Catholic Daily Brief

Chapter 4: How to know whether we are acting with distrust of self and trust in God Chapter 5: Timidity is not a virtue Chapter 6: Further advice on distrust of self and trust in God

Is Communism against religion?

Chapter 1: In What Spiritual Perfection Consists Chapter 2: On Distrust of Self Chapter 3: On Trust in God

"The truth finally becomes apparent that neither in any operation with factual propositions nor in any appeal to instinct can the Innovator find the basis for a system of values. None of the principles he requires are to be found there: but they are all to be found somewhere else."

"And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

"If naturalism is right, then it is at this point, at the study of man himself, that it wins its final victory and overthrows all our hopes: not only our hope of immortality, but our hope of finding significance in our lives here and now. On the other hand, if naturalism is wrong, it will be here that it will reveal its fatal philosophical defect, and that is what I think it does."

"The Angels of heaven, He said, rejoice more over one sinner doing penance than ninety-nine just who need not penance; the publican in the back of the temple mourning over his sins, He said, went back to his house justified. Now in His farewell discourse before the Ascension, He bade the world repent."

"If Our Lord took the worst the world had to offer, and then by the power of God rose above it; if He, the unarmed, could make war with no other weapon than goodness and pardon, so that the slain had the gain, and they who killed Him lost the day, then who should ever be without hope? Who shall ever despair in any momentary defeat by evil? Who shall fail to trust when he sees walking in the darkness the Risen One with glorious scars on hands and feet and side?"

"If this commission were given solely for the time span of the Apostles, it is evident that they could not possibly go to all nations. The dynamism or current that was passed into the Apostles under the headship of Peter was to continue until Christ’s Second Coming. No doubt was left concerning the authority and the work of the Church when the Master would leave the earth."

"Thus we must admit that Faith, as we know it, does not flow from philosophical argument alone; nor from experience of the Numinous alone; nor from moral experience alone; nor from history alone; but from historical events which at once fulfil and transcend the moral category, which link themselves with the most numinous elements in Paganism, and which (as it seems to us) demand as their pre- supposition the existence of a Being who is more, but not less, than the God whom many reputable philosophers think they can establish."

"If you make the adults of today Christian, the children of tomorrow will receive a Christian education. What a society has, that, be sure, and nothing else, it will hand on to its young. The work is urgent, for men perish around us."

Why can't there be women priests?

"Thomas thought that he was doing the right thing in demanding the full evidence of sensible proof; but what would become of future generations if the same evidence was to be demanded by them? The future believers, the Lord implied, must accept the fact of the Resurrection from those who had been with Him."

The Resurrection of Our Lord; the conclusion of Sister Emmerich's visions

The Events of Holy Saturday and the Harrowing of Hell

The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus; The Earthquake and Appearance of the Dead

The Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, and Pilate's 'Ecce Homo'

Mary's grief; Jesus in the subterranean prison

The cruelty towards Our Lord in the house of Caiphas, and the denials of St Peter

Jesus before the tribunals of Annas and Caiaphas

The plotting of the enemies of Christ, and the chaos in and around Jerusalem during Holy Thursday night

Chapter 3: Jesus is Arrested

Chapter 2: Judas and His Band

The Agony in the Garden

Meditation 9: Private Instructions and Consecrations

Meditation 8: The Institution of the Holy Eucharist

Meditation 5: Jesus Goes Up to Jerusalem Meditation 6: The Last Pasch Meditation 7: The Washing of the Feet

Meditation 1: Preparations for the Pasch Meditation 2: The Supper Room Meditation 3: Arrangements for Eating the Paschal Lamb Meditation 4: The Chalice Used at the Last Supper

There are three laws of pleasure which make the attainment of happiness easier.

"Men and women are forever trying to add to their possessions far beyond the limit of enjoyment. This is because of their mistaken belief that their hunger for Infinity can be satisfied by an infinity of material things: what they really wish is the Infinity of Divine Love."

"Repose allows us to contemplate the little things we do in their relationship to the vast things which alone can give them worth and meaning."

"I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing."

"Whom the Lord loveth tenderly, He chasteneth."

"From examining his own soul, any one of us can learn five general truths about all human beings."

"God made us out of nothing - nothing at all - and it well for us occasionally to recall that fact."

"This is, indeed, a century of revolutions. But it need not go down in history as a period when revolutions were entirely economic and political."

"Our exterior world today is in desperate straits, but the inner world of man is far from hopeless."

Sheen's thoughts on humility, egotism, and joy

"'Great works' (of art) and 'good works' (of charity) had better also be Good Work. Let choirs sing well or not at all. Otherwise we merely confirm the majority in their conviction that the world of Business, which does with such efficiency so much that never really needed doing, is the real, the adult, and the practical world; and that all this 'culture' and all this 'religion' (horrid words both) are essentially marginal, amateurish, and rather effeminate activities."

"It will be infallible judgment. If it is favorable we shall have no fear, if unfavorable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other."

The theological implications of extraterrestrial life

"Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?"

"How is it right, or even psychologically possible, for creatures who are every moment advancing either to heaven or to hell, to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology?"

The Seventh Word from the Cross: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit"

The Sixth Word from the Cross: "It is finished"

The Fifth Word from the Cross: "I thirst"

The Fourth Word from the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Monica's death; Augustine's grief and prayers for her soul

The Third Word from the Cross: "Mother behold thy son; son, behold thy Mother"

The Second Word from the Cross: "This day you will be with me in Paradise"