Ponder the fact that God has made you a gardener, to root out vice and plant virtue.
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
This my goodness does to endow the souls of the just more fully with spiritual riches when for my love they are stripped of material goods because they have renounced the world and all its pleasures and even their own will. These are the ones who fatten their souls, enlarging them in the abyss of my charity. Then I become their spiritual provider. The Holy Spirit becomes their servant.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the spiritual wealth gained by those who renounce worldly pleasures in favor of a deeper connection with the divine.
In this quote, St. Catherine of Siena speaks to the profound spiritual transformation that occurs when individuals abandon material desires and worldly distractions. By willingly stripping away their possessions and desires, these individuals cultivate a deep love for God, thereby enriching their souls with spiritual abundance. This divine support nurtures their spiritual growth and elevates them, revealing the notion that true richness lies not in material wealth but in the depth of one's relationship with the divine and the spirit.
Themes
SpiritualityWealthRenunciationCharityLoveSacrifice
In practice
Example use cases
In a church sermon discussing the virtue of charity, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of spiritual wealth over material possessions.
More from St. Catherine Of Siena
All quotes →When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side-it may be that your judgment is false. On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
O unfathomable depth! O Deity eternal! O deep ocean! What more could You give me than to give me Yourself?
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his left and right hand. He uses both.
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
There is no perfect virtue-none that bears fruit- unless it is exercised by means of our neighbor.
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
Eternal Trinity... mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being.
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
Similar quotes
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Wislawa SzymborskaRead
One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Baruch SpinozaRead
There is nothing but water in the holy pools. I know, I have been swimming there. All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can’t say a word. I know, I have been crying out to them. The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
KabirRead
She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
One man's death: that is a catastrophe. A hundred thousand dead: that is a statistic
Kurt TucholskyRead