Sunday Snippets - June 30, 2013

Thank you RAnn at "This That and the Other Thing" for hosting this site and for providing a welcoming place for so many talented Catholic Bloggers to share their work. It is an honor to be here.

I offer the following this week:

Monday Musings - Just Eat The Pork Under Protest

Eucharistic Reflection - Be Conscious That Christ Is Within You

Eucharistic Reflection - Be Conscious That Christ Is Within You

“How to find Christmas peace in a world of unrest? You cannot find peace on the outside but you can find peace on the inside, by letting God do to your soul what Mary let Him do to her body, namely, let Christ be formed in you. As she cooked meals in her Nazarene home, as she nursed her aged cousin, as she drew water at the well, as she prepared the meals of the village carpenter, as she knitted the seamless garment, as she kneaded the dough and swept the floor, she was conscious that Christ was in her; that she was a living Ciborium, a monstrance of the Divine Eucharist, a Gate of Heaven through which a Creator would peer upon creation, a Tower of Ivory up whose chaste body He was to climb ‘to kiss upon her lips a mystical rose.’

As He was physically formed in her, so He wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew He was seeing through your eyes, you would see in every fellowman a child of God. If you knew that He worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through. If you knew He spoke through your lips, then your speech, like Peter's, would betray that you had been with the Galilean. If you knew that He wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different you would be. If half the world did this there would be no war!”

(From How to Find Christmas Peace by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen)

Monday Musings – Just Eat The Pork Under Protest!

(Biblebios.com)

If God used Balaam’s donkey to get that prophet’s attention, I guess he can use me to get yours. May these periodic postings on the second and fourth Mondays of each month (God willing) generate fruitful discussion and faithful change.

One of my favorite characters in the Old Testament (2 Maccabees 6:18-31) is Eleazar, a ninety year old Jewish scribe, a “teacher of the Law.” He was ordered to eat pork in violation of the Mosaic Law or be killed. He preferred death rather than offend God.

He was well respected not only among the Jews but even by some of those charged with killing him. They pulled him aside, spoke to him outside the hearing of his fellow Jews and urged him to eat some other type of meat not prohibited by Jewish dietary law and pretend it was pork. They advised him to act this way not only because they wanted to save his life, but because they assumed most of his fellow Jews, believing their well-respected leader ate pork to save his life, would follow his example.

This too Eleazar refused to do since he would thereby “offend God, bring dishonor to himself and lead other Jews astray.” He knew full well that while participating in this ruse would spare him from the punishment of men, he would never escape eternal punishment.  Instead, he chose to “leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws”.

Sunday Snippets - June 23, 2013

(Abbey at Genesee,
Piffard, NY)

Thank you RAnn at "This That and the Other Thing" for hosting this site and for providing a welcoming place for so many talented Catholic Bloggers to share their work. It is an honor to be here.

 

My three submissions follow:

Eucharistic Reflection - Don't Ever be A Hissing Candle

Got To Keep Loving Those Dominicans

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 20, 2013

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 20, 2013

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. Teresa of Avila

“The highest perfection consists not in interior favors or in great raptures but in the bringing of our wills so closely into conformity with the Will of God that, as soon as we realize that He wills anything, we desire it ourselves with all our might.”

(Book of Foundations)

 

Tertullian

 “We ourselves, though we’re guilty of every sin, are not just a work of God; we’re image. Yet we have cut ourselves off from our Creator in both soul and body. Did we get eyes to serve lust, the tongue to speak evil, ears to hear evil, a throat for gluttony, a stomach to be gluttony’s ally, hands to do violence, genitals for unchaste excesses, feet for an erring life? Was the soul put in the body to think up traps, fraud and injustice? I don’t think so.”

(Tertullian On The Shows: An Anaylsis - The Journal of Theological Studies (1978) XXIX (2): 339-365)

 

St. Catherine of Siena

“Always keep your eyes on God. Let everything you do be directed toward God. Let each of you try to grow from strength to strength, never turning back to look at the world but keeping your heart constantly fixed on the thought of how short our time is. Ponder the price at which you have been so tenderly ransomed and the reward given to those who clothe themselves in virtue. In this way…you will grow more and more in holy desire. Then at the end of your life you will…come bound in love and charity, to that perfect union and vision of peace where there is joy and happiness completely free of sadness or bitterness.” 

