Worth Revisiting - Podcast - We Don't Love God As He Deserves

We thank Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. It is a privilege to share our work with them and their followers.

 We Don't Love God As He Deserves 

(Originally posted on March 17, 2019)

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Let's be honest. We need to take a closer look at how we treat the God we profess to love. Listen here.

Eucharistic Reflection - Our Unbelievable Foolishness

“My Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, how can I ever express the sympathy and sorrow which should be expressed for the unbelievable foolishness which we show in our daily neglect of You. The church is so crowded on Sunday [written in 1954] with men and women who are ready to do what they must do to save their souls. But on weekdays, the same Church has but a handful of people who rise a little earlier to come and kneel at Your feet. Others will rise earlier for a number of other reasons, but for an extra half hour with You, they will not do so. 

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

You offer so much in the Mass and Holy Communion, yet we do so little to deserve Your generosity and love. Lord, place my heart in Yours for a moment and inflame it with the fire of Your love. Let me grow in appreciation of Holy Communion so that I may come to You more often. You desire to come to me that You many grant me more graces and blessings. In Holy Communion the privilege is all mine. I shall never forget this again. Amen."

(Father Anthony J. Paone, S.J. from My Daily Bread)

Monday Musings - May We Not Rot

Eucharistic Reflection - Our Generous Savior

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Consider the generosity of our Savior: what He acquired by dying becomes ours by eating. As often as we receive this Sacrament with proper dispositions, we make our own the fruits of all the labors, injuries and sufferings of His life, especially those borne at the time of His passion and death. Just as the power and the sensations of the head reach all the members of the body, in the same way, because Christ is “the head of the Church which is His Body” (Eph. 1:23), the treasures of His grace are made abundantly available to all who through charity are one with Him as living members.

Venerable Louis of Grenada

Monday Musings – Stop the Nonsense! Reinstate Reverent Silence in Our Churches Now! Our Lord Deserves Nothing Less!

It should trouble the hearts of all Catholics to see how we have lost the sense of the Sacred within our Church buildings, where for the most part we act as if our Lord is not really, substantially and physically present among us in our tabernacles and on our tongues. In far too many parishes, our Church’s have become nothing more than another social gathering space with the focus on those present rather than on the God to Whom our prayerful silence, reverence and worship is owed. 

What is even worst is how hurt our Lord is by our neglect and irreverence. But how many of us ever think of how He feels? Listen and feel His anguish and pain: 

“I remain unknown. I am left alone. Even those who claim to profess the mystery of my Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar forsake Me. I am treated with a terrible indifference, with coldness, and with a lack of respect that causes the angels to weep because they cannot offer Me reparation for the coldness and indifference of human hearts. Only men can make reparation for men. What is lacking is the loving response of a human heart to My Eucharistic Heart, pierced, alive and beating in the Sacrament of the Altar. Only a human heart can make reparation for a human heart. For this reason, the angels are sorrowful.”

 (The Soul of the Apostolate - Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.)

Good Friday - Gazing Upon The Face of Christ

I have shared this post before:

It is only with much perseverance and undeserved grace that our meditation and contemplation will bear fruit - fruit which we should share with those around us. On those occasions when we are so blessed, most of us will resort to sharing our experience with written or spoken words.

A rare few who ponder persistently the mysteries of our Faith and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ, and who have been blessed with artistic gifts, will receive a greater grace - the ability to share the fruits of their meditation and contemplation through the creation of penetrating, piercing, and powerful images of He Whom they have contemplated.

Take time this Good Friday (and from time to time thereafter) to gaze upon and ponder the drawing posted below. Let your eyes, heart, mind and soul take in every painstakingly created feature of this compelling representation of our Lord.

Ponder the depth of God's love for you as He suffered such a savage, barbaric and painful death in order that we might all have an opportunity of spending eternity in His loving arms. Are you satisfied with how you have loved Him in return?

No doubt the creator of this sketch - a man who spent time in prison - meditated and contemplated much before he put lead pencil to a blank sheet of copy paper. This visual gift - the fruit of this soul's contemplation - has remained in my home office for many years.  Others deserve to see it. May God use it to touch and stir the hearts and souls of all who visit here as He had so obviously penetrated that of the artist.

