Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 15, 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.

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)

St. Catherine of Siena

“Don’t be afraid, my dearest brother, though you may have seen or may still see the devil sending you spiritual discouragement and darkness by filling you with all sorts of evil thoughts and preoccupations in order to disturb the peace and patience of your heart and soul. It will even seem that your body wants to rebel against your spirit…It’s not that he thinks you will fall in those struggle and temptations (for he already knows that you are determined to die rather than offend God mortally with your will). No, he does this to bring you to such a state of discouragement that you will abandon all your religious exercises, thinking you have sinned when you haven’t sinned at all… But I don’t want you to do that; one ought never to be discouraged because of any struggle one might experience, nor ever abandon any exercise or duty or anything else…Realize that God’s goodness allows the devil to torment us in order to make us humble ourselves and recognize His goodness, and to make us take refuge within His most tender wounds as a child takes refuge in its mother.”

(From Letters of St. Catherine, Vol II, Suzanne Noffle, Op., Tr.)

 


 Father Federico Suarez

“Silence is an indispensable condition for keeping things and pondering them in one’s heart. Profundity of thoughts can develop only in a climate of silence. Too much chatter exhausts our inner strength; it dissipates everything of any value in our heart, which becomes like a bottle of perfume left open for a long time: only water remains with a slight touch of its former fragrance.”

(From Mary of Nazareth)