It's "Worth Revisiting" Wednesday - Musings Of An Aging Sibling

Another week has gone by and it is time to thank Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for inviting an ever-expanding group of Catholic bloggers 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.

Be sure to visit Allison at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of the week.  

Here is my contribution this week:

Musings of An Aging Sibling 

(Originally posted May 6, 2011)

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I have wondered occasionally what you must have thought when you first saw two little bodies squirming around in their cribs, squawking and demanding so much attention from others.  Joseph, you were certainly old enough to understand who these two little runts were and why they required so much attention.  But John, you were still in diapers and barely able to walk.  You must have had some difficulty sizing up your new brother and sister and accepting your sudden relegation from king of the roost to third in line. 

Jane and I certainly had no idea who you were or what kind of future we would all have together. I am sure my primary and sole focus at the time was to get fed and to be the center of attention.  From family stories that I have heard, Jane had the same idea and the upper hand.

Eucharistic Reflection - Shall I Go Forward, Or Shall I Go Back?

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

O what an awesome thought! You deal otherwise with others, but, as to me, the flesh and blood of God is my sole life. I shall perish without it; yet shall I not perish with it and by it? How can I raise myself to such an act as to feed upon God? 0 my God, I am in a quandary—shall I go forward, or shall I go back?

I will go forward: I will go to meet You. I will open my mouth, and receive Your gift. I do so with great awe and fear, but what else can I do? To whom should I go but to You? Who can save me but You? Who can cleanse me but You? Who can make me overcome myself but You? Who can raise my body from the grave but You? Therefore I come to You in all these my necessities: in fear, but in faith.

Monday Musings - Good Prayer, Bad Prayer, The Better Prayer

There is always something more that a hungry soul can learn about prayer. I found this to be true during a brief presentation Father John Denburger, OCSO offered at a recent retreat I made at the Abbey at the Genesee in Piffard, New York

I hope I can do justice to the pearls he shared with us. The most important relationship we are called to develop in this life," Father began, "is our relationship with God and His with us." Prayer is essential. If one does not pray, there can be no fruitful relationship between God and man.

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska confirms Father's teaching, telling us that there are no exceptions to this command to pray:

"In whatever state a soul may be, it ought to pray. A soul which is pure and beautiful must pray, or else it will lose its beauty; a soul which is striving after this purity must pray, or else it will never attain it; a soul which is newly converted must pray, or else it will fall again; a sinful soul, plunged in sins, must pray so that it might rise again. There is no soul which is not bound to pray, for every single grace comes to the soul through prayer."

So what is prayer?

Pavarotti & Clapton Holy Mother For War Child 1996

Time

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - September 24, 2015

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.

 
Saint Augustine

“If you love God; draw to you all those who gather around or live in your house, so that all will come to love Him If you love the Body of Christ, which is the unity of the Church, impel everyone, to rejoice in God and tell them with David: ‘Magnify with me the Lord, and let us together praise His Holy Name' (Prov 21:28); and in this do not be calculating or stingy, but rather win for the Lord all those you can by whatever means possible, according to your abilities: exhorting them; bearing them up, pleading with then; arguing with them and giving them the reasons for the things of faith, with all gentleness and tact.”

(From Commentary on the Psalms)

It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday - Good Night Lord - Thank You For My Life and My Dominican Vocation

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 hope you find something of value in what follows:

Good Night Lord: Thank You For My Life and My Dominican Vocation

(Originally posted:  April 25, 2011)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

There are two reasons why I may have some difficulty falling asleep tonight.

On my way to Mass this morning at a Church near where my son and his wife live, I was awestruck by a life size portrait of Our Risen Lord that was on display immediately in front of the Church's main entrance.  It was the most astonishing portrait that I had ever seen. I could not keep my eyes off of it. While gazing at it, I began to make a left hand turn down a side street and to a nearby parking area.  So distracted were my mind and eyes that I turned directly into the path of an on-coming vehicle.

Eucharistic Reflection - Of Mute and Silent Tabernacles and Lifeless Hosts

“We ministers of the Lord, for whom the Tabernacle has become mute and silent, the stone of consecration cold, the Host a venerable, but lifeless, memento: have been unable to turn souls from their evil How could we ever draw them out of the mire or forbidden pleasures?

