CAPG's Blog 

No one can be saved without exertion on his part. Some foolish people assert that no man can influence his destiny. 

A Franciscan monk, Dunn Scotus by name, was one day walking alongside a field where a laborer was at work, cursing and swearing all the time. The monk begged him to desist, telling him if he used such bad language he would surely go to hell.

The Man answered: "if God has decreed that I shall go to hell, no prayers will avail me anything; if He has decreed that I shall go to heaven, I shall be saved, however much I curse and swear."

"If so," the priest rejoined, "I cannot understand why you are plowing this field. For if God has decreed that you shall have a good crop, you will have one although you do not cultivate your land: but if He has decreed that the harvest shall fail, all your labor will be in vain." The peasant replied that if he did not till the ground there would certainly be no harvest. The priest smiled, and said: "There, you have just reversed your former argument." Thus the man's eyes were opened to the falsity of fatalism.

source: Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism. 1904

An unbeliever said once to a good and faithful Catholic: "O unhappy Christian! How terribly you will find you have been deceived, if heaven is only a fable!" 

The Catholic answered: "O unhappy atheist! How terribly you will find you have been deceived, when you discover that hell is NOT a fictitious place.!

Source: Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism.

The world is at present afflicted with a strange malady; it is in the throes of a feverish intoxication; it is like a sick man writhing in pain; it is harassed and tortured by the burning fever of impiety.

But when God shall determine to put an end to these convulsive movements, what will He do? Will He raise up astute politicians and powerful rulers who will restrain as with fetters of iron the seething passions of men? No.

Will He send profound philosophers and great orators to recall these peoples by eloquent speech and powerful reasoning to a sense of their duty? By no means.

What, then, will He do? He will do what He has done in every age when He wished to heal the wounds of society and restore it to moral soundness. He will send apostles chosen for this special work, priests without name or reputation, but strong in strength of faith and holiness of life; these He will send, bearing a cross of wood into the midst of nations invaded and desolated by the demon of pride and the lust of greed and sensuality: Go, ye swifts angels, to a nation rent and torn in pieces, to a terrible people, to a nation expecting and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled.

Thither will these apostolic men go, urged on by the Spirit of God. Error and vice will flee at the sight of them, and a purified land will bring forth a new generation of men, full of life and adorned with every virtue: Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

 Source: Jesus Living in the Priest: Considerations on the Greatness and Holiness of the Priesthood by Rev. Fr. P Millet, S.J. 1901

Who are the priests to whom even the world cannot refuse its esteem and confidence? Are they not precisely those who hold themselves furthest aloof from its vanity and dissipation, and refuse to share in its feasts and diversions?

Such priests fully realize that those who are called to their state should be grave and serious men., They are never seen meddling in other people's business: they live in retirement and silence: they are not anxious to get news, rather they prefer not to know many things which would serve no purpose except to gratify curiosity; they avoid encumbering their memory and burdening their mind with the silly stories and gossip of the world, while their holy faith furnishes them with so many sublime truths on which they can occupy their thoughts with profit and pleasure. In all this they but imitate our Blessed Mother, of whom St. Ambrose beautifully says: She sought no companionship except that of her own thoughts, and she was never less alone than when she seemed alone.

Source: Jesus Living in the Priest: Considerations on the Greatness and Holiness of the Priesthood, Rev. Fr. Millet, SJ 1901

"No, I do not believe that there ever existed in the world so much pomp and vanity, so much impurity, as at the present day; to find in the world's epoch so criminal, we must go to the days of Noe and the universal deluge. the inns in the cities and villages are filled with persons of abandoned character; they are so numerous that the entire world is infected by them... Avarice and usury increase under the disguised name of contracts, Simony reigns among the clergy, envy among the religious. Gluttony prevails to such an extent in every rank of social life that the fasts of Lent, the vigils and Ember days, are no longer observed... In a word, vice is held in such great honour that those who prefer the service of God to that of the world are held up to scorn as useless ans unworthy members of society."

Source: St. Vincent of Ferrer, The Angel of the Judgment, by F.r Andrew Pradel, O.P.