Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 9, 2015
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| (Image 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.
Monsignor Ronald A. Knox
"When you have a
lot of people singing without any organ accompaniment, there is a constant
tendency for the note to drop all the time; it gets lower and lower as it goes
on. And therefore, when the choir isn't accustomed to singing without
accompaniment, every now and then the choirmaster, who has a pitch-pipe
concealed on his person, gives a little 'toot' in the background, to remind
them of the higher note which they ought to be taking and aren't.
And, you see, we
are rather like that We go on living from day to day without thinking much
about how we are living, or what we are here for, or whether the things that
chiefly interest us are really worth living for; and we get accustomed to our
sins, and feel vaguely that it is a pity we go on committing them, but after
all, there doesn't seem to be much chance of our stopping; and our prayers get
very languid and washed out, and we think of very little except our food and
our amusements - do you see what I mean? All the time, the note on which our
lives are lived is dropping dropping, till it's ready to die away into our
boots, and we don't notice, just as the choir doesn't notice when the note
drops. So we want that sudden little 'toot' of the pitch- pipe, to pull us
together and screw the note of our lives up again. And the pitch-pipe we use
... is meditation on Our Lord's Passion.”
(From A Retreat for Lay People)
St. Catherine of Siena
“I have no doubt that if you turn
your understanding's eye to look at yourself and realize that you are not, you will
discover with what blazing love your being has been given you. I tell you, your
heart and affection will not be able to keep from exploding for love.
Selfishness will not be able to live there. You will seek yourself not for your
own sake, for your own advantage, but for God's honor. You will seek your
neighbors not for your own sake, your own advantage, but will love them and
long for their salvation for the praise and glory of God's name. For you will
see that God loves people above all else, and this is why, God's servants love other
people so much —because they see that the Creator loves them above all else. I
love what the person I love loves; that's the nature of love. God's servants, I
say, love God not for their own sake but because God is supreme eternal
Goodness and deserves to be loved.”
(From The Letters
of St, Catherine of Siena,
Vol. II, Suzanne Noffke, O.P., Tr.)
Venerable Fulton
J. Sheen
"He did at the marriage feast, what He would not do in the desert: He worked in the full glaze
of men, what He refused do before Satan. Satan asked. Him to turn stones into
bread, in order that He might, be an economic Messiah; His Mother asked Him to
change, water into wine that He might begin 'His Hour' of Redemption.
Satan tempted Him from death; Mary 'tempted
Him’ to death. Satan would lead Him
from the Cross; Mary sent on His way. Later on. He would take hold 'of the bread'
that Satan said men needed, and the wine which His Mother said the guests
needed, and would change them both into the memorial of His Passion and His
Death, then he would ask that men renew that memorial, even 'unto the
consummation of the world.' The antiphon of His life continues to ring;
everyone else came into the world to live; He came into the world to die.”
(From The Life of Christ)