Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(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)

How can we let the month of May draw to a close without sharing yet another masterful narrative image of our Blessed Mother? We can't! (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "She [Mary] holds all the great Truths of Christianity together; as a piece of wood holds a kite. Children wrap the string of a kite around a stick and release the string as the kite climbs   to the heavens. Mary is like that piece of wood. Around her we wrap all the precious strings of the great 'Truths of our holy Faith—for example, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, the Church. No matter how far we get above the earth, as the kite may, we always have need of Mary to hold the doctrines of the Creed together. If we threw away, the stick, we would no longer have the kite; If we threw away Mary, we would never have Our Lord. He would be lost in the Heavens, like our runaway kite, and   that would be terrible, indeed, for us on earth."    (From The...

Grotto at Notre Dame (Photo©Michael Seagriff) Thanks to the generosity and encouragement of Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan, an ever-expanding group of Catholic bloggers take the time each week to re-post their favorite articles on “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Do yourself a favor- go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey. During the rest of each week. visit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb . You will be pleased with what they share. I share the following with you this week:: The Eucharist and the Rosary - Our Spiritual Armament [What follows is a modification of an article I posted nearly two years ago. It seemed appropriate and timely to share it again.] There are two devotions close to my heart and vital for the future of our Church and for the salvation of our souls - The Eucharist and the Rosary. May we rediscover each day a deeper and...

Let us imagine that the Communion, for which we are preparing, is to be the last in our lives. Let us prepare, every time, as though, on quitting the holy table, we had to pass from this life to eternity. If we desire that the sacrament of the Eucharist should produce in us sentiments of the love of God, let us think of the immense love which God has shown us in instituting this mystery, and of His design to oblige us thereby to love Him perfectly.

What tears our Blessed Mother must shed  and how tormented she must be since so many of her children have not listened to her.

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 “Why did the Lord include so many fishermen among his Apostles? ... What were the good points that He saw in them? I think there was one thing which He specially appreciated in those who were to be his Apostles: an unshakeable patience ... They had worked all night and had caught nothing; long hours of waiting after which the grey light of dawn was to bring them their reward; but there was none. What a lot of waiting the Church of Christ has had to endure throughout the centuries ... patiently extending her invitation and leaving grace to do its work! ... What does it matter if she has worked very hard in one place or another and reaped very little for her Master? On the basis of his word; in spite of everything, she will launch her nets again until such time as His grace, the limits of which are in no w...

Thanks to the generosity and encouragement of Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb , an ever-expanding group of Catholic bloggers take the time each week to re-post their favorite articles on the site they host: “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Do yourself a favor- go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey. Here is my contribution: (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) I Don't Get It! I Will Never Get It! [I will admit it - I am an appeaser, a  coward, failing more often than not,  to stand up for the Truth for fear of offending others. May God be merciful to me a sinner. But today, there is a kernel of gumption that has popped through this fearful man's being, so I will yield to its prompting. While I have been criticized before and no doubt will be attacked again, silence is not an option. Misguided contemporary thought notwithstanding, the supreme l...

  “Were we to communicate only once in our life, our whole life, however long it might be, would  not be too long to prepare ourselves worthily for receiving so holy and so awful a mystery. This  should not, however, keep us from it. It should only urge us to approach it with the requisite  dispositions. We are wrong, then, when we say: '' I will not communicate, because I feel I am  unworthy." We should say, on the contrary: “I will endeavor, as far as possible, by the innocence  and regularity of my life, to make myself worthy to communicate."   To approach worthily, is to believe ourselves unworthy; while, at the same time, we do what we can to make ourselves less unworthy. A single good Communion is enough to make a Saint. Not much more is necessary than a good will, and a few reflections, in order to make a good Communion.   Those who communicate...

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) “As one cannot go to a statue of a mother holding a child and cut away the mother without destroying the child, so neither can one have Jesus without his Mother. Could you claim as a friend one who, every time he came into your home, refused to speak to your mother or treated her with cold indifference? Jesus cannot feel pleased with those who never give recognition to or show respect for his mother. Coldness to his mother is certainly not the best way to keep warm a friendship with him. The unkindest cut of all would be to say that she who is the mother of our Lord is unworthy of being our mother."                                                 (Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)       ...

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) “The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families…that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.” (Sister Lucia dos Santos)

St. Catherine of Siena was not timid in her prayer:

Thank you, Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan, for hosting It’s "Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Go there now (and every Wednesday) and enjoy the posts of some very talented Catholic bloggers.   During the rest of each week. visit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb .. You will be pleased with what they share. This is my contribution: Two Truths - Two Questions At least two essential truths flow from Luke's Gospel (Lk 1:26-38): “Nothing is impossible with God!” and “Let it be it done to me according to His will!” It is upon these foundational stones that we must live our earthly lives.  What intellectual, emotional and spiritual maturity Mary displayed! She was, after all, just a teenager, one whom some believe at an earlier age had vowed her virginity to God. What courage she had to ask the angel Gabriel, "How can that be? I know not man." What grace God showered on her that she might have the faith to step...

