St. Philip Neri said.....

[Denise]

"It is a good thing, during the week that follows our communion-day, to do something more than usual; for example, to say five Our Fathers and Hail Mary's with our arms extended, or an extra rosary."

I can relate to this. Growing up during Lent my whole family knelt with our arms extended to pray the Franciscan Crown Rosary nightly, which consists of 7 decades. I have my dad's rosary to this day.

[Denise]

"It is not a good thing to load ourselves with many spiritual exercises; it is better to undertake a little, and go on with it: for if the devil can persuade us to omit an exercise once, he will easily get us to omit it the second time, and the third, until at last all our pious practices will melt away."

[Denise]

"We must take care of little faults: for he who once begins to go backward, and to make light of such defects, brings a sort of grossness over his conscience, and then goes wrong altogether."

[Denise]

"The servant of God ought to seek knowledge, but never to show it or make a parade of it."

[Denise]

"Let us always go to confession with sincerity, and take this as our rule - Never out of human respect to conceal anything from our confessor, however inconsiderable it may be."

[Denise]

"He who conceals a grave sin in confession, is completely in the devil's hands."

[Denise]

"Penitents should not generally change their confessors, nor confessors be forward to receive the penitents of others, a few particular cases excepted."

[Denise]

"When a person who has been living a spiritual life for a long time falls into a serious fault, there is no better way of raising him up again than by exhorting him to manifest his fall to any pious friend with whom he has a particular intimacy: and God will re-conduct him to his first estate for the sake of his humility."

[Denise]

"For young men to make sure of persevering, it is absolutely necessary that they should avoid wicked companions, and be familiar with good ones."

[Denise]

"In the spiritual life there are three degrees: the first may be called the animal life; this is the life of those who run after sensible devotion, which God generally gives to beginners, to allure them onwards by that sweetness to the spiritual life, just as an animal is drawn on by a sensible object."

[Denise]

"The second degree of the spiritual life may be called the human life; this is the life of those who do not experience any sensible sweetness, but by the help of virtue combat their own passions."

[Denise]

"The third degree of the spiritual life may be called the angelic life; this is the life which they come to, who, having been exercised for a long time in the taming of their own passions, receive from God a quiet, tranquil, and almost angelic life, even in this world, feeling no trouble or repugnance in anything."

[Denise]

"Of these three degrees of the spiritual life it is well to persevere in the second, because the Lord will grant the third in His own good time."

[Denise]

"We must not be too ready to trust young men who have great devotion; we must wait till their wings are grown, and then see what sort of a flight they make."

[Denise]

"Outward mortifications are a great help towards the acquisition of interior mortification and the other virtues."