Why then did God create a world?

“Why then did God create a world? God created the world for something like the same reason that we find it hard to keep a secret! Good things are hard to keep. The rose is good and tells its secret in perfume. The sun is good and tells its secret in light and heat. Man is good and tells the secret of his goodness in the language of thought. But God is infinitely Good and therefore infinitely Loving. Why therefore could not He, by a free impulsion of His love, let love overflow and bring new worlds into being? God could not keep, as it were the secret of His Love – and telling it was creation. Love overflowed. Eternity moved and said to time: ‘Begin.’ Omnipotence moved and said to nothingness: ‘Be.’ Light moved and said to darkness: ‘Be Light.’ Out from the finger-tips of God there tumbled planets and worlds.” 
~Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen~

St. Francis

by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

If St. Francis had been sent to a Siberian labor camp, or to a leper colony, or to a Wall Street brokerage firm, would he be any less a St. Francis? But how many mortals there are in the world who are one kind of character in need, another kind of character in plenty, who grumble amidst the uncomfortable, and who become possessed by possessions. St. Francis remains the same in all circumstances; the non-St. Francis types, like a chameleon, take on the color of the leaf on which they rest.

True goodness is unconscious

by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“The better we become, the less conscious we are of our goodness. If anyone admits to being a saint, he is close to being a devil. Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that of all men, he was the most perfect, but he had so many cracks in his soul that he abandoned his children after their birth. The more saintly we become, the less conscious we are of being holy. A child is cute so long as he does not know he is cute. As soon as he thinks he is, he turns into a brat. True goodness is unconscious.”

The cross was never meant to be on the inside

by  Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“Every unhappy soul in the world has a cross embedded on it. The cross was never meant to be on the inside, but only on the outside. When the Israelites were bitten by the serpents, and the poison seeped within, Moses planted a brazen serpent on a stick and all who looked on it were healed….So the Son of Man came in the likeness of man, but was without sin, and all who look upon Him on His cross are saved. In like manner, the inner cross disappears when one catches a vision of the great outer Cross on Calvary.”

We have to become saints to be happy

by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“How are we going to live in these troubled times? There’s really only one answer. We have to become saints…so here we have the dilemma, that we have to become saints to be happy, and yet how to be one? Well, the Church has given us a saint for our times, and that is, the picture of this young nun, St. Therese, who gave us a way, first of all, that is very simple…she really had two rules. One was never to seek the satisfaction of the self, and secondly, to do everything, to bear everything, out of love for our Lord…the method of the little flower was to integrate sanctity with what we are doing….a saint is one who makes Christ loveable…it does not require much time to make a saint, it requires only, much love.”