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“For years, while raising children, a mother’s time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart.” -Fr. Rolheiser, OMI

✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽

“It is wrong to deny one’s self all diversion. The mind becomes fatigued and depressed by remaining always concentrated in itself and thus more easily falls a prey to sadness. Saint Thomas says explicitly that one may incur sin by refusing all innocent amusement. Every excess, no matter what its nature, is contrary to order and consequently to virtue.” – Light and Peace, Quadrupani, 1795

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“Dear Girls, contemplating the final leap, I want you to understand that you can afford a great deal less to be careless after marriage than before; because you have now to keep the husband you have won. Men like what is bright and cheerful, and pleasant to behold. So far as you are concerned see that you are never an eyesore. Even if you have your own work to do, there is no necessity why you should be a dowdy or a slattern. Even a cotton dress clean and daintily made can be as becoming to you as a robe of silk and lace.” -Courtship and Marriage and the Gentle Art of Home-making, Annie S. Swan, 1894

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“Christian humility does not lower, it elevates; it does not cast down, but gives courage, for the more it reveals to the soul its nothingness and abjection, the more it moves it toward God with confidence and abandonment.” – Divine Intimacy, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

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✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽✾✿❀❁❃✽

“The first area that you must succeed in, since you are a woman, is in the home, in the roles of compassionate wife, diligent mother, and successful keeper of the home. Yes, the key to your happiness lies within your own four walls. To reach these goals you may have to go beyond the call of duty…go the second mile, doing more than is asked or expected. ” -FW

The truly religious wife finds God at Mass and from Him receives the strength to become the ideal helpmate to her husband. She does not leave God at church but keeps Him with her every minute of the day in every nook and cranny of her home. Each menial, repetitious task she must perform is a work of love for her husband and children, and through them, a work of love for her Creator. – Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J. 1950’s

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“Lord, You know my weakness; every morning I make a resolution to practice humility, and every evening I acknowledge that I still have many failures. I am tempted to be discouraged by this, but I know that discouragement also has its source in pride. That is why I prefer to put my trust in You alone, O my God. Since You are all-powerful, deign to create in my soul the virtue for which I long”. – St. Therese of the Child Jesus

 

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St. Francis de Sales gives us some words of warning on the company we keep: “Be very careful, therefore, dear reader, not to have any evil love, because you will in turn quickly become evil yourself.
Friendship is the most dangerous of all love. Why? Because other loves can exist without communication, exchange, closeness. But friendship is completely founded upon communication and exchange and cannot exist in practice without sharing in the qualities and defects of the friend loved.”

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