Saints on Saints

These are some quotes from saints talking about other saints and what we might find helpful in their lives:

St. John Chrysostom on St. Paul:

"The most important thing of all to him, however, was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ. Enjoying this love, he considered himself happier than anyone else; were he without it, it would be no satisfaction to be the friend of principalities and powers. He preferred to be thus loved and be the least of all, or even to be among the damned, than to be without that love and be among the great and honored.

To be separated from that love was, in his eyes, the greatest and most extraordinary of torments; the pain of that loss would alone have been hell, and endless, unbearable torture.

So too, in being loved by Christ he thought of himself as possessing life, the world, the angels, present and future, the kingdom, the promise and countless blessings. Apart from that love nothing saddened or delighted him; for nothing earthly did he regard as bitter or sweet.

Paul set no store by the things that fill our visible world, any more than a man sets value on the withered grass of the field." (from The Liturgy of the Hours for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Office of Readings)

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman on St. Philip Neri:

"My own special Father and Patron, St. Philip Neri, lived in an age as traitorous to the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can follow it. He perceived that the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great counter-fascination of purity and truth.”