Catholic Urban Project

Quotes that inspire our mission…

“The frontier (of mission) now is the city, and it is there that the new
missionary heroism must shine no less brightly than it did in other ways in the
past… This will depend in large part upon the energy and dedication of urban
lay missionaries, but they in turn will need the service of truly zealous priests
who are themselves fired with the missionary spirit…”
- Pope John Paul II

"Do you want to do something beautiful for God? There is a person who needs
you. This is your chance."
-Mother Teresa

“The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.”
- Mother Teresa

"Do not be afraid to say yes to Jesus, to find your joy in doing his will, giving
yourself completely to the pursuit of holiness and using your talents in service
of others..."
- Pope Benedict XVI

"Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and in public places, like the first
apostles who preached Christ and the good news of salvation in the squares of
the cities, towns and villages. It is time to preach it from the rooftops."
- Pope John Paul II

"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only
solution is love and that love comes with community."
- Dorothy Day

"I wish to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment… For
missionary activity renews the Church, revitalizes faith and Christian identity,
and offers fresh enthusiasm and new incentive. Faith is strengthened when it
is given to others."
- Pope John Paul II

“The Church is each one of us: you, I. We are the ones who have to know, love,
and put ourselves at the service of the poorest.”
-Mother Teresa

“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the
encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a
decisive direction.”
-Benedict XVI

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world
is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not
always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to
come awake. Still more to remain awake.”
- C.S. Lewis

"Out of his solitude Jesus reached out his caring hand to the people in need...
Jesus indeed cared. Being pragmatists we say: "That is obvious: he fed the
hungry, made the blind see, the deaf hear, the crippled walk and the dead live.
He indeed cared." But by being surprised by all the remarkable things he did,
we forget that Jesus did not give food to the many without having received
some loaves and fishes from a stranger in the crowd; that he did not return
the boy of Nain to his widowed mother without having felt her sorrow, that
he did not raise Lazarus from the grave without tears and a sigh of distress
that came straight from the heart. What we see, and like to see, is cure and
change. But what we do not see and do not want to see is care, the
participation in the pain, the solidarity in the suffering, the sharing in the
experience of brokenness.
- Henri Nouwen

“I have the sense that the secret of Jesus’ ministry is hidden in that lonely
place where he went to pray, early in the morning, long before dawn. In the
lonely place Jesus finds the courage to follow God’s will and not his own; to
speak God’s words and not his own; to do God’s work and not his own. He
reminds us constantly: “I can do nothing by myself…my aim is to do not my
own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 5:30) The careful balance
between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and
closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life…”
-Henri Nouwen

“The vocation to love, understood as a true openness to our fellow human
beings and solidarity with them, is the most basic of all vocations. It is the
origin of all vocations in life.”
- Pope John Paul II

“Prayer not only opens us up to a meeting with the Most High but also
disposes us to a meeting with our neighbor, helping us to establish with
everyone, without discrimination, relationships of respect, understanding,
esteem, and love.”
- Pope John Paul II

“We can no longer expect people to come to our communities spontaneously:
there must be instead a new missionary outreach in the cities, with dedicated
men and women, and young people, going forth in Christ's name to invite
people into the community of the Church.”
- Pope John Paul II

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object
presented to your senses.”
- C.S. Lewis

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved…”
- Mother Teresa