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. Venerable Fulton J. Sheen “Notice, too, that at the crib, only two classes of people found their way to Christ when he came to this earth: the very simple, and the very learned - the shepherds who knew that they knew nothing, and the wise men who knew that they did not know everything; never the man who thought that he knew. (From The Life of Christ )   Catherine de Heuck Doherty, Servant of God “God the Father is angry at the rejection of the words of his Son, and only the prayers of the Mother of God and the intercession of Jesus Himself are holding back God’s arm from striking.”  (From Musings About COVID by Father David May)   C.S. Lewis “As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel reall

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons )   “See how proud men pass before My altar, seeking the esteem and applause of men. They pass by preferring a fleeting honor to My love. I am relegated to the shadows of My sanctuary from whence I utter these words: Learn of Me for I am humble and poor . Yes, poor because I have renounced the wealth of the world to open the treasures of the eternal paradise to you. I have become the poorest of the poor. Out of love I have become a Beggar. That is why I am despised by the world which makes a