Catholic Moment Quotes & Sayings

There is a wonderful simple human reality to Christ's hunger. The man is famished. He's missed meals for three days, He has a lot on his mind, He's on His way back to heaven, but before He goes He is itching for a nice piece of broiled fish and a little bread on the side with the men and women He loves. Do we not like Him the more for His prandial persistance? And think for a moment about the holiness of our own food, and the ways that cooking and sharing a meal can be forms of love and prayer. And realize again that the Eucharist at the heart of stubborn Catholicism is the breakfast that Christ prepares for Catholics, every morning, as we return from fishing in vast dreamy seas? — Brian Doyle

How am I immature? Intellectually, emotionally, and sexually. Yeah, but in what other ways? — Woody Allen

I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment. — Grimes

My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised. — Richard John Neuhaus

What if two people want to be your partner, then what? — Emily Giffin

We all make the mistake thinking that how you look makes you more worthy of love. — Meryl Streep

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party. — Dylan Thomas

From the period of development to the present, Reformed theologians have debated the finer points (particularly the relation of the Sinai covenant to the covenant of grace). Nevertheless, a consensus emerged (evident, for example, in the Westminster Confession) affirming the three covenants I have mentioned: the eternal covenant of redemption; the covenant of works; and the covenant of grace. With these last two covenants, Reformed theology affirmed (with Lutheranism) the crucial distinction between law and gospel, but within a more concrete biblical-historical framework ... Ironically, just at the moment when so much Protestant biblical scholarship is rejecting a sharp distinction between law and gospel, Ancient Near Eastern scholars from Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions have demonstrated the accuracy of that seminal distinction between covenant of law and covenants of promise. P.13 — Michael S. Horton

The Catholic Church discourages non-Catholics from receiving the Eucharist, so I remained in my seat as the twenty or so congregants approached the altar to receive the elements. The "Not Catholic?" part of my brochure suggested I use this moment to "pray for the reunification of the church," which, though I'm sure it was unintended, sounded a lot like, "You sit here and think about that schism you caused. — Rachel Held Evans

I have my own tastes and I have my my own ... like, I dunno. I think it's really subjective; something that I think is a great song, is unlistenable to somebody else, which I've come to realise. — Regina Spektor

Some Catholics have a concept I very much admire: the Sacrament of the Present Moment. It suggests that every moment of our lives is sacred, and that we should make of each moment a sacrament. Were we to do this we would think of the entire world as diffused with holiness. Wherever we might be would be a holy place for us, and we would see the holy, even sainthood, in everyone we encounter. — M. Scott Peck

By way of parenthesis let me say that this hand on the tomb has a lovely lesson for all those unfortunate members of Christ who have fallen into mortal sin. In them, Jesus lies dead - as dead as he was on this Sabbath of twenty centuries ago. But on them, as on this tomb, the hand of Mary, the Refuge of Sinners, rests, awaiting and praying for the Resurrection of Christ within them! May those who are in such a state fell that hand as they read this book, and bring Christ to life within them by asking Mary to help them make a perfect act of contrition, which is an act of love, this moment. She can grant such a grace; for she is Mediatrix of all grace! — M. Raymond

If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity? — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One spiritual writer has observed that human beings are born with two diseases: life, from which we die; and hope, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is built into the structure of our personalities, into the depths of our unconscious; it plagues us to the very moment of our death. The critical question is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the imprint of reality. — Brennan Manning

My dad was the funniest guy I ever knew. — Russell Peters

For a moment this day, for many moments this May, let us gape in awe at the strength of women, and look upon their sinewy courage with respect and humility, as the Lord looked on His Mother, and still does. Like Him we are of women born, and to women must pay our first respect, and owe our first love, for they are as strong as the very ribs of the earth. — Brian Doyle

I understand that it takes patience, but there are also positive signs. H. U. von Balthasar, the theologian who probably has the greatest influence in the Catholic world for the moment, has handed down a very positive verdict on my book. Likewise, K. Lehmann, who is the theologian of the German Bishops' Conference. So I think that your thinking will gradually prevail, even if there is resistance and difficulties for the moment. — Scott Cowdell

When we reached the stairs, I could hear somebody scream.
"should I call the police?" Prosper asked me.
"No," I said "Find a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil, and sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each," and I left him gaping at me and ran up the stairs. — Lemony Snicket

The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. — G.K. Chesterton

I'm surprised you holy people talk to me," Wolfie said suddenly, "after what I done." He swayed there a moment, frowning. "As a Catholic priest, I must accept men's frailty. And as a European I am too old and tired to expend emotion upon matters I can do nothing about. — Peter Matthiessen

You see de white gown she wears, richly embroidered, showing de family's wealth and influence," said Daphne authoritatively. "De red rose in her hair symbolizes her Spanish ancestry. De prayer book in her left hand to display de Catholic allegiance."
"What does the dog symbolize?" Sarah asked. Daphne blinked at her for a moment.
"De dog is just a dog," she said, finally. — Magnus Flyte

The Artist should not forget his mission, perhaps the most religious of all, of sustaining faith in the worthwhileness of art and thus of life. — Ernst Bacon

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. — Catherine De Hueck Doherty

You and I are faced with one of those situations (which fortunately are not very numerous in one lifetime) which cannot possibly be adequately judged beforehand. It strikes me as a colossal gamble, or rather, a very great adventure. And personally I am considerably exhilarated by the risks! ... The greatness of the adventure perhaps consists partly in the fact that as a Catholic I can marry only once! But, as with being born, perhaps once is quite sufficient! In the Church, you know, there is a great heightening of every moment of experience, since every moment is played against a supernatural backdrop. Nothing can be humdrum in this scheme. — Marshall McLuhan

Beyond our grasp, He chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, He began to exist at a moment in time. — Pope Leo I

This is the same notion - Catholic exorcism, psychotherapy, shamanistic practices - getting to the moment when whatever it was gained access. And also to the name of the spirit. Just to know that it's the Ugly Spirit. That's a great step. Because the spirit doesn't want its name to be known. — Allen Ginsberg

The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading. — Vernon Lee

At this moment the President is beginning to speak in New Orleans and the Vice-President is mounting the platform at NASA a few miles away. Both are making a plea for unity. The President, who is an integrationist Mormon married to a liberated Catholic, will appeal to Leftists to respect law and order. The Vice-President, a Southern Baptist Knothead married to a conservative Unitarian, is asking Knotheads for tolerance and understanding, etcetera. The poor U.S.A.! Even — Walker Percy

I swallowed. "Mum, you're not going to get divorced, are you?" Her eyes shot open. "Divorced? I'm a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don't divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity." She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh. — Jojo Moyes

Lord, make me a blessing to someone today. — Jan Karon

Stay with & live your dreams, for these trail blazers did and history is telling their stories in golden, glossy and embossed shining foils — Ikechukwu Joseph

When Christ's love fills our hearts, it puts selfishness on the run. — Billy Graham

We receive God's Will only in fragments; tiny fragments; one to each new now. It is our business to take them and piece them together, to fashion them into the design that is His and has been His from all eternity. What that design is we shall see only at our last moment. It will be perfect as God wills it to be perfect only if we live His Will in the now, the only fragment that is ours, the only fragment of God's plan that is allowed in our hands, the only fragment of Christ's life in us and our life in Christ that can be lived. But it is only by "gathering up these fragments, lest they be lost" that we can really live and attain life's only success - sainthood. — M. Raymond

The facts tell us that no religious Faith releases - or ever has released at any moment in History - a higher degree of warmth, a more intense dynamism of unification than the Christianity of our own day - and the more Catholic it is, the truer my words. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

I wanted to confront her, to make her see the folly of her religion, to change her diet, to help her spend less on makeup and other nonessentials, to make her worship every biological moment she was offered instead of some badly punctured deity. I also wanted to kiss her for some reason, feel the life pulsing in those big Catholic lips, remind myself of the primacy of the living animal, of my time amongst the Romans. — Gary Shteyngart

People are always changing themselves and their world, dear. Very few of the changes are new. We rather confuse change and newness, I think. What is truly new never changes."

"You speak in riddles, aged progenitor."

"The world worships a certain kind of newness. People are always talking about a new car, or a new drink or p-p-play or house, but these things are not truly new, are they? They begin to get old the minute you acquire them. New is not in things. New is within us. The truly new is something that is new forever: you. Every morning of your life and every evening, every moment is new. You have never lived this moment before and you never will again. In this sense the new is also the eternal. — Tony Hendra

We must be faithful to the present moment or we will frustrate the plan of God for our lives. — Solanus Casey

I believe that were it not for the Holy Mass, as of this moment the world would be in the abyss. — Leonard Of Port Maurice

We get to go out into the schools and work with the kids on connecting them to their food at a young age, to actually see where their food is coming from, to see that their food is coming from the earth and not just from a supermarket. Once they make that connection, they can start to build upon that. — Jack Johnson

I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier. — Thomas Jefferson

The Catholic priest, from the moment he becomes a priest, is a sworn officer of the pope. — Otto Von Bismarck

Cautiously, slowly, and hoping that God was too busy with other things to notice, our logic and lust would unravel quilts of Sunday morning sermons, catechism lessons, confessional admonitions, and parental warnings.
Such apprehensive behavior would often overflow into other activities. A devout Catholic would never completely open his Christmas gifts until August. Catholics also did very well on bomb squads.
By the time we got through all the wrappings, we would often discover that our virginity had simply melted away. Ask a non-Catholic when they lost their virginity and they recall a specific moment. Ask a Catholic the same question and they begin counting the years on their fingers. — John R. Powers

But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn't a very committed Catholic beforehand, but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious: I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected. — Javier Bardem

Precisely in an age when the inviolable rights of the person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled upon, especially at the more significant moments of existence: the moment of birth and the moment of death. — Pope John Paul II