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"[W]hoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me."
(Our Lord Jesus Christ, Mt. 10:38)
"Then Jesus said to his disciples,
'Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.'"
(Mt 16:24)
"[Jesus] summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
'Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." (Mk. 8:34)
"Then
[Jesus] said to all, 'If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
(Lk. 9:23)
"Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple."
(Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lk. 14:27)
"Our greatest cross is the fear of
crosses." (St. John Vianney)
"God calls his friends to bear his Cross
after him." (St. John Vianney)
"What does he gain who refuses the cross?
He increases its weight." (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of
the Church)
"Jesus, Mary, The Cross: I want no other
friends but these." (St. Bernadette Soubirous)
"You must accept your cross; if you bear it
courageously it will carry you to Heaven." (St. John Vianney)
"Oh Jesus! Jesus! No longer do I feel my
cross, when now I think of yours!" (St. Bernadette Soubirous)
"Come, come, my dear, don't be frightened
at your burden; our Lord will help you to carry it." (St.
John Vianney)
"Whoever doesn't seek the cross of Christ
doesn't seek the glory of Christ." (St. John of the Cross,
Doctor of the Church)
"The Cross will not crush you; if its
weight makes you stagger, its power will also sustain you."
(St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina)
"Alas! O my God, if they are so few to bear
the cross, there will only be few to adore thee in eternity."
(St. John Vianney)
"I tell you that you have less to suffer in
following the Cross than in serving the world and its
pleasures." (St. John Vianney)
"I have had crosses in plenty - more than I
could carry almost! I set myself to ask for the love of crosses -
then I was happy." (St. John Vianney)
"And
in truth it was more by love than by the violence of the
executioners that our divine Redeemer was fixed to the
Cross." (Pope Pius XII, "Haurietis Aquas", 1956
A.D.)
"One must be humble, little,
self-disciplined, spiritual and despised by the world to learn the
mystery of the Cross." (St. Louis de Montfort)
"The cross is brought before our minds; who
will not crucify himself [that is, mystically]? The true
worshipper of the sacred Wood is he who carries out his worship in
his deeds." (St. Sophronius)
"As
in Heaven, nothing will be sweeter than to resemble Him in His
glory, so here on earth, nothing is more to our advantage than to
be like Him in His Passion." (St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor
of the Church)
"He sends us crosses, not because he wishes
evil to us, but because he desires our welfare, and because he
knows that they are conducive to our salvation." (St.
Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of
the Church)
"All those who are willing to be saved
through the cross will find salvation there. But those who desire
to be saved without it will perish miserably. There is no
salvation except in this cross." (St. Francis de Sales,
Doctor of the Church)
"All
men are anxious to stand on Mount Tabor and witness Christ's
transfiguration, but few are willing to go up with Him to
Jerusalem and accompany Him to Calvary." (St. Robert
Southwell)
"And how can a person who seeks to please
God, enjoy greater happiness than that which arises from
cheerfully embracing the cross which God sends him, and from the
conviction that, in embracing it, he pleases God in the highest
degree?" (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church)
"The prototype, the example on which one
should reflect and model one's self is Jesus Christ. But Jesus
chose the cross as his standard, so he wants all his followers to
tread the path to Calvary, carrying the cross and then dying
stretched out on it. Only this way do we reach salvation."
(St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina)
"The cross signifies that a truly detached
person should always be disposed, both outwardly and inwardly, to
self-surrender in everything that God wants him to endure, no
matter where it comes from; that he be inclined, dying to self, to
accept it all for the praise of his heavenly Father." (Bl.
Henry Suso)
"And as that blessed Savior, in His
infinite wisdom, made spontaneous choice of sorrows, of
sufferings, and of death on a cross, as the best means of our
redemption, so has He always allotted to His best loved friends,
the king of life which He had deliberately chosen for Himself,
that is, the way of the cross." (Liturgical Year)
"[Jesus]
did not announce for a future society the reign of an ideal
happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His
lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness
which is possible on earth and of perfect happiness in Heaven: the
royal way of the Cross." (Pope St. Pius X, "Our Apostolic
Mandate")
"Follow
the Divine Master up the steep slope of Calvary, loaded with the
cross and when it pleases Him to place us on the cross by
confining us to a bed of pain, let us thank Him and consider
ourselves lucky to be honored in this way, aware that to be on the
cross with Jesus is infinitely more perfect than merely
contemplating Him on the cross." [St. Pio of Pietrelcina
(Padre Pio)]
"[T]he
more penitent we are, the less anxious we are to escape our cross.