(The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, Vol. II, Suzanne Noffke, O.P., Tr.)

 

 

Got to Keep Loving Those Dominicans!

 

The good Dominican nuns at Summit give us even more reasons to love those Dominican Friars! Click here and discover what they are!

 

 

Eucharistic Reflection – Don’t Ever Be A Hissing Candle



(Adoration Chapel-St. Agatha's)

“But anyone who would approach this gracious sacrament while guilty of deadly sin would receive no grace from it, even though such a person would really be receiving Me as I am, wholly God, wholly human. But do you know the situation of the soul who receives the sacrament unworthily? She is like a candle that has been doused with water and only hisses when it is brought under the fire. The flame no more than touches it but it goes out and nothing remains but smoke. Just so, this soul brings the candle she received in holy baptism and throws the water of sin over it, a water that drenches the wick of baptismal grace that is meant to bear the light. And unless she dries the wick out with the fire of true contrition by confessing her sin, she will physically receive the light when she approaches the table of the altar, but she will not receive it into her spirit. 

If the soul is not disposed as she should be for so great a mystery, this true light will not graciously remain in her but will depart, leaving her more confounded, more darksome, and more deeply in sin. She will have gained nothing from this sacrament but the hissing of remorse, not because of any defect in the light (for nothing can impair it) but because of the water it encountered in the soul, the water that so drenched her love that she could not receive this light.”

(God the Father to St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue)

Sunday Snippets - June 15, 2013

It's Sunday.  Come join a dedicated group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place where you are sure to find something that will speak to your heart and touch your soul.

 

Here are my offerings:

 

Monday Musings - Does This Make Any Sense to You? A Punch to the Gut

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Eucharistic Reflection - Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament



(Source: Missionaries of the Blessed Sacrament)

"Mary devoted herself exclusively to the Eucharistic Glory of Jesus. She knew that it was the desire of the Eternal Father to make the Eucharist known, loved and served by all men; that need of Jesus’ Heart was to communicate to all men His gifts of grace and glory. She knew, too, that it was the mission of the Holy Spirit to extend and perfect in the hearts of men, the reign of Jesus Christ, and that the Church had been founded only to give Jesus to the world.

All Mary’s desire, then, was to make Him known in His Sacrament. Her intense love for Jesus felt the need of expanding in this way, of consecrating itself - as a kind of relief, as it were - because of her own inability to glorify Him as much as she desired.

Monday Musings - Does This Make Any Sense to You? - A Punch to the Gut

Yesterday, in a small upstate Village in New York State, thousands of adoring and appreciative boxing fans came out to cheer and pay tribute to several boxing legends and a well-known national actress who processed and paraded through the Village’s streets.

Months of preparation went into this annual event. Many came several hours before the parade began in order to stake claim to prime viewing positions. This weekend event attracts national television and media coverage, as well as visitors from all parts of this nation and even from some foreign countries – assembled to publicly honor and pay homage to men and women who made a living by physically pummeling each other. They certainly have the right to do so.

This acclaimed group of human celebrities paraded right past the local Catholic Church, where the only Divine Person deserving of such public acclamation and worship remained locked in a tabernacle, ignored, unappreciated and alone.

Last week we Catholics celebrated the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were and have been encouraged for centuries to take Him out of the locked tabernacles in our churches on this feast day and to honor and adore the King of King and Lord of Lords, by publicly processing and carrying Him onto and over the streets of our cities, towns and villages. Few, so very few, parishes were or have been willing to do so. How can that be?

I guess we value those who punch each other with their hands more than He Who allowed Himself to be pummeled, crucified and killed out of love for us.

Doesn’t seem right to me.

Sunday Snippets - June 9, 2013

It's Sunday (well to be perfectly honest it is actually Saturday night)and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place where you are sure to find something that will speak to your heart and soul. Take a few minutes and visit!

