A Year With the Saints Quotes

“Eternal Father, I humbly adore you, and thank you for having created me and for having redeemed me through Jesus Christ. I thank you most sincerely for having made me a Christian, by giving me the true faith, and by adopting me as your Son, in the sacrament of Baptism. I thank you for having waited for my repentance after the numberless sins I’d committed, and for having pardoned (as I humbly hope) all the offences that I’ve committed against you, and for which I’m now sincerely sorry, because they have been displeasing to you, who are infinite Goodness. I thank you for having preserved me from the many relapses of which I would have been guilty, if you hadn’t protected me. Even so, my spiritual enemies still continue—and will continue till death—to fight against me, and to endeavor to make me their slave. If you don’t constantly guard and support me with your aid, this miserable creature will return to sinning and will certainly lose your grace. I beg you, then, for the love of Jesus Christ, to grant me holy perseverance until death. Jesus, your Son, has promised that you’ll grant whatever we ask in his name. So through the merits of Jesus Christ, I beg for myself and for all those who have been justified the grace never again to be separated from your love, but to love you forever, in time and eternity. — St. Alphonsus Liguori, A Prayer to Obtain Final Perseverance”
― Paul Thigpen, A Year With the Saints: Daily Meditations With the Holy Ones of God.

“You angels of Jesus and his saints, pray for me, that our loving Savior may give me new grace and new love for him, to devote this year and my whole life, purely and solely, to the service of his glory and love. Amen.”
― Paul Thigpen, A Year With the Saints: Daily Meditations With the Holy Ones of God.

“DAY 254 Controlling our appetite St. Augustine readily admitted the challenges of controlling physical appetites. The tendency to eat and drink too much is especially difficult to overcome, since we can’t simply “swear off” eating and drinking altogether. But he recognized that God is willing to help us in our weakness. By eating and drinking we restore the daily losses of the body. This activity must last, then, until the day comes when you, Lord, destroy both food and stomach; when you’ll slay this emptiness of mine with a marvelous fullness; when you’ll clothe this corruptible nature with eternal and incorruptible life. For now, however, this necessity of eating and drinking is sweet to me. So I must fight against this sweetness to keep from being made captive by it. I carry on my daily battle by fasting, “bringing my body into subjection,” as St. Paul put it (see 1 Corinthians 9:27). This much you’ve taught me, Lord: I must look upon food as medicine, and consume only as much as I need. Yet placed in the midst of these temptations to eat and drink too much, I must strive daily against craving for food and drink. For it’s not the kind of temptation I’m able to deal with simply by resolving to cut it off, once and for all, never to touch it again, as I was able to do with sexual sin. Instead, the throat is like the bridle of a horse that must be held with a hand that’s neither too firm nor too slack. For who, Lord, isn’t carried away in what he eats and drinks beyond the limits of what’s only necessary? Whoever can do that is a great man. Let him magnify your name for such a gift. But I’m not someone like that, for I’m a sinful man. Even so, I also magnify your name. And the one who has overcome the world makes intercession to you for my sins, counting me among the members of his body, however weak I may be. — St. Augustine, Confessions,”
― Paul Thigpen, A Year With the Saints: Daily Meditations With the Holy Ones of God.

“If you speak, say little and speak low; don’t shout. Truly, this is a most useful saying! — St. Bernardine of Siena,”
― Paul Thigpen, A Year With the Saints: Daily Meditations With the Holy Ones of God.