Carry Our Crosses:

May God’s Church be filled with prayerful, virtuous Christians who carry their crosses joyfully in union with Jesus. Through their faithful witness may all men and women and children come to know the love and mercy of God!

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If we knew at what time we were to depart from this world, we would be able to select a season for pleasure and another for repentance. But God, who has promised pardon to every repentant sinner, has not promised us tomorrow. Therefore we must always dread the final day, which we can never foresee. This very day is a day of truce, a day for conversion. And yet we refuse to cry over the evil we have done! Not only do we not weep for the sins we have committed, we even add to them.

- Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604)

"Perhaps it is not after all so difficult for a man to part with his possessions, but it is certainly most difficult for him to part with himself. To renounce what one has is a minor thing; but to renounce what one is, that is asking a lot" (St. Gregory 540- 604, Homilies on the Gospels).