Catherine Doherty
36 quotes
Biography
"I go to my past in order to discern the future."
"To pass through the door that leads to God's kingdom, we must go down on our knees."
"Lord, give bread to the hungry, and hunger for you to those who have bread."
"Pain is the kiss of Christ."
"The duty of the moment is what you should be doing at any given time, in whatever place God has put you. You may not have Christ in a homeless person at your door, but you may have a little child. If you have a child, your duty of the moment may be to change a dirty diaper. So you do it. But you don’t just change that diaper, you change it to the best of your ability, with great love for both God and that child.... There are all kinds of good Catholic things you can do, but whatever they are, you have to realize that there is always the duty of the moment to be done. And it must be done, because the duty of the moment is the duty of God."
"With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again."
"We do not have to wait for the hereafter — it is now that we are one with Christ."
"You live between two Masses. You exist in the present moment."
"Arise, go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.Little, be always little, simple, poor, childlike.Preach the Gospel with your life, without compromise. Listen to the Spirit; He will lead you.Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.Love, love, love, never counting the cost.Go into the market place and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always: fast.Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbor's feet. Go without fears into the depth of men's hearts. I shall be with you.Pray always. I will be your rest."
"True silence is the speech of lovers. For only love knows its beauty, completeness and utter joy."
"God reveals himself to those who wait for that revelation and who don't try to "tear at the hem of a mystery" forcing disclosure."
"Real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you."
"Faith sees God's face in every human face."
"Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces everyone of us at one time or another."
"It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so ill, so weak, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well."
"Purity of heart is love for the weak who constantly fall."
"The stranger is simply a friend I haven't met yet."
"We cannot give the world anything it doesn't already have except God and God's love. But before we can give God to men, we must be one with him ourselves."
"Must the Church conform to the world and its modern ideas in order to be understood and heard? Much depends on the clarification of the word "conform." The answer is "yes" if by conform is meant change and adaptation in order to express eternal truths in a way more understandable to modern man."
"On the other hand, the Church cannot conform to the world as understood by Christ in his parables. To this world there can be neither conformity nor can we compromise with it. On the contrary, toward this world the Church and every Christian must be prophetic. We must cry out loudly the word of God, ready even to be stoned as were all the prophets sent by the Lord."
"Yes, of course, the Christian has dogmas he must believe in order to be a Christian, but all those dogmas concern love which is the essence. God is love. Where love is, God is. Dogmas and tenets of the Christian faith without love are dead letters, not even worth spelling out."
"God gave us two commandments, to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.There is a lot of talk about the neighbor, but few mention the fact that before this we must love ourselves, "Your neighbor as yourself."What about this loving of ourselves? It doesn't take a vast sociological survey to tell us that very few people accept and love themselves in the proper way, love themselves so as to be able to properly love God and their neighbor."
"Every third-grader knows that prayer is the lifting up of one's heart and mind to God. But there are many ways of lifting. It begins with vocal prayer, the one all of us are so familiar with. It goes on to mental prayer and meditation, a prayer that all too many people are unfamiliar with. This "lifting" also includes the prayer of silence, the prayer of the heart, contemplative prayer, unknown to still more people."
"Sometimes, in pentecostal gatherings, we treat prophecy too lightly. We don't seem to realize the agony of a prophet. Truly, there is no prophet who hasn't experienced agony."
"The Lord said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Which means we must love ourselves first, for we are, in a manner of speaking, our first neighbor."