Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

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. C.S. Lewis “It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – how can we do it? Only, I think by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms, To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.”                                                          ( From Essay on Forgiveness )

THE ORDER OF PREACHERS  THE DOMINICANS  THE PREACHERS OF MERCY Take a Quick Peak Here

Thank you Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for inviting Catholic bloggers to re-post their favorite articles on It’s "Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Do yourself a favor: Come here 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:  Is It Time To Change? (Originally posted November 11, 2012) [Spend a few minutes reflecting on these fundamental Truths of your Catholic Faith:] God loves you! He made you in His image and likeness. He wants to spend eternity with you!  But He will not force Himself or His plan on you.

Today Jesus came to live in my heart, He descended from His throne on high, the great Lord, the Creator of all things; and He came to me in the form of bread. O Eternal God, in my bosom enclosed, possessing You, I possess all Heaven, and with the Angels I sing to You: Holy, I live for Your glory alone. Not with a Seraph, do You unite Yourself, 0 God, but with a wretched man who can do nothing without You; but to him You are ever merciful. My heart is Your abode, O King of Eternal Glory. Rule in my heart and be Lord, as in a palace of splendor untold. O great, incomprehensible God, Who have deigned to abase Yourself so, humbly 1 adore You and beg You in Your goodness to save me. (From The Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) What a treasure St. Catherine of Siena is! One does not become a Doctor of the Church by being fearful to express, teach and live God's Truth in its entirety.  How ill-advised we are to discount, ignore or try to nuance the wisdom God has shared over the centuries through such faithful servants as she.  Less likely would we be to commit this error if our primary concern was the salvation of souls. No wonder those who wish to only tickle our ears and destroy our consciences ignore these great spiritual writers, abandoning God's Truth for a less demanding and counterfeit one. The following words  Jesus shared with St. Catherine in the 13th century are clear and unambiguous directions to his shepherds - not only those living then but for those among us today. May we and they be given the grace, humility and wisdom to hear and follow His Inerrant Voice: "No rank, whether of civil or divine law, can be held in g

“The human heart continues feeling today, those same impulses that Jesus denounced as the cause and root of impurity: selfishness in all its forms, malicious intentions, the base motives that so often inspire man's conduct. But it seems as if at this moment in history we are witnessing something (the degradation of human love and a universal wave of impurity and sensuality) which, because of its gravity and extension, has not been experienced hitherto. This debasement of man affects the central core of his being, the very essence of his personality and, given its world-wide dissemination, has to be considered an unprecedented historical phenomenon.” (From The Eight Beatitudes by Jose Orlandis)

Every Wednesday, Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan invite Catholic bloggers to re-post their favorite articles on It’s "Worth Revisiting” Wednesday. Consider dropping in each week. I have no doubt you will read something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Go there now (and every Wednesday). During the rest of each week. visit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb . What follows is my contribution this week. Got To Have Heart - His and Yours (Originally posted February 28, 2012 with a few minor edits)) When God created us, He inserted a heart within our chest, the mechanism that He made to pump blood and oxygen throughout our bodies. We all have one. Most of us rarely take notice of its rhythmic beats. It’s there but we pay little or no conscious attention to it – much like many of us have done to God – we know He’s “there” but ignore Him. We take Him for granted. Of course in the case of our physic

Pierce, 0 most Sweet Lord Jesus, my inmost soul with the most joyous and healthful wound of Thy love, with true, serene, and most holy apostolic charity, that my soul may ever languish and melt with love and longing for Thee, that it may yearn for Thee and faint for Thy courts, and long to be dissolved and to be with Thee. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) Grant that my soul may hunger after Thee, the bread of angels, the refreshment of holy souls, our daily and supersubstantial bread, having all sweetness and savor and every delight of taste; let my heart ever hunger after and feed upon Thee, upon whom the angels desire to look, and may my inmost soul be filled with the sweetness of Thy savor; may it ever thirst after Thee, the fountain of life, the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the fountain of eternal light, the torrent of pleasure, the richness of the house of God.

