Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: Clear Your Minds

If you desire the worship that you give to God to be pleasing to Him and valuable for the salvation of your soul, put it properly into practice. Begin by preparing for holy Mass as soon as you are awake, uniting yourself to all the Masses which are being said at that moment. When the bell rings to call you to the house of God, consider the fact that it is Jesus Christ Himself calling you. Start out immediately, so that you will have a moment to meditate upon the tremendous act at which you are about to assist. Do not say, like those people who have no religion, that you have plenty of time, that you will be there soon enough. But say, rather, with the Holy Prophet: "I rejoice when I am told that we are going into the house of the Lord."
  When you come out from your home, think about what you are going to do and what you are going to ask of God. Begin by clearing your mind of earthly matters so that you will be thinking of God only. Avoid all sorts of unnecessary conversations which serve no other purpose than to make you hear Mass badly. When you enter the church, recall to yourself what the holy patriarch Jacob said: "How awesome is this place! How holy it is! It is truly the house of God and the gateway to Heaven!"
  When you get to your place, humble yourself profoundly as you think of your own unworthiness and the greatness of your God, Who, nevertheless, in spite of your sins, wishes to suffer you in His holy presence. Make an act of faith with all your heart. Ask God to give you the grace to lose none of the many favors which He grants to those who come here with good dispositions. Open your heart so that the word of God may enter it, take root in it, and bear fruit there for eternal life. Before leaving the church, do not fail to thank God for the graces He has just given you and go straight home, fully occupied with the thoughts of what you have seen and heard.
  Yes, my dear children, if we conducted ourselves in this manner, we should never come away from services of the Church without being filled with a fresh desire for Heaven and a new disgust for ourselves and the things of this earth. Our hearts and our minds would be given altogether to God and not at all to the world. Then the house of God would truly be for us the gateway to Heaven. That is what I desire for you.

Pope Pius VI: Charitas (Charity)

"Love, which is patient and kindly, as the Apostle Paul says, supports and endures all things as long as a hope remains that mildness will prevent the growth of incipient errors. But if errors increase daily and reach the point of creating schism, the laws of love itself, together with Our duty, demand that We reveal to the erring their horrible sin and the heavy canonical penalties which they have incurred. For this sternness will lead those who are wandering from the way of truth to recover their senses, reject their errors, and come back to the Church, which opens its arms like a kind mother and embraces them on their return. The rest of the faithful in this way will be quickly delivered from the deceits of false pastors who enter the fold by ways other than the door, and whose only aim is theft, slaughter, and destruction."

Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: Not Like Others

I am NOT like others!
That, my dear brethren, is the usual tone of false virtue and the attitude of those proud people who, always quite satisfied with themselves, are at all times ready to censure and to criticize the conduct of others. That, too, is the attitude of the rich, who look upon the poor as if they were of a different race or nature from them and who behave towards them accordingly. Let us go one better, my dear brethren, and admit that it is the attitude of most of the world. There are very few people, even in the lowliest conditions, who do not have a good opinion of themselves. They regard themselves as far superior to their equals, and their detestable pride urges them to believe that they are indeed worth a great deal more than most other people. From this I conclude that pride is the source of all the vices and the cause of all the evils which have occurred, and which are still to come, in the course of the centuries. We carry our blindness so far that often we even glorify ourselves on account of things which really ought to cover us with confusion. Some derive a great deal of pride because they believe that they have more intelligence than others; others because they have a few more inches of land or some money, when in fact they should be in dread of the formidable account which God will demand of them one day. Oh, my dear brethren, if only some of them felt the need to say the prayer that St. Augustine addressed to God: "My God, teach me to know myself for what I am and I shall have no need of anything else to cover me with confusion and scorn for myself."
  We could say that this sin is found everywhere, that it accompanies man in what he does and says. It is like a kind of seasoning or flavoring which can be tasted in every portion of a dish. Listen to me for a moment and you can see this for yourselves. Our Lord gives us an example in the Gospel when He tells us of the Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray and, standing up where all could see him, said in a loud voice: "O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men steeped in sin. I spend my life doing good and pleasing you." Herein consists the very nature of the proud man: instead of thanking God for condescending to make use of him for a good purpose and for giving him grace, he looks upon whatever good he does as something which comes from himself, not from God. Let us go into a few details and you will see that there are hardly any exceptions to this general sin of pride. The old and the young, the rich and the poor, all suffer from it. Each and everyone congratulates himself and flatters himself because of what he is or what he does - or rather because of what he is not and what he does not. Everyone applauds himself and loves also to be applauded. Everyone rushes to solicit the praises of the rest of the world, and everyone strives to draw them to himself. In this way are the lives of the great majority of people passed.
  The door by which pride enters with the greatest ease and strength is the door of wealth. Just as soon as someone improves his possessions and his source of wealth, you will observe him change his mode of life. He will act as Jesus Christ told us the Pharisees liked to act: these people love to be called master and to have people saluting them. they like the first places. They begin to appear in better clothes. They leave behind their air of simplicity. If you salute them, they will, with difficult, nod to you without raising their hats. Walking with their heads in the air, they will study to find the finest words for everything, though quite often they do not even know the meaning of the words, and they love to repeat them. In order to show that his wealth has been increased, this man will make your head swim with stories of the legacies he is going to receive. Others are preoccupied with their labors to become highly esteemed and praised. If one of them has succeeded in some undertaking, he will rush to make it known as widely as possible so that his would-be wisdom and cleverness may be spread far and wide. If another has said something which has gained approval or interest, he will deafen everyone he knows with repetition of it, until they are bored to death and make fun of him. If such vain and boastful people do any traveling at all, you will hear them exaggerating a hundred times all that they said and did to such an extent that you feel sorry for the people who have to listen to them. They think that they appear very brilliant, though people are scoffing at them in secret. No one can stop them from talking about themselves: one well-known braggart convinced himself that people believed everything he said!...
  Observe a person of some standing scrutinizing the work of someone else. He will find a hundred faults with it and will say: "Ah, what can you expect? He does not know any better" But since the proud person never depreciates the merit of someone else without increasing his own importance, he will hurry on then to speak of some work which he has done, which so-and-so has considered so well executed that he has talked about it to many others.
  Take a young woman who has a shapely figure or who, at any rate, thinks she has. You see her walking along, picking her steps, full of affectation, with a pride which seems colossal enough to reach the clouds! If she has plenty of clothes, she will leave her wardrobe open so that they can be seen. People take pride in their animals and in their households. They take pride in knowing how to go to Confession properly, in saying their prayers, in behaving modestly and decorously in the church. A mother takes pride from her children. You will hear a landowner whose fields are in better condition than those of his neighbors criticizing these and applauding his own superior knowledge. Or it may be a young man with a watch, or perhaps only the chain, and a couple of coins in his pocket, and you will hear him saying, "I did not know that it was so late," so that people will see him looking at the watch or will know that he has one. You may observe a man gambling; he may have but two coins to spare, but he will have all he possessed in his hand, and sometimes even what is not his. Or indeed, he will even pretend that he has more than he really has. How many people even borrow, either money or clothes, just to go to places of gambling or other kinds of pleasure.
   No, my dear brethren, there is nothing that is quite as ridiculous or stupid as to be forever talking about what we have or what we do. Just listen to the father of a family when his children are of an age to get married; in all the places and gatherings where he is to be found you will hear him saying:
  "I have so many thousand francs ready; my business will give me many thousands, etc."
  But if later he is asked for a few coppers for the poor, he has nothing.
  If a tailor or a dressmaker has made a success of a coat or a frock and someone seeing the wearer pass says, "That looks very well. I wonder who made it?" they will make very sure to observe, "Oh, I made that."
  Why? So that everyone may know how skillful they are. But if the garment had not been such a success, they would, of course, take good care to say nothing, for fear of being humiliated. The housewives in their own domain...
  And I will add this to what I have just said. This sin is ever more to be feared in people who put on a good show of piety and religion.


St. John Vianney, pray for us to have the humility of the saints. The humility of the Blessed Mother. And most truly the humility of our Lord.

Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: Over and Above These is Evil

"The name of God is so holy, so great, and so adorable that the angels and the Saints, St. John tells us, say unceasingly in Heaven: 'Holy, holy, holy, is the great God of hosts; may his holy name be blessed for ever and ever.' When the Blessed Virgin went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and the saintly woman said to her, 'How happy you are to have been chosen to be the mother of God!' the Blessed Virgin replied to her: 'He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is His name.'
...St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that it is a serious sin to pronounce the Name of God in vain, that it is not a sin like other sins. In other sins the light nature of the matter diminishes the seriousness of and the malice in them, and quite often what could be a mortal sin is only a venial one. For instance, larceny is a mortal sin,  but if it is larceny of something very small, like a couple of pennies, then it will be a venial sin only. Anger and gluttony are mortal sins, but slight anger or a little gluttony are only venial sins.
IN REGARD TO SWEARING, however, it is not the same thing at all; here the lighter the matter, the greater the irreverence, as if a person were to ask the king to serve as a witness to some trifle, which would be to make a fool of him and to belittle him. Almighty God tells us that anyone who swears by His Name will be sternly punished...the Holy Scripture tells us again that whoever is accustomed to swearing, his house will be filled with iniquities and the curse will never leave the house until it has been destroyed...When you want to confirm something say: 'that is' or 'that is not.' 'Yes' or 'No'. 'I did it' or 'I did not do it.'
Everything you say over and above that comes from the devil."

Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: A Curse Will Fall

How is it that you are complaining that your animals are dying? Undoubtedly you must have forgotten all those sins which have been committed in your outbuildings and stables during the five or six months of winter. You have forgotten that the Holy Ghost has said that the everywhere this sin shall be committed, the curse of the Lord will fall. How many young people - alas! - would still have their innocence if they had not attended certain "winter gatherings," young people who  now perhaps will never come back to God? Again, as a result of these affairs, there are those young people who form associations which, most frequently, end in scandal and the loss of a girl's reputation. Then there are the young libertines, who, having sold their own souls to the Devil, now set out to rob others of theirs. Yes, my children, the evil which results from these gatherings is incalculable. If you are Christians and you wish to save your souls and those of your children and others of your household, you should never hold these gatherings in your homes, or at least not unless you yourselves, one of the heads of the household, are going to see to it that God will not be offended by what goes on. Once you have all come in, you should close the door and refuse to admit anyone else. Begin your gatherings by reciting one or two decades of the Rosary to invoke the protection of the Blessed Virgin - and this you can do if you put your mind to it. Then banish all lascivious and sinful songs; your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, and these profane your hearts and mouths; banish also all those stories that are only lies and yarns in any event and are most often directed against people consecrated to God, which makes them more sinful. And you should never allow your children into any other of these gatherings. Why do they want to get away from you, except for the purpose of avoiding supervision? If you are faithful to the fulfillment of your duties, God will be less offended and you less blameworthy.

Preparation for Death - St. Alphonsus de Liguori

"Preparation for Death" by St. Alphonsus De Liguori

"The Lord called the virgins foolish who wished to prepare
their lamps when the bridegroom was nigh. All have a
horror of a sudden death, because there is no time to
settle the accounts of conscience. All confess that the
Saints have been truly wise, because they prepared for
death during life. And what are we doing? Shall we
expose ourselves to the danger of preparing for death
when it arrives? We ought to do at present what we shall
then wish to have done. Oh ! what pain will then arise
from the remembrance of time lost, and still more from
the remembrance of time spent in sin : time given by God
to merit eternal life ; but now past, and never to return!
What anguish will the sinner feel when he shall be told :
You can be steward no longer! (Luke, xvi, 2). There is no
more time for doing penance, for frequenting the
sacraments, for hearing sermons, for visiting Jesus Christ
in the Holy Sacrament, or for prayer. What is done is
done. To make a good confession, to remove several
grievous scruples, and thus tranquillize the conscience,
would require a better state of mind and time more free
from confusion and agitation. But time will be no more.
(Apoc. X, 6).

