Book Review - A Storyteller's Guide to a Grace-Filled Life - Voume II by Tony Agnesi

Book Review of A Storyteller’s Guide to a GRACE-FILLED Life – Volume II by Tony Agnesi

Want To Know How To Eat An Elephant?

What a gift Tony Agnesi has to simply live each day and then share what he observed, whom he interacted with, and what he did or what he failed to do to promote the Kingdom of God. He shows how easy it is to be Christ-like to those struggling emotionally, physically and spiritually if we would but open our eyes and our hearts. 

It makes no difference where Tony is – work, Church, walking down a street, eating at a restaurant, or in jail – he loves to share his faith. In A Storyteller’s Guide to a GRACE-FILLED Life – Volume II, he challenges us not to ignore the many opportunities God puts in our path daily to lead souls into His loving embrace. In fact, all of us should adopt Tony's daily prayer: Lord, put someone in my path today that I can help.

Nothing he writes is contrived. It is simply Tony being Tony – a simple but very gifted soul, a man of great faith, who tries to live the Gospel message out in his daily life. 

Tony invites us to imagine we were “waiting to enter the gates of heaven,” and saw “a friend being condemned to hell”. What do you think your friend might ask you? I’m not telling. You will have to read the book!

Tony loves to ask questions. Here are a few: 

                                What are you on the inside?

                                Do you control your tongue?

                                Are you afraid to live and share your faith in public?

                                Do you simply go along with prevailing public opinion to avoid being ridiculed?

One moment this author tugs at your heart telling you why young women that he has coached or met in jail and who have had no positive earthly father-figure in their lives wish they were his daughters. A few pages later he reminds us that “God Grants Mulligans.”. Elsewhere in the book, he hilariously describes the different flavors of Catholics he has met. Why he will even tells us how to eat an elephant!

Yes, my friend is a story-teller extraordinaire. You will find the forty-three stories in A Storyteller’s Guide to a GRACE-FILLED Life – Volume II inspirational and thought-provoking. You certainly will find some challenging. I have no doubt, however, that you will find all well-worth your time. After you put this book down, you will probably see our loving Lord more often in the souls you encounter.

I have reviewed Tony’s two previous books, (here and here if you are interested) so you will not be surprised that I enjoyed this one as well. Once again, Tony Agnesi has given us much to ponder.  Get your copy now.

As is true of his other books, all the proceeds realized from sales go directly to benefit several charities close to Tony’s heart.

Keep those stories coming Tony!

Worth Revisiting - Eucharistic Reflection - His Goal Is My Heart

Thank you 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 you and your followers.


Eucharistic Reflection - His Goal Is My Heart

(Originally posted on July 28, 2012)

(St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, NYC)

“When Jesus remains in the quiet of the altar, in the tabernacle’s shadow, people in their blind carelessness let Him alone, they forget all about Him. And when He exposes Himself upon the altar, he is hurt to the Heart by the irreverence of so many who either have no faith at all or a faith that is very weak. When He goes through the streets in order to bring unspeakable blessings to His beloved children, He hears curses and blasphemies that make out of His errand of mercy another way of the cross.

But in the midst of all these bitternesses one hope sustains Him – the hope of a place of refuge that will offer the love and peace He craves. The bitter chalice which others continually place to His lips He drinks with resignation; for He is sustained by the hope of a loving reception in my heart by way of reparation. One only hour spent in the enjoyment of my love, and He forgets years and years of suffering…

Altar and tabernacle, monstrance and church, are merely the avenues thorough which He enters; its goal is my heart;it is there that He would rest. Ah! How it would pain His Divine heart if I would not let Him in, or if I would receive Him unworthily. What a bitter disappointment that would be!"  

(Eucharistic Whisperings, Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.)

Eucharistic Reflection - This Great Mystery

"How consoling is this mystery of the Eucharist! If we knew how to appreciate it, it would suffice to fortify and sustain us. Is there anything sweeter than to have a friend to whom we may at any hour confide our difficulties and our pain?"

                                                                      Saint Theodore Guerin

Monday Musings - The Kind Of Prayer We Need Today

Servant of God Catherine Doherty is correct: we have forgotten how to pray. Let her refresh our memory: 

“Prayer now is the last resort. We have forgotten how to pray.

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

We have forgotten that there must be a time when we are silent so we can hear what God wants to say to us. Yes, my friends, we must pray. It must be the prayer of two people in love with each other who cease to talk…Two people in love! When you are in love with God you will understand that He loved your first. You will enter into a deep and mysterious silence and in that silence become one with the Absolute…Your oneness with God will overflow to all your brothers and sisters.

My friends this is the kind of prayer we need today. If you pray like this you will be overshadowed by the wings of a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit.

