Find Your Own Calcutta
 
  "Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are -- in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. ... You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society -- completely forgotten, completely left alone."
 
Blessed Mother of Teresa

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Quotation:
    A gospel which does not express itself to the physical
needs of man is a gospel not worthy of the name... Man is a
whole person, with body and soul. Some evangelicals act as if
people are disembodied souls, statistics for eternity only.
    ... Stan Mooneyham, former president, World Vision US, in a
          private communication from World Vision
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have provided salvation for the whole man.
 
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Saint of the Day

Quotation:
    Who is there that ever receives a gift and tries to make
bargains about it? Let us, then, return thanks for what He has
bestowed on us... Who can tell whether, if we had had a larger
share of ability [or] stronger health, ... we should not have
possessed them to our destruction.
    ... Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787), The Complete Works of
          Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, v. II, Redemptorist
          Fathers, p. 372
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs239
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me a fit receptacle for Your Gifts.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day

Quotation:
    In questions of this sort there are two things to be
observed. First, that the truth of Scripture be inviolably
maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse
interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition
with such pertinacity, that if what he supposed to be the
teaching of Scripture, should afterward turn out to be clearly
false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward;
lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the
derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be
closed to them.
    ... Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274), Summa Theologica [1274],
          Pars Prima, Quaest. lxviii, art. primus
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs235
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant that what I proclaim shall be Your word and not
my opinion only.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day

Intimacy With God
 
   As he parted with the apostles on the eve of his Passion, Jesus said: “Anyone who loves me will be true to my word and my Father will love him; and we will come to him and make our dwelling place with him” (Jn 14:23). Just a few moments before being handed over to death he reveals the heights and depths of an immense love. He reveals to us the mystery of God’s indwelling presence. Yes, man is called to become a temple of the Blessed Trinity. What greater degree of communion with God could man ever aspire to?
     What greater proof than this could God ever give us of is saving love? The God of all wants to enter into communion with man. All the age-old history of Christian mysticism, even with some of its most sublime expressions, can speak only imperfectly to us about the unutterable presence of God in our hearts.
 
from Breakfast with the Pope - Pope John Paul II

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Quotation:
    There are great limits upon the human imagination. We can
only rearrange the elements God has provided. No one can create
a new primary color, a third sex, a fourth dimension, or a
completely original animal. Even by writing a book, planting a
garden, or begetting a child, we never create anything in the
strict sense; we only take part in God's creation.
    ... Kathryn Lindskoog (1934-2003), C. S. Lewis, Mere
          Christian, Glendale, Cal.: G/L Publications, 1973,
          reprint, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
          1981, p. 48
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs231
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, we acknowledge that You are the originator of all
that is.
 
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Prayer of the Day
 

Quotation:
    God's omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not
intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him,
but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose
to say, "God can give a creature free will and at the same time
withhold free will from it," you have not succeeded in saying
anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not
suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the
two other words "God can." It remains true that all things are
possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things
but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the
weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually
exclusive alternatives--not because His power meets an
obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we
talk it about God.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Problem of Pain, New York:
          Macmillan, 1944, p. 16
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs230
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, what You have promised, You will do.
 
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Saint of the Day

Quotation:
    Without realizing what was happening, most of us gradually
came to take for granted the premises underlying this
philosophy of optimism. We proceeded to live these
propositions, though we would not have stated them as blandly
as I set them forth here:
    Man is inherently good.
    Individual man can carve out his own salvation with the
help of education and society through progressively better
government.
    Reality and values worth searching for lie in the material
world that science is steadily teaching us to analyze,
catalogue, and measure. While we would not deny the existence
of inner values, we relegate them to second place.
    The purpose of life is happiness, [which] we define in
terms of enjoyable activity, friends, and the accumulation of
material objects.
    The pain and evil of life--such as ignorance, poverty,
selfishness, hatred, greed, lust for power--are caused by
factors in the external world; therefore, the cure lies in the
reforming of human institutions and the bettering of
environmental conditions.
    As science and technology remove poverty and lift from us
the burden of physical existence, we shall automatically become
finer persons, seeing for ourselves the value of living the
Golden Rule.
    In time, the rest of the world will appreciate the
demonstration that the American way of life is best. They will
then seek for themselves the good life of freedom and
prosperity. This will be the greatest impetus toward an end of
global conflict.
    The way to get along with people is to beware of religious
dictums and dogma. The ideal is to be a nice person and to live
by the Creed of Tolerance. Thus we offend few people. We live
and let live. This is the American Way.
    ... Catherine Marshall (1914-1983), Beyond Our Selves, New
          York: McGraw-Hill, 1961, p. 5-6
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs229
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, keep me from adopting the world's system.

Quotation:
    It is to be acknowledged that many passages in the Bible
are abstruse, and not to be easy to be understood. Yet we are
not to omit reading the abstruser texts, which have any
appearance of relating to us; but should follow the example of
the Blessed Virgin, who understood not several of our Saviour's
sayings, but kept them all in her heart. Were we only to learn
humility thus, it would be enough; but we shall come by degrees
to apprehend far more than we expected, if we diligently
compare spiritual things with spiritual.
    ... George D'Oyly (1778-1846) & Richard Mant (1776-1848),
          Holy Bible According to the Authorized Version,
          Introduction to, London: SPCK, 1839, p. 18
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs228
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me the patience and faith to live with less
than all the answers.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day

Quotation:
    [At the Garden of Olives Monastery]
    "Why are you all so quiet all the time?" I say, still
whispering at him in this hoarse voice.
    "We are teachers and workers," he says, "not talkers."
    "Workers, O.K.," I say, "but how can a teacher be quiet all
the time and teach anybody anything?"
    "Christ was the best," he says, thinking of something. "He
lived thirty-three years. Thirty years he kept quiet; three
years he talked. Ten to one for keeping quiet."
    ... Franc Smith, Harry Vernon at Prep, Boston: Houghton
          Mifflin Co., 1959, p. 134
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs227
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I meditate on the goodness of Your life, that my own
life might reflect it.
 
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Saint of the Day

Quotation:
    The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the
virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.
You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I
warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie
there. Well, now we have come to the centre. According to
Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is
Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are
mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the
devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is
the complete anti-God state of mind.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian Behavior, London:
          Geoffrey Bles, Macmillan, 1943, p. 42
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs226
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, give me the strength of faith to ask for humility.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day

Quotation:
    Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures
of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred--may not even be
encumbrances.
    ... Coventry Patmore (1823-1896), The Rod, the Root, and
          the Flower, London: G. Bell, 1895, p. 222
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs225
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, knowledge of You is a treasure beyond price.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day

Quotation:
    The word of God has been so thoroughly tamed that as
peddled in the churches there is nothing scandalous, strenuous,
or revolutionary about it. It is not even difficult. It is
easier to join a Christian church than it is to join Rotary.
Whereas in some eras of its history, Christianity was
threatened by persecution, in our own American culture, it
faces an opposite threat which lies in its very success.
Christianity is dying, not of persecution or neglect, but of
respectability.
    ... W. Waldo Beach (1916-2000), The Christian Life,
          Richmond, Va.: CLC Press, 1966, p. 11
    See the book at http://cqod.com/r/rs233
 
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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You will save Your church, as You have promised.
 
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Saint of the Day


Prayer of the Day