"A saint said that we were Christ-bearers. It is very true; but we have not enough faith. We do not comprehend our dignity. When we leave the holy banquet, we are as happy as the Wise Men would have been, if they could have carried away the Infant Jesus. Take a vessel full of liquor, and cork it well -- you will keep the liquor as long as you please. So if you were to keep Our Lord well and recollectedly after Communion, you would long feel that devouring fire which would inspire your heart with an inclination to good and a repugnance to evil.” (St. John Vianney on the Holy Eucharist)

As we strive toward a more intimate relationship with the God we love, we will not only have to ask ourselves some tough questions (like the one above) but we must answer those queries truthfully  and change our lives accordingly:

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)   "By the remembrance of Mary Immaculate, by the tears You shed in seeing her weep over Your absence and over the ignominy of Your sorrowful Passion, we   pray You, Jesus, to listen to the supplication of mothers who help You to save souls by suffering for them at the foot of the Cross.   See with what ardent faith they implore the salvation of their families.   Hearken to those who acclaim You their beloved King at their children's cradle and their husband's tomb.   By those tears and prayers they ask You for the decisive victory of Your Sacred Heart.   They confide to that divine Ark all the treasures of their love…”     "Good Jesus, You have confided to them the souls of their husbands and children; they have laid them with trusting love on the altar of Your Sacred Heart.   King of Mercy, during this Holy Hour remember Your Blessed Mother as You certainly remembered her in the Garden of Ge...

(Image Source: Marge Hendry Photo©Michael Seagriff) [Another prophetic but ignored excerpt and plea from the Apostolic Letter On The   Rosary of The Virgin Mary ] The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set out into the deep” ( duc in altum! ) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), “the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and ci...

One of my Lay Dominican brothers, Louis Puzutti, posted this video of Jonathan Cahn's compelling presentation at last year's National Day of Prayer.  I am sure you probably have not heard it.  You have to prayerfully watch and ponder the Truths he so clearly and courageously shares. Pass it on.

(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. Catechism of the Catholic Church “It is not the role of the Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life. This task is part of the vocation of the lay faithful, acting on their own initiative with their fellow citizens ...lt is the role of the laity "to animate temporal realities with Christian commitment, by which they show that they are witnesses and agents of peace and justice." (CCC 2442) Monsignor Romano Guardini "No one has ever died like Jesus Christ, because He was Life itself. No one has expiated for sin like Him, for He was purity itself." (From Our Lord ) Second Vatican Council "...when religious education is neglected or shortcomings made evident in the religious, moral and ...

Thanks to the generosity and encouragement of Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan, an ever-expanding group of Catholic bloggers take the time each week to re-post their favorite articles on “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Do yourself a favor- go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey. During the rest of each week. visit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb .  You will be pleased with what they share. I offer this post for your consideration: Who Is St. Claude de la Colombiere? St. Claude de la Colombiere was a 17th century Jesuit. He believed that one of "the most firmly established and consoling of the truths that have been revealed to us" is "that (apart from sin) nothing happens to us in life unless God wills it so." St. Claude became the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. He encouraged, supported and promoted her call to sprea...

Until it sinks in. Probably until our last breath...

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) " Of course, all the other sacraments and also the Eucharist involve great care for souls. We have to care for people but above all -- this is our mandate -- for their souls. We must think of the many illnesses and moral and spiritual needs that exist today and that we must face, guiding people to the encounter with Christ in the sacrament, helping them to discover prayer and meditation, being silently recollected in church with this presence of God. And then, preaching. What do we preach? We proclaim the Kingdom of God. But the Kingdom of God is not a distant utopia in a better world which may be achieved in 50 years' time, or who knows when. The Kingdom of God is God Himself, God close to us who became very close in Christ.  This is the Kingdom of God: God Himself is near to us and we must draw close to this God who is close for He was made man, remains man and is always with us in His Word, in the Most Holy Eucharist and in all b...

For too long there has been a hesitancy, if not a fear, to ask difficult but necessary questions. What follows is certainly one of them. Would our Church and world look substantially different today had all our priests followed this shepherd's example?  It is never too late to begin! Pray for all our shepherds.

God willing, every Saturday in the month of May, I will share some short reflection on the Rosary. I begin with this insightful and prophetic excerpt from St. John Paul II’s 2002 Apostolic Letter on The Rosary of the Virgin Mary : “The Rosary is a way of contemplating the face of Christ seeing him – we may say – with the eyes of Mary. For this reason, it is a prayer that drawing upon the core of the Gospel is in full accord with the inspiration of the Second Vatican Council and very much in keeping with the direction I gave in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio ineunte : the Church has to launch out "into the deep" in the new millennium beginning with the contemplation of the face of Christ…

What a shame that so few of us really appreciate the Gift of having our loving Lord ever in our midst.