Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Thank you Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You   and Elizabeth Riordan at  Theology Is A Verb   for  hosting Catholic bloggers at  Worth   Revisiting . It is a privilege for us to share our work with you and your readers .  Here is my contribution:   Monday Musings - Wake Up Slumbering Souls! Wake Up! (Originally posted on November 5, 2018) [The sad reality of our times is that so very few of us love God as we ought and as He deserves. For the most part, He remains abandoned and ignored as a prisoner in the tabernacles of His Churches. It is my hope that by sharing the Introduction from my most recent book, Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Reflections , hearts will be changed and more of us will re-discover and treasure a greater reverence and appreciation for the Gift of our Lord's Presence here among us]: Have you ever loved someone so much that you could hardly wait to hear from them, speak w...

Were our Savior not present in His Adorable Sacrament, where could we find Him? In His Holy Scriptures? Yes, but in these He speaks from afar, and the past cannot satisfy us. Contemplating Him in His glory in Heaven would but increase our longing. We cannot live on meditation and desires alone. But, oh, mercy and love of our Savior! He foresaw all this and for that reason instituted this Miracle of Love, the Holy Eucharist. (Image Source - Wikimedia Commons ) When Jesus gives Himself to us in this Sacrament, we possess Him as holy Simeon did when he held Him as an infant in his arms; as Magdalen did when she caressed and kissed His feet; as St. John did when he reposed on His Heart. Jesus has unweariedly followed us from the Crib to Calvary; from Calvary to the Tabernacle; from the Tabernacle to the hands of the priest; from the hands of the pries to our heart. (Father Lukas Etlin, O.S.B. from The Holy Eucharist - Our All )

[One of the one hundred thought-provoking and faith-stirring quotations you will find in Pondering Tidbits of Truth - Volume 3 .]  "The real Jesus was radically counter-cultural and unbelievably attractive. He had crowds following up and down the shore of the Sea of Galilee to listen to him speak, sometimes for several days. They would carry their loved ones on stretchers for miles, just to bring them into his presence. At his word, "Come, follow me!" men would leave their livelihoods, their families, and all they knew to accompany Him, not having any clue where he was heading. (Photo©Michael Seagriff) Once the idea that Jesus is a warm cuddly bear, who basi­cally loves us so much that He indulges all our vices with a benign shrug of the shoulders, is replaced by the Jesus who loves us so much that He was crucified to save us from those vices, who overturns tables when we're being abused by money-changers, and who tells us to pluck out eyes and...

(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 .  Dr. Peter Kreeft “To care is even more important than to know, for it is the only way to know the most important thing: yourself, your soul, your identity, your purpose, your destiny and your immortality. If we are indifferent instead of seeking, we simply will not find, that is, we will not be saved. Hell is not populated mainly by passionate rebels but nice, bland, indifferent, respectable people who simply never gave a damn.” (From Christianity For Modern Pagans ) St. Alphonsus de Liguori “God is merciful. Who denies it? But, great as His mercy is, how many does He every day send to hell? God is merciful, but He is also just, and is, therefore, obliged to punish those who offend Him. And ‘His mercy,’ says the divine mother, extends ‘to them that fear him’. (Luke 1:...