Scripture records several instances where the minute people in a village or town recognized Jesus in their midst, they ran to bring their sick to Him that they might be healed. One such incident is discussed in Mark's Gospel (6:53-56).  (Image source: Wikimedia Commons )   Is not the same Jesus with us even now? Should we not bring our sick to Him today with the same expectant faith as did those people in Mark's Gospel?   If you are interested  in my answers to these questions, listen here .

  [Yesterday was the memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. She was devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and spent her life promoting devotion to It and to Him. Sadly, in our busyness, many of us skipped by this special remembrance without much thought or reflection - just as we often pass by our waiting Lord. Sometime today or during this weekend, let us pause and ponder the insight of this loving servant, the majestic Gift of His Sacred Heart and His Presence here among us.] We must know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge It seems to me that our Lord's earnest desire to have his Sacred Heart honored in a special way is directed toward renewing the effects of redemption in our souls. For the sacred heart is an inexhaustible fountain and its sole desire is to pour itself out into the hearts of the humble so as to free them and prepare them to lead lives according to his good pleasure.  From this divine heart three streams flow endlessly. T

(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. St. Francis de Sales "We blame our neighbor for the slightest faults, and we condone the greatest ones in ourselves. We want to sell dearly, but buy cheaply. We want justice done in the home of others, but mercy in our own. We want our words to be taken kindly, but we are offended by those of others. If an inferior is not well-mannered with us, we are irked by whatever he does; but if we find someone agreeable, we excuse him, in any action. We firmly demand our rights, but we want others to be tem­perate in demanding theirs. . . . What we do for others always seems a great deal, what others do for us seems nothing." (From Letters From John Paul I )

Every Wednesday, Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan invite Catholic bloggers to re-post their favorite articles on “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays. Consider dropping in each week. I have no doubt you will read something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Go there now (and every Wednesday). During the rest of each week. visit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb .  Here is what I am sharing this week: The Elephant In Our Midst (Originally posted May 5, 2011) (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) More than a century and half ago, St. Peter Eymard made the following observations:   “Alas, it is but too true: Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is not loved! He is not loved by millions of pagans, by millions of infidels, by the millions of schismatics and heretics who either do not know anything of the Eucharist or have no notions about it. Among so many thousands of creatures in whom God has placed a heart capab

“ The efficacy of an apostolate almost invariably corresponds to the degree of Eucharistic life acquired by a soul. Indeed, the sure sign of a successful apostolate is when it makes souls thirst for frequent and fruitful participation in the Divine Banquet. And this result will never be obtained except in proportion as the apostle himself really makes Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament the source and center of his life. (Photo©Michael Seagriff) Like St. Thomas Aquinas, who practically entered the Tabernacle, so to speak, when he wanted to work out a problem, the apostle also will go and tell all his troubles to the Divine Guest, and his action upon souls will be simply his conversations with the Author of Life put into practice. Our wonderful Father and Pope, Pius X, the Pope of Frequent Communion, was also the Pope of the interior life. ‘Re-establish all things in Christ’ was the first thing he had to say, above all to active workers. It summarizes the program of

What follows is the sound but difficult advice Jesus offered St. Catherine of Siena. She in turn shares His wisdom with all who seek to serve Him and to spend eternity in His loving embrace: (Images Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Let every soul rejoice who suffers many troubles, because such is the road that leads to this delightfully glorious state. I have told you before that you reach perfection through knowledge and contempt of yourself and knowledge of My goodness. And at no time does the soul know herself so well, if I am within her, as when she is most beleaguered. Why? I will tell you. She knows herself well when she finds herself besieged and can neither free herself nor resist being captured. Yes, she can resist with her will to the point of not giving her consent, but that is all. Then she can come to know that [of herself] she is nothing. For if she were anything at all of herself, she would be able to get rid of what she did not want. So in this w