NEWSLETTER INSERTS FOR TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

'The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace.

St Teresa of Calcutta

'I assure you, my sons and daughters, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you repeatedly, and hammered away once and again on the idea that the Christian vocation consists of making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my sons and daughters, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives'.

St Josemaría Escrivá

‘I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted

‘Because of all desires I have ever known, just one did I cling to, for it was the essence of all desire: to know beauty.’

St John of the Cross.

'We must find places where the virtues can flourish. It is time to rediscover the courage of non-conformism. Christians must create places where the air is breathable, or simply where the Christian life is possible. I call upon Christians to bravely open oases of freedom in the midst of the desert created by rampant profiteering. Indeed you must not be alone in the desert of a society without God. A Christian who stays alone is a Christian in danger! He will end up being devoured by the sharks of the market society. Christians must regroup in communities around their cathedrals: the houses of God. Our communities must put God in the center. At the center of our lives, our thoughts, our actions, our liturgies, and our cathedrals'.

Cardinal Robert Sarah

'Amidst the avalanche of lies, we must be able to find places where truth is not only explained but experienced. In a word, we must live the Gospel: not merely thinking about it as a utopia, but living it in a concrete way. The Faith is like a fire, but it has to be burning in order to be transmitted to others. Watch over this sacred fire! Let it be your warmth in the heart of this winter of the West. When a fire glows in the night, men slowly gather around it. This is our hope.'

Cardinal Robert Sarah

‘In history there is no revolution that is not a restoration'

GK Chesterton

‘In the depths of every human heart there is light and darkness. There is desire for good and inclination to evil. The prophet Jeremiah writes ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt; who can understand it’ (Jer. 17:9). The human heart is easily deceived because of the fall of Adam and Eve every one of us knows that we're made for glory and yet original sin attempts to achieve that glory apart from God, to become like God without God.  And so we settled for counterfeit love. We settled for counterfeit truth beauty and goodness’

Jimmy Mitchell, Let Beauty Speak