We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is God’s arrival that is the important event.
Fulton J. SheenIt is a long established principle of the Church never to completely drop from her public worship any ceremony, object or prayer which once occupied a place in that worship.
Fulton J. SheenWhen we die to something, something comes alive within us. If we die to self, charity comes alive; if we die to pride, service comes alive; if we die to lust, reverence for personality comes alive; if we die to anger, love comes alive.
Fulton J. SheenThe Western world generally has lost the concept of man as a creature made to the image and likeness of God, and reduced him either to a component part of the universe, to an economic animal or to a "physiological bag filled with psychological libido." Once man became materialized and atomized in Western thinking, it was only natural for a totalitarianism to arise to gather up the fragments into a new totality and substitute the collective man for the individual man who was isolated from all social responsibilities.
Fulton J. SheenSome representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, "No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company." Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies.
Fulton J. Sheen