St. Augustine of Hippo on Loving God Late

Late have I loved You. O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

– St. Augustine of Hippo

C.S Lewis on Aiming for Heaven

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

C. S. Lewis

Leontius the Hierapolian on the Veneration of Sacred Icons

I sketch and paint Christ and the sufferings of Christ in churches, in homes, in public squares and on icons, on linen cloth, in closets, on clothes, and in every place I paint so that men may see them plainly, may remember them and not forget them… And as thou, when thou makest thy reverence to the Book of the Law, bowest down not to the substance of skins and ink, but to the sayings of God that are found therein, so I do reverence to the image of Christ. Not to the substance of wood and paint — that shall never happen… But, by doing reverence to an inanimate image of Christ, through Him I think to embrace Christ Himself and to do Him reverence… We Christians, by bodily kissing an icon of Christ, or of an apostle or martyr, are in spirit kissing Christ Himself or His martyr.

Leontius the Hierapolian – Sacred Images, Statues and Other Icons

C.S. Lewis on Forgiveness of Self

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

C.S. Lewis – Anglican, but “Catholike” Author

Henri de Lubac on Undying Love for the Catholic Church

But she’s still our Mother!

Henri de Lubac – responding to Hans Kung’s complaints of troubles in the Catholic Church at Vatican II

St. Alphonsus Liguori on the Urgency of Prayer

Whoever prays is certainly saved. He who does not is certainly damned. All the blessed have been saved by prayer. All the damned have been lost through not praying. If they had prayed they would not have been lost. And this is, and will be their greatest torment in hell: to think how easily they might have been saved, just by asking God for His grace, but that now it is too late – their time of prayer is gone.

St. Alphonsus Liguori

Martin Luther on his authority to add to Sacred Scripture to support his doctrine of Faith Alone

You tell me what a great fuss the Papists are making because the word “alone” (which Luther added) is not in the text of Paul (Romans 3:28). If your Papist makes such an unnecessary row about the word “alone”, say right out to him: “Dr. Martin Luther will have it so”, and I order it to be so, and my will is reason enough.I know very well that the word “alone” is not in the Latin or the Greek text…it shall remain in my New Testament. All the Popish donkeys will not get it out.

Martin Luther – Source: John Stoddard, Rebuilding a Lost Faith, (Rockford, IL: TAN Books), 136-137

Martin Luther on the Immaculate Conception and Sinless Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary

It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.

“On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” – Sermon by Martin Luther 1527, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception