
- Carrie Newcomer

Mission Moment
September 2, 2002

I assure you, my children, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you so often, and hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my children, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives...
- Blessed Josemaria Escriva

Mission Moment
September 9, 2002

For we are like olives....only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.
- Talmud

Mission Moment
September 16, 2002

If the Holy Father sees a bright future, then I'm not worried.
- Grandma Donaghy

Mission Moment
September 23, 2002

Pray, hope, and don't worry.
- St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Mission Moment
September 30, 2002

God speaks in the silence of the heart, and we listen. And then we speak to God from the fullness of our heart, and God listens. And this listening and this speaking is what prayer is meant to be....
- Mother Teresa

Mission Moment
October 7, 2002

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing...
- Thomas Merton

Mission Moment
October 14, 2002

Get into the habit of saying, ''Speak, Lord,'' and life will become a romance.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
October 21, 2002

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way......What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything....
Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
- Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

Mission Moment
October 28, 2002

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
November 4, 2002

If a tiny spark of God's love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out.... Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter.... Do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself.
- St. Charles Borromeo

Mission Moment
November 11, 2002

Fight to the death for Truth, and the Lord God will do battle for you.
- Sirach 4:33

Mission Moment
November 18, 2002

With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.
- Cardinal John Henry Newman

Mission Moment
November 25, 2002

We are only syllables of the perfect Word.
- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December 2, 2002

God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
December 9, 2002

No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
- Bishop Sheen

Mission Moment
December 15, 2002

Holidays and vacations can help to balance activity with contemplation, haste with more natural rhythms, noise with the heralding silence of peace.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
December 23, 2002

We are God's creative works in process. God alone knows what we shall become. What might He have in store in the fullness of our time? In the beginning, God created Light. In Mary, God became flesh. What will God become in us this Advent?
- Thomas Hoffman

Mission Moment
December 30, 2002

Entrances to holiness are everywhere. The possibility of ascent is all the time.
Even at unlikely times and through unlikely places.
- Bamidbar Rabba

Mission Moment
January 6, 2003

The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
January 13, 2003

If you are silent, be silent out of love. If you speak, speak out of love.
- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
January 20, 2003

Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think....In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.
- Pico Iyer

Mission Moment
January 27, 2003

God's plan remains God's plan despite our sin.
- Christopher West

Mission Moment
February 3, 2003

It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men!
-Cesar Chavez

Mission Moment
February 10, 2003

The greatest barrier to evangelization today is bad example....Our strategy of evangelization must be based upon sanctity, upon our enthusiastic response to Christ's universal call to holiness.
- Archbishop John Foley

Mission Moment
February 17, 2003

Let us be servants in order to be leaders.
- Dostoyevsky

Mission Moment
February 24, 2003

In the end, it is conscience that will have the last word, stronger than all strategies, all ideologies and also all religions.... Peace is still possible...
- Cardinal Etchegaray

Mission Moment
March 3, 2003

Ours is the Spirit of the Eucharist, the total Gift of Self.
- St. Katharine Drexel

Mission Moment
March 10, 2003

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.
- Ezekiel 36:26

Mission Moment
March 17, 2003

And there I saw in the night the vision of a man....coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, ''The voice of the Irish''...and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice - they were those beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea - and thus did they cry out as with one mouth:
''We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more.''
- St. Patrick

Mission Moment
March 24, 2003

...Now it is our turn; and all ministering spirits keep silence and look on. O let not your foot slip, or your eye be false, or your ear dull, or your attention flagging! Be not dispirited; be not afraid; keep a good heart; be bold; draw not back; you will be carried through...O children of a heavenly Father, be not afraid!
- John Henry Cardinal Newman

Mission Moment
March 31, 2003

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
April 7, 2003

What the soul is in the body, let Christians be in the world.
- St. John Chrysostom

Mission Moment
April 14, 2003

Be the Church - that is, be an evangelical movement that tells the world of God's passionate love for humanity. That, not institutional maintenance, is what the Church is for. When the Church is that, and does that, it flourishes...
- George Weigel

Mission Moment
April 21, 2003

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary odedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.
- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
April 28, 2003

Know that My Heart is mercy itself. From this sea of mercy graces flow out upon the world....I desire that your heart be an abiding place of My mercy. I desire that this mercy flow out upon the whole world through your heart.
- from the diary of St. Faustina Kowalska

Mission Moment
May 5, 2003

Take nothing seriously, except for God; and even then remember, He has a sense of humor too.
- Deacon Kevin McGoldrick

Mission Moment
May 12, 2003

Boredom...has a remedy. It is to recognize and engage the drama which already surges beneath the routine of our daily existence. It is to throw ourselves into life with all our heart and soul...
- Carter Griffin

Mission Moment
May 19, 2003

Christ has no body now but mine. He prays in me, works in me, looks through my eyes, speaks through my words, works through my hands, walks with my feet and loves with my heart.
- St. Theresa of Avila

Mission Moment
May 26, 2003

The more administrative machinery we construct, be it the most modern, the less place there is for the Spirit, the less place there is for the Lord, and the less freedom there is. It is my opinion that we ought to begin an unsparing examination of conscience on this point at all levels in the Church.
- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Mission Moment
June 2, 2003

The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility... Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile.
- Pope Paul VI

Mission Moment
June 9, 2003

This is a beautiful time, this last age, the age of the Holy Spirit... He is crying to every soul that is walled: Open to Me, My spouse, My sister. And once inside, He is calling again: Come to Me here in this secret place. Oh, hear Him tonight crying all over the world a last desperate summons of love to a dying race.
- Jessica Powers

Mission Moment
June 16, 2003

In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, the kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life. This heart is the heart of the Triune Divinity, and the center of all human hearts... It draws us to itself with secret power, it conceals us in itself in the Father's bosom and floods us with the Holy Spirit. This heart, it beats for us in a small tabernacle where it remains mysteriously hidden in that still, white host.
- St. Edith Stein

Mission Moment
June 23, 2003

It is pleasant to spend time with Him, to lie close to His breast like the Beloved Disciple and to feel the infinite love present in His Heart....how can we not feel a renewed need to spend time in spiritual converse, in silent adoration, in heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament?
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
June 30, 2003

You go to Church on Sunday so you can bring Christ to work on Monday.
- Dr. Chapp

Mission Moment
July 7, 2003

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
-C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
July 14, 2003

I suspect that it is a trick of the Devil to divert good people from the task of Evangelization by embroiling them in endless controversial issues to the neglect of the Church's essential role, which is mission.
- Basil Cardinal Hume

Mission Moment
July 21, 2003

For me to believe is to fling myself into the darkness of the night, following a star I once saw though I do not know where it will take me... to believe is to trust God and place my hope in him.
- Fr. Marcial Maciel

Mission Moment
July 28, 2003

The frenetic pace of modern life can lead to an obscuring or even a loss of what is truly human... Perhaps more than in other periods of history, our time is in need of that genius which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
August 4, 2003

"The times are bad! The times are troublesome!" This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times.
- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
August 11, 2003

Let your door stand open to receive Him, unlock your soul to Him, offer Him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace. Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light...
- St. Ambrose

