Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

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. Sister Ruth Burrows, O.C.D. “Both in life and after death, it is love that purifies. If in Life we allow God to come close to us in love, to take us in his arms and hold us fast, this inevitably means pain, simply because we are so twisted, hard and unyielding. If we submit, his love softens us, straightens us out, transforms us into his own likeness. The pain of purification is the direct effect of love. And this is the same after death.” (From To Believe in Jesus) Congressman Henry J. Hyde  "When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face the awesome minute, the Final Judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible momement of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. "But I really think that tho...

"I was first introduced to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament during the 1980’s in St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Liberty, NY. I was invited by some friendly people to attend Adoration on the First Friday of the month. This became a regular visit. In those years, I was busy with my husband and growing children at home. I was still mourning the loss of my youngest sister’s sudden death and a miscarriage early-on in a pregnancy. It was during those quiet hours in the evening in the church, talking to Jesus in this most intimate way, sometimes in tears, that I began a path to inner peace. Adoration led me to spiritual reading, learning more about the faith I grew up in, to regular Confession, to talking more to our priests and others. I became involved in activities in my own parish, helping with the Altar Rosary Society, religious education, projects to raise funds, pro-life work and Bible study. In the local newspaper, I read about an Adoration event happening at St. Joseph’s C...

 

" O dearest Jesus, I am so very grateful for the times that I spend with You in Adoration. You have chosen to be a prisoner of the tabernacle for my sake, but You are not restrained there. Whether I kneel or sit, You are so very close to me, indeed, right by my side. I feel Your Presence with me. I am so blessed to have these encounters with You. What a privilege it is for me! Then I remember that so many of Your flock do not realize that You are waiting for this intimacy with them. Please, Lord, Your world needs You. Your people need You desperately. Many are lost and hurting. Good Shepherd, many have wandered from the fold, caught up in the distractions of the world. Let Your children experience Your Presence in their lives. Call them back home. Heal them in the manner that they need to be healed. Restore them to right relationship with You. Advent is a season of joyful anticipation of Your coming, and I pause then to reflect on Your three-fold coming that we celebrate. I ca...

  (Art Work of Marge Hendry- Photo©Michael Seagriff)  “No one can live continually in sin and continue to say the Rosary: either they will give up sin or they will give up the Rosary.”           (Bishop Hugh Doyle)

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. St. John Vianney "I come to tell you that they suffer in Purgatory, that they weep, and that they demand with urgent cries the help of your prayers and good works. I seem to hear them crying from the depths of those fires which devour them: 'Tell our loved ones, tell our children, tell all our relatives how great the evils are which they are making us suffer. We throw ourselves at their feet to implore the help of their prayers. Ah! Tell them that since we have been separated from them, we have been here burning in flames." (From Handbook for the Holy Souls in Purgatory ) Archbishop Luis M. Martinez "On the manger straw the celestial babe lay wrapped in the whitest of swaddling clothers. His sweet Mother contemplated Him in silence, her heart melted with tenderness, her soul absorbed in profound adoration. Jesus opened his eyes an...

"Home... That’s the word that the Lord lays on my heart when I walk into the Adoration Chapel. But it wasn’t always that way. For a couple of years, I went to Adoration, to beg, borrow, plead, and to try and 'make a deal' with God; what I’d do for Him, if He’d only do what I wanted for me. But that isn’t how God works. He loves us too much to give us what we 'want,' instead, in His Love for us, He gives us what we 'need.' And often times in my life, well, in my 'old' life, those two things were rarely the same. And so, I literally spent hundreds of hours in Adoration, trying to 'convince' God that I knew better. But today, I thank God without ceasing for loving me too much to give me what I 'thought' was best, instead; because of His love for me, He chose to give me more than I ever could have imagined or even conceived of asking Him for. And since He’s given these things to me, has my life smoothed out and gotten happy, or fun, or e...