Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. on Unity in Spite of Injury

You must expect that these poor sinners in the Church are going to get hurt and that they are going to hurt each other. To be let down by the Church is not a reason to leave her, any more than to be let down by your family is a reason to give up family life and move to a desert island. Are there any who have not been hurt by members of their family? In his ‘City of God’, St. Augustine wisely observed that it breaks the heart of any good person to see that even in one’s own home one is not in a safe place and that one may be attacked even there by an enemy posing as a friend or even by an enemy who used to be a loved one. If we all gave up on the human race because we have been hurt, we’d have to move to separate planets.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. – “Arise from Darkness”

St. Gregory of Nyssa on Holiness

If we truly think of Christ as our source of holiness, we shall refrain from anything wicked or impure in thought or act and thus show ourselves to be worthy bearers of his name. For the quality of holiness is shown not by what we say but by what we do in life.

St. Gregory of Nyssa

Dr. Douglas Grandon on the Inadequacy of Scripture Alone

Trying to understand what the Apostles taught and what the Church taught in the early centuries simply by reading the Bible is like trying to watch a baseball game through the knothole in the fence…Scripture was not intended to present a full witness to us of all that the Church taught, believed and practiced. (Scripture is) made up of fully authoritative, inspired writings, but incomplete. That’s why God gave Bishops to us, to sort all of this out over time, as different needs arose in the Church.

Dr. Douglas Grandon – The Journey Home

Fr. Benedict Groeschel on Declaring the Catholic Faith Boldly and with Conviction

And I have found that when we Catholics, in the spirit of love and charity, declare our faith boldly and with conviction, we are more likely to find kindred spirits. This is how we must comport ourselves if we are to fulfill our Lord’s command in the Gospel of John (17:21), Ut unum sint, that all may be one.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel

Gregory of Nazianz on Baptismal Regeneration

Such is the grace and power of baptism; not an overwhelming of the world as of old, but a purification of the sins of each individual, and a complete cleansing from all the bruises and stains of sin. And since we are double-made, I mean of body and soul, and the one part is visible, the other invisible, so the cleansing also is twofold, by water and the Spirit; the one received visibly in the body, the other concurring with it invisibly and apart from the body; the one typical, the other real and cleansing the depths.

Oration on Holy Baptism 7–8 [A.D. 388] – Gregory of Nazianz