Mission Moment
August 18, 2003

At first we feel called by God and attracted by him. We grow in our vocation and get the impression that God has gripped us and will never let us go. We want to withdraw from him in order to escape his grasp. But he loves us too much to allow us to fall. He holds us fast, challenges us.
- Benedictine Father Notker Wolf

Mission Moment
August 25, 2003

Be humble and you will never be disturbed. It is very difficult in practice because we all want to see the result of our work. Leave it to Jesus.
- Mother Teresa

Mission Moment
September 1, 2003

We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life "hidden with Christ in God" in our everyday human conditions.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
September 8, 2003

The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is ''fully formed'' in us... Why should we not once more have recourse to the Rosary, with the same faith as those who have gone before us?
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
September 15, 2003

Did a Magdalene, a Paul, a Constantine, an Augustine become mountains of ice after their conversion? Quite the contrary. We should never have had these prodigies of conversion and marvelous holiness if they had not changed the flames of human passion into volcanoes of immense love of God.
- St. Frances Cabrini

Mission Moment
September 22, 2003

He must increase, I must decrease.
- St. John the Baptist

Mission Moment
September 29, 2003

Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you - for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart... The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us - that is all He asks.
- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
October 6, 2003

This morning outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head...
'Cause everything is holy now
Everything is holy now...
- Peter Mayer

Mission Moment
October 13, 2003

Love is shown more in deeds than in words.
- St. Ignatius of Loyola

Mission Moment
October 20, 2003

Do you really know the living Jesus - not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to you?... The devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes - to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is a danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely the opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more - He longs for you.
- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
October 27, 2003

The biggest disease in North America is busyness.
- Thomas Merton

Mission Moment
November 3, 2003

To awaken a new longing for holiness: this is the great pastoral challenge that we have before us, if we want to be faithful to God's plan and also to respond to the yearnings and hopes of the peoples of America and of all peoples on earth...
- Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe

Mission Moment
November 10, 2003

Are you debating whether you should take a step of faith in Jesus, or whether you should wait until you can clearly see how to do what He has asked? Simply obey Him with unrestrained joy. When He tells you something and you begin to debate, it is because you have a misunderstanding of what honors Him and what doesn't. Are you faithful to Jesus, or faithful to your ideas about Him?
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
November 17, 2003

Fear not! Stand your ground... the Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.
- Moses

Mission Moment
November 24, 2003

God wants to reach out to others through your hands. He wants to speak to others through your lips, and God wants others to look into your eyes and see Him... give God permission.
- John Cardinal O'Connor

Mission Moment
December 1, 2003

Sometimes you just close your eyes and jump... you don't think too long or maybe you just won't. Sometimes you just follow your heart, don't analyze too long, or maybe it might just be gone.
- Carrie Newcomer

Mission Moment
December 8, 2003

By his own will Christ was dependent on Mary during Advent: he was absolutely helpless; he could go nowhere but where she chose to take him; he could not speak; her breathing was his breath; his heart beat in the beating of her heart.... In the seasons of our Advent - waking, working, eating, sleeping, being - each breath is a breathing of Christ into the world.
- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December 15, 2003

We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
December 22, 2003

No one, whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here below except by kneeling before the manger at Bethlehem and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a new-born child.
- Catholic Catechism, 563

Mission Moment
December 29, 2003

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
January 12, 2004

Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, not even if your whole world seems upset. If you find that you have wandered away from the shelter of God, lead your heart back to Him quietly and simply.
- St. Francis de Sales

Mission Moment
January 19, 2004

Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.
- Isaiah 43:18

Mission Moment
January 26, 2004

Do not be depressed. Do not let your weakness make you impatient. Instead, let the serenity of your spirit shine through your face. Let the joy of your mind burst forth.
- St. Peter Damian

Mission Moment
February 2, 2004

I am not going to wait. I will live each present moment, filling it to the brim with love.
- Monsignor John Walsh

Mission Moment
February 9, 2004

I want eternity. I was born for greater things...
- St. Stanislaus Kostka

Mission Moment
February 16, 2004

Today it takes no great stretch of the imagination to envisage the earth as an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions - a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny.
- Archbishop John Foley

Mission Moment
February 23, 2004

God passionately desires and ardently yearns for our salvation...
Nothing is greater than this: that the blood of God was poured out for us.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
March 1, 2004

We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God....
not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything,
to dwell lovingly in God's presence - silent, empty, expectant, and motionless.
- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
March 8, 2004

Don't get upset with your imperfections. It's a great mistake because it leads nowhere - to get angry because you are angry, upset at being upset, depressed at being depressed, disappointed because you are disappointed. So don't fool yourself. Simply surrender to the Power of God's Love, which is always greater than our weakness.
- St. Francis De Sales

Mission Moment
March 15, 2004

The reason we have a life is so that we may lay it down for others.
- Dr. Janet Haggerty

Mission Moment
March 22, 2004

We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration.... We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle.
- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
March 29, 2004

The Church therefore has one inescapable task: To lift up Christ. When she seeks to lift herself up she becomes weak, but when she acknowledges her own weakness and proclaims her Lord, she is strong.
- Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

Mission Moment
April 5, 2004

Evil labors with vast power and perpetual success - in vain:
preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
April 12, 2004

The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared,
the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity...
- from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

Mission Moment
April 19, 2004

It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.
- St. Peter

Mission Moment
April 26, 2004

Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person,
and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
May 3, 2004

Be attentive to the voice of grace.
- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Mission Moment
May 10, 2004

Do I dare believe and let Love lead my life?
Could I not believe and leave that Love behind?

- Dave Wilcox

Mission Moment
May 17, 2004

Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.

- Psalm 34

Mission Moment
May 24, 2004

The greatest mistake is in not being aware that others are Christ.
There are very many people who will not discover it until their last day.

- Archbishop Van Thuân

Mission Moment
May 31, 2004

God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably....
We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend.
We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves,
substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction.

- Thomas Merton

Mission Moment
June 7, 2004

Yield thou not to adversity, but press on the more bravely.

- Virgil

Mission Moment
June 14, 2004

What is needed to attain happiness is not a comfortable life,
but a heart in love, such as Christ's.

- Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos

Mission Moment
June 21, 2004

I know now one thing only matters in these days... true love... love and love alone.

- James Taylor

Mission Moment
June 28, 2004

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars,
and they pass by themselves without wondering.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
July 5, 2004

We must open our eyes to admire God who hides and at the same time reveals himself in things
and introduces us into the realms of mystery... we must be pure and simple like children,
capable of admiring, being astonished, of marveling, and being enchanted by the divine gestures
of love and closeness we witness.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
July 12, 2004

Let us listen to what all the faithful say, because in every one of them the Spirit of God breathes.

- St. Paulinus of Nola

Mission Moment
July 19, 2004

You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and grace. That is enough for me.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola

Mission Moment
July 26, 2004

In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature, one easily experiences
how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever more rare... In reality, only in silence does man
succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free.
And vacations can help to rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
August 2, 2004

Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.

- Josef Pieper

Mission Moment
August 9, 2004

Love alone allows man to forget himself... it alone can still redeem even the darkest hours of the past
since it alone finds the courage to believe in the mercy of the holy God.

