Michael Sliney

“Silence before a God who is now more hidden seems to imply being alone simply with self. Contemplative prayer can seem at first like a conversation that arrives at a sudden awkward silence, without words or thoughts. We are unaccustomed to this absence of speech and at first dislike it. The emptiness can seem without purpose. But all those confusions are simply symptoms. They await an insight. Our own silence is not disagreeable to God, it does not repel Him. He listens to the longing deep within our soul. With God we must learn a new language of love in which words are often unnecessary. Contemplative Provocations” – Fr. Donald Haggerty

“We can ‘work for Him’ that is, we can choose what we want to give Him, what we want Him to like, what we think He needs and desires from us. Or we “do His work”, meaning, we can ask Him what He would like and do what He desires. ‘Do His work’, no matter how repugnant it may be to us.” Fr. Thomas Green – Darkness in the Marketplace.

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

“Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.” William Butler Yeats

“All that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery – is the long terrible story of humanity trying to find something other than God which will make us happy.” C.S. Lewis