Catherine Doherty

Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces everyone of us at one time or another.

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.

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.

Pain is the kiss of Christ.

Lord, give bread to the hungry, and hunger for you to those who have bread.

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.<p>Little, be always little, simple, poor, childlike.<p>Preach the Gospel with your life, without compromise. Listen to the Spirit; He will lead you.<p>Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.<p>Love, love, love, never counting the cost.<p>Go into the market place and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always: fast.<p>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.<p>Pray always. I will be your rest.

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.

Everybody in this pragmatic, cerebral society always wants to put himself first, and this cannot be done. God doesn't want me to do it. God wants me to be third, never first. God comes first, my neighbor second, and I am third!

I go to my past in order to discern the future.

True silence is the speech of lovers. For only love knows its beauty, completeness and utter joy.

We do not have to wait for the hereafter — it is now that we are one with Christ.

When we reach the silver sands and plunge into the great sea of God's silence, we begin to understand that he alone is God — Lover, Friend, the totality of gentleness, peace and rest. He calls us and we cannot resist that call. We have to be alone with him. It is a necessity, it is a hunger. It has been said that prayer is a hunger. But this Christ walks with loneliness and rejection, and so must we.

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.

Identification [with the other] is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that "heaven is taken by violence" to oneself [Luke 16:16]. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth.