Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Thank you Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for your weekly invitation to re-post our favorite articles on Worth Revisiting . Go here now (and every Wednesday) and let an interesting group of Catholic bloggers nourish you in your Faith journey. V isit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of each week.   They have much to offer. Here is my contribution: Monday Musings - Stomach, Sex and Money (Originally posted June 27, 2016) [What follows pretty well describes our current culture. This clear thinking and prophetic Bishop saw this coming more than 30 years ago. Yet, the majority of his brethren remained silent over the ensuing decades. Even now, some have still not found their voices.]   “…contemporary paganism is characterized by the search for material well-being at any I cost, and by the corresponding disregard- or to put it more accurately, fear and genuine terror – of anything that

“I contemplate You, red with blood and dying for me, O Jesus, most pure Ideal of my soul! If, giving my life, I could save Yours! But it necessary that my Treasure should die to give me the life of grace and of love. Photo©Michael Seagriff My heart breaks upon contemplating that innocent Body broken, but it is my own doing , and I tremble upon contemplating it! But, nonetheless, since I have been the cause of Your suffering, I wish to console You…and with my breath…and with my voluntary sacrifices, and with all the tenderness of my heart, today I want to bring You solace…I will never offend You again, my Jesus, and from now on I will give You only caresses…the best of my soul, my vitality, my entire being, hiding You from Your enemies deep in my heart.

Most of us would prefer to avoid pain of any type - physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. But pain, suffering and tribulations are part and parcel of the human condition and an integral part of God's plan of salvation. St. Gregory reminds us that God "grants us a greater mercy when He gives us the strength to bear sufferings and tribulations than when He takes them from us". So as difficult and unwanted as suffering may be, may God grant us the grace to heed St. Pio's advice and embrace it as Jesus did His Cross:

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) In today’s Gospel we are reminded of the form God’s justice will take – each of us will be held accountable for the things we have done and that we have failed to do, the manner in which we have loved others or failed to do so. It really is that simple. Stop acting like others are there to serve us; serve others first. There are Lazarus’ all around us - most of the time we either don’t see them or consciously chose to ignore them.   If we don’t open our eyes and lend a helping hand now, we will be in the same plight as the rich man in today’s Gospel. When we know the truth and fail to act on it, we condemn ourselves to eternal punishment. Is it time to change the way we live?

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 "Apostolic zeal, the desire to draw many people to Our Lord, does not require us to do anything odd or peculiar, and much to neglect our family, social or professional duties, It is precisely in those situations – in our family, at work, with our friends, in everyday human relationships – that we find scope for an apostolic activity which may often be silent, but which is always efficacious." (In Conversation With God , Volume 4:75.2)

Once again, I thank Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for their weekly invitation to re-post our favorite articles on Worth Revisiting . Go here now (and every Wednesday) and let an interesting group of Catholic bloggers nourish you in your Faith journey. V isit Allison at   Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of each week.   They have much to offer. I decided to share the following: Have We Forgotten The Guilty One? (Originally posted August 2, 2015) (Photo©Michael Seagriff) Last week I suggested that our individual and collective loss of any sense of sin and the moral decline in our current culture might well be attributed to our failure and reluctance to ponder the Passion, Sufferings and Death of Our Lord.    If you missed that short post you can find it here.   In thinking further about this point, I recalled reading an excerpt some time back from an an article in an old issue of 

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) "Lay the tired brain, the strained muscles, the aching head – lay them all down at His feet without a word, just for His eye to rest on and His Heart to help and heal." (Mother Mary Loyola from Coram Sanctissimo )

  (Photo©Michael Seagriff) “O Jesus, hidden God, more friendly than a brother, I believe most firmly that You are present, a few feet only from where I kneel.  You are behind that little wall, listening to every word of confidence and love, and thanksgiving, and praise. Listening when my heart is free to pour itself out to You as the brook to the river in the days of spring. Listening more tenderly when the stream is ice-bound; when I kneel before You troubled, wearied, anxious about many things – about may souls perhaps – yet dry and hard, without a word to say.  Make my heart so perfectly at ease with You, O Lord, that it may be able to turn to You even in its coldness and inertness; to confide to You naturally all that most intimately concerns it; to be content with this, when discontented with all else, with self most of all – that You know all men and need not that any should give testimony of man, for You know what is in man.” (Mother Mary Loyola from

I recently discovered an article by James Monti in The Wanderer Online Daily. It was entitled Restoring the Sacred…Coram Sanctissimo; An Afternoon With God.  Monti powerfully reminds us of an essential and foundational Truth so many have forgotten e.g. “A Catholic church is unlike any other place on earth, for it is the dwelling place of God on earth.” The author does this in a number of ways. One is by quoting the reactions of Charles Reding, a fictional character in Blessed John Henry Newman’s novel, Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert. Sadly, the sense of the Sacred depicted in the following paragraph is no longer common place in many of our Churches today: (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) “A priest, or at least an assistant, had mounted for a moment above the altar, and removed a chalice or vessel which stood there; he could not see distinctly. A cloud of incense was rising on high; the people suddenly all bowed low; what could it mean? The truth fla