Catherine Doherty

With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again.

— Catherine Doherty

I go to my past in order to discern the future.

— Catherine Doherty

To pass through the door that leads to God's kingdom, we must go down on our knees.

— Catherine Doherty

Lord, give bread to the hungry, and hunger for you to those who have bread.

— Catherine Doherty

Pain is the kiss of Christ.

— Catherine Doherty

We do not have to wait for the hereafter — it is now that we are one with Christ.

— Catherine Doherty

What you do matters — but not much. What you are matters tremendously.

— Catherine Doherty

You live between two Masses. You exist in the present moment.

— Catherine Doherty

True silence is the speech of lovers. For only love knows its beauty, completeness and utter joy.

— Catherine Doherty

God reveals himself to those who wait for that revelation and who don't try to "tear at the hem of a mystery" forcing disclosure.

— Catherine Doherty

Real zeal is standing still and letting God be a bonfire in you.

— Catherine Doherty

Faith sees God's face in every human face.

— Catherine Doherty

Faith allows us to enter peacefully into the dark night which faces everyone of us at one time or another.

— Catherine Doherty

It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so ill, so weak, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well.

— Catherine Doherty

Purity of heart is love for the weak who constantly fall.

— Catherine Doherty

The stranger is simply a friend I haven't met yet.

— Catherine Doherty

I am third.

— Catherine Doherty

What binds us together is love, and only love. For love is a Person. Love is God.

— Catherine Doherty

We do not go to mission lands to 'bring Jesus Christ' as much as to uncover him where he already is.

— Catherine Doherty

Lord, give me the heart of a child, and the awesome courage to live it out as an adult.

— Catherine Doherty

Loving does not necessarily mean liking. But it still is loving, yes — totally, completely, utterly. Take the key of wisdom and unlock your own heart. Then let people in one by one. Listen to them, with full attention, with all your mind, heart, body and soul, unto exhaustion. And look! — the exhaustion will be lifted, and you will be able to listen still more. Yes, love must be communicated person to person; otherwise it will not be effective.

— Catherine Doherty

When we reach the silver sands and plunge into the great sea of God's silence, we begin to understand that he alone is God — Lover, Friend, the totality of gentleness, peace and rest. He calls us and we cannot resist that call. We have to be alone with him. It is a necessity, it is a hunger. It has been said that prayer is a hunger. But this Christ walks with loneliness and rejection, and so must we.

— Catherine Doherty

To be simple is to accept the essence of the message and not try to twist it or adapt it to our own ideas. To be simple we must desire to remain in the image of God. We must not be so complex that we make God into our image! Simplicity is dying to self, an emptying.

— Catherine Doherty

Here I want to reiterate very clearly that this Little Mandate did not come to me dictated, or as a whole, but as I am telling it now. Get the picture: it could happen any place, any time, in the midst of a group, in my office, at lunch in a cafeteria. Suddenly a little light, a little added word would come to me. I used to write them down on scraps of paper, on the back of old envelopes, in some diary, maybe lost or forgotten now; though some of them are still here. It was a patchy thing.

— Catherine Doherty

Identification [with the other] is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that "heaven is taken by violence" to oneself [Luke 16:16]. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth.

— Catherine Doherty

What is the market place? Is it the secular city? Is it the factual market place, that is to say the urban inner city? Is it suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. The market place is simply the soul of man. It is the place where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil or to the 'in between', with indifference, tepidity and complacency.

— Catherine Doherty