Soul Scribe

And for us this is the end of all the stories.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on Earth has read…in which every chapter is better than the one before.

C. S. Lewis
The Last Battle,
Chronicles of Narnia

Broken things are precious. We eat broken bread because we share in the death of our Lord and his broken life. Broken flowers give perfume. Broken incense is used in adoration. A broken ship saved Paul and many other passengers on the way to Rome. Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

God calls us to lead lives of holiness.  Jesus gave the most perfect example with his own life.  But he gave us other examples of holiness in his own mother, the Virgin Mary, and the saints.

Saints are people to whom we can relate, essentially role models for the faithful.  Saints do not forget those of us on Earth.  They follow Jesus’ commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:39) even after death.  In following this, saints pray intensely for those of us on Earth.  And thank goodness, because we really need it!

While we ask saints for help, it is by God that our prayers are answered.  Saints help us at the request of Jesus and through God’s power.  When you pray to a saint, you’re not worshiping that saint.  You’re asking for the saint to pray for you and ask God to help you.

God is the one acting in our lives, not the saints.  They’re just the messengers showing us the way to reach the Lord.

We know that every effort to better society, especially where injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

March 24, 1980

Last homily before he was martyred for the people of El Salvador

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

Emily Dickinson

Stand by the roads and look, ask for the ancient path, which is the way to good.  Walk on it and find rest for your soul.

Jeremiah 6:16

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

If we pray, we will believe.
If we believe, we will love.
If we love, we will serve.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.

Thomas Merton

Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

Chinese Proverb