May the image's creator be comforted and encouraged this day knowing that God will use the fruit of his contemplation to draw others to Him. 

We owe this gifted artist our gratitude and unending prayerful support.

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 18, 2019

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

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

"The executioners expected Jesus to cry, for everyone pinned to the gibbet of the Cross had done it before Him. Seneca wrote that those who were crucified cursed the day of their birthday, the executioners, their mothers, and even spat on those who looked upon them. Cicero recorded that at times it was necessary to cut out the tongues of those who were crucified to stop their terrible blasphemies. Hence the executioners expected a word, but not the kind of word that they heard...Like some fragrant trees which bathe in perfume the very axe which gashes them, the great Heart on the Tree of Love poured out from its depths something  less than a cry than a prayer - the soft, low prayer of pardon and forgiveness."

(From The Life of Christ)

Ven. Cardinal Nguyen Von Thuan

"Kneeling before your tabernacle, Lord, I hear you repeating to me, Love your neighbor as yourself! I understand what you demand of me, Lord. When I go back over my life, I see clearly how I have not yet loved anyone as I love myself. I have not yet really put your word into practice; I have loved others, but less than myself. Nevertheless, I sometimes flattered myself that I was living charitably and that I was one of your authentic disciples!...It is not enough to give a few coins or to help victims of natural disasters with used clothing. I must treat my brothers and sisters as my right hand treats my left hand when it is hurt."

(From Prayers of Hope:Words of Courage) 

Father Anthony J. Paone, S.J. 

[Jesus to a listening soul:] "I shall estimate your worth by your humility and by your charity. I shall look to see whether you think too much of yourself, or whether you prefer My Will. I shall consider whether you seek My honor and glory in your daily activities, or whether you seek your own advantage and honor."

(From My Daily Bread)

Worth Revisiting - Eucharistic Reflection - I Want My Priests and My People Close to Me To Console Me

We thank Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. It is a privilege to share our work with them and their followers.

 
Eucharistic Reflection - I Want My Priests and My People Close to Me To Console Me

(Originally posted on April2, 2015)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Holy Thursday should be among the most treasured days in our Church as we commemorate and give thanks for the Gift of the Eucharist and the Priesthood.

It must be an occasion for the spiritual re-invigoration of our priests and of all whom they serve.

God is quite clear as to what He expects from His priests! - to make the Eucharist the center of all that they do - all that they do.  This begins and is sustained only by spending time in His Eucharistic Presence, adoring Him, listening to Him and allowing Him to complete their priestly transformation into other Christs,

His expectations and pleadings have not changed over the centuries.  Sadly, He still awaits a universal and affirmative response from many of His priests.

Thank God that through the following two reflections, Father Mark at Vultus Christi has the courage to share those expectations with his brother priests and with us. 

Here are two brief excerpts from each of Father's posts and the links to where you can read them in their entirety.

After pondering these stirring words, will you love your priests enough to get copies of these reflections into their "sacred and venerable" hands?

Will you too make the Eucharist the center of all that you do? Will you also come into His Presence? Will you pray unceasingly for the sanctification of our priests?

[Image source: Wikimedia Commons]

Christ’s First Mandate to His Priests - Watch and Prayer With Me

"...I wanted them to understand by this that unless a priest keeps watch and perseveres in prayer, all else will be in vain.He will dispense the substance of My mysteries, but without the sweetness of a heavenly unction, without the fire and light of a personal experience of My Divine Friendship. This is why I beg My priests to become adorers:to begin to keep watch and pray close to Me in he Sacrament of My Love. [Read full post here.]

 

The Night of My Agony and Betrayal 

"The renewal of My priesthood in the Church will begin from the fire of love that blazes in the Sacrament of My Body and Blood. I call all priests to seek My Eucharistic Face and to abide in My presence. I want all My priests to discover My open Heart, My living Heart beating with Love for them,and pouring forth a purifying stream of Blood and of Water for their holiness, and for the life of the world. I summon all My priests into My Eucharistic presence.They must learn that in My company is the fullness of joy. They must discover in the Sacrament of My Love the sweetness and strength of My Divine Friendship...." [Click to read in its entirety.]