Catherine McAuley Quotes

'Doing your own thing' and being a Christian is an oxymoron. As Christians, every day we need to be presenting ourselves before the Lord, thanking Him for His mercy and asking Him to make us more like Him by emptying us of our will, so God's will can be done.

I must consider myself as the man of the cross and love the one that God gives me without thinking any further.

What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.

Jesus gives his life for the congregation, not the other way around.

I find that doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.

When you find your definitions in God, you find the very purpose for which you were created. Put your hand into God's hand, know His absolutes, demonstrate His love, present His truth, and the message of redemption and transformation will take hold.

Let us live no more to ourselves, but to Him who loved us, and gave Himself to die for us.

God comes first - if I don't love him, I can't love anybody, and if I can't love me I can't love nobody.

We don't know how God chooses martyrs. We do know that they give us the most precious gift they possess — their very lives.

Jesus showed me what it means to be holy - he did his father's will no matter how difficult it was to accomplish.

Laying my will down for Jesus was laying my life down for others.

I no longer desire anything but to be Thine.

He [Jesus] has no need of our works but only of our love.

God always wants what's best for us, just as you want what's best for someone you really love. You put them before you, and God does that too. God puts us before His Son, who He sacrificed for our salvation. But the Son did it voluntarily because He has the love of the Father before us.

Those virtues which cost us dear prove that we love God; those which are easy to us prove that He loves us.

In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.

Sacrifice is the essence of love, which is the essence of God.

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

Leadership is an act of submission to God. To be a leader means listening to all kinds of people and situations. Out of that listening, we are hoping to discern the mind of God as best we can. This is the price of leadership - it's an act of sacrifice. So leadership is part and parcel of the work of submission to God.

Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.

Faith is walking by faith, not by what you feel. You are not always going to feel that Jesus loves you or that God is good, but you know He is. It is the up and down of the journey.

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

God will never reject you. Whether you accept Him is your decision.

I, for one, am profoundly grateful to feel the hand of God at work in my life. But at the beginning and end of the day, when my default setting is to show kindness and love to others, I never regret it. And to me, that is what faith is all about.