Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

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.         Archbishop Joseph Raya “Faith doesn’t mean you can’t panic. Mary and Joseph almost certainly panicked when they lost Jesus in the temple. What it means is that you keep on going even if you do panic. You just do whatever is right in front of you, and keep on going, in faith that it will all work out.”   (From July-August 2020 issue of RESTORATION published by Madonna House)     Dan Burke “No matter how [spiritual] consolation specifically surfaces within us, if it is authentic, it will always draw us to submit to the magisterium of the Church and to God’s will and ways. It is really no more complicated than that. The challenge is that if we are not well catechized – and most of us are not – we may not understand or even notice when we are led astray. By God’s grace we have a catechism that addresses all the most important t

 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Let us remind ourselves that each of our Communions ought to be substantially more fervent than the preceding, since each of them ought to increase the love of God in us, and thus dispose us to receive our Lord with a greater fervor of will on the following day." (Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. from The Three Conversions in the Spiritual Life )

     

 

We are not required to ask for suffering. We are not prohibited from seeking to be relieved from our suffering. But when God wills it, we can accept it and recognize it for what it actually is:

"God is not the great unknown, whom we can but dimly conceive. We need not fear, as heathens do, that He might be capricious and bloodthirsty or too far away and too great to hear men. He is there [in the Eucharist], and we always know where we can find Him, where He allows himself to be found and is waiting for us.   Today this should once more sink into our hearts: God is near. God knows us. God is waiting for us in Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us not leave Him waiting in vain! Let us not, through distraction and lethargy, pass by the greatest and most important thing life offers us...Let us not pass it heedlessly by. Let us take time, in the course of the week, in passing, to go in and spend a moment with the Lord Who is near. During the day our churches should not be allowed to be dead houses, standing empty and seemingly useless. Jesus Christ's invitation is always proffered from them. This sacred proximity to us is always alive in them. It is always calling

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 Kevin M. Cusick “When we are ashamed of the truth about how God made us, and ashamed to tell others that truth, we are asking our Lord to be ashamed of us before His heavenly Father when we stand before the throne of the Triune God at the end of our earthly lives.” (From article, The Kingdom For A Pronoun , published in the October 1, 2020 issue of The Wanderer)   Venerable Bruno Lanteri   Be on guard against discouragement and lack of trust. Strive to do well all that you do, but do this with respect for your humanity, without striving for impossible perfection, focusing simply on the day at hand. Remember that "the just man falls seven times a day," and so you will find blessing in beginning not only every day, but every hour." (From Overcoming Spiritual Discouragement )    Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena "Nothi