William Gurnall Quotes

The purpose of God's discipline is not to punish us but to transform us.

A holy habit clenseth not a foule soule.

The Lord never lays more on us, in the way of chastisement, than our state of heart makes needful; so that whilst He smites with the one hand, He supports with the other.

Why must we love the Lord? Because as we do so, we become refined, pure, and holy.

Waiting on God means increasing purity.

It is the Lord's kindness that he will take the scum off us in the fire. Who know how needful winnowing is to us and what dross we have before we enter the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven that our knots, lumps of pride, self-love, idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may stoop low and creep through into that narrow entry.

At the time of Holy Communion I sometimes picture my soul under the figure of a little child of three or four years, who at play has got its hair tossed and its clothes soiled. These misfortunes have befallen me in battling with souls. But very soon the Blessed Virgin hastens to my aid: quickly, she takes off my dirty little pinafore, smoothes my hair and adorns it with a pretty ribbon or simply with a little flower... and this suffices to render me pleasing and enables me to sit at the Banquet of Angels without blushing.

God uses prayer to educate His people and to produce holiness of character in them.

How grimy did God get when He reached down to clean you up? How grimy are you willing to get in order to be an 'imitator of God'?

God sees us perfect in His Son while He disciplines and chastens and purges us that we may be partakers of His holiness.

We know that God disciplines His children, and that testing, suffering, and persecution come to us from Heaven to stretch, grow, and mature us into the men and women God intends to make us... If we keep this in mind when hard times fall, it can be a real source of joy in the fire.

Purgatory basically means that God can put the pieces back together again. That He can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to be with Him and can stand there in the fullness of life. Purgatory strips off from one person what is unbearable and from another the inability to bear certain things, so that in each of them a pure heart is revealed, and we can see that we all belong together in one enormous symphony of being.

A saint serves others, knowing that the more one serves, the greater the opportunity for the Spirit to sanctify and purify.

Saints are ordinary people who love Jesus, try to be like him, are faithful to the duties of their state in life, sacrifice themselves for their neighbor, and keep their hearts and minds free of this world.

The best helps to growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us. We should receive them with all thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this account, that our will has no part therein.

Problems patiently endured will work for our spiritual perfecting.

Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.

Grace is the mother and nurse of holiness, and not the apologist of sin.

We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.

The worlds greatest need is the personal holiness of Christian people.

Purification is but the cleaning of the lamp-glass which hides the Light

If God's love for his children is to be measured by our health, wealth, and comfort in this life, God hated the apostle Paul.

We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make . . . pure spirits more pure.

Purity is the fruit of prayer.

A heart given to God loses none of its natural tenderness; on the contrary, the more pure and divine it becomes, the more such tenderness increases.