- Fr. Karl Rahner

Mission Moment
August 16, 2004

We may never be faced with the big decision for or against Christ,
but we are faced fifty times a day with the little decisions for or against Him.

- Dr. Kevin Hughes

Mission Moment
August 23, 2004

It is seldom we have the heart to throw ourselves, if I may so speak, on the Divine Arm;
we dare not trust ourselves on the waters, though Christ bids us. We have not St. Peter's love to ask leave
to come to him upon the sea. When we once are filled with that heavenly charity, we can do all things,
because we attempt all things - for to attempt is to do.

- Venerable John Henry Newman

Mission Moment
August 30, 2004

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good.

- St. Paul

Mission Moment
September 6, 2004

Words that do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
September 13, 2004

I will go anywhere and do anything in order to communicate the love of Jesus
to those who do not know Him or have forgotten Him.

- St. Frances Cabrini

Mission Moment
September 20, 2004

Seek by reading and you will find by meditating.
Knock by praying, and it will be opened to you in contemplation.

- St. John of the Cross

Mission Moment
September 27, 2004

Nothing's written in stone, except the Ten Commandments, of course.

- Christine Hart

Mission Moment
October 4, 2004

Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith.

- Saint Francis of Assisi

Mission Moment
October 11, 2004

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

- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Mission Moment
October 18, 2004

We've been invited to come and believe the Unbelievable, receive the Inconceivable, and see beyond our wildest imaginations... Lord, we come with great expectations.

- Steven Curtis Chapman

Mission Moment
October 25, 2004

Whoever is near us and needing us must be our ''neighbor''; it does not matter whether he is
related to us or not, whether he is morally worthy of our help or not. The love of Christ knows no limits.
It never ends; it does not shrink from ugliness and filth.

- St. Edith Stein

Mission Moment
November 1, 2004

O Jesus, come back into our society, our family life, our souls and reign there
as our peaceful Sovereign. Enlighten with the splendor of faith and the charity of Your tender heart
the souls of those who work for the good of the people, for Your poor. Impart to them Your own spirit,
a spirit of discipline, order and gentleness, preserving the flame of enthusiasm ever alight in their hearts...
May that day come very soon, when we shall see You restored to the center of civic life,
borne on the shoulders of Your joyful people.

- Pope John XXIII

Mission Moment
November 8, 2004

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
November 15, 2004

If you see things as in eternity, you are less a prey to the pain of their passing, and so you can learn the
more easily not to clutch at them as they pass... you learn to be reverent and not proudly possessive.

- Father Gerald Vann

Mission Moment
November 22, 2004

Holiness is not first a matter of doing anything. It is first and foremost a matter of letting it be done.
Holiness is to conceive the love of God within and to bring it forth to the world.

- Christopher West

Mission Moment
November 29, 2004

What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is
dying of hunger. Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well.

- Saint John Chrysostom

Mission Moment
December 6, 2004

Solitude is the place of purification.

- Martin Buber

Mission Moment
December 13, 2004

It is part of God's plan for us that Christ shall come to us in everyone;
it is in their particular role that we must come to know him. He may come as a little child,
making enormous demands, giving enormous consolation. He may come as a stranger,
so that we must give the hospitality to a stranger that we should like to give to Christ...

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December 20, 2004

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
- St. Paul, Philippians 4:5-6

Mission Moment
December 27, 2004

The first thing that a person finds in life and the last to which he holds out his hand,
and the most precious that he possess, even if he does not realize it, is family life.

- Blessed Adolph Kolping

Mission Moment
January 3, 2005

God is constantly knocking at the gate of my heart to invite me to go beyond the state I have reached,
because my whole life should be a journey on the way to Love.

- Charles Cardinal Journet

Mission Moment
January 10, 2005

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

- Karl Barth

Mission Moment
January 17, 2005

The needs of the times will teach you what to do.

- Blessed Adolph Kolping

Mission Moment
January 24, 2005

This is what helps to advance God's kingdom: by giving Him absolute mastery over us,
we become apostles without being aware of it...

- Mother Marie des Douleurs

Mission Moment
January 31, 2005

If you practice the holy exercise of Spiritual Communion a good many times each day,
within a month you will see yourself completely changed.

- St. Leonard of Port Maurice

Mission Moment
February 7, 2005

Happy is the soul that knows how to find Jesus in the Eucharist,
and in the Eucharist all things!

- Saint Peter Julian Eymard

Mission Moment
February 14, 2005

The eternal God asks a favor of his bride: "Hold me close to your heart,
close as locket or bracelet fits." No matter whether we walk or stand still, eat or drink,
we should at all times wear the golden locket "Jesus" upon our heart.

- Blessed Henry Suso

Mission Moment
February 21, 2005

Few souls understand what God would effect in them if they should give themselves
entirely into his hands and allow his grace to act.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola

Mission Moment
February 28, 2005

Your soul must hold fast to Him, you must follow after Him in your thoughts,
you must tread His ways by faith, not in outward show.

- St. Ambrose

Mission Moment
March 7, 2005

It is a lesson we all need - to let alone the things that do not concern us.
He has other ways for others to follow Him; all do not go by the same path.
It is for each of us to learn the path by which He requires us to follow Him,
and to follow Him in that path.

- St. Katharine Drexel

Mission Moment
March 14, 2005

No one, however weak, is denied a share in the victory of the cross.
No one is beyond the help of the prayer of Christ.

- St. Leo the Great

Mission Moment
March 21, 2005

In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God's own heart is opened up -
here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up.
God has stepped out of his hiddenness

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Mission Moment
March 28, 2005

The glory of God is man fully alive.

- St. Irenaeus

Mission Moment
April 4, 2005

Be not afraid.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
April 11, 2005

There are efficient people who are not at all effective, and there are inefficient people,
as the Pope was in his suffering, who are extraordinarily effective.

- Archbishop Comastri

Mission Moment
April 18, 2005

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love.
Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Mission Moment
April 25, 2005

If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life
free, beautiful, and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide.
Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
May 2, 2005

Every ordinary thing in your life is a word of God's love: your home, your work,
the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the food you eat.... the flowers under your feet
are the courtesy of God's heart flung down on You! All these things say one thing only:
"See how I love you."

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
May 9, 2005

To watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade;
to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray - these are the things that make us happy...
The world's prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things...

- John Ruskin

Mission Moment
May 16, 2005

He pours light into our minds, arouses our desire and gives us strength...
As the soul is the life of the body, so the Holy Spirit is the life of our souls.

- St. Peter Damian

Mission Moment
May 23, 2005

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new...
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

- John Donne

Mission Moment
May 30, 2005

The Eucharist compels us to move outward: into our neighborhood,
into our country, and into the world. The Eucharist draws us together only
to send us out - again and again, like breathing.

- Father Joe Veneroso

Mission Moment
June 6, 2005

God wastes nothing - not even sin. The soul that has struggled and come through is
enriched by it's experiences, and Grace does not merely blot out the evil past
but in the most literal sense "makes it good."

- Dorothy Sayers

Mission Moment
June 13, 2005

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

- G. K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
June 20, 2005

A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances;
consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus.

- Oswald Chambers

Mission Moment
June 27, 2005

Do not be troubled if you do not immediately receive from God what you ask Him;
for He desires to do something even greater for you, while you cling to Him in prayer.

