Category: Fulton Sheen

Whenever man attempts to do what he knows to be the Master’s will, a power will be given him equal to the duty.

Curiously enough, it is fear of how grace will change an improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take away their love of riches, but not their riches–to purge them of the disgust of sin, but not of the pleasure of sin.

Love cannot remain by itself–it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do…but how much love we put into that action.

All love on this earth involves choice. When, for example, a young man expresses his love to a young women and asks her to become his wife, he is not just making an affirmation of love, he is also negating his love for anyone else. In that one act by which he chooses her, he rejects all that is not her. There is no other real way in which to prove we love a thing than by choosing it in preference to something else. Word and signs of love may be, and often are, expressions of egotism or passion; but deeds are proofs of love. We can prove we love our Lord only by choosing Him in preference to anything else.

The world would hate His followers, not because of evil in their lives, but precisely because of the absence of evil or rather their goodness. Goodness does not cause hatred, but it gives occasion for hatred to manifest itself. The holier and purer a life, the more it would attract malignity and hate. Mediocrity alone survives.

To value only what can be “sold” is to defile what is truly precious. The innocent joy of childhood, the devotedness of a wife, the self sacrificing service of a daughter–none of these have an early market. To reduce everything to the dirty scales of economic values is to forget that some gifts, like Mary’s, are so precious that the heart that offers them will e praised as long as time endures.

As all men are touched by God’s love, so all are also touched by the desire for his intimacy. No one escapes this longing; we are all kings in exile, mineable without the infinite. Those who reject the grave of God have a desire to avoid God, as those who accept it have a desire for God.

Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.

There are two ways of waking up in the morning. One is to say, ‘Good morning, God,’ and the other is to say, ‘Good God, morning’!