Oh, my God! had I died on one of the nights known to
Thee, where should I be at present ? I thank Thee
for having waited for me; I thank Thee for all those
moments which I should have spent in hell from the first
moment that I offended Thee. Ah! give me light, and make
me sensible of the great evil I have done Thee in
voluntarily losing Thy grace, which Thou didst merit for me
by the sacrifice of Thy life on the cross. Ah ! my Jesus,
pardon me : I am sorry from the bottom of my heart, and
above all things, for having despised Thee, who art
infinite goodness. Ah! assist me, O my Saviour! that I may
never lose Thee again. Alas, my Lord! if I return again to
sin, after so many lights and graces which Thou hast
bestowed upon me, I should deserve a hell to be made on
purpose for myself. Through the merits of that blood
which Thou hast shed for my sake, do not permit me ever
more to offend Thee. Give me holy perseverance, give me
Thy love. I love Thee, and I will never cease to love Thee
till death. My God, have mercy on me for the love of Jesus
Christ. O Mary, my hope! do thou too have pity on me;
recommend me to God: thy recommendations are never
rejected by that God who loves thee so tenderly."

St. John Fisher

Pray for us, model of conviction to the Church of Christ!

Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: You Will Answer for Their Souls

But, you will tell me, "we cannot always be following them around. We have other things to do."

As to that, my dear brethren, I will say nothing. All I know is that you will answer for their souls as much as for your own.
"But we do all we can."
I do not know whether you do all you can, but this much I do know: if your children incur damnation at home with you, you too will be damned. That much I know, and nothing else. You may go on saying "No" to that, saying I go too far. You will agree with it if you have not entirely lost your faith. That alone should suffice to cast you into a state of despair from which you could not emerge. But I know well that you will not take another step to fulfill any better your duties to your children. You are not at all disturbed, and you are almost right, for you will have plenty of time to torment yourselves during all eternity. We will pass on.

Sermons of the Curé D'Ars: The Evil Tongues

There are some who, through envy, for that is what it amounts to, belittle and slander others, especially those in the same business or profession as their own, in order to draw business to themselves. They will say such evil things as "their merchandise is worthless" or "they cheat;" that they have nothing at home and that it would be impossible to give goods away at such a price; that there have been many complaints about these goods; that they will give no value or wear or whatever  it is, or even that it is short weight, or not the right length, and so on. A workman will say that another man is not a good worker, that he is always changing his job, that people are not satisfied with him, or that he does no work, that he only puts in his time, or perhaps that he does not know how to work.
"What i was telling you there," they will add, "it would be better to say nothing about it. He might lose by it, you know."
"Is that so?" you answer. "It would have been better if you yourself had said nothing. That would been the thing to do."

A farmer will observe that his neighbor's property is doing better than his own. This makes him very angry so he will speak evil of him. There are others who slander their neighbors from motives of vengeance. If you do or say something to help someone, even through reasons of duty or of charity, they will then look for opportunities to decry you, to think up things which will harm you, in order to revenge themselves. If their neighbor is well spoken of, they will be very annoyed and will tell you:
"He is just like everyone else. He has his own faults. he has done this, he has said that. You didn't know that? Ah, that is because you have never had anything to do with him."
A great many people slander others because of pride. They think that by depreciating others they will increase their own worth. They want to make the most of their own alleged good thing that others say and do will be wrong.
But the great bulk of malicious talk is done by people who are simply irresponsible, who have an itch to chatter about others without feeling any need to discover whether what they are saying is true or false. They just have to talk. Yet, although these latter are less guilty than the others - that is to say, than those who slander and backbite through hatred or envy or revenge - yet they are not free from sin. Whatever motive that prompts them, they should not sully the reputation of their neighbor.
It is my belief that the sin of scandalmongering includes all that is most evil and wicked. Yes, my dear brethren, this sin includes the poison of all the vices - the meanness of vanity, the venom of jealousy, the bitterness of anger, the malice of hatred, and the flightiness and irresponsibility so unworthy of a Christian...Is it not, in fact, scandalmongering which sows almost all discord and disunity, which breaks up friendships and hinders enemies from reconciling their quarrels, which disturbs the peace of homes, which turns brother against brother, husband against wife, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law and son-in-law against father-in-law? How many united households have been turned upside down by one evil tongue, so that their members could not bear to see or to speak to one another? And one malicious tongue, belonging to a neighbor, man or woman, can be the cause of all this misery...
Yes, my dear brethren, the evil tongue of one scandalmonger poisons all the virtues and engenders all the vices. It is from that malicious tongue that a stain is spread so many times through a whole family, a stain which passes from fathers to children, from one generation to the next, and which perhaps never effaced. The malicious tongue will follow the dead into the grave; it will disturb the remains of these unfortunates by making live again the faults which were buried with them in that resting place. What a foul crime, my dear brethren! Would thou not be filled with fiery indignation if you were to see some vindictive wretch pounding upon a corpse and tearing it into a thousand pieces? Such a sight would make you cry out in horror and compassion. And yet the crime of continuing to talk of the faults of the dead is much greater. A great many people habitually speak of someone who has died something after his fashion:
"Ah. he did very well in his time He was a seasoned drinker. He was cute as a fox. He was no better than he should have been."
But perhaps, my friend, you are mistaken, and although everything may have been exactly as you have said, perhaps he is already in Heaven, perhaps God has pardoned him. But, in the meantime, where is your charity?
- St. John Marie Baptiste Vianney