- Evagrius Ponticus

Mission Moment
July 4, 2005

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result
of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
July 11, 2005

Encourage each other daily while it is still today.

- Hebrews 3:13

Mission Moment
July 18, 2005

God speaks silently, God speaks in your heart; if your heart is noisy, chattering, you will not hear.

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
July 25, 2005

There are very few people who realise what God would make of them
if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola

Mission Moment
August 1, 2005

You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay...

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
August 8, 2005

The more we have received in silence, the more we give in action.

- Ernest Hello

Mission Moment
August 15, 2005

We need to make our own the ancient pastoral wisdom which...
encouraged Pastors to listen more widely to the entire People of God.
Significant is Saint Benedict's reminder to the Abbot of a monastery,
inviting him to consult even the youngest members of the community:
"By the Lord's inspiration, it is often a younger person who knows what is best".

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
August 22, 2005

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.
And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

- G.K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
August 29, 2005

Discouragement itself is a form of pride.

- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
September 5, 2005

We shall steer safely through every storm so long as our heart is right,
our intention fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God.

- St. Francis de Sales

Mission Moment
September 12, 2005

Remember who you are and whose you are.

- Sister Thea Bowman

Mission Moment
September 19, 2005

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

- J.R.R.Tolkien

Mission Moment
September 26, 2005

With thy very wounds, I will heal thee.

- Talmud

Mission Moment
October 3, 2005

God gave Himself to you: give yourself to God.

- Blessed Robert Southwell

Mission Moment
October 10, 2005

The happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face:
it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
October 17, 2005

Christianity is God's marriage proposal to the soul.

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
October 24, 2005

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh,
and the greatness which does not bow before children.

- Kahlil Gibran

Mission Moment
October 31, 2005

To make the sign of the cross is to pronounce a visible and public yes to him
who died for us and who is risen, to the God who in the humility and weakness
of his love is omnipotent, stronger than all the power and intelligence of the world.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
November 7, 2005

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

- Max Ehrmann

Mission Moment
November 14, 2005

Do everything as if He were dwelling in us. Thus we shall be His temples
and He will be within us as our God - as He actually is.

- St. Ignatius of Antioch

Mission Moment
November 21, 2005

We do not exist for ourselves.

- Thomas Merton

Mission Moment
November 28, 2005

Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven.

- Pope St. Pius X

Mission Moment
December 5, 2005

If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because
I have not been embarrassed to talk about God.

- Dorothy Day

Mission Moment
December 12, 2005

Let not your heart be disturbed... Am I not here, who is your Mother?
Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold?
What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.

- words of the Virgin to Juan Diego

Mission Moment
December 19, 2005

You can call happy those who saw Him... But, come to the altar and you will see Him,
you will touch Him, you will give to Him holy kisses, you will wash Him with your tears,
you will carry Him within you like Mary Most Holy.

- St. John Chrysostom

Mission Moment
December 26, 2005

You can reach heaven from any place on earth.

- St. Samthann

Mission Moment
January 2, 2006

And if the years vanish in their course, they are still only successions of days
that pass right through us as we pass through them in order to seek constantly
what You have to show us... to remain constantly in Your embrace,
just as the whole of time remains in the embrace of eternity.

- Adrienne von Speyr

Mission Moment
January 9, 2006

If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion.

- St. Maximilian Kolbe

Mission Moment
January 16, 2006

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Mission Moment
January 23, 2006

Our body is a cenacle, a monstrance: through its crystal the world should see God.

- St. Gianna Molla

Mission Moment
January 30, 2006

I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
February 6, 2006

A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing
and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love and that God's presence is felt
at the very time when the only thing we do is to love.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
February 13, 2006

The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us;
so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

- 1 John 3:16

Mission Moment
February 20, 2006

To work is simple enough; but to rest, there is the difficulty.

- Ernest Hello

Mission Moment
February 27, 2006

May God protect me from gloomy saints!

- Saint Teresa of Avila

Mission Moment
March 6, 2006

Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life
and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from,
where we must go, what path we must take in life...

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
March 13, 2006

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly... Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless... and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed.

- Isaiah 58: 6-8

Mission Moment
March 20, 2006

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family...
The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil,
between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
March 27, 2006

The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God.

- St. Thomas Aquinas

Mission Moment
April 3, 2006

We are united to Him, we are one, and it is when His Passion becomes real to us,
through experience and love, that we grow aware of His presence in us.

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
April 10, 2006

The piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself… Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love…

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Mission Moment
April 16, 2006

Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being;
the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered...
God exists: that is the real message of Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp
what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
April 24, 2006

Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
May 1, 2006

Where there is humility, there is wisdom.

- Proverbs 11:2

Mission Moment
May 8, 2006

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

- Abraham Heschel

Mission Moment
May 15, 2006

We are in the age of the media and the media are more interested in novelty than in truth.
Let us concentrate on the mystery that we are celebrating...."To fix one's gaze on the pierced side of Christ..."

- Father Cantalamessa

Mission Moment
May 22, 2006

In the context of the "great mystery" of Christ and of the Church, all are called to respond - as a bride - with the gift of their lives to the inexpressible gift of the love of Christ, who alone, as the Redeemer of the world, is the Church’s Bridegroom.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
May 29, 2006

The goal of our spiritual life is to become a new person in Christ. It is not enough just to be a ''good person'' or to be ''nice.'' We are called to be saints.

- Father James Farfaglia

Mission Moment
June 5, 2006

The Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance. He is not felt as a burden, for he is light, very light. Rays of light and knowledge stream before him as he approaches. The Spirit comes with the tenderness of a true friend and protector to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, to console.

- St. Cyril of Jerusalem

Mission Moment
June 12, 2006

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

- Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

Mission Moment
June 19, 2006

In the world in which we live, it is almost a necessity to be able to regain one's strength of body and spirit, especially for those who live in the city, where the conditions of life, often feverish, leave little room for silence, reflection and relaxed contact with nature.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
June 26, 2006

Grace flows through wounds.

- Christopher West

Mission Moment
July 3, 2006

The call for a sincere gift of self is the fullest way to realize our personal freedom.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
July 10, 2006

Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true? Does it improve on the silence?

- Shirdi Sai Baba

Mission Moment
July 17, 2006

The world needs more than just itself. Amid the dreariness, people do not need a distraction that will in the end become dreary itself; they are asking for mystery, even if they do not realize this themselves. They need the sign of the wholly Other, the living Word of God, entering into this our age in unadulterated trustworthiness and dynamism.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
July 24, 2006

Love begins with listening.

- Mister Rogers

Mission Moment
July 31, 2006

There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.

- Leon Bloy

Mission Moment
August 7, 2006

For too long already we have talked about man; let us finally talk about God again.

- Vladimir Maximov

Mission Moment
August 14, 2006

"Not my will, but Yours be done"....
By obeying we raise ourselves beyond our littleness and we can act in conformity
with an infinite wisdom... Through obedience we become infinitely powerful.

