In honor of the Feast of All Saints, I thought I would post twelve of their words of wisdom. After all, the saints are our heroes. They lived life successfully and know how to do it. One of my favorites from St. Turibius: “Christ called himself the truth not the custom.” Some of these quotations you might have heard before, but some may be new. Some are prayers. So here is the “guest blog” of a few saints:

1. St. Pio of Pietrelcino (Padre Pio), the Franciscan stigmatist who died in 1968:  “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

2. St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church who reformed the Carmelites: “The desire to serve God came to me so intensely that I should like to shout it out and tell everyone how important it is not to just give a little.”

3. St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits: “Pray as if everything depended on God, but work as though everything depended on you.”

4. St. Augustine, convert and bishop of Hippo: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

5. Blessed Charles de Foucauld, hermit, martyr in Algeria:  “O God, one more day to love you!”

6. St. Clare, the first Franciscan sister, on her deathbed: “I thank you, God, for having created me.”

7. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order: “He alone is God who can never be sought in vain; not even when he cannot be found.”

8. St. Viincent de Paul, founder of the Vincentians who had a large heart for the poor: “Let us love God, but with the strength of our arms, in the sweat of our brow.”

9. St. Philip Neri, good-humored founder of the Oratorians: “There is no more excellent way to obtain graces from God than to seek them through Mary because her divine Son cannot refuse her anything.”

10. St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church who taught about holiness:   “The past must be abandoned to God’s mercy, the present to our fidelity, the future to divine providence.”

11. St. Therese of Lisieux, young Carmelite of the “little way” of holiness: “For me, prayer means launching out of the heart towards God; it means lifting up one’s eyes quite simply to Heaven a cry of grateful love from the crest of joy or the trough of despair; it’s a vast supernatural force which opens out my heart  and binds me close to Jesus.”

12. St. Clement of Alexandria, early Doctor of the Church: “All our life is like a day of celebration for us; we are convinced, in fact, that God is always everywhere.”

Is there another saying from a saint that inspires you? What is it?