Anyone can find what is beautiful and true by living apart from ordinary life. Everyone is enlightened on the mountaintop. The harder choice is to live with the knowing right in the center of your life. In your daily chores. In the middle of a family. In places of commerce. The challenge is to find what is beautiful and true in ordinary life.

– from The Divine Spark

All the obstacles and trials of life, which we perceive as making us unhappy, are not impediments to real living. Instead they are ways of really living, opportunities to discover that real living involves real loving and real loving can be painful at times.

– from When You Suffer

We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.

– from The Spirit of Saint Francis

Maybe the highest form of spirituality is simply to bear patiently with our brokenness. In the midst of a world of emotional and psychological violence, perhaps we can at least refrain from violence of any kind toward ourselves.

– from Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough

A great way to end your workout each day is to spend time thanking God for what He’s done and praising God for who He is. By doing so you let God do “heart surgery”: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

– from A 40-Day Spiritual Workout for Catholics

We must be unafraid of ridicule or human respect, unafraid to walk out alone, knowing that we are nothing and can do nothing on our own. But with God’s grace and God’s power, you can do all things.

– from Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence