Top 516 Quotes & Sayings by Pope John Paul II - Page 3

Believers do not surrender. They can continue on their way to the truth because they are certain that God has created them "explorers", whose mission is to leave no stone unturned, though the temptation to doubt is always there. Leaning on God, they continue to reach out, always and everywhere, for all that is beautiful, good, and true.

Following Christ, the Church seeks the truth, which is not always the same as the majority opinion.

You are called to stand up for life! To respect and defend the mystery of life always and everywhere, including the lives of unborn babies, giving real help and encouragement to mothers in difficult situations. You are called to work and pray against abortion.

Love the family! Defend and promote it as the basic cell of human society; nurture it as the prime sanctuary of life. Give great care to the preparation of engaged couples and be close to young married couples, so that they will be for their children and the whole community an eloquent testimony of God's love.

Today, the scale and horror of modern warfare - whether nuclear or not - makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations. War should belong to the tragic past, to history; it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future.

Christian holiness does not being sinless, but rather it means struggling not to give in and always getting up after every fall.

Do not be afraid to be holy! Have the courage and humility to present yourselves to the world determined to be holy, since full, true freedom is born from holiness.

Your faith will help you realize that it is Jesus Himself Who is present in the Blessed Sacrament, waiting for you and calling you to spend one special specific hour with Him each week.

...Be holy men and women! Do not forget that the fruits of the apostolate depend on the depth of the spiritual life, on the intensity of prayer, of continual formation and sincere adhesion to the directives of the Church.

The Church and the world have a great need of eucharistic worship. Jesus waits for us in this sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease

If the aim is globalization without marginalization, we can no longer tolerate a world in which there live side by side the immensely rich and the miserably poor, the have-nots deprived even of essentials and people who thoughtlessly waste what others so desperately need. Such countries are an affront to the dignity of the human person. He further said, Ethics demand that systems be attuned to the needs of man, and not that man be sacrificed for the sake of the system.

What have I done with my baptism and confirmation? Is Christ really at the center of my life? Do I have time for prayer in my life? Do I live my life as a vocation and mission?

True holiness does not mean a flight from the world; rather, it lies in the effort to incarnate the Gospel in everyday life, in the family, at school and at work, and in social and political involvement.

People are made for happiness. Rightly, then, you thirst for happiness. Christ has the answer to this desire of yours. But he asks you to trust him.

Life is entrusted to man as a treasure which must not be squandered, as a talent which must be used well.

He has chosen you, in a mysterious but real way, to make you saviors with Him and like Him. Yes, Christ calls you, but He calls you in truth. His call is demanding, because He invites you to let yourselves be 'captured' by Him completely, so that your whole lives will be seen in a different light.

From the Eucharist comes strength to live the Christian life and zeal to share that life with others

The worst prison would be a closed heart.

We can pray perfectly when we are out in the mountains or on a lake and we feel at one with nature. Nature speaks for us or rather speaks to us. We pray perfectly.

A man shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity that he is called to perform.

Everybody that is just is called to form part of the Kingdom of Heaven-whether they be Buddhas, Jews, or Atheists-as long as they are good.

By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable.

This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis.

We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: 'We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection.

To humanity, which sometimes seems to be lost and dominated by the power of evil, selfishness and fear, the risen Lord gives the gift of His love which forgives, reconciles and reopens the soul to hope.

Amongst all unimportant subjects, football is by far the most important.

Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors to Christ.

In order to see Jesus, we first need to let him look at us!

Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons," a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.

The Eucharist is the secret of my day. It gives strength and meaning to all my activities of service to the Church and to the whole world. . . . Let Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament speak to your hearts. It is he who is the true answer of life that you seek. He stays here with us: he is God with us. Seek him without tiring, welcome him without reserve, love him without interruption: today, tomorrow, forever.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

It is a mistake to apply American democratic procedures to the faith and the truth. You cannot take a vote on the truth. The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

When man turns his back on the Creator's plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order. If man is not at peace with God, then earth itself cannot be at peace.

Believers know that the presence of evil is always accompanied by the presence of good, by grace... Where evil grows, there the hope for good also grows... In the love that pours forth from the heart of Christ, we find hope for the future of the world. Christ has redeemed the world: "By his wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)

The modern world, a world which has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself.

Faith leads us beyond ourselves. It leads us directly to God.

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

[On his 83rd birthday] Physical condition or advancing of age are not obstacles to a perfect life. God does not look at external things but at the soul.

Thus to share in the sufferings of Christ is, at the same time, to suffer for the kingdom of God. In the eyes of the just God, before his judgment. Those who share in the sufferings of Christ become worthy of this kingdom.

Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life, in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom.

Jesus Christ has taken the lead on the way of the cross. He has suffered first. He does not drive us toward suffering but shares it with us, wanting us to have life and to have it in abundance.

May Mary, who in the freedom of her 'Fiat' and her presence at the foot of the cross, offered to the world, Jesus, the Liberator, help us to find him in the Sacrament of the altar

Around the world, we see the results of exploitation which destroys much without taking future generations into account. Protecting the world's forests; stemming desertification and erosion; avoiding the spread of toxic substances harmful to man, animals and plants; protecting the atmosphere; all these can be accomplished only through active and wise cooperation, without borders or political power plays.

Know what you are talking about.

Each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

A good leader sees everything, overlooks a great deal, and corrects a little.

Holiness is not reserved for a small number of exceptional persons. It is for everyone. It is the Lord who brings us to holiness when we are willing to collaborate in the salvation of the world for the glory of God, despite our sin and our sometimes rebellious temperament.

The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn; nor storm without haven.

Pray and learn to pray! Deepen your knowledge of the Word of the Living God by reading and meditating on the Scriptures.

The Rosary is a prayer both so humble and simple and a theologically rich in Biblical content. I beg you to pray it.

Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another.

This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops.

There is nothing more man needs than Divine Mercy - that love which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights to the holiness of God.

Dear young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task awaits you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where brothers and sisters - members all of the same family - are able at last to live in peace.

When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular concept of weekend dominated by such things as entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer see the heavens.

Peoples of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His Hands the destiny of this passing world... And this Someone is Love- Love that became Man, Love crucified and risen, Love unceasingly present among men. It is Eucharistic Love.

We are the people of life, because God, in His unconditional love, has given us the Gospel of Life, and we are called to act accordingly.

Mary's role is to make Her Son Shine

This is the wonderful truth, my dear friends: the Word, which became flesh two thousand years ago, is present today in the Eucharist