6 Quotes by Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard

A man can suffer like a pagan, like the damned, or like a saint. If he wishes to suffer with Christ, he must try to suffer like a saint. For then, suffering is of benefit to our own souls, and applies the merits of the Passion to those of others: “I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His Body, which is the Church.”10.

The Liturgy may be considered a school for acquiring four fruits: the presence of God, sorrow for sin, joy, and prayer.

Believe me,” St. Vincent de Paul said to his priests, “we will never be any use in doing God’s work until we become thoroughly convinced that, of ourselves, we are better fitted to ruin everything than to make a success of it.

Bossuet has a sentence which is beyond the comprehension of an apostle who does not realize what must be the soul of his apostolate. It runs: “When God desires a work to be wholly from His hand, he reduces all to impotence and nothingness, and then He acts.” Nothing wounds God so much as pride.

A jeweler will prefer the smallest fragment of diamond to several sapphires; and so, in the order established by God, our intimacy with Him gives Him more glory than all possible good, procured by us, for a great number of souls, but to the detriment of our own progress. Our Heavenly Father, “who devotes Himself more to the direction of a soul in which He reigns, than to the natural government of the whole universe and to the civil government of all empires,” looks for this harmony in our zeal.

Let the men eaten up with activity,” he says, “and who imagine they are able to shake the world with their preaching and other outward works, stop and reflect a moment. It will not be difficult for them to understand that they would be much more useful to the Church and more pleasing to the Lord, not to mention the good example they would give to those around them, if they devoted more time to prayer and to the exercises of the interior life.