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St. Basil, Letter 2, 4th Century: “Now solitude is of the greatest use… For just as animals are more easily controlled when they are stroked... the soul’s deadly foes, are better brought under the control of reason, after being calmed by inaction, and where there is no continuous stimulation. Let there then be such a place as ours, separate from interactions with men, that the tenor of our exercises be not interrupted from without.”
Pope Benedict XIV, Quod Provinciale, Aug. 1, 1754: “The Provincial Council of your province of Albania… decreed most solemnly in its third canon, among other matters, as you know, that Turkish or Mohammedan names should not be given either to children or adults in baptism… This should not be hard for any one of you, venerable brothers, for none of the schismatics and heretics has been rash enough to take a Mohammedan name, and unless your justice abounds more than theirs, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.” (Quod Provinciale #1, Aug. 1, 1754)
When the Philistines captured the ark of God: “And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it into the temple of Dagon [their idol], and set it by Dagon. And when the Azotians arose early the next day, behold Dagon lay upon his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord: and they took Dagon, and set him again in his place. And the next day again, when they rose in the morning, they found Dagon lying upon his face on the earth before the ark of the Lord: and the head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands, were cut off upon the threshold.” (1 Kings 5:2-4)
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, c. 185: “And the heretics, indeed, who bring strange fire to the altar of God – namely, strange doctrines – shall be burned up by the fire from heaven, as were Nadab and Abiud. But such as rise in opposition to the truth, and exhort others against the Church of God, [shall] remain among those in hell, being swallowed up by an earthquake, even as those who were with Core, Dathan, and Abiron.”
St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto: “There is no lack in these days of captious listeners and questioners; but to find a character desirous of information, and seeking the truth as a remedy for ignorance, is very difficult. Just as in the hunter’s snare, or in the soldier’s ambush, the trick is generally ingeniously concealed, so it is with the inquiries of the majority of the questioners who advance arguments, not so much with the view of getting any good out of them, as in order that, in the event of their failing to elicit answers which chime in with their own desires, they may seem to have fair ground for controversy.”
Pope Pius X: “As a matter of fact, however, merely naturally good acts are only a counterfeit of virtue since they are neither permanent nor sufficient for salvation.” (Editae Saepe # 28, May 26, 1910)
St. Augustine, Against Julian, Book 5, Chap. 1, AD 422: “… man is like to vanity and his days pass away like a shadow…”
Pope St. Leo the Great, Letter 105, May 22, 452: “… giving thanks to the Merciful and Almighty God that He has suffered none save those who loved darkness rather than light to be defrauded of the gospel-truth.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 88, A. 5, Reply 1: “With regard to drunkenness we reply that it is a mortal sin by reason of its genus; for, that a man, without necessity, and through the mere lust of wine, makes himself unable to use his reason, whereby he is directed to God and avoids committing many sins, is expressly contrary to virtue.”
Pope Pius IX: “In particular, ensure that the faithful are deeply and thoroughly convinced of the truth of the doctrine that the Catholic faith is necessary for attaining salvation.” (Nostis et Nobiscum # 10, Dec. 8, 1849)
St. Alphonsus on the damnation of the impure: “Continue, O fool, says St. Peter Damian (speaking to the unchaste), continue to gratify the flesh; for the day will come in which thy impurities will become as pitch in thy entrails, to increase and aggravate the torments of the flame which will burn thee in hell: ‘The day will come, yea rather the night, when thy lust shall be turned into pitch, to feed in thy bowels the everlasting fire.’”
Pope St. Leo the Great, Letter 15, July 21, 447: “Besides this one consubstantial, eternal, and unchangeable Godhead of the Most High Trinity there is nothing in all creation which, in its origin, is not created out of nothing.”
St. Alphonsus: “All the reprobate have been damned in consequence of their neglect of prayer; had they prayed they should not be lost; and all the saints have become saints by prayer; had they neglected prayer, they would not have become saints. We must live in the persuasion, St. John Chrysostom says, that to neglect prayer, and to lose the grace of God, are one and the same thing.”
Pope Leo XIII: “The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavor than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own.” (Satis Cognitum # 9, June 29, 1896)
St. John Eudes (17th century): “In order to ensnare us, the Devil gives sin a captivating appearance, that he might the more easily cause us to commit it. It was thus he seduced our first parents: by promising them the knowledge of good and evil. He even dared to tempt our Lord Himself in the same manner; offering Him all the possessions of the earth if He would only commit one sin. We find that in all his attempts to draw us into sin, he invariably holds out a hope of some temporal advantage. Thousands of Christians daily yield to this temptation, and lose the eternal happiness of the other life to enjoy the false pleasures of this world.”
