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'Behold how many there are who are called, and how few who are chosen! And behold, if you have no care for yourself, your perdition is more certain than your amendment, especially since the way that leads to eternal life is so narrow.'
St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church
'The saved are few, but we must live with the few if we would be saved with the few. O God, too few indeed they are: yet amongst those few I wish to be!'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'The more the wicked abound, so much the more must we suffer with them in patience; for on the threshing floor few are the grains carried into the barns, but high are the piles of chaff burned with fire.'
Pope St. Gregory the Great, Doctor and Father of the Church
'A multitude of souls fall into the depths of Hell, and it is of the faith that all who die in mortal sin are condemned for ever and ever. According to statistics, approximately 80,000 persons die every day. How many of these will die in mortal sin, and how many will be condemned! For, as their lives have been, so also will be their end.'
St. Anthony Mary Claret
'Not all, nor even a majority, are saved. . . They are indeed many, if regarded by themselves, but they are few in comparison with the far larger number of those who shall be punished with the devil.'
St. Augustine, Doctor and Father of the Church
'All would wish to be saved and to enjoy the glory of paradise; but to gain heaven, it is necessary to walk in the straight road that leads to eternal bliss. This road is the observance of the divine commandments.
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'Our chronicles relate an even more dreadful happening. One of our brothers, well-known for his doctrine and holiness, was preaching in Germany. He represented the ugliness of the sin of impurity so forceful that a woman fell dead of sorrow in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said, "When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived at the same time from all parts of the world; out of that number, three were saved by going to Purgatory, and all the rest were damned.'
St. Leonard of Port Maurice
'That those who walk in the way of salvation are the smaller number is due to the vice and depraved habits imbibed in youth and nourished in childhood. By these means Lucifer has hurled into Hell so great a number of souls, and continues thus to hurl them into Hell every day, casting so many nations from abyss to abyss of darkness and errors, such as are contained in the heresies and false sects of the infidels.'
Ven. Mary of Agreda
'We owe God a deep.. gratitude for the purely gratuitous gift of the true faith with which he has favored us. How many are the infidels, heretics and schismatic who do not enjoy comparable happiness? The earth is full of them and they are all lost!'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'If traitors have arisen from among the very clergy themselves, let not this undermine your confidence in God... [In] the attack against our Lord, high priests and scribes and elders devised the plot, and how few of the people were found really receiving the word. Remember that it is not the multitude who are being saved, but the elect of God. Be not then affrighted at the great multitude of the people who are carried hither and thither...
St. Basil the Great, Doctor and Father of the Church
'Nor should we think that it is enough for salvation that we are no worse off than the mass of the careless and indifferent, or that in our faith we are, like so many others, uninstructed.'
St. Bede the Venerable, Doctor and Father of the Church
'As a man lives, so shall he die.'
St. Augustine, Doctor and Father of the Church
'Meditate on the horrors of Hell which will last for eternity because of one easily-committed mortal sin. Try hard to be among the few who are chosen. Think of the eternal flames of Hell, and how few there are that are saved.'
St. Benedict Joseph Labre
'A great number of Christians are lost.'
St. Leonard of Port Maurice
'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, impurity, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, acts of selfishness, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.'
Galatians 5:19-21
'The greater part of men choose to be damned rather than to love Almighty God.'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'I was watching souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist.'
St. Benedict Joseph Labre
'The Lord called the world a "field" and all the faithful who draw near to him "wheat." All through the field, and around the threshing-floor, there is both wheat and chaff. But the greater part is chaff; the lesser part is wheat, for which is prepared a barn not a fire. . . The good also are many, but in comparison with the wicked the good are few. Many are the grains of wheat, but compared with the chaff, the grains are few.'
St. Augustine, Doctor and Father of the Church
'I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that!'
St. John Chrysostom, Doctor and Father of the Church
'All persons desire to be saved, but the greater part, because they will not adopt the means of being saved, fall into sin and are lost. . . In fact, the Elect are much fewer than the damned, for the reprobate are much more numerous than the Elect.'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'Shall we all be saved? Shall we go to Heaven? Alas, my children, we do not know at all! But I tremble when I see so many souls lost these days. See, they fall into Hell as leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter.'
St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars, Patron Saint of Parish Priests
'With the exception of those who die in childhood, most men will be damned.'
St. Regimius of Rheims
'God... wishes to be served by his priests with the fervor with which the seraphim serve him in heaven; otherwise he will withdraw his graces and permit them to sleep in tepidity, and thence to fall, first into the precipice of sin and afterwards into hell.'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'Ah, how many souls lose Heaven and are cast into Hell!'
St. Francis Xavier
'How many among these uncivilized peoples do not yet know God, and are sunk in the darkest idolatry, superstition and ignorance! . . . Poor souls! These are they in whom Christ saw, in all the horror of His imminent Passion, the uselessness of His agony for so many souls!'
St. Francesca Saverio Cabrini
'The Ark [of Noah], which in the midst of the Flood was a symbol of the Church, was wide below and narrow above; and, at the summit, measured only a single cubit. . . It was wide where the animals were, narrow where men lived: for the Holy Church is indeed wide in the number of those who are carnal minded, narrow in the number of those who are spiritual.'
Pope St. Gregory the Great, Doctor and Father of the Church
'There are many who arrive at the faith, but few that are led into the heavenly kingdom.'
Pope St. Gregory the Great, Doctor and Father of the Church
'It is as though Jesus said: "O My Father, I am indeed going to clothe myself with human flesh, but the greater part of the world will set no value on my blood!"'
St. Isidore of Seville, Doctor and Father of the Church
'In the Great Deluge in the days of Noah, nearly all mankind perished, eight persons alone being saved in the Ark. In our days a deluge, not of water but of sins, continually inundates the earth, and out of this deluge very few escape. Scarcely anyone is saved.'
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church
'How few the Elect are may be understood from the multitude being cast out.'
St. Hilary of Poitiers, Doctor and Father of the Church
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