- St. Maximilian Kolbe

Mission Moment
August 21, 2006

Vacation time offers the unique opportunity to pause before the thought-provoking spectacles
of nature, a wonderful "book" within reach of everyone, adults and children. In contact with
nature, a person rediscovers his correct dimension, rediscovers himself as a creature, small but
at the same time unique, with a "capacity for God" because interiorly he is open to the Infinite.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
August 28, 2006

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.
I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
September 4, 2006

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen,
not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
September 11, 2006

Believers know that the presence of evil is always accompanied
by the presence of good, by grace... Where evil grows, there the hope for good also grows...
In the love that pours forth from the heart of Christ, we find hope for the future of the world.
Christ has redeemed the world: "By his wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
September 18, 2006

We need a new apologetic, geared to the needs of today, which keeps in mind that our task is not to win arguments but to win souls... Such an apologetic will need to breathe a spirit of humanity, that humility and compassion which understand the anxieties and questions of people.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
September 25, 2006

Let go into the mystery. Let yourself go. And when you open up your heart,
you get everything you need. Baby there's a way and a mystic road. You've got to have
some faith to carry on, you've got to open up your heart to the Son.

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
October 2, 2006

Above the clouds the sky is always blue.

- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
October 9, 2006

If I were a physician, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world,
how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Mission Moment
October 16, 2006

We are born with a lingering hunger
We are born to be unsatisfied
We are strangers who can't help but wander
And dream about the other side....

- Nichole Nordeman

Mission Moment
October 23, 2006

This is what it means to live: in everything to say "yes" to the One who is among us.
Our life in this "yes" becomes His glory, the reverberation of His presence within reality.

- Fr. Stefano Alberto

Mission Moment
October 30, 2006

Strange is our situation here upon the earth. Each of us comes for a short visit not knowing why.
Yet sometimes seeming to a Divine Purpose. From the standpoint of daily life however,
there is one thing we do know...that we are here for the sake of others....

- Albert Einstein

Mission Moment
November 6, 2006

There is nothing so great or ideally beautiful as the action of God in the human soul.
If we knew how to discern it in ourselves, our lives would be transformed. If we could see it
in others we would love even more him who is always in our midst, who acts in us, and who
works marvels - these spiritual renewals that we shall understand only in eternity.

- Elisabeth Leseur

Mission Moment
November 13, 2006

The Eucharist is the lifeline thrown from eternity into time. We should hold onto it firmly
and not give ourselves over to the false promises of the world...

- Fr. Albert Paretsky, O.P.

Mission Moment
November 20, 2006

Do not let a day go by without some spiritual reading.

- St. John Bosco

Mission Moment
November 27, 2006

Love, and He will draw near; love, and He will dwell within you.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
December 4, 2006

It is a time of darkness, of faith. We shall not see Christ's radiance in our lives yet;
it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that He is growing
in our lives; we must believe it so firmly that we cannot help relating everything,
literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December11, 2006

We are not heading for an eternal void and an eternal silence
but we are on our way to an encounter, an encounter with Him who created us
and loves us more than mother and father.

- Father Cantalamessa

Mission Moment
December 18, 2006

You can't always get what you want. No, you can't always get what you want.
But if you try sometimes you just might find, you can get what you need.

- Mick Jagger

Mission Moment
December 25, 2006

It is done. Once again the Fire has penetrated the earth, not with the sudden crash of thunderbolt,
riving the mountain tops: does the Master break down doors to enter His own home?
Without earthquake, or thunderclap: the flame has lit up the whole world from within.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Mission Moment
January 1, 2007

Which direction do we take? The one prompted by the passions or the one indicated by the star
which shines in your conscience? The Magi heard the answer: "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is
written by the prophet"... enlightened by these words, they chose to press forward to the very end.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
January 7, 2007

The Magi are filled with awe by what they see; heaven on earth and earth in heaven; man in God and God in man; they see enclosed in a tiny body the One whom the entire world cannot contain.

- St. Peter Chrysologus

Mission Moment
January 15, 2007

I believe in the rest of the story. I believe there's still ink in the pen....
and someday all that's hazy through a clouded glass will be clear at last.

- Nichole Nordeman

Mission Moment
January 22, 2007

The human person is a unique composite - a unity of spirit and matter,
soul and body, fashioned in the image of God and destined to live forever.
Every human life is sacred, because every human person is sacred.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
January 29, 2007

Ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, "God is hard to find."

- Bishop Fulton Sheen

Mission Moment
February 5, 2007

On Christmas Eve I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral... It had dawned on me before, but it really sank in: the Christmas story... Love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical... Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen... There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.
- Bono

Mission Moment
February 12, 2007

Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed "ecstasy," not in the sense of a moment of intoxication,
but rather as a journey, an on-going exodus out of the closed inward-looking self toward its
liberation through self-giving... toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God...

- Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 6

Mission Moment
February 19, 2007

When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you.
Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand... but just how far and in what form?
At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding,
of all theology and ecclesial wisdom.

- Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Mission Moment
February 26, 2007

Throughout history there have been many men and women who have chosen to imitate Jesus as he withdraws into the desert... To pass time in the desert means to create a little emptiness and silence around us, to rediscover the road to our heart, to remove ourselves from the noise and external distractions, to enter into contact with the deepest source of our being and our faith.

- Fr. Cantalamessa

Mission Moment
March 5, 2007

Christianity, if false, is of no importance; and if true, of infinite importance.
The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.

- C. S. Lewis

Mission Moment
March 12, 2007

Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.

- Pope John Paul II
(in a speech to the people of Galway in 1979)

Mission Moment
March 19, 2007

One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented "lives of quiet desperation."

- Fr. McNamara

Mission Moment
March 26, 2007

Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back.
It must be held out empty - for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.

- Dag Hammarskjöld

Mission Moment
April 2, 2007

At the judgment, in response to our questions, the Lord will show us his wounds, and we will understand. In the meantime, however, he simply expects us to stand by him and to believe what these wounds tell us, even though we cannot work right through the logic of this world.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
April 9, 2007

Only from God does true revolution come... the definitive way to change the world.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
April 16, 2007

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

- W.H. Davies

Mission Moment
April 23, 2007

Our own evil inclinations are far more dangerous than any external enemies.

- St. Ambrose

Mission Moment
April 30, 2007

All the troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source:
that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration
penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture.

- St. Teresa of Avila

Mission Moment
May 7, 2007

It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally.

- G. K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
May 14, 2007

Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator. It is a book of beauty that our intellect reads,
but through the passageways of our five senses.

- Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.

Mission Moment
May 21, 2007

The world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds that refuse to be perceived as mere objects of pleasure.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
May 28, 2007

The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn; nor storm without haven.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
June 4, 2007

Eternal Trinity... mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire
ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being...

- Saint Catherine of Siena

Mission Moment
June 11, 2007

What wonderful majesty! What stupendous condescension! O sublime humility!
That the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble Himself like this
under the form of a little bread, for our salvation.

- St. Francis of Assisi

Mission Moment
June 18, 2007

For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original Author, by analogy, is seen.

- Wisdom 13:5

Mission Moment
June 25, 2007

Holy is the dish and drain, the soap and sink, and the cup and plate
and the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile, showerheads and good dry towels
and frying eggs sound like psalms, with bits of salt measured in my palm.
It’s all a part of a sacrament, as holy as a day is spent...

- Carrie Newcomer

Mission Moment
July 2, 2007

These are the times that try men's souls.... but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly...