The more we see ourselves as we are, the more we say with the good
thief: 'I deserved this cross.' He did not want to be excused; he
did not want to have his sin explained away; he did not want to be
let off; he did not ask to be taken down. He wanted only to be
forgiven." (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)
"Having thus called upon His disciples to
deny themselves and take up their cross, the hearers were filled
with great terror, therefore these severe tidings are followed by
more joyful; For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his
Father with the holy Angels. Do you fear death? Hear the glory of
the triumph. Do you dread the cross? Hear the attendance of the
Angels." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and
"greatest theologian in the history of the Church")
"Surely
nothing is too much for Him when there is a question of
sanctifying a soul. He hands over the body and soul to weakness in
order to purify them in contempt of earthly things and in the love
of His Majesty. He wounds and He heals them; He crucifies them on
His cross in order to glorify them in His glory; in short, He
gives them death in order to have them live in eternity. Let us
accept these appearances of evil in order to have the real goods
they produce, and we will be happy both in this life and in the
next." (St. Vincent de Paul)
"But, how great is the folly of those who
resist the divine will, and instead of receiving tribulations with
patience, get into a rage, and accuse God of treating them with
injustice and cruelty! Perhaps they expect that, in consequence of
their opposition, what God wills shall not happen? 'Who resists
his will?' (Rom. 9:19). Miserable men! Instead of lightening the
cross which God sends them, they make it more heavy and painful.
'Who hath resisted him, and hath peace?' (Job 9:4). Let us be
resigned to the divine will, and we shall thus render our crosses
light, and shall gain great treasures of merits for eternal life.
In sending us tribulations, God intends to make us saints."
(St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of
the Church)
"Now the exhortation of the Apostle, 'Let
this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,' requires that
all Christians should possess, as far as is humanly possible, the
same dispositions as those which the divine Redeemer had when He
offered Himself in sacrifice: that is to say, they should, in a
humble attitude of mind, pay adoration, honor, praise and
thanksgiving to the supreme majesty of God. Moreover, it means
that they must assume to some extent the character of a victim,
that they deny themselves as the Gospel commands, that freely and
of their own accord they do penance and that each detests and
satisfies for his sins. It means, in a word, that we must all
undergo with Christ a mystical death on the cross so that we can
apply to ourselves the words of St. Paul, 'With Christ I am nailed
to the cross.'" (Pope Pius XII, "Menti Nostrae",
1950)
"If
we are true Christians, we must desire to be ever with Jesus
Christ. Now, where are we to find this loving Savior of our souls?
In what place may we embrace Him? He is found in two places: in
His glory and in His sufferings: on His throne and on His cross.
We must, then, in order to be with Him, either embrace Him on His
throne, which death enables us to do; or else share in His cross,
and this we do by suffering; hence we must either suffer or die,
if we would never be separated from our Lord. Let us suffer then,
O Christians; let us suffer what it pleases God to send us:
afflictions, sicknesses, the miseries of poverty, injuries,
calumnies; let us try to carry, with steadfast courage, that
portion of His cross, with which He is pleased to honor us."
(Bossuet)
"[I]n
the life of a Christian, the intellect must be entirely subject to
God's authority. And if, in this submission of reason to
authority, our self-love, which is so strong, is restrained and
made to suffer, this only proves the necessity to a Christian of
long-suffering not only in will but also in intellect. We would
remind those persons of this truth who desire a kind of
Christianity such as they themselves have devised, whose precepts
should be very mild, much more indulgent towards human nature, and
requiring little if any hardships to be borne. They do not
properly understand the meaning of faith and Christian precepts.
They do not see that the Cross meets us everywhere, the model of
our life, the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in
reality and not merely in name." (Pope Leo XIII, "Tametsi
Futura Prospicientibus", 1900)
"Mary
is already in the dust of human lives; she lives amidst terror,
brain-washings, false accusations, libels, and all the other
instruments of terror. The Immaculate is with the maculate, the
sinless with the sinner, and she bears no rancor or bitterness
toward them - only pity that they do not see or know how loving
that Love is that they are sending to His death. In her purity,
Mary is on the mountaintop; in her compassion she is amidst
curses, death cells, hangmen, executioners, and blood. A man may
despair in his consciousness of sin from crying to God for
forgiveness, but he cannot shrink from invoking the intercession
of God's Mother, who saw sinners do these things and yet prayed
for their forgiveness. If the good Holy Mother, Mary, who deserved
to be speared evil, could nevertheless, in the special providence
of her Son, have a Cross, then how shall we, who deserve not to be
ranked with her, expect to escape our meeting with a cross? 'What
have I done to deserve this?' is a cry of pride. What did Jesus
do? What did Mary do? Let their be no complaint against God for
sending a cross; let there only be wisdom enough to see that Mary
is there making it lighter, making it sweeter, making it
hers!" (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)
Also
See: Suffering
& Death | The
Passion / The Cross (Catholic Basics Reflections) | Adversity
| Affliction
| Necessity
of / Reasons for Suffering | Pain
| Sickness
/ Illness | Sorrow
/ Sorrows | Suffering
| Trials
& Tribulations | Words
of Advice (Suffering) | Words
of Encouragement (Suffering) | Inspiration
(Reflections) | Misc.
(Suffering & Death) | The
Trials & Sorrows of Jesus | Personal
Stories of Inspiration Section
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