Thus, we come to pray, "In the hour of my death, call me," knowing that he will, and for the same reason that he has called me all during my life: that I may come to him. We shall be able to make that final decision to say, "Yes! yes! I choose his hour for my death, so that I may come to you," if we have prepared for it by a lifetime of understanding what it means to be called. Do we not see this even in our dealings with one another? If I call one of you, it is for a reason, maybe even the dearest of reasons: just that I want to see you! And when God calls us, it is for a reason, particularly in that dearest final call, which will be made because he just wants to see us. We can help one another remember, by our manner of living, that God has always the same elemental reason for each of his calls, whether in life or in death: that we may come to him.

Mother Mary Francis was the abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, NM.

A child shows his love with artless innocence: everything in him expresses the feelings of his heart, and he is all the more touching and persuasive because there is nothing studied about him. It is the same with the spiritual child, when he wishes to show his love for God and his charity for his neighbor. He goes to God simply, without preparation; he says to God without set formulas or choice of words all that his loving heart suggests to him; he knows no other method of prayer than to keep himself in the presence of God, to look at God, to listen to him, to possess him, to tell him all the feelings with which grace inspires him, sometimes in words, but more often without speaking at all.

Fr. Jean-Nicholas Grou, S.J., was a French Jesuit priest of the 19th century and spiritual director.

We run still greater risks in the realm of sensibility, and in believing that our prayer has value only when we have "felt" something. The modern world takes special interest in "experiences," descriptions, states of the soul; there is a kind of cult for everything that can yield some kind of "interior witness." We delight in working out a projection of ourselves that arises from the senses.

Prayer is an extremely favorable opportunity for realizing such a projection. But this will always be the great difference between Christian and non-Christian prayer: the former does not contain its own end. A person does not pray primarily in order to find himself, but to give himself, to enter into a plan of salvation that goes beyond himself. In Christian prayer, what matters above all is not the quality of the interior experience, which can sometimes be very shallow, but the Person who is the "object" of this experience. Saint Paul speaks of "groanings" (Rom 8:26) or of a "cry" (Gal 4:6). What is important is not our experience but the gift we make of ourselves. We should enter into prayer, not to receive, but to give, to give ourselves and lose ourselves. And if friendship with God is to remain pre-eminent in our prayer, we must enter into prayer in order to give ourselves as a free gift, with the knowledge that we may not always really give what we are giving, and yet without being concerned about what we are giving.

Taken from The Rediscovery of Prayer by Fr. Bernard Bro, O.P., a distinguished French Dominican, theologian, and prolific author.

Taken from Fr. de Caussade, a French Jesuit and revered spiritual director of the 18th century.

It is not we who wait for God, and draw his attention, but it is God who awaits us. It is not we who are anxious to see him realize our desires, but it is he who wishes to enter into our plans and to invest us with his own strength. And in prayer it is he who anticipates us, giving us an opportunity to work for and with him, in the absolute certainty of success. 'For thirty years I searched for God, and at the end I saw that it was he who was waiting for me.'

This is the first response of God, the secret of our hope, and what should be the foundation of our certitude.

In this connection, it seems that too often we believe that the essential element in hope ('its formal object,' as we say) is the desire to possess happiness and to possess God. Yet the essential note of hope is not primarily the desire for beatitude, but the assurance that God comes to our aid."

Taken from Father Bernard Bro, O.P., a French Dominican priest and a distinguished theologian and author.

Blessed John Cardinal Henry Newman

There have been men before now who have supposed Christian love was so diffusive as not to admit of concentration upon individuals; so that we ought to love all men equally. And many there are, who, without bringing forward any theory, yet consider practically that the love of many is something superior to the love of one or two; and neglect the charities of private life, while busy in the schemes of an expansive benevolence, or of effecting a general union and conciliation among Christians. Now I shall here maintain, in opposition to such notions of Christian love, and with our Savior's pattern before me, that the best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.

It has been the plan of divine providence to ground what is good and true in religion and morals, on the basis of our good natural feelings. What we are towards our earthly friends in the instincts and wishes of our infancy, such we are to become at length towards God and man in the extended field of our duties as accountable beings."

Taken from Bl. John Henry Newman, who established in Oratory in Birmingham, England, and was a preacher of great eloquence.

Photograph of Servant of God Madeleine Debrel

We will be incapable of incarnating God's love in the world, we will be incapable of bringing the Gospel, which is but the manifestation of love, to the world, if we do not first accept the incarnation of this love in the Church, in the mystical Body of Jesus Christ...

Everything in the Church shows the movement of Christ's blood, the gestures that offer it, the places where we can place our lips to drink it and to cause it to pour forth.

This is what liturgy is... Are we aware that liturgy is the salvation of the world? If, through the long course of history, it was necessary to adapt the liturgy, to explain it, to translate it, and if it is once again necessary to do so in our time, it never has been and is not today a question of making the liturgy more human. It already is human, and tragically so: it is the Passion of the Son of God made man, made continually present among us.

This is, above all, what a parish is, in the midst of a world that comprehends nothing about such things. What else are bishops with their offices other than the faith preserved and the responsibility for the salvation that is meant to spread to the ends of the earth? Rome, through everything else, is the love of God that has been promised to the Church for eternity. This body wants to propagate itself. The Church will forever aspire to the world. She doesn't need the world in order to accomplish her mission, but without the world, she would have no mission. The world is the stubble and the Church is the flame."

Taken from Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel, a 20th century French laywoman, writer, and mystic devoted to caring for the poor and the evangelization of culture.