Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place   where you are sure to find something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! Here is what I posted this week: Monday Musings - Are You A Scoundrel?  Do You Believe? Making Charity Concrete and Unambiguous  Eucharistic Reflection - With A Heart Humbled and Broken With Grief Thanking Him Who Is Mad With Love

This Thanksgiving Day take some time to ponder He Who created you from nothing, He Who suffered and died for you, He Who watches over you, He Who longs to hold you in His loving arms for all eternity. If you have not contemplated these Truths in a while, now would be a great time to spend a few silent moments doing so. May the following words of St. Teresa of the Andes fuel your reflection. Thank our Lord for all that He has given you and especially for loving you, even during those times when you may not have loved Him as you ought.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) Most adorable and most amiable Jesus! Ever full of love for us, ever touched with compassion for our miseries, ever actuated by the desire of making us partakers of Thy treasures, and of giving Thyself wholly to us: Jesus, my Savior and my God, Who, through an excess of the most ardent and most won- derful love, hast placed Thyself in the condition of a victim, in the Adorable Eucharist, where Thou offers Thyself for us in sacrifice so many times every day, what must be Thy sentiments in this state, at finding no return for all this, in the hearts of the greater part of men, but hardness, forgetfulness, ingratitude and  contempt!   Was it not enough. Oh my God, to have taken the most painful means of saving us, when Thou could have shown us Thy excessive love at much less cost ? 

No generalities here. No mistaking what is expected of us. No wiggle room for misunderstanding.

(Image Source ) I have been working my way through a second reading of Finding God’s Will For You by St. Francis de Sales. His explanations of fundamental Truths always challenge his readers to reassess their relationship with the God they claim to love and serve. This gifted spiritual adviser always provides much fruit for contemplation. God has a plan for each of us – one that will lead to eternal happiness. He provides us with the graces sufficient to discover, accept and live out that plan. At the same time, He gave us free will and allows us to reject the path He sets before us. Many in our contemporary world (even among some clergy and members of our Church) ridicule and reject that which He calls us to believe and live. “Dogma” and “Doctrine” have become dirty words and those who dare treasure and teach God’s Truths are often ridiculed and attacked for doing so.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place  where you are sure to find something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! This is what I shared: Faith Is Like A Dark Tunnel Eucharistic Reflection - Why Do We Limit God's Power? Have You Accepted His Invitation?  Pondering Tidbits of Truth-November 20, 2014  

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) 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. Pius X "When vice runs wild, when persecution hangs heavy, when error is so cunning that it threatens her destruction by snatching many children from her bosom (and plunges them into the whirlpool of sin and impiety) - then, more than ever, the Church is strengthened from above. Whether the wicked will it or not, God makes even error aid in the triumph of Truth whose guardian and defender is the Church. He puts corruption in the service of sanctity, whose mother and nurse is the Church. Out of persecution He brings a more wondrous 'freedom from our enemies.' For these reasons, when worldly men think they see the Church buffeted and almost capsized in the raging storm, then she really comes forth fairer, stronger, purer, and brighter with the luster of distinguished virtues." ...

During the course of our lifetimes we receive countless invitations. Some we accept; others we decline. Many we simply ignore, even those with a R.S.V.P. Some of us give little or no thought to how our response or failure to respond to those invitations impacts the person who thought enough of us to invite us in the first place.  God is constantly inviting us to a more intimate relationship with Him. Does He not deserve an affirmative response?

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) “Is there any real difference between Jesus in heaven and Jesus in the Eucharist? No, it is the same Jesus. The only differ­ence is in us. We now on earth cannot see or touch Him with our senses. But that is not a limitation in Him; it is a limitation in us. We speak correctly of believing in the Real Presence. But we should grow in our understanding of what this implies. The living, breathing Jesus Christ is in the Blessed Sacra­ment. This is the reality. When we speak of presence, however, we are saying something more. Two people may be really near each other physically, but not present to each other spiritually. To be present to someone means to have another person in mind by being mentally aware of their existence, and to have them in one's heart by loving that other person... Jesus is on earth in the Blessed Sacrament. Why? In order that we might come to Him now no less than His contemporaries did in first ...

Don't miss out on getting your copy of this book. Let  your family and friends know of this opportunity as well.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place  where you are sure to find something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! Here is what I shared this week: Monday Musings - What Are The Most Important Works of Charity?  Who Fills Your Heart? Eucharistic Reflection - Are We All For Him?  Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 13, 2014

Every author writes in hopes that others will read, enjoy and be touched by the story or stories one shares.  What a privilege and awesome responsibility  it is to write and how humbling it is when someone takes the time to read and share their reaction to your work. Patti McGuire Armstrong took the time to do both, for which I am most grateful.  If you want to read what she had to say, click here . If you want to be inspired on a regular basis visit her website often.

