Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 14, 2016

Pondering Tidbits of Truth is my simple and inadequate way of providing nuggets of spiritual wisdom for you to chew on from time to time




Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B.

"The thought of the punishment we deserve for our sins helps us to face the daily difficulties and deprivations and struggles without which there cannot be any real freedom from sin or any perfect union with God. We always have, indeed, plenty of reason to be penetrated with the fear of God, when we consider the many occasions of sin that lie all around us, our own extreme weakness, the strength of our inordinate attachments and habits, our natural inclination to self-indulgence, the pull of our own concupiscence from within and the attractions of the world without, our many faults and defects and the plain carelessness of which we are guilty every day."

(From Frequent Confessions)

St. Ambrose
 

 "Remove, Lord Jesus, the rottenness of my sins. While You hold me bound with bonds of love, cure what is sick within me...I have met a Physician Who lives in heaven and pours out His medicine on earth. Only He can cure my wounds, for He Himself has none; only He can remove sorrow from my heart, wanness from my soul, for He alone knows my innermost secrets."

(From Treatise on St. Mark's Gospel)

 

St. John Paul II

"There are incomparably more events than such visible actions whose importance to society remains hidden for the time being. There is, for example, the immense multitude of souls who have spent the whole of their existence giving themselves in the anonymity of the home, the factory, the office. There are those who have consumed themselves in anonymity amid the praying society of the cloister; those who  have immolated themselves in daily martyrdom of protracted illness. The day that everything is brought out into the public gaze when the Lord comes again, everyone will see the decisive role that the humble and the inconspicuous have played, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, in the unrolling of the history of the world. And this will also be a cause of joy for the blessed, who will derive from it a theme of everlasting praise of the God who is three times Holy."

(From February 11, 1981 Homily)