St. Louis de Montfort: The Praise of Men

St. Louis Marie de Montfort - The Secret of the Rosary
"Blessed Alan writes that one day Father Dominic said to him in a vision, 'My son, it is good to preach; but there is always a danger of looking for praise rather than the salvation of souls.'"

"Blessed Alan said our Lady revealed to him that, after she had appeared to St. Dominic, her blessed Son appeared to him and said, 'Dominic, I rejoice to see that you are not relying on your own wisdom and that, rather than seek the empty praise of men, you are working with great humility for the salvation of souls.
But many priests want to preach thunderously against the worst kinds of sin at the very outset, failing to realize that before a sick person is given bitter medicine, he needs to be prepared by being put into the right frame of mind to really benefit by it.
That is why, before doing anything else, priests should try to kindle a love of prayer in people's hearts and especially a love of my Angelic Psalter. If only they would all start saying it and would really persevere, God in his mercy could hardly refuse to give them his grace. So i want you to preach my Rosary.
All priests [ought to] say a Hail Mary with the faithful before preaching, to ask for God's grace...
So when you give a sermon, urge people to say my Rosary, and in this way your words will bear much fruit for souls.'
St. Dominic lost no time in obeying, and from then on he exerted great influence by his sermons."

Pope St. Pius X: "It is not fitting that the servant be applauded in His Masters House".

St. John Vianney - Incorruptible Body

Epiphany

St. Augustine's Confessions: Love and Lust

Sixteenth Year - Book 2 - Chapter 2
What was there to bring me delight except to love and be loved? But that due measure between soul and soul, wherein lie the bright boundaries of friendship, was not kept. Clouds arose from the slimy desires of the flesh and from youth's seething spring. They clouded over and darkened my soul, so that I could not distinguish the calm light of chaste love from the fog of lust. Both kinds of affection burned confusedly within me and swept my feeble youth over the crags of desire and plunged me into a whirlpool of shameful deeds. Your wrath was raised above me, but I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking chains of my morality, the penalty of my pride of soul. I wandered farther away from you, and you let me go. I was tossed about and spilt out in my fornications; I flowed out and boiled over in them, but you kept silent. Ah, my late-found joy! You kept silent at that time, and farther and farther I went from you, into more and more fruitless seedings of sorrows, with a proud dejection and a weariness without rest.
...I might have listened more heedfully to your voice as it sounded from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have tribulations of the flesh. But I spare you." "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." And again, "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to God, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of this world and how he may please his wife." I should have listened more heedfully to these words, and having thus been made a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, I would have looked with greater joy to your embraces.
But I, poor wretch, foamed over: I followed after the sweeping tide of passions and I departed from you. I broke all your laws, but I did not escape your scourges. For what mortal man can do that? You were always present to aid me, merciful in your anger, and charging with the greatest bitterness and disgust all my unlawful pleasures, so that I might seek after pleasure that was free from disgust, to the end that, when I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord, in none but you. For you fashion sorrow into a lesson to us. You smite so that you may heal. You slay us, so that we may not die apart from you