From the Depths of our Hearts Quotes

“We thought in particular about the priests. Our priestly hearts wished to strengthen them, to encourage them. With all priests, we pray: Save us, Lord, for we are perishing! The Lord is asleep while the storm is unleashed. He seems to abandon us to the waves of doubt and error. We are tempted to lose confidence. On every side, the waves of relativism are submerging the barque of the Church.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Just as an atmospheric pollution exists that poisons the environment and living beings, thus a pollution of heart and spirit exists that mortifies and poisons spiritual life.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Without the Resurrection, all this would have no meaning.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Let us look at the hands of the Crucified. Our hands, like his, must be pierced so as to keep and to hold nothing greedily. Our heart, like his, must be open so that everyone finds welcome and refuge there... let us look at the Cross. It is the only book that will give us the true meaning of it... Only the Cross will teach us to ‘love to the end.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The experience of the Cross reveals the truth of our life.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Crises are always overcome by returning to the radical character of the Gospel, and not by adopting worldly criteria.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“God alone suffices. He alone can save us and make us fully happy.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“There is no culture that God’s grace cannot reach and transform.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The Cross causes us to be born to divine life. Without the Eucharist, we cannot live. The Virgin, like a mother, watches attentively over our spiritual growth. She educates us to grow in faith. Jesus reveals to us the secret of this heavenly nourishment in which his own flesh becomes our food.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live them with particular intensity and naturalness. In this way, women play a role of maximum importance in the Church’s life by recalling these dispositions to all the baptized and contributing in a unique way to showing the true face of the Church, spouse of Christ and mother of believers...”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“We need women’s special genius. We must learn from them what the Church must be.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Nevertheless, the mystery that dwells in you can give you the strength to live in the midst of the world. And every time the servant of “the one thing necessary” strives to put God at the heart of his life, it brings a bit of light into the darkness.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“It is important to take our time and to open our souls to the breath of the Holy Spirit.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“We must continually be purified and overcome by Christ so that he is the one who speaks and acts in us, and less and less we ourselves.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The only washing that can really purify man is the truth, is Christ himself.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“His elevation is the Cross. It is the deepest descent and, as love pushed to the limit, it is at the same time the culmination of the ascent, the true “elevation” of humanity.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“This letting oneself be guided where one does not want to be led is an essential dimension of our service, and it is exactly what makes us free. In this being guided, which can be contrary to our ideas and plans, we experience something new- the wealth of God’s love.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The Eucharist as the presence of the descent and ascent of Christ thus always recalls, beyond itself, the many ways of service through love of neighbor.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The love of Jesus Christ... embraces the whole world.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The truth is that we must share our freedom with others and we can be free only in communion with them. This shared freedom can be true freedom only if we enter into what constitutes the very measure of freedom, if we enter into God’s will.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Love and sacrifice are one.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“Although ideology divides, truth unites hearts.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“The search for truth can be made only by opening the heart.”
― Robert Sarah, From the Depths of our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

“At the time of Vatican II, this question of the opposition between ministries and priesthood became absolutely unavoidable for the Catholic Church as well. Indeed, “allegory” as a pneumatic transition from the Old to the New Testament had become incomprehensible. The decree of the council on the ministry and life of priests hardly deals with this question at all. Nevertheless, in the period that followed, it monopolized our attention with an unprecedented urgency, and it turned into a crisis of the priesthood that has lasted to this day in the Church.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church