The Duty of the Moment

The hard truth is that I don’t have to go to South America to be a saint. I can do that here, among the pots and pans and glowing rectangles of my life, by striving to remain fully awake, fully alive, living each moment in the presence of God. I can strive to love everyone I meet, not with my own love but the love of Christ — a love that isn’t always romantic or thrilling, that sometimes feels like drudgery, but only because its glory is hidden, like the glory of Christ was hidden on earth. Love in action means love where and when you are, not in the dream of some beautiful Elsewhere.

- Steve Gershom

Thomas Aquinas

Grant me the talent

Of being exact in my explanations

And the ability to express myself

With thoroughness and charm. 

There are many kinds of alms the giving of which helps us to obtain pardon for our sins; but none is greater than that by which we forgive from our heart a sin that someone has committed against us.

—St. Augustine

The Holy Father's September Prayer Intentions
Teachers. That all teachers may know how to communicate the love of truth and instill authentic moral and spiritual values.
Church in Asia. That the Christian communities in Asia may proclaim the Gospel with fervor, witnessing to its beauty with the joy of faith.

If you feel that Catholicism or Christianity or religion is not
represented, by detractors or defenders, in ways that honor its
profundity and beauty, live out its profundity and beauty. To do this
is more telling than any argument.

-- Marilynne Robinson

Say only the good things

πᾶς λόγος σαπρὸς ἐκ τοῦ στόματος ὑμῶν μὴ ἐκπορευέσθω, ἀλλὰ εἴ τις ἀγαθὸς πρὸς οἰκοδομὴν τῆς χρείας, ἵνα δῷ χάριν τοῖς ἀκούουσιν.

Let every rotten word not go forth from your mouth, but whatever is good for necessary edification, so that it may give grace to those who hear.

-- Ephesians 4:29

"You may take it, young man, that I am versed in the elements of my business.  This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of any other creature known to zoology.  It belongs to a very large, a very strong, and, by all analogy a very fierce animal which exists upon the face of the earth, but has not yet come under the notice of science.  You are still unconvinced?"

"I am at least deeply interested."

"Then your case is not hopeless.  I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we may patiently grope around for it."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World