Pope St. Leo the Great: “But that this may be properly observed and guarded, the integrity of the Catholic faith must first of all be preserved, and, because in all cases ‘narrow’ and steep ‘is the way that leadeth unto life,’ there must be no deviation from its track, either to the right hand or to the left.” (Letter 85, June 9, 451)
Padre Pio on the devil beating him with iron weapons: “The ogre [the devil] won’t admit defeat. He has appeared in almost every form. For the past few days he has paid me visits along with some of his satellites armed with clubs and iron weapons and, what is worse, in their own form as devils.” (Letter to Padre Agostino, Jan. 18, 1912)
Pope Pius VIII: “The heretics have disseminated pestilential books everywhere, by which the teachings of the impious spread, much as a cancer. To counteract this most deadly pest, spare no labor.” (Traditi Humilitati # 9, May 24, 1829)
“During the reign of [King] Achaz the people of Juda were visited with a terrible calamity. That unhappy king had sacrificed his own children to the idol Moloch, one of the chief gods of the Gentiles. He had closed the gates of the Temple, and broken the sacred vessels. The Lord therefore delivered him into the hands of the king of Syria, who slew in one day a hundred and twenty thousand men of Juda, while two hundred thousand women and children were carried into captivity.” (2 Paralip. 29-32 - Bishop Frederick Justus Knecht, A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture, p. 314.)
Pope Pius XI: “Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.” (Mit Brennender Sorge #9, March 14, 1937)
Acts 26:15-18 – “And I said: Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord answered: ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by the faith that is in me.’”
Pope Pius X (1904): “Men even go so far as to impugn the arguments for the existence of God, denying with unparalleled audacity and against the first principles of reason the invincible force of the proof which from the effects ascends to their cause, that is God, and to the notion of His infinite attributes. ‘For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: his eternal power and divinity’ (Rom. 1:20).” (Iucunda sane #15)
2 Chronicles 12:5- “Then Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam and to the princes of Judah, who had gathered at Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said to them: Thus says the Lord, ‘You abandoned me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak.’”
Pope Leo XIII (1886): “Everyone knows how inimical to virtue these times are and how the Church is attacked. We have much to fear amid such dangers, lest a shaken faith languish even where it has taken strong and deep roots. It is enough to recall rationalism and naturalism, those deadly sources of evil whose teachings are everywhere freely distributed. We must then add the many allurements of corruption: the opposition to or open defection from the Church by public officials, the bold obstinacy of secret societies, here and there a curriculum for the education of youth without regard for God.” (Quod multum #3)
St. Basil (4th century): “… our life has been slandered; and our faith in God has been slandered; for I realize that the slanderer inflicts injury on three persons at once: he injures him whom he calumniates, those with whom he has conversation, and himself.” (Letter 204)
Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 16, 5th century: “But at all these acts of godliness, dearly-beloved, which commend us more and more to God, there is no doubt that our enemy, who is so eager and so skilled in harming us, is aroused with keener stings of hatred, that under a false profession of the Christian name he may corrupt those whom he is not allowed to attack with open and bloody persecutions, and for this work he has heretics in his service whom he has led astray from the Catholic faith, subjected to himself, and forced under divers errors to serve in his camp.”
“So, after making many attempts” to attack, discourage and frighten St. Antony of the Desert, “they [the demons] gnashed their teeth at him… And the Lord in this also forgot not Antony’s wrestling, but came to his defense. For looking up, Antony saw as it were the roof opening and a beam of light coming down to him. And the demons suddenly disappeared, and the soreness of his body ceased at once, and the building was again sound.” (St. Antony of the Desert, p. 14.)
St. Athanasius, 4th century: “First of all believe that God is one, who created all things and fitted them together, and made all things to be out of that which is not” (On the Incarnation, 3, 1)
Vision of St. Ansgar (9th century): “When then I had been brought by the men whom I mentioned into the presence of this unending light, where the majesty of almighty God was revealed to me without need for anyone to explain, and when they and I had offered our united adoration, a most sweet voice, the sound of which was more distinct than all other sounds, and which seemed to me to fill the whole world, came to me from the same divine majesty…” (Life of Ansgar, p. 10)
Job 11:7-10- “… God… He is higher than heaven, and what wilt thou do? He is deeper than hell, and how wilt thou know? The measure of him is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.”
