What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith.

I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not bid me to do so.

Father, I am seeking: I am hesitant and uncertain, but will you, O God, watch over each step of mine and guide me.

Let your old age be childlike, and your childhood like old age; that is, so that neither may your wisdom be with pride, nor your humility without wisdom.

That your enemies have been created is God's doing; that they hate you and wish to ruin you is their own doing. What should you say about them in your mind? "Lord be merciful to them, forgive them their sins, put the fear of God in them, change them!" You are loving in them not what they are, but what you would have them to become.

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.