Short videos discussing the Wisdom of Fulton Sheen

With the crib seen as a tabernacle and the child as a kind of host, then the home becomes a living temple of God. The sacristan of that sanctuary is the mother, who never permits the tabernacle lamp of faith to go out.

The life of a bishop should be more perfect than the life of a hermit. The reason he gave was that the holiness which the monk preserves in the desert must be preserved by the bishop in the midst of the evil of the world

Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent.

We are living in perilous times when the hearts and souls of men are sorely tried. Never before has the future been so utterly unpredictable; we are not so much in a period of transition with belief in progress to push us on, rather we seem to be entering they realm of the unknown, joylessly, disillusioned, and without hope. The whole world seems to be in a state of spiritual widowhood, possessed of the harrowing devastation of one who set out on life’s course joyously in intimate comradeship with another, and then is bereft of that companion forever.

Since evil is nothing positive, there can be no principle of evil. It has no meaning expect in reference to something good.

Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation.

It is not the sanctuary that is in danger; it is civilization. It is not infallibility that may go down; it is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away; it is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate; it is the courts of human justice. It is not that God may be driven from His throne; it is that men may lose the meaning of home. For peace on earth will come only to those who give glory to God! It is not the Church that is in danger, it is the world!

What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil.

There has been no single influence which has done more to prevent man from finding God and rebuilding his character, has done more to lower the moral tone of society than the denial of personal guilt. This repudiation of man’s personal responsibility for his action is falsely justified in two ways: by assuming that man is only an animal and by giving a sense of guilt the tag “morbid.”

O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law:
come to save us, Lord our God!

The very freedom which the sinner supposedly exercises in his self-indulgence is only another proof that he is ruled by the tyrant.

O King of all nations and keystone of the Church:
come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!

The nice people rarely come to God; they take their moral tone from the society in which they live. Like the Pharisee in front of the temple, they believe themselves to be very respectable citizens. Elegance is their test of virtue; to them, the moral is the aesthetic, the evil is the ugly. Every move they make is dictated, not by a love of goodness, but by the influence of their age. Their intellects are cultivated–in knowledge of current events; they read only the bestsellers, but their hearts are undisciplined. They say that they would go to the church if the Church were only better–but they never tell you how much better the Church must be before they will join it. They sometimes condemn the gross sins of society, such as murder; they are not tempted to this because they fear the opprobrium which comes to them who commit them. By avoiding the sins which society condemns, they escape the reproach, they consider themselves good par excellence.

O Radiant Dawn,
splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:
come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the
shadow of death.

Short videos discussing the Wisdom of Fulton Sheen

The nice people do not come to God, because they think they are good through their own merits or bad through inherited instincts. If they do good, they believe they are to receive the credit for it; if they do evil, they deny that it is their own fault. They are good through their own good-heartedness, they say; but they are bad because they are misfortunate, either in their economic life or through an inheritance of evil genes from their grandparents.

O Key of David,
opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom:
come and free the prisoners of darkness!

Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth…Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because he called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is other-worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself.

O Root of Jesse’s stem,
sign of God’s love for all his people:
come to save us without delay!

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world..

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

When you think of the condition the world is in now you sometimes wish that Noah had missed the boat.

The modern atheist does not disbelieve because of his intellect, but because of his will; it is not knowledge that makes him an atheist…The denial of God springs from a man’s desire not to have a God–from his wish that there were no Justice behind the universe, so that his injustices would fear not retribution; from his desire that there be no Law, so that he may not be judged by it; from his wish that there were no Absolute Goodness; that he might go on sinning with impunity. That is why the modern atheist is always angered when he hears anything said about God and religion–he would be incapable of such a resentment if God were only a myth.

If bringing of children into the world is today an economic burden it is because the social system is inadequate; and not because God’s law is wrong. Therefore the State should remove the causes of that burden. The human must not be limited and controlled to fit the economic, but the economic must be expanded to fit the human.

Very few people believe in the devil these days, which suits the devil very well. He is always helping to circulate the news of his own death. The essence of God is existence, and He defines Himself as: ‘I am Who am.” The essence of the devil is the lie, and he defines himself as: “I am who am not.” Satan has very little trouble with those who do not believe in him; they are already on his side.

Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.

The world blesses not the meek, but the vindictive; it praises not the one who turns the other cheek, but the one who renders evil for evil; it exalts not the humble, but the aggressive. Ideological forces have carried that spirit of violence, class-struggle, and the clenched fist to an extreme the like of which the world before has never seen.

(Repose) reminds us that all actions get teir worth from God: “worship” means “admitting worth.” To worship is to restore to our workaday life its true worth by setting it in its real relationship to God. Who is its end and ours.

Short videos discussing the Wisdom of Fulton Sheen

Many people make the great mistake of aiming directly at pleasure; they forget that pleasure comes only from the fulfillment of a duty or obedience to a law–for man is made to obey the laws of his own nature as inescapably as he must obey the laws of gravity. A boy has pleasure eating ice-cream because he is fulfilling one of the “oughts” of human nature: eating. If he eats more ice-cream that the laws of his body sanction, he will no longer get the pleasure he seeks, but the pain of a stomachache. To see pleasure, regardless of law, is to miss it.

Change your entire point of view! Life is not a mockery. Disappointments are merely markers on the road of life, saying: “Perfect happiness is not here.” Though your passions may have been satisfied, you were never satisfied, because while your passions can find satisfaction in this world, you cannot.

Every earthy ideal is lost by being possessed. The more material you ideal, the greater the disappointment; the more spiritual it is, the less the disillusionment.

I wonder maybe if our Lord does not suffer more from our indifference, than He did from the crucifixion.

The Wisdom of Fulton Sheen…Memorial of St. Nicholas….It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer they protest that it is too long.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15)

the Rosary is the best therapy for these distraught, unhappy, fearful, and frustrated souls, precisely because it involves the simultaneous use of three powers: the physical, the vocal, and the spiritual, and in that order.

Evil may have its hour, but God will have His day.

But in a conflict between truth and darkness, truth cannot loose.

It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the tines in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times.

Deep sorrow does not come because one has violated a law, but only if one knows he has broken off the relationship with Divine Love.