Portraits of Our Beloved Holy Fathers and Their Words of Spiritual Guidance

Venerable John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as Cardinal

Picture source

Baby Karol

Picture source

"Nothing can give us a profound sense of the meaning of our earthly life and stimulate us to live it as a brief experimental state--as can an inner attitude of seeing ourselves as pilgrims." - Venerable John Paul II

Baby Karol and his beloved parents

Picture source

"The bond that unites a family is not only a matter of natural kinship or of shared life and experience.  It is essentially a holy and religious bond.  Marriage and the family are sacred realities." - Venerable John Paul II

Karol as a young school boy

Picture source

"Again and again I find in young people the joy and enthusiasm of life, a searching for truth and for the deeper meaning of the existence that unfolds before them in all its attraction and potential." - Venerable John Paul II

Josef as a little boy

Picture source

"In the course of our lives, all of us are on a journey, we are traveling towards the future.  Naturally, we want to find the right road:  to find true life, and not a dead end or a desert.  We don't want to end up saying:  I took the wrong road, my life is a failure, it went wrong.  We want to find joy in life; we want, in the words of Jesus, 'to have life in abundance.'" - Pope Benedict XVI

Karol's First Holy Communion

Picture source

"The Eucharist educates us to...love in a deeper way; it show us, in fact, what value each person, our brother or sister, has in God's eyes, if Christ offers Himself equally to each one, under the species of bread and wine." - Venerable John Paul II

Josef's First Holy Communion

Picture source

"Through the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Communion, a community is formed which spills over all borders and embraces all languages." - Pope Bendict XVI

Ratzinger Children

Picture source

"If we follow God in all that we think and do, then we draw closer together, we gain freedom and thus true fraternity is born." - Pope Benedict XVI

Karol the Young Man

Picture source

"There is always a special attraction in you young people, because of that instinctive goodness of yours not contaminated by evil, and because of your particular readiness to accept truth, and put it into practice.  And since God is truth, you, loving and accepting truth, are nearest to heaven." - Venerable John Paul II

According to the picture source, Josef right before ordination

Picture source

"Let us love being with the Lord!  There we can speak with him about everything.  We can offer him our petitions, our concerns, our troubles.  Our joys.  Our gratitude, our disappointments, our needs and our aspirations." - Pope Benedict XVI

"known as the young priest Father Karol Wojtyla, while in seminary"

Picture source

"Changed by the working of grace into a new creature, the Christian...humbly sets himself to follow Christ and learns more and more within the Church to think like Him, to judge like Him, to act in conformity with His commandments, and to hope as He invites us to." - Venerable John Paul II

Young Priest Karol

Picture source

"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." - Venerable John Paul II

Young Priest Josef

Picture source

"Let us discover the intimate riches of the Church's liturgy and its true greatness:  it is not we who are celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God himself who is preparing a banquet for us." - Pope Benedict XVI

Young Father Josef blessing the crowd

Picture source

"The more we allow ourselves, through the liturgy, to be transformed in Christ, the more we will be capable of transforming the world, radiating Christ's goodness, his mercy and his love for others." - Pope Benedict XVI

Bishop Karol Wojtyla

Picture source

"Prayer calls us to examine our consciences on all the issues that affect humanity.  It calls us to ponder our personal and collective responsibility before the judgment of God and in the light of human solidarity. Hence prayer is able to transform the world.  Everything is new with prayer, both for individual and for communities.  New goals and new ideals emerge.  Christian dignity and action are reaffirmed.  The commitments of our Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders take on new urgency.  The horizons of of conjugal love and of the mission of the family are vastly extended in prayers." - Venerable John Paul II

Archbishop Josef Ratzinger's first Corpus Christi Procession in 1977

Picture source

"We know this from experience:  whenever priests, because of their many duties, allot less and less time to being with the Lord, they eventually lose, for all their often heroic activity, the inner strength that sustains them. Their activity ends up as an empty activism.

To be with Christ --  how does t his come about?  Well, the first and most important thing for the priest is his daily Mass, always celebrated with deep interior participation.  If we celebrate Mass truly as men of prayer, if we unite our words and our activities to the Word that precedes us and let them be shaped by the Eucharistic celebration, if in Communion we let ourselves truly be embraced by him and receive him -- then we are being with him." - Pope Benedict XVI

Cardinal Karol Wojtyla

Picture source

"Only through acceptance of the Gospel can every hope...find full realization." - Venerable John Paul II

Pope John Paul II Praying the Holy Rosary

Picture source

O Virgin Mother, guide and sustain us so that we might always live as true sons and daughters of the Church of your Son.  Enable us to do our part in helping to establish on earth the civilization of truth and love, as God wills it, for His glory. Amen. - Venerable John Paul II

Pope Benedict XVI Praying the Holy Rosary

Picture source

"Mary is and remains the handmaid of the Lord who does not put herself at the center, but wants to lead us towards God, to teach us a way of life in which God is acknowledged as the center of all there is and the center of our personal lives." - Pope Benedict XVI

Picture source

"The Apostle Paul said:  'God...Has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation' (2 Cor 5:18).  The people of God are called to a continual conversion, to an ever renewed reconciliation with God in Christ.  This reconciliation is effected in the sacrament of penance, and it is there that you exercise, par excellence,  your ministry of reconciliation." - Venerable John Paul II's address to priests of Zaire

Picture source

"Let us bear witness to our faith in such a way that it shines forth as the power of love, 'so that the world may believe' (Jn 17:21)." - Pope Benedict XVI

Sources for quotations:
Coming Together in Joy 99 Sayings by Benedict XVI, New City Press, Inc.
The Wisdom of John Paul II, Compiled by Bakalar and Balkin, Harper
A Moment's Peace: Words of Encouragement - Pope John Paul II