Called Quotes

“the end, I think that we are only truly free when we accept that we are not in control and choose to seek the One who is. That’s true insecurity worth seeking.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“When we accept the poverty that we have absolutely no control over our fate, that all we have is freely given, unmerited favor from God, we begin to relate to our possessions, to others, and to God in a completely different way. With this realization, all is gift, and God is the only one worth relying on. In times of great favor, we give glory to God; in times of trouble, God is the first we seek for help; at all times, we are unwilling to waste our lives acquiring, maintaining, and protecting possessions that fade at the expense of relationships that last.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“Even though he lived an extremely austere lifestyle and placed heavy burdens of fasting and deprivation on himself, what emerges from his Admonitions and final Testament of life is not a desire to be poor above all else, but to be completely and utterly reliant on the love and mercy of God. When he exhorted the brothers, he obviously wanted the brothers to be poor, but even poverty was at the service of a more important virtue: humility. Servants of God and man, imitating Jesus who humbled himself to be among us, they were to live as they were aptly called, the “lesser brothers.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“Although neither condemning nor protesting either institution in any explicit sense, the humble saint’s life serves as a radical juxtaposition and critique of the values of the world. He is not concerned with power. He is not interested in wealth. All he wants, with all his heart, is to be a poor imitator of Christ. Our world, as St. Francis knew, values individual greatness. In order for our lives to be significant—in order to be “great”—we are told that we must obtain as much power, wealth, and prestige as we can, living in constant competition with one another to see who has the most and thus is the best. Our worth is defined by what we possess as it relates to what others possess, and those who have more than others live believing that they are owed certain things from the world. Respect. Admiration. Glory. Fear. Love. This is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ that St. Francis lived by.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“maybe some people can live anywhere with anyone doing anything because their lives are not defined by the intense love they find and share in one person, but rather by the desire to be in relationship with the source of love itself and to share it in a broad sense with all.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“That same week, I found a letter written by Fr. Jose Carballo, OFM, the former minister general of the Order of Friars Minor and the current secretary for the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, to the Poor Clares on their eight hundredth year anniversary. Fr. Carballo writes: If there is anything that destroys our fraternities it is the pretension of being above others, becoming judges of our brothers and sisters. This is due to our projecting onto them our dreams, and we demand of God and others that they fulfill them. Loving our dream of fraternity more than real fraternity, we turn into destroyers of fraternity. We begin to be accusers of our brothers, and then we accuse God, and finally we become desperate accusers of ourselves. We must remember that there will never exist the ideal fraternity that can accept our dreams of pretentious pride, and that the fraternity is built on the basis of pardon and reconciliation, since it has so much to do with our own limitations and those of others.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“There is a classic story that I love to tell about a man who died and ended up in the the most idyllic world imaginable. All around were people like him and who liked him, and he never once had a fight with anyone; if there was a disagreement, the others always took his side. Each day he was free to indulge in anything he wanted without any consequences or ill effects; he played poker and always won, he drank his favorite whiskey and never got drunk, and at the end of the night, always managed to get the girl. Never once did anyone go against him, never once was anything out of place. At some point, the man began to grow tired of such constant gratification. Surrounded only by those who supported him no matter what he did, successful no matter how hard he tried to fail, and completely unchallenged against his own selfish desires, the excitement of everything he used to love faded. He went to the angel and requested a transfer: “This heaven of yours is quite nice, but it is a little boring. I think I might try hell for a little while. Maybe there I will be able to feel something again.” The angel replied, “Oh, I am terribly sorry, sir. This is hell.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“That is the effect that an encounter with God can have on our lives. When we stop for a moment the desire to convince God to give us what we want and simply encounter God in Godself—to aim our full attention at the light itself rather than using it to see what we want—our focus becomes clear. All of a sudden, we see ourselves and the world the way God does… and for the first time know that things are not the way that the should be. Something needs to change. Often, that something is us.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God

“In its fullness, prayer is an encounter with God that transforms the way we see and interact with the world.”
― Casey Cole OFM, Called: What Happens After Saying Yes to God