 

 

Just got back from a Day of Reflection and will be leaving in the early morning for a vacation with my bride. Published my new e-book last week (Fleeting Glimpses of the Silly, Sentimental and Sublime) and spent the week getting another ready.

I have one post that I would like to share with you today:

Pondering Tidbits of Truth -June 6, 2013

Flowers have been awesome this year haven't they?

Prayer to the Sacred Heart

St. Gertrude offers us a great prayer on this feast day of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus:

(Sacred Heart Parish, Winchester, VA)

Prayer to the Sacred Heart

Hail! O Sacred Heart of Jesus, living and quickening source of eternal life, infinite treasure of the Divinity, and burning furnace of divine love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary, O my amiable Savior. Consume my heart with that burning fire with which Yours is ever inflamed. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Your love, and let my heart be so united with Yours, that our wills may be one, and mine in all things, be conformed to Yours. May Your Your divine will be equally the standard and rule of all my desires and of all my actions. Amen.

Pondering Tidbits of Truth

 

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.

Pope Francis

Paul is a nuisance; he is a man, who with his preaching, his work, his attitude, irritates others, because testifying to Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Jesus Christ makes us uncomfortable, it threatens our comfort zones – even Christian comfort zones, right? It irritates us. The Lord always wants us to move forward, forward, forward – not to take refuge in a quiet life, or in cozy structures, no? And Paul, in preaching of the Lord, was a nuisance. But he had deep within him that most Christian of attitudes: Apostolic zeal.” 

(Homily – May 16, 2013)

 

St. Thomas Aquinas

“Man needs to know two things: the glory of God and the punishment of Hell. For through being drawn by His glory and terrified by His punishments, men are careful on their own account and refrain from sin.” 

(The Treasury of Catholic Wisdom edited by Father John A. Hardon, S.J.)

 

St. Pius X

"Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.”

(Notre Charge Apostolique)

Come let Us Adore Him!

Thank you Holy Father Francis for calling the entire world to adore our Lord! So many ignore His invitation to do so.

Let us run to kneel before Him, not just on Corpus Christi but as often as we can.

I could not pass up sharing this photograph and article from Crisis Magazine:

Sunday Snippets - June 2, 2013

It's Sunday and time to join a gifted group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place where you are sure to find something that will speak to your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! 

Eucharistic Reflection - May 28, 2013

In Hopes of Making This Corpus Christi Special

Don't Miss Out on Free E-Book - "Thomas Aquinas In 50 Pages"

Don't Miss Out on Free E-Book - "Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages"

Just helping to spread the word!

Taylor R. Marshall, Ph.D. whose blog you will want to read regularly, has a free e-book, you do not want to miss:

 

THOMAS AQUINAS IN 50 PAGES

 A QUICK LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO THOMISM

 

 Get your free copy by clicking here!

In Hopes of Making This Corpus Christi Special

How wonderful it is that our Holy Father Francis has invited the entire world to join him tomorrow in a world-wide united act of adoration of the one true God.

 

Although excuses have already been offered as to why the time he has chosen is too inconvenient for some, my prayer is that millions will join our Pope on their knees before the Most Blessed Sacrament, not just tomorrow but at least for one hour each week.

For those who are unable to join our Holy Father tomorrow, or for those who wish to linger in further reflection on the magnificent gift of the Eucharist, I am recycling a suggestion I made two years ago in hopes that it will provide additional spiritual nourishment on this feast day of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ:

 

Still trying to rediscover a sense of awe and amazement in the Eucharist?  Perhaps our beloved St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, has just what you need this Corpus Christi. 

 

There are arguably no more beautiful and moving hymns than the three he composed for this great feast day:  Pange Linga, Tantum Ergo and Adore te Devote.

 But they are in Latin, you say, and you don't understand that language. But your heart can, if you just let these hauntingly beautiful melodies penetrate it. Your mind can certainly "rap itself around" the English translations of these classics if you would but invest some time pondering and reflecting on these heavenly lyrics.