- Thomas Paine

Mission Moment
July 9, 2007

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
July 16, 2007

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mission Moment
July 23, 2007

Don't just talk... do.

- Grandma Donaghy

Mission Moment
July 30, 2007

It's not just by coincidence
That lives are made of accidents
And doesn't it make perfect sense
That life turns on a point in time
And I know that this is mine.

- Dave Wilcox

Mission Moment
August 6, 2007

Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father's love - difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul's miseries, her burdens, her needs - everything, because through them, she learns humility, realizes her weakness. Everything is a grace because everything is God's gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events - to the heart that loves, all is well.

- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
August 13, 2007

The brilliance of contemplated beauty opens the spirit to the mystery of God.

- Cardinal Angelo Sodano

Mission Moment
August 20, 2007

Between the probable and proved there yawns a gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns our only hope: to leap into the Word that opens up the shuttered universe.

- Sheldon Vanauken

Mission Moment
August 27, 2007

Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ.

- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Mission Moment
September 3, 2007

If God causes you to suffer much it is a sign that He has great designs for you and that He certainly intends to make you a saint. And if you wish to become a great saint, entreat Him yourself to give you much opportunity for suffering; for there is no wood better to kindle the fire of holy love than the wood of the cross, which Christ used for His own great sacrifice of boundless charity.

- St. Ignatius of Loyola

Mission Moment
September 10, 2007

To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God.

- St. John of the Cross

Mission Moment
September 17, 2007

The highest things, the things that really matter, we cannot achieve on our own;
we have to accept them as gifts and enter in to the dynamic of the gift, so to speak.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
September 24, 2007

After the wind there was an earthquake - but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire--but the LORD was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, "Elijah, why are you here?"

- 1 Kings 19:11-13

Mission Moment
October 1, 2007

Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity.

- Saint Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
October 8, 2007

The rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying that the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the rosary is beyond description.

- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Mission Moment
October 15, 2007

The Holy Spirit lovingly penetrates those areas of our personality that would hold us captive. He opens up the mysteries of God's love, sets us free and enables us to experience the new life we have in Christ.

- Mary Healy

Mission Moment
October 22, 2007

There's a hole in my heart
That can only be filled by you
And this hole in my heart
Can't be filled with the things I do

- Extreme

Mission Moment
October 29, 2007

The Holy Spirit knows what a particular age's most pressing need is far better than men with their "programs."

- Hans Urs von Balthasar

Mission Moment
November 5, 2007

For in this world, marked by sin, the gravitational pull of our lives is weighted by the chains of the "I" and the "self." These chains must be broken to free us for a new love that places us in another gravitational field where we can enter new l ife.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
November 12, 2007

If I ever become a Saint - I will surely be one of "darkness." I will continually be absent from heaven -
to light the light of those in darkness on earth.

- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
November 19, 2007

Love can wait to give. Lust can't wait to get.

- Jason Evert

Mission Moment
November 26, 2007

The block of marble is not the sculptor, and doesn't see that he's about to become a masterpiece...
We're the block of marble and God is the sculptor, and the chisel is.... everything.

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
December 3, 2007

Holiness is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it
the whole world would be converted and happy before the year's end.

- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
December 10, 2007

In an age that has thrown off all tradition, the only rebellion possible is orthodoxy.

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
December 17, 2007

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.

- Saint John of the Cross

Mission Moment
December 24, 2007

Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again...
Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior...
Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it,
since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?

- St. Gregory of Nyssa

Mission Moment
December 31, 2007

... But certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane,
is still soaked with the sense of 'exile.'

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
January 7, 2008

If we approach with faith, we too will see Jesus... for the Eucharistic table takes the place of the crib.
Here the Body of the Lord is present, wrapped not in swaddling clothes but in the rays of the Holy Spirit.

- St. John Chrysostom

Mission Moment
January 14, 2008

We must have such great love for the truth that our words will take on the character of oaths.

- St. Paulinus

Mission Moment
January 21, 2008

Yes, the civilization of love is possible; it is not a utopia. But it is only possible by a constant and ready reference to the "Father from whom all fatherhood [and motherhood] on earth is named," from whom every human family comes.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
January 28, 2008

My television is the tabernacle.
- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
February 4, 2008

Moses does not encounter the living God at the mall. He finds Him (or is found by Him)
somewhere out in the deserts of Sinai, a long way from the comforts of Egypt... Where did
the great prophet Elijah go to recover his strength? To the wild. As did John the Baptist,
and his cousin, Jesus, Who is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

- John Eldredge

Mission Moment
February 11, 2008

Let us rise above the things that pass away. Up above, the air is so pure.
Jesus can hide Himself but we will find Him there.

- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
February 18, 2008

The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known - it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
February 25, 2008

There are strange things happening every day.
I hear music up above my head
Fill me up with Your wonder
Give me my rapture today.

Won’t You guide me through the dark night of the soul
That I may better understand Your way...
Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds
That I may be a vehicle for Thee...
Give me my rapture today.

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
March 3, 2008

Oh, how great is the goodness of God, greater than we can understand. There are moments and there are mysteries of the divine mercy over which the heavens are astounded. Let our judgment of souls cease, for God's mercy upon them is extraordinary.

- St. Faustina Kowalska

Mission Moment
March 10, 2008

To the servant of God... every place is the right place, and every time is the right time.

- St. Catherine of Siena

Mission Moment
March 17, 2008

But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins,
Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.

- Isaiah 53:5

Mission Moment
March 24, 2008

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Let the hearer say, "Come." Let the one who thirsts come forward,
and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water.

- Revelation 22:17

Mission Moment
March 31, 2008

It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.

- St. Francis of Assisi

Mission Moment
April 7, 2008

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it,
but because by it I see everything else.

- C. S. Lewis

Mission Moment
April 14, 2008

You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength I will always be joyful. Sadness ought to be banished from Catholic souls... the purpose for which we have been created shows us the path; even if strewn with many thorns, it is not a sad path. It is joyful even in the face of sorrow.

- Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

Mission Moment
April 21, 2008

Sometimes we are looked upon as people who speak only of prohibitions. Nothing could be further from the truth! Authentic Christian discipleship is marked by a sense of wonder. We stand before the God we know and love as a friend, the vastness of his creation, and the beauty of our Christian faith.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
April 28, 2008

Singing is a lover's thing.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
May 5, 2008

The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things.
But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.

- Pope St. Gregory the Great

Mission Moment
May 12, 2008

The field of earth and of our human nature is now no longer barren but full of the seed of divine life. But it takes time for the seed to grow, for the Kingdom to come, and we are commanded to pray and work for that coming, that growth, even if we do not yet see the fruits, or even the blossoms, or even the leaves....

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
May 19, 2008

Our first experience of God is so important, we either experience Him as
the police guard that wants to punish or as Creative Love that awaits.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
May 26, 2008

Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One? Yes, he can, precisely because God Himself has become man, become body, and here (in the liturgy), again and again, he comes through his body to us who live in the body.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
June 2, 2008

Believe the incredible and you can do the impossible.

- Bishop Fulton Sheen

Mission Moment
June 9, 2008

It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly
than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction.

- St. Edmund

Mission Moment
June 16, 2008

The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God
can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter...

