Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

To follow Christ is to become more like Him. It is to learn from His character.

Jesus showed me what it means to be holy - he did his father's will no matter how difficult it was to accomplish.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

Make intercessory prayer a priority in your life and the life of your family. It will cause you to be more empathetic, less self-obsessed, and increasingly more like Christ.

It's so easy to settle for less than God's best for us because we don't always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God's will.

One of the blessings that comes from paying a full tithing is developing faith to live an even higher law. To live in the celestial kingdom, we must live the law of consecration. There we must be able to feel that all we are and all we have belong to God.

With all my heart, I plead with the Latter-day Saints to live honestly with the Lord in the payment of tithes and offerings. I plead with youth to establish this habit while you are still young and to resolve to continue with it all the days of your lives.

If I don't have anything to sacrifice, I don't have anything to gain. From the Bible I have learned if you want something good, you must sacrifice.

God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.

The Church doesn't censor. It tries to guide its faithful through catechism.

I have taken this step because I want the discipline, the fire and the authority of the Church. I am hopelessly unworthy of it, but I hope to become worthy.

When you choose to follow Christ, you choose to be changed.

Well, to take me from where I was, and the life I was leading, to the life I lead now with the church and with the Lord and with Jesus Christ, it's a total, total turn-around.

I was in Kashi to take the holy dip, and when you go to Kashi you have to give up something that you enjoy the most. I gave up shopping, particularly sarees, from thereon. I now only buy the essential items.

I went from one state of life to another state of life by obeying, understanding, and applying the principles that are laid down in the Bible.

Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!

Though it be said that faith cometh by hearing, yet it is the Spirit that worketh faith in the heart through hearing, or else they are not profited by hearing.

I received Christ into my heart and my life began to change. But it was a gradual change. And I didn't see any flashing bulbs. I didn't hear any thunder. There was no great emotional experience. It was just saying: Yes, Lord Jesus, I want you to be the lord of my life.

The most urgent task is that of the biblical and liturgical formation of the people of God.

The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.

Bible reading is an education in itself.

I don't know a single person who truly seems to bear the mark of God's presence and power in his or her life who hasn't been asked by God to be obedient in a way that was dramatically painful.

In our family, at this point,[Sunday School] its not a choice for my kids. It's a duty for us as parents to give them faith as a foundation and hope that when they bemuse older teens and young adults they will choose the same thing for themselves.

One of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.

Jesus is knocking at your door. Take hold of the better life by letting him into your life. Make him the boss of your life. It'll change everything.