Quotes and meditations of Father Casimir Michael Cypher:
“What is important is not that we wait for a revelation in some book or in some saying, but take the revelation we have in our everyday life. And the revelation in our everyday life is to use the talents God gave us. Lazarus had no ‘talents’ — but what he was, he was. And that was all.“
“There is beauty in life if we only worry about living completely and just being truly what God meant us to be. We miss it when we worry about not being really great, about accomplishing things we cannot accomplish. When we want God to make us greater than we are, we become smaller, because we neglect what we have and what we are already.“
“Remember this Gospel. It is a sort of warning: Don’t look too far into the future. When you look into eternity, don’t look on forever; you will stumble over your own life. Look for eternity in those who are near you right now. For eternity begins today; it begins this moment. It begins right NOW!”
Facing frequent illnesses, poverty and many other obstacles he once wrote “I am forever being frustrated by the smallness of my own humanity. But at the same time I’m getting impressed with the power of God and the endurance of Charity.”
I had heard in the family, that Michael was even quite selfless as a child. So the story goes, he received a new winter coat and when he came home from school he was not wearing it. His mother asked where his coat was and he replied another child, friend [unknown name] didn’t have a coat so he gave it to them. [citation needed]
When his body was discovered, his mother refused to have it shipped back to the United States. She told a reporter from NC News Service, “He told me that he wanted to be buried among the people he had worked with if something happened. The Capuchin order offered to bring him back, but that was out. I wouldn’t do anything against his will,” she said. — Our Sunday Visitor article, Michael Gable
“If I am to help these people, I have to be smaller than they are.”
“I am growing rapidly without a great deal of concern for where it is leading me.”
Living on beans and rice, he once said, “Pray for me sometime and remember me when you have your next hamburger.”
“This shirt will last me the rest of my life.”
Caught up in the hunger march of June 25, 1975, one eyewitness saw him walking around like this, absolving the living and blessing the dead bodies.
… unwittingly, he said the night before he was arrested that, “…there was a time that I was afraid to die, but now I am not.” — Our Sunday Visitor article, Michael Gable
See also “The Sun” poem written for Juanita Klapeke.