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
June 23, 2008

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.

- Mother Teresa

Mission Moment
June 30, 2008

“If you have walked all these days with closed ears and mind asleep, wake up now!”

- Gandalf

Mission Moment
July 7, 2008

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.

- August Rush

Mission Moment
July 14, 2008

There is no need to be dismayed if love sometimes follows torturous ways.
Grace has the power to make straight the paths of human love.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
July 21, 2008

God calls us, just as he called Abraham, away from the security we knew, out of our old, familiar, little room, down the ladder of faith and into his arms. Jesus called his disciples that way - just as a lover elopes with his beloved.
- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
July 28, 2008

Remember that the Christian life is one of action, not speech and daydreams.
Let there be few words and many deeds, and let them be done well.

- St. Vincent Pallotti

Mission Moment
August 4, 2008

When we are before the Blessed Sacrament, let us open our heart;
our good God will open His. We shall go to him; He will come to us...
It will be like a breath from one to the Other.

- St. John Vianney

Mission Moment
August 11, 2008

Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
August 18, 2008

Before His gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves... His gaze, the touch of His heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of His love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

- Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi

Mission Moment
August 25, 2008

Every blade of grass is a blade of grace, a grace note in God's single Song. Nature is not blind and dumb.
Nature is eloquent. Human science is blind and dumb if it does not hear this eloquence.
- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
September 1, 2008

I believe that in a certain way this is proof of the truth of Christianity:
Heart and reason encounter one another, beauty and truth converge,
and the more that we ourselves succeed in living in the beauty of truth,
the more that faith will be able to return to being creative in our time too,
and to express itself in a convincing form of art.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
September 8, 2008

For as Eve was seduced by the word of an angel to flee from God, having rebelled against His Word, so Mary by the word of an angel received the glad tidings that she would bear God by obeying his Word. The former was seduced to disobey God, but the latter was persuaded to obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. As the human race was subjected to death through [the act of] a virgin, so it was saved by a virgin.

- St. Irenaeus, A.D. 180

Mission Moment
September 15, 2008

When I think of that dear rugged cross where the dear Saviour gave his all...
When I feel like I'm on my last go round, see me through.

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
Septeber 22, 2008

All that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
September 29, 2008

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.

~ G. K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
October 6, 2008

The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
October 13, 2008

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ("How time flies... I can hardly believe it!") In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
October 20, 2008

Desire to see God, be fearful of losing Him, and find joy in everything that can lead to Him.
If you act in this way, you will always live in great peace.

- St. Theresa of Avila

Mission Moment
October 27, 2008

Your heart is like an infinitely large hole, and only God is big enough to fill it.

- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
November 3, 2008

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live...

- Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Mission Moment
November 10, 2008

Silence exists so that we might speak to God. And it is in silence that God communicates His graces to us.

- St. Vincent de Paul

Mission Moment
November 17, 2008

Meditate daily on the words of your Creator. Learn the Heart of God in the words of God,
that your soul may be enkindled with greater longings for heavenly joys.

- St. Gregory the Great

Mission Moment
November 24, 2008

Enrich your soul in the great goodness of God: The Father is your table, the Son is your food,
and the Holy Spirit waits on you and then makes His dwelling in you.

- St. Catherine of Siena

Mission Moment
December 1, 2008

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend...

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Mission Moment
December 8, 2008

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word."
- Luke 1:38

“The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”
- Pope Pius IX

Mission Moment
December 15, 2008

Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used his own body to utter his love on earth; his perfectly real body, with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our bodies to express his love on earth, our humanity. A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul... Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice.

- Caryll Houselander

Mission Moment
December 22, 2008

We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice...

- Pope Paul VI

Mission Moment
December 29. 2008

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
January 5, 2009

The deepest lessons the heart has to deliver to us become accessible only when it is ruptured. It is anguish that makes the heart an open book because the wound it causes pierces all the way through to the core. These are terrible lessons, the kind that fill one with nausea. We like to think our lives would be happier if we could find a way to avoid learning them; but the only way to do that is to close one's heart and keep it closed, so that nothing gets in or out of it - to make oneself a heart of stone. It is terrible to put into words the one real alternative to this avoidance. But I see no way to get around what seems to be the harshest, the most merciless truth about the human heart - I mean the fact that, to keep it open, once it has been pierced, one must allow it to be an open wound.

- Jerome Miller

Mission Moment
January 12, 2009

For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down
and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats,
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

- Isaiah 55

Mission Moment
January 19, 2009

Peace begins in the womb.

- Feminists for Life

Mission Moment
January 26, 2009

Believers do not surrender. They can continue on their way to the truth because they are certain
that God has created them "explorers", whose mission is to leave no stone unturned, though the temptation to doubt is always there. Leaning on God, they continue to reach out, always and everywhere, for all that is beautiful, good, and true.

- Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 21

Mission Moment
February 2, 2009

Violence against even one human being is violence against all.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
February 9, 2009

The Pro-Life cause is the preeminent cause of our time, and this struggle between
the gospel of life and the culture of death will determine the destiny of mankind.

- Peter Garrett

February 16, 2009
Mission Moment

One with a spirit of joy preaches without preaching.

- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
February 23, 2009

Christ said, "I am the Truth"; he did not say "I am the custom."

- St. Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo

Mission Moment
March 2, 2009

Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of “things” and not of “persons,” a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
March 9, 2009

The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
March 16, 2009

God no longer simply stands before us as the One who is totally Other. He is within us, and we are in him. His dynamic enters into us and then seeks to spread outward to others until it fills the world, so that his love can truly become the dominant measure of the world.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
March 23, 2009

Not 100 in the United States hate the Roman Catholic Church,
but millions hate what they mistakenly think the Roman Catholic Church is.

- Bishop Fulton Sheen

Mission Moment
March 30, 2009

Who except God can give you peace? Has the world ever been able to satisfy the heart?

- St. Gerard Majella

Mission Moment
April 6, 2009

My daughter, I see more Pharisees among Christians than there were around Pilate.

- St. Margaret of Cortona

Mission Moment
April 13, 2009

Jesus, I trust in You.

- St. Faustina

Mission Moment
April 20, 2009

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

- C.S. Lewis

Mission Moment
April 27, 2009

Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life...

- John 6:27

Mission Moment
May 4, 2009

Let us allow ourselves to be 'infected' by St. Joseph's silence! We need it greatly, in a world that is
often too noisy, that does not favor meditation or listening to the voice of God.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
May 11, 2009

Kindness has converted more people than zeal, science, or eloquence.

- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
May 18, 2009

Let go into the Mystery, let yourself go. You've got to open up your heart, that's all I know.
Trust what I say and do what you're told, and baby, all your dirt will turn into gold.

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
May 25, 2009

The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
June 1, 2009

Oh, hear Him within you speaking this infinite love,
moving like some divine and audible leaven,
lifting the sky of the soul with expansions of light,
shaping new heights and new depths,
and, at your stir of assent,
spreading the mountains with flame, filling the hollows with Heaven.

- Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit (Jessica Powers)

Mission Moment
June 8, 2009

The “name” of the Most Holy Trinity is in a certain way impressed upon everything that exists, because everything that exists, down to the least particle, is a being in relation, and thus God-relation shines forth, ultimately creative Love shines forth. All comes from love, tends toward love, and is moved by love, naturally, according to different grades of consciousness and freedom... The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: only love makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and be loved.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
June 15, 2009

Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.