And yet we have talked to them about the joys of religion and of good conscience. But because we have not known how to slake our own thirst at the living waters of the Lamb, we have mumbled and stuttered in our attempts to portray those ineffable joys, the very desire of which would have shattered the chains of the triple concupiscence much more effectively than all our thundering tirades about hell…Our lips have been unable to speak the language of the Heart of Him Who loves men, because our converse with Him has been as infrequent as it has been cold.

Let us not try to shift all the blame onto the profoundly demoralized state of society. After all, we have only to look, for example, at the effect on completely de-Christianized parishes of the presence of sensible, active, devoted, capable priests, but priests who were, above all, lovers of the Eucharist.”

(From  The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)

Monday Musings - Reality Check

Eucharistic Reflection – A Heart Consumed

"When a preacher or catechist retains, in himself the warm life of the Precious Blood, when his heart is consumed with the fire that consumes the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, what life his words will have: they will burn, they will be living flames! And what effects the Eucharist will have, radiating throughout a class for instance, or through a hospital ward, or in a club, and so on, when the ones God has chosen to work there have nourished their zeal in Holy Communion, and have become Christ-bearers!"

(From The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)

It's Worth Revisiting" Wednesday - May More of Our Priests Accept God's Invitation to Come Before His Eucharistic Face and Enter His Sacred Heart

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.

Here is what I am sharing this week:

May More of Our Priests Accept God's Invitation to Come Before His Eucharistic Face and Enter His Sacred Heart

(Originally posted July 9, 2012) 

In case you have not recently read Vultus Christi, Father Mark’s blog, make sure you read what follows and then share it with everyone you know, especially with as many priests as you can.  Recommend  Vultus Christi to your priests. 

We need to challenge our priests and they us. We must pray for their sanctification, as they pray for our holiness as well. 

The Friendship of Christ for His Priests

How it grieves My Heart when the unique love I offer a soul
is spurned, or ignored, or regarded with indifference.
I tell you this so that you may make reparation to My Heart
by accepting the love I have for you
and by living in My friendship.
Receive My gifts, My kindnesses, My attention, My mercies
for the sake of those who refuse what I so desire to give them.
Do this especially for My priests, your brothers.

I would fill each one of My priests with My merciful love,
I would take each one into the shelter of My wounded Side,
I would give to each one the delights of My Divine Friendship,
but so few of My priests accept what I desire to give them.
They flee from before My Face.
They remain at a distance from My open Heart.
They keep themselves apart from Me.
Their lives are compartmentalized.
They treat with Me only when duty obliges them to do so.
There is no gratuitous love,
no desire to be with Me for My own sake,
simply because I am there in the Sacrament of My Love,
waiting for the companionship and friendship of those
whom I have chosen and called from among millions of souls
to be My priests
and to be the special friends of My Sacred Heart.

Monday Musings - Podcast - Holding On To Anything?

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Amazing what we can accomplish when we cooperate with God.

Visit here and you will understand what I mean.

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - September 10, 2015

(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.

 

 

Father Francis Fernandez

"We may also recall today the obligation - at times grave - that we have to do everything possible so that no relative, friend or colleague or ours dies without the spiritual assistance that our Mother Church provides for the final moments of our journey [Viaticum-Last rites]. This is the best and most effective and perhaps the last possible manifestation of charity and affection towards those persons here on earth."

(From In Conversation With God, Vol 4:56.1)

It's "Worth Revisiting" Wednesday - Your Presence Makes A Difference

My continued thanks to Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for inviting Catholic bloggers re-post their favorite articles on It’s "Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays!

 

Go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey.

  

During the rest of the week, visit Allison at Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb.   

 

Here is what I wish to share this week:

[As 40 Days for Life prepares to kick off its Fall campaign in a few weeks and as we struggle with the barbaric revelations from the mouths of Planned Parenthood's own staff, the  following post from September of 2011 seemed a timely one to re-share]

Your Presence Makes a Difference 

My wife, I and four strangers spent an hour outside the local Planned Parenthood center witnessing to and praying for all those entering that building – staff and client alike. This was only the fourth time over the past two years that I participated in the Forty Days for Life prayer vigil in front of this place of deception and death.

The majority of the cars entering the facility’s driveway while we were there sped up immediately when they saw the signs and leaflets we carried and the rosaries in our hands. Most avoided having any eye contact with us, perhaps in a last ditch effort to prevent their consciences from awakening them to the horror of what they were about to do. It was like we were lepers.