Pope St. Martin I, Lateran Synod, 649: “… the devil, who always hastens to perform his own works through ‘the sons of disobedience.’”
Pope St. Martin I, Lateran Synod, 649: “… there is no common ground between the heretics and the holy fathers, but that ‘as far as the East is from the West’, so far are the impious heretics in word and thought from the men who speak of God.”
As a youth, the future apostle of Brazil, Padre Jose de Anchieta [16th cent.], was happy and well liked. “Jose nevertheless was frequently sad and melancholy. In his restless moods he sought solitude for prayer and meditation: his soul yearned for something more than ordinary piety, knowledge and affection. When that spirit seized him, he would leave his arduous studies and walk along the banks of the Mondego, finding in its beauty release to contemplate the tragedy of human weakness. After one of these excursions of hungry searching, Jose entered the Cathedral of Coimbra. As he knelt in the deep, shadowy silence before the image of the Virgin, he suddenly found the peace and joy for which he yearned. The vague longing that had disturbed and at times consumed him now took shape as a desire to dedicate his life to the service of God…” (Helen G. Dominian, Apostle of Brazil, p. 6)
While converting heathen slaves in South America, St. Peter Claver (1580-1654) instructed them that they ought to ask “pardon for the sins of their past heathen life, especially for idolatry, lust and drunkenness.” (Fr. Angel Valtierra, Peter Claver – Saint of the Slaves, 1960, p. 127)
Ecclesiasticus 28:22- “Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have perished by their own tongue.”
Pope St. Leo the Great: “Defend the Church in unshaken peace against the heretics, that your empire also may be defended by Christ’s right hand.” (Letter 44, Oct. 13, 449, to Emperor Theodosius II)
Proverbs 15:8- “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord…”
Romans 16:17-18 “Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who make dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them. For they that are such, serve not Christ our Lord, but their own belly; and by pleasing speeches and good words, seduce the hearts of the innocent.”
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5, Chap. 24, c. AD 180: “The Devil, however, as he is the apostate angel, can only go to this length, as he did at the beginning, [namely] to deceive and lead astray the mind of man into disobeying the commandments of God, and gradually to darken the hearts of those who would endeavor to serve him...”
Pope Benedict XIV, Nuper ad nos, March 16, 1743, Profession of Faith: “This faith of the Catholic Church, without which no one can be saved, and which of my own accord I now profess and truly hold…”
“There is, says the Holy Ghost, one that humbleth himself wickedly, and his interior is full of deceit (Ecclus. 19:23). There are some who humble themselves... through a motive of being esteemed humble and of being praised for their humility. But, according to St. Bernard, to seek praise from voluntary humiliations is not humility, but the destruction of humility, for it changes humility into an object of pride.” (St. Alphonsus)
St. Gregory of Nyssa, Letter To Peter, 4th century: “… it would be a most shameful lack of spirit, when our foes make no concealment of their blasphemy, not to be bold in our statement of the truth.”
St. Alphonsus (1755) on detachment from relatives: “If attachment to relatives were not productive of great mischief Jesus Christ would not have so strenuously exhorted us to estrangement from them… a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household (Mt. 10:36)… Relatives are [very often] the worst enemies of the sanctification of Christians...”
Fr. William Jurgens: “… we must stress that a particular patristic text [a particular statement from a father] is in no instance to be regarded as a ‘proof’ of a particular doctrine. Dogmas are not ‘proved’ by patristic statements, but by the infallible teaching instruments of the Church. The value of the Fathers and writers is this: that in the aggregate [that is, in totality], they demonstrate what the Church believes and teaches; and again, in the aggregate [that is, in totality], they provide a witness to the content of Tradition, that Tradition which is itself a vehicle of revelation.”
2 Paralipomenon 19:2- “Thou helpest the ungodly, and thou art joined in friendship with them that hate the Lord, and therefore thou didst deserve indeed the wrath of the Lord.”
