Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 13, 2017

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.

Pope Pius XI

"Christ must reign in our minds – which must assent firmly and submissively to all revealed truth and to Christ’s teachings. He must reign in our wills – which should bow in obedience to God’s laws and precepts. He must reign in our hearts - which, turning aside from all natural desires, should love God above all things and cling to Him alone. He should reign in our bodies and members, which should serve as instruments of our soul’s sanctification."

(From Encyclical Quas Primas)

  Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.

"This morning, I, and every priest who offered the Holy Sacrifice, took an almost weightless wafer of wheat, a drop of water, and a very insignificant amount of wine - three very ordinary, and truly insignificant things, no matter how we view them - and we offered them to God. Certainly in a world such as ours, these three things, plus a few words my fellow priests and I spoke, amount to nothing. Yet, when touched by God, when taken by Christ, when transubstantiated, what in the world can compare with them?

Of the three things offered, neither you nor I, by ordinary vision, could see anything of the water; and of the wheat and the wine, the appearances remained just as insignificant after Consecration as before. But how deceiving are those appearances!

The dynamism and power said to be latent in certain atoms, is as nothing compared to the Power in what looks like a tiny wafer of wheat and a half ounce of wine. Omnipotence is there. And so with our significant lives and the truly insignificant acts that fill them. Once they are placed in Christ Jesus, touched by God, taken into His Christ, they can save the world." 

(From God, A Woman and The Way)

Catherine Doherty, Servant of God

"The naked crucified One always knows His own, and [He] especially cannot resist the ones who strip themselves inwardly naked for Him and immolate themselves with Him on His own cross for love of Him and for the souls for whom He dies.

Stripped in this fashion, dying to self, crucified through poverty and obedience, walking in humility which is truth, you will be able to feel what the poor feel. You will heal, console, and bring multitudes to God. You will be truly poor in the full sense of that glorious word, and hence truly rich."

(From Dearly Beloved, Volume 1)