We continued to pray. We sang softly and sometimes off key. We listened to God’s Word. We encouraged each other and prayed that these women, their escorts and the facility’s staff would know that we were there out of love for them and as instruments of a loving and merciful Lord. We trusted God would use our presence to make a difference in someone’s life today.

We also watched as cars pulled out, driver and passengers again refusing for the most part to glance at us, anxious to get away from this place – that is with the exception of an obviously distraught young woman in the front passenger seat of a jeep. She used a crumpled tissue to capture the slow trickle of tears flowing from her eyes, receiving no apparent comfort or solace from her male companion.

She turned and looked right at me. I was drawn to her watery eyes and immediately saw in them the anguish and pain I suspect I would have seen in the eyes of my crucified and suffering Lord had I been at the foot of His cross. Silently and earnestly I starred deeply into her eyes, hoping that God would allow her to see in us, even now, the image of her forgiving, healing, loving and merciful Lord and His desire to give her new life.

Your presence makes a difference. Come. Pray. Be the eyes of Christ.

Eucharistic Reflection – He Is Here!

You can feel Him…O yes, here you can feel God…you can inhale and breathe Him, filling this humble cenacle of the earth, impregnating the atmosphere with celestial perfume. This tabernacle bears the fragrance of Jesus; one enters here as if entering Jesus' innermost being; with that same respect... that same confidence... that same love. The light, the warmth, the fire of the Eucharistic Jesus fills everything, and thus, in this beloved enclosure, the thorns are roses... sacrifice is not felt... pain and martyrdom are sweet because they are suffered for His sake and in His intimacy.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

If the altar is poor, Jesus is its richness... its most delicate embellishment. Without being fully aware of it, one enters into profound concentration and prayer because one leaves earthly things at the door, and the soul is engulfed in the possession of its Beloved.

Monday Musings - Put On Your Boots!

Our failure to live this Truth has contributed to the destruction of our culture and  the loss of countless souls. It is time to engage the enemy...

Time For A Different Perspective?

It's "Worth Revisiting" Wednesday - Who Was That Man?

My continued thanks to Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for inviting Catholic bloggers re-post their favorite articles on It’s "Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays!

Go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey. 

During the rest of the week, visit Allison at Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb.   

 

I WANT TO APOLOGIZE for the link I posted last week.  I deleted it accidentally and could not retrieve it. Consequently most of you were unable to read the post.  

 

After praying to St. Anthony for the past week, he allowed me to find a copy yesterday. I am re-posting it below or if you prefer as a podcast here. I hope you find it worthy of your time. 

 

Who Was That Man? 

(Originally posted Mach 3, 2014) 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I’ve walked these few blocks countless times over the past twelve years during my visits to see my ailing sister. Although I have seen homeless individuals soliciting money many times, I had never seen anyone quite like the gentleman I saw this day as I headed toward confession.  

 

There he was sitting with folded legs on the cold dirty icy cement sidewalk in front of the Catholic Church I was about to enter - sitting right next to the little tree where neighborhood animals defecate and urinate. His presence there caught me my surprise and made me uncomfortable.

He had a thick white beard. He wore several layers of dirty clothing hoping I am sure to stave off the bitter cold. He just sat there staring at the concrete slab and passing feet that rushed past him, holding the smallest of Dixie cups in his outstretched hand - his head bowed down conveying a sense of shame and utter despair. The paltry size of his cup suggested he was not anticipating any sizable donations from the hundreds that would pass him by.  In the few moments I watched him, no one stopped. No one said anything to him. No one put any money in his cup. No one seemed to care.

Who was this man?

Eucharistic Reflection - And So It Will Be With Us!

“Even after three years of close companionship with Jesus, the apostles noticed no striking change in each other, and little in themselves. Yet Jesus saw a steady transformation going forward, and He rejoiced. He saw how the love of Himself, which brings with it all good, was gradually raising their standards; was widening, purifying, and kindling their hearts; and preparing the material for fire which at Pentecost was to descend upon them and transform them into other men. Slowly and quietly, as is the way with the works of God, the apostles grew into the knowledge of the likeness of the Son of God, until each in his measure of capacity, and according to God's plan for him I became alter Christus  — another Christ. So it will be with us.”

(Attributed to Mother Mary Loyola in The Blessed Sacrament Prayer Book)