Francis Aidan Gasquet

“ O Lord God Almighty, King of eternal glory, who hast made the heavens and hast broken down the gates of hell, restrain, I beseech Thee, the bold attacks of my enemies, save me from the malice of those who hate me, so that their wickedness prevail not against me. In Thy love for me, and through the intercession of Thy elect, deign so to guide my life that I may walk without offending Thee or being scoffed at by men. Open to me wide the arms of Thy love, and show unto me the multitude of Thy mercy. ”

“ No devotion is so pleasing to Mary as when you imitate her humility; no religion is so acceptable to the saints and so proper in itself as striving to copy their virtue. Do you wish to merit the patronage of Peter and Paul? Imitate the faith of the one and the charity of the other and you will do more than if you had made ten journeys to Rome. Do you wish to do something to show high honour to St. Francis? You are proud, you are a lover of riches, you are quarrelsome ”

“ LAST Sunday I spoke of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist; I pointed out what our faith taught us about the Blessed Sacrament and how the Mass was to our Catholic forefathers and to us to-day, the central act of worship of God; and that the Holy Communion in a very true sense is the food of our spiritual life, as it binds us to God and brings Him into our lives in truth and in reality, which is the end and object of every act of religion. ”

“ On the 6th of the Kalends of May, in the year of grace 1257, died the blessed mother abbess, Euphemia, most worthy to be remembered, who, by our affection and good fellowship, and with divine sanction, succeeded the late abbess Maud of sweet memory. It is, therefore, most fitting that we should always perpetuate the memory, in our special prayers and suffrages, of one who ever worked for the glory of God, and for the weal of both our souls and bodies. For she increased the number of the Lord’s handmaids in this monastery from forty to eighty, to the exaltation of the worship of God. ”

“ As a mother will sit weeping at the tomb of an only son, so I, not as much as I desire, but as much as I can, sit weeping, as I think of Thy Passion, as I think of Thy buffetings, as I think of Thy stripes, as I think of Thy cross and of Thy wounds, how Thou didst die for me, and of how and where Thou wast buried. With Mary I sit weeping at the tomb — the tomb that is my mind— where faith has buried Thee, where hope seeks to find Thee, and charity to anoint Thee. ”

“ Why not as a Christian to a Christian? Why do these frivolous things have greater weight than such natural ties, such bonds of Christ? Places separate bodies, not souls. In old days the Rhine divided a Frenchman from a German, but the Rhine cannot divide one Christian from another. The Pyrenees cut off Spain from France, but these mountains do not destroy the communion of the Church. The sea divides the English and French peoples, but it cannot cut off the society of religion....” The world is the fatherland of all people; all men are sprung from a common stock. ”

“ When Henry VIII succeeded his father, every man of thirty must have had within his own personal recollection some knowledge of the terrible war, whilst his parents must have lived through the whole of it.
The obvious result of a knowledge of the danger and troubles of this long civil war, whether derived from personal experience or the relation of parents, was a willingness to hazard everything rather than recur to such a period of distress and bloodshed. Periods of revolution inspire peculiar prudence, and protracted war a determination at all costs to cling "to peace and pursue it." ”