- G.K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
June 22, 2009

With the Eucharist, therefore, heaven comes down to earth, the tomorrow of God descends into
the present and it is as if time remains embraced by divine eternity.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
June 29, 2009

If you love, you will suffer. The only way to protect yourself against suffering
is to protect yourself against love - and that is the greatest suffering of all, loneliness.

- Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
July 6, 2009

I say, we need less ingestion and more digestion. We need less information and more meditation, reflection, and contemplation.

- Art Carey

Mission Moment
July 13, 2009

The family is the great catechism God has given the world. The work of our lifetime is to learn how to read it and then study it prayerfully.

- Mike Aquilina

Mission Moment
July 20, 2009

We can say with infallible certainty that Mary is in Heaven.

- Cardinal Bevilacqua

Mission Moment
July 27, 2009

Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags.
The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world.

- G.K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
August 3, 2009

The sun penetrates crystal and makes it more dazzling. In the same way, the sanctifying Spirit indwells in souls and makes them more radiant. They become like so many powerhouses beaming grace and love around them.

- St. Basil

Mission Moment
August 10, 2009

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!
And transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation.

- St. Clare of Assisi

Mission Moment
August 17, 2009

The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence
of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.

- G.K. Chesterton

Mission Moment
August 24, 2009

Bad times make good people, as mountainous pressures make diamonds or as fire tempers steel.

- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
August 31, 2009

When a society closes the door to the Infinite, to transcendence, hope is exiled.

- Bishop Wenski

Mission Moment
September 7, 2009

Only if there is love, if hearts are opened, can one person truly know the other.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
September 14, 2009

It is much easier to conquer a country than to conquer ourselves.

- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Mission Moment
September 21, 2009

Humanity, its dignity and its balance, will depend at every moment and on every place on the globe,
on who man is for woman and who woman is for man.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
September 28, 2009

Our life is a gymnasium of desire.... When Christians say "God,"
what do we wish to express? This word is all that we yearn for."

- St. Augustine

Mission Moment
October 5, 2009

It is not enough to long for a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above all, long for that person's good.

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
October 12, 2009

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

- Albert Einstein

Mission Moment
October 19, 2009

Without God the economy is only economy, nature is nothing more than a deposit of material, the family only a contract, life nothing more than a laboratory product, love only chemistry, and development nothing more than a form of growth.

- Archbishop Crepaldi

Mission Moment
October 26, 2009

Do you remember the time darlin' when everything made more sense in the world?
Oh I remember, I remember... when life made more sense... Take me back, take me back,
take me way back... to when life made more sense.

- Van Morrison

Mission Moment
November 2, 2009

How will the Tower of Babel be undone? How will we understand each other in Heaven?
Will we all speak English or Dutch or Latin? No, we will speak music.

- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
November 9, 2009

Music, great music, distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
November 16, 2009

A world that is "beyond good and evil," in which nothing is either genuinely good or genuinely bad, and no truth, goodness, or beauty are revealed, is a world in which nothing is either intrinsically desirable or detestable. Such a world affords no possibility of seeing and using things as holy, which means to some degree letting them be, because in such a world there can be no holy things. Boredom is therefore the defining condition of a people uniquely in danger of losing their capacity to love, that is, a people uniquely in danger of failing to grasp "the mystery of [its] own being" and losing its very humanity.

- Michael Hanby

Mission Moment
November 23, 2009

From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the profoundest sense to himself not through what he does but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift… One must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved… If he declines to let himself be presented with the gift, then he destroys himself.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
November 30, 2009

Silence…leads us to make a gift of self rather than a selfishness that has been gift-wrapped …Silence does not mean running away but rather recollecting ourselves in the open space of God.

- Madeleine Delbrêl

Mission Moment
December 7, 2009

Love alone makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and to be loved.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
December 14, 2009

When we leave the holy banquet of Communion, we are as happy as the wise men would have been if they could have carried away the Infant Jesus.

- St. John Vianney

Mission Moment
December 21, 2009

Cast aside regret and fear... do the deed at hand.

- Gandalf

Mission Moment
December 28, 2009

We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and occupations that totally absorb us and are a great distance from the manger. In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to us again and again, so that we can manage to escape from the muddle of our thoughts and activities and discover the way that leads to him. But a path exists for all of us. The Lord provides everyone with tailor-made signals.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
January 4, 2010

“Women and men are not mistaken when they regard themselves as superior to mere bodily creatures and as more than mere particles of nature or nameless units in modern society. For by their power to know themselves in the depths of their being they rise above the entire universe of mere objects.... Endowed with wisdom, women and men are led through visible realities to those which are invisible”
- Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 14–15

Mission Moment
January 11, 2010

To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good...

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
January 18, 2010

God and the devil are fighting... and the battlefield is the heart of man.

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mission Moment
January 25, 2010

The love of husband and wife is the force that welds society together.

- St. John Chrysostom

Mission Moment
February 1, 2010

No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.

- Corrie ten Boom

Mission Moment
February 8, 2010

Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself, ‘Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?' I felt a great desire to see him, to know him and to pay him homage.

- Saint Josephine Bakhita

Mission Moment
February 15, 2010

Leave sadness to those in the world. We who work for God should be lighthearted.

- St. Leonard of Port Maurice

Mission Moment
February 22, 2010

God seeks us where we are, not so that we stay there, but so that we may come to be where He is, so that we may get beyond ourselves.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
March 1, 2010

I'm suffering very much, but am I suffering very well? That's the point!

- St. Therese of Lisieux

Mission Moment
March 8, 2010

He won me over entirely by giving Himself entirely to me.

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Mission Moment
March 15, 2010

All about us, in earth and air, wherever the eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing itself forth in signs, now in daisy, now in a wind-waft, a cloud, a sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark and silent world within us. The same God who is in us, and upon whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about us- inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying to meet in us...

- George MacDonald

Mission Moment
March 22, 2010

God loves us; we need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved.

- Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment
March 29, 2010

No man can attain to the knowledge of God but by humility. The way to mount high is to descend.

- Blessed Giles of Assisi

Mission Moment
April 5, 2010

"It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still that she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time began, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and death itself would work backwards."

- C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

Mission Moment
April 12, 2010

Mad with the love of a wife for her husband... sing for the Most High sing for no other.
We are all notes in this eternal song. God plays His flute and we all dance along.

- Trevor Hall

Mission Moment
April 19, 2010

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family... I have tried to show how the family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good...

- Pope John Paul II

Mission Moment
April 26, 2010

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

- Dr. Peter Kreeft

Mission Moment
May 3, 2010

The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.

- St. Jane Frances de Chantal

Mission Moment
May 10, 2010

[In] spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

- Walker Percy

Mission Moment
May 17, 2010

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

- Frederick Buechner

Mission Moment
May 24, 2010

"What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?"

- John Locke

Mission Moment
May 31, 2010

Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor.

- St. Paul, Romans 12:9

Mission Moment
June 7, 2010

What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetite
and with our tongue, for the language He best hears is silent love.

- St. John of the Cross