Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 23, 2017

Photo©Michael Seagriff

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 Federico Suarez

"If there are so many Christians who today live aimlessly with little depth, and hemmed in on all sides by narrow horizons, it is due, above all, to their lack of any clear idea of why they, personally exist...What elevates a man and truly gives him a personality of his own is the consciousness of his vocation, the consciousness of his own specific task in the universe."

(From Mary of Nazareth)

St. Augustine

"In former times, Christians were incited to renounce Christ; now they are taught to deny Christ. Then they were forced, now they are taught; then violence was used, now it is deception; then one heard the shouts of the enemy; now, when he prowls around, gentle and insinuating, it is difficult to recognize him. Everyone knows how he tried to force Christians to deny Christ; he tried to attract them to himself so that they would renounce him; but they confessed Christ and were crowned by Him. Now they are taught to deny Christ by trickery, because he doesn't want them to realize that he is drawing them away from Christ."

(From Commentaries on the Psalms, 39:1) 

Father Francis Fernandez

"During the three years of His public life, He [Jesus] has healed many people,  he has freed those possessed by the devil, He has raised the dead...But He did not heal all the sick people in the world, nor did He eliminate all the sufferings of this life, for pain is not an absolute evil, as sin is, and it can have an incomparable redemptive value, if we unite it to the suffering  of Christ."

(From In Conversations With God, 3:13.1)