"If you neglect Martha, who will serve Jesus? And if you neglect Mary, of what use to you will Jesus' visit be?"

"Do not neglect Mary for Martha, nor Martha for Mary.  If you neglect Martha, who will serve Jesus?  And if you neglect Mary, of what use to you will Jesus' visit be? . . .  [I]n this life it is never necessary to separate these two women."

     St. Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption, as translated by me from the French of Marie-Benoît Meeuws, OSB, "«Ora et labora»:  devise bénédictine?," Collectanea Cisterciensia 54 (1992/3):  205 (193-219).

"Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself"

Source

"If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God. For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner; for his sake, therefore, you must cease to sin. Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself [(Προσκύνησον τὸν διὰ σὲ κρεμασθέντα, καὶ κρεμάμενος)]. Derive some benefit from the very shame; purchase salvation with your death. Enter paradise with Jesus, and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy."

     St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 45.24, as trans. Universalis.  Greek, for now, from PG 36, col. 656C.

Ora et labora: No Benedictine motto

In these pedagogical texts of the late 18th and the 19th centuries "no reference to monasticism can be detected.
     "By contrast, it says in the programmatic text Praecipua Ordinis Monastici Elementa [(1880)], by Archabbot Maurus Wolter [(1824-1890)],

Hinc vetus clarissimaque illa monachorum tessera:  Ora et labora.  Opus Dei atque opus laboris, . . . sive alae duae, quae ad altissimam attollunt perfectionem . . . ut haec illi vigoris, illa huic benedictionis semper novum afferat incrementum.

Maurus Wolter gives no source. . . .  The striking parallels make it plain that he was influenced by the [late 18th- and the 19th-century] pedagogical literature on the theme of prayer and work.
     "The ongoing treatment [(Die bis heute anhaltende Wertung)] of ora et labora as a motto of the Benedictine order shows how much of an impact Maurus Wolter had on the understanding of his time, such that this treatment [(dies)] could be so deeply rooted [still today].  But we should ask whether what lies here before us [in the ora et labora] is for Benedictine life today an appropriate leitmotif or an unhappily constrictive foreshortening [(eine unglückliche Verkürzung)]."

     Oliver J. Kaften, OSB, "Ora et labora:  (k)ein benediktinishes Motto [a, or, rather, no Benedictine motto]:  eine Spurensuche," Erbe und Auftrag 90 (2014):  421 (415-421), translation mine.  These concluding words are preceded by an unsuccessful attempt to find anything closely resembling the (supposedly reductive) motto before the late medieval (but especially the modern and even Protestant) period (though I certainly do not summarize those findings properly here).

"The truth is the first of the mercies that Jesus offers to the sinner."

Wikimedia Commons

 "La verità è la prima delle misericordie che Gesù offre al peccatore."

      Robert Cardinal Sarah, "Messaggio di Natale," Roma, 6 gennaio 2024, festa dell’Epifania del Signore, as reproduced on Diakonos.be:  regards sur l'Eglise catholique by Sandro Magister.  In English.

John Henry Newman on the truth at an extreme

"I had got but a little way in my work, when my trouble returned upon me.  The ghost had come a second time.  In the Arian History I found the very same phenomenon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite.  I had not observed it in 1832.  Wonderful that this should come upon me!  I had not sought it out; I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a 'metaphysical' subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then.  The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called 'the extreme party.'  As I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge upon the argument; I have said something on the subject in a volume, from which I have already quoted."

     John Henry [Cardinal] Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, chap. 3, "History of my religious opinions from 1839 to 1841," ed. David J. DeLaura, Norton critical edition (1968), 114-115.

"I have sinned—I sin continually—but Christ has died, and for ever lives, as my Redeemer, Priest, Advocate, and King."

     John Newton, letter to Mr. Robert Jones dated 17 March 1757, as reproduced on p. 20 (17-22) of Twenty-five letters, hitherto unpublished, of the Rev. John Newton, rector of Olney and St Mary, Woolnoth, London.  From the years 1757 to 1759 (Edinburgh:  J. Johnstone, 1840).  Crossway, the publisher of the series _____ on the Christian life, attributed it ("I sin continually.  But Christ has died, and forever lives, as my redeemer, priest, advocate, and king") to Luther as quoted by Carl Trueman, though it actually appears in a different book in that same series, the one on Newton by Tony Reinke.

"be willing that Self shall suffer for the Truth, and not the Truth for Self . . . and so own the Cross, and despise the Shame"

      James Parnell, "A few words to all my dear Friends in and about the county of Essex," in A collection of the several writings given forth from the Spirit of the Lord through that meek, patient, and suffering servant of God, James Parnel, who, though a young man, bore a faithful testimony for God and dyed a prisoner under the hands of a persecuting generation in Colchester Castle in the year 1656 (1675), 293 (291-294).