Pope Pius XI (1923): “… the heresies begotten by the [Protestant] Reformation. It is in these heresies that we discover the beginnings of that apostasy of mankind from the Church, the sad and disastrous effects of which are deplored, even to the present hour, by every fair mind.” (Rerum omnium pertabationem #4, Jan. 26, 1923)
“Another characteristic of the saints that Francisco began to manifest after the apparition of the Lady (1917) was the love of solitude. One May morning he left the two girls (Jacinta and Lucia) with the sheep, and climbed to the top of a high rock. ‘You can’t come up here!’ he called down. ‘Leave me alone!’… Lucia and Jacinta began to run after butterflies. By the time they wearied of this they had forgotten all about Francisco, and they thought no more of him until they realized that they were hungry, and that it must be long past the time for their meal. There Francisco was, still lying motionless on the top of the rock…. ‘What have you been doing all this time?’ ‘I have been thinking of God, who is so sad because of so many sins,’ the boy answered seriously. ‘If I could only give Him joy!’” (William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima, pp. 61-62)
St. Thomas Aquinas (1274): Whether A Father Can Compel his son to Marry: “I answer that, Since in marriage there is a kind of perpetual service, as it were, a father cannot by his command compel his son to marry, since the latter is of free condition...” (Summa Theologiae, Suppl., Q. 48, A. 6.)
St. Alphonsus (1755): “Purity of intention consists in performing all our actions through the sole motive of pleasing God… In the life of St. Pachomius, Surius relates that a certain monk made two mats, whilst his companions made but one; he showed the two mats to St. Pachomius in order to receive praise, but the saint said to the other monks: ‘Behold, this monk worked till night, and has offered his work to the devil.’”
Pope St. Agatho, III Council of Constantinople, 680-681: “… how could a knowledge of the Scriptures, in its fullness, be found unless what has been canonically defined by our holy and apostolic predecessors, and by the venerable five councils, we preserve in simplicity of heart, and without any distorting keep the faith come to us from the Fathers, always desirous and endeavoring to possess that one and chiefest good, viz.: that nothing be diminished from the things canonically defined, and that nothing be changed nor added thereto, but that those same things, both in words and sense, be guarded untouched?”
“St. Francis Borgia says that prayer introduces the love of God into the soul, but mortification prepares a place for it, by banishing from the heart earthly affections – the most powerful obstacles to charity… ‘Prayer without mortification,’ says Father Balthasar Alvarez, ‘is either an illusion, or lasts but a short time.’” (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
St. Augustine, on confession to priests: “Let no man say within himself: ‘I repent in secret to the Lord. God, who has power to pardon me, knows the inmost sentiments of my heart.’ Was there, then, no reason for saying ‘whatsoever you loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.’ [Mt. 18:18] No reason why the keys were given to the Church of God?” (Lib. 1 Hom. 49.)
Pope Clement XIV, Salutis Nostrae (#5), April 30, 1774: “Do not let these days of salvation pass by without using the great opportunity to appease divine justice and obtain grace. For it is not fitting that you should be less eager in obtaining the abundance of heavenly grace... than men greedy for profit or zealous for travel. Yet these allow no inconveniences or hindrances to detain them.”
“Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgment, to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth.” (Exodus 23:2)
St. Alphonsus (c. 1755): “Whosoever loves God loves solitude; there the Lord communicates himself more familiarly to souls, because there he finds them less entangled in worldly affairs, and more detached from earthly affections… St. Eucherius relates that a certain man, desirous of becoming a saint, asked a servant of God where he should find God. The servant conducted him to a solitary place, and said: ‘Behold where God is found.’”
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book IV, Chap. 14, AD 180: “In the beginning, therefore, did God form Adam, not as if He stood in need of man, but that He might have someone upon whom to confer His benefits… for this reason does God demand service from men, in order that, since He is good and merciful, He may benefit those who continue in His service.”
Pope St. Gregory VII, Summer 1076: “… God whose wrath when He begins to judge is as stern as His patience is abundant.”
St Augustine (395): “… God does not forgive sins except to the baptized.”
(1918): “Jacinta [of Fatima] became ill a few days after Francisco. One day Lucia found her strangely elated. ‘Look, Lucia!’ she said. ‘Our Lady came to see us here, and she said that she is coming very soon to take Francisco to heaven. And she asked me if I still wanted to convert more sinners and I said yes. Our Lady wants me to go to two hospitals. But not to be cured. It is to suffer more for the love of God, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for the offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.’” (Our Lady of Fatima, p. 161)
Pope St. Innocent (414): “But that which Your Fraternity asserts the Pelagians preach, that even without the grace of Baptism infants are able to be endowed with the rewards of eternal life, is quite idiotic.”
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