26 quotes
Our rule is the works of mercy… It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence.
The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (1997)
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
Loaves and Fishes (1963)
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
I too complain ceaselessly in my heart and in my words too. My very life is a protest. Against government, for instance.
The Duty of Delight (2011)
When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me.
The Duty of Delight (2011)
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
The Long Loneliness (1952)
We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war.... The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.
Of all the charges made against the Communists these days of congressional investigations, the charge of loose morals is seldom heard, so very loose have become those of "Christian" people.
On Pilgrimage (1948)
It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over.
I have been disillusioned, however, this long, long time in the means used by any but the saints to live in this world God has made for us.
On Pilgrimage (1948)
The papers list the scientists (the murderers) who are credited with perfecting this new weapon.
We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice.
If we had had the privilege of giving hospitality to a Ho Chi Minh, with what respect and interest we would have served him, as a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders.
Everyone says, "I wonder what the Pope thinks of it?" How everyone turns to the Vatican for judgment, even though they do not seem to listen to the voice there!
The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. … Eternal life begins now. The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit." And love makes all things easy.
When Dr. Stern wanted to know whether I was an alcoholic, when Dwight Macdonald asked me seriously whether I drank longshoremen under the table — I can only confess that yes, I did "fling roses with the throng."
The Duty of Delight (2011)
We need always to be thinking and writing about poverty, for if we are not among its victims, its reality fades from us. We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.
Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that 'all things work together for good for those that love Him.
On Pilgrimage (1948)
But I am sure that God did not intend that there be so many poor. The class structure is of our making and our consent, not His. It is the way we have arranged it, and it is up to us to change it. So we are urging revolutionary change.