On those wings your prayer of silence will be lifted into the hands of ‘the Woman Wrapped in Silence,’ and she will lay it at the feet of the Most Holy Trinity. The answer today to the salvation of mankind lies in prayer.”

(From Fragments of My Life)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 24, 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






St. Frances de Sales

"It is horrible irreverence to Him who with so much love and sweetness invites us to perfection, to say, ‘I do not want to be holy, or perfect, or to have a greater share in Your friendship, or to follow the counsels You give me to advance in it.” 

(From Finding God’s Will For You)

Worth Revisiting - Recite The Rosary Like A Child

Thank you 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 you and your followers. My contribution this week as we near the end of the Month of the Rosary:

Recite The Rosary Like A Child 

 

(Originally posted on October 15, 2018)

 

"The rosary is not a tedious prayer just because the person is always repeating the Hail Mary. Each Hail Mary recited, with the contemplation of the mysteries, is always said with a different feeling and the intensity of the prayer is not monotonous. It is an intensity of love. 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Does not a child call his mother all the time? His cry: "Mom!" is different according to the need that inspires and animates it. Therefore, recite the rosary like a child, invoking our Heavenly Mother and imploring her help."

  (Servant of God, Dolindo Ruotolo Champions of the Rosary)

Eucharistic Reflection - The Nature of True Prayer

(Image Source- Wikimedia Commons)

"By our prayer we share the life of God. True prayer demands that we be more passive than active; it requires more silence than words, more adoration than study, more concentration than rushing about, more faith than reason. The highest state of prayer is to be children in the arms of Love: silent, loving, rejoicing."

Carlo Carretto

Worth Revisiting - Communions of Reparation

Thank you 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 you and your followers. Here is my contribution: 

Eucharistic Reflection - Communion of Reparation 

(Originally posted on July 21, 2015) 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“When Christ manifested Himself to Margaret Mary, and declared to her the infinitude of His love, at the same time, in the manner of a mourner, He complained that so many and such great injuries were done to Him by ungrateful men — and we would that these words in which He made this complaint were fixed in the minds of the faithful, and were never blotted out by oblivion:

‘Behold this Heart’ — He said — ‘which has loved men so much and has loaded them with all benefits, and for this boundless love has had no return but neglect, and contumely, and this often from those who were bound by a debt and duty of more special love.’

In order that these faults might be washed away, He then recommended several things to be done, and in particular the following as most pleasing to Himself, namely that men should approach the Altar with this purpose of expiating sin, making what is called a Communion of Reparation — and that they should likewise make expiatory supplications and prayers, prolonged for a whole hour — which is rightly called the ‘Holy Hour.’ "

(From Encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (On Reparation to the Sacred Heart) by Pope Pius XI)

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Eucharistic Reflection - The Life of Our Lord In Us

"Only in the Eucharist are virtues easily acquired and sustained.

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Let us then remember that our Lord is in the Blessed Sacrament not merely to distribute His graces but above all to be our Way and our Model.

A mother educates her child through her presence, through a secret correspondence that exists between her heart and that of her child. The mere sound of her voice thrills the heart of her child, whereas  strangers fail to make any impression at all.

We shall have the life of our Lord in us only if we live under His inspiration and receive our education from Him."

(From The Real Presence by St. Peter Julian Eymard)

Monday Musings - Some Random Thoughts on The Eucharist

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

God will test us during the course of life with a variety of challenges, all of which are intended to strengthen our belief in and resolve to follow Him. We need to embrace these challenges if we are to grow spiritually and closer to Him.  These challenges and the gift of the Eucharist should be a constant reminder of His love for us and of our obligation to love and trust Him in return.

It is not bread and wine we eat and drink but the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ! We should approach and respond to Him with a mindset and in a fashion deserving of such great a gift.

It is understandable why so many were repulsed and walked away from Our Lord after He told them that they had to eat His Body and drink His Blood if they wished to have eternal life. It made no sense. Cannibalism was not a concept easily embraced by anyone. Jews weren’t even permitted to drink the blood of slaughtered animals. Even if one was inclined to do as Jesus commanded, how does one go about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a living human being? The Apostles had no greater understanding at the time of what Jesus said than those who left Him. But they (save Judas) stayed. When asked if they also would leave Him, Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” As St. Thomas Aquinas advises, we are to accept what Jesus says in faith even when we can not understand it, praying that at some time He will give us the understanding we lack. In the meanwhile, we are to live by faith, trusting Him with our eternal well-being.

The Eucharist is such a great gift! How tragic it is that so many to whom it has been given, no longer participate in it, don’t believe it is the Body and Blood of their Lord and Savior, or receive Him unworthily.

We and our world would be totally different if we but believed!