(Source: Wikimedia Commons ) 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. M. Eugene Boylan, O.C.R. “We have our own plans for our happiness, and too often we look upon God as someone who will help us to carry them out. The true state of affairs is invariably the reverse of this. God has his own perfect plans for our happiness, and is waiting for us to help him carry them out. And let it be clear that we can in no way improve on God's plans.” (From This Tremendous Lover )

(St. Joseph's Parish, Oneida, NY) "If the Blessed Sacrament is Jesus all for us, is it not the most legitimate of conclusions that we should be all for Him? We should be all for Jesus, if Jesus is our all. And what does this mean? Surely, among other things, that the Blessed Sacrament should be to us just the single overpowering fact of the world. Our hands hold Him; our words make Him; our tongue rests Him; our body compasses Him; our souls feel Him; our flesh feeds upon Him, Him, the Infinite, the Incomprehensible, the Immense, the Eternal. Must not all life be looked at in this light, just as the whole Church lies in this light and has no other?" (The Blessed Sacrament , by Fr. Frederick Faber)

Certainly we need to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit the imprisoned. These are all vital and necessary acts of charity. They are not, however,  the end all of our obligations.  There are  other works of charity that are more difficult to do than those listed above and,  in the view of a forgotten Dominican Friar, who authored one of the most widely read spiritual books of all time, The Sinner's Guide, more important.  His words deserve our attention, contemplation and response:

(Someone has his eye on you!) Come visit RAnn's place and sample the diverse work of Catholic bloggers. You are bound to find something to chew on and ponder. Here is what I posted this week: St. Martin de Porres and My Sister  Mary of Nazareth - The Life of Our Lady In Pictures  Eucharistic Reflection -  The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Eucharist Where is Your Center? Got Joy?

Why do so many who profess being Catholic minimize, ignore or even reject the following essential and fundamental Truth of our Catholic Faith?

(Sacred Heart Chapel-St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, NYC)  "Devotion to the Sacred Heart should bring us to a life of intimate union with Jesus who, we know, is truly present and living in the Eucharist. The two devotions — to the Sacred Heart and to the Eucharist — are closely connected. They call upon one another and, we may even say, they require one another. The Sacred Heart explains the mystery of the love of Jesus by which He becomes bread in order to nourish us with His substance, while in the Eucharist we have the real presence of this same Heart, living in our midst.

Today, November 4, 2014, Ignatius Press released Mary of Nazareth: The Life of Our Lady in Pictures - a pictorial memorial of its epic film, Mary of Nazareth . This book serves as a powerful visual and contemplative tool through which one can readily relive the significant events in the lives of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother – the poignant and majestic moments portrayed in the movie - one image at a time. Mary of Nazareth: The Life of Our Lady in Pictures contains more than sixty still photographs from the movie, along with thought-provoking reflections prepared by Father Donald Calloway, MIC, as well as  inspiring quotations from Scripture, from present and past Popes (Francis, Benedict XVI, and St. John Paul II), well known Saints and Blesseds (such as St. Albert the Great,  St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Therese of Lisieux, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, and Venerable Fulton J. Sheen) and from spiritual models who may not be as familiar to us (for example, St....

(Statue of St. Martin de Porres at St. Vicnert Ferrer Parish, NYC) Today we Dominicans celebrate the memorial of St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639) – one of three Dominican saints who walked the streets of Lima, Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - St. Rose of Lima and St. John Macias being the other two.  St. John XXIII canonized St. Martin on May 6, 1962. There are a number of reasons why I have a great fondness for St. Martin de Porres. He was a simple, humble and holy layman who initially refused the Dominican habit, not feeling worthy to wear it. After serving his Dominican brothers for nine years, as an act of obedience, he made his Solemn vows as a lay Dominican brother.

It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place . Come visit. Find something there that will touch your heart and stir your soul.  The question of the week: Who is your favorite saint?  It is an impossible question to answer accurately without saying all of them . There are so many who have inspired and molded me.  After our Blessed Mother, I would have to include St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Francis de Sales. Truth be told, as a Lay Dominican,  I would not want to exclude any of the  many other Dominican  Saints and Blesseds - all of whom have much to teach us. Here is what I shared this week: Eucharistic Reflection - O Precious, O Adorable Blood of Jesus Winning and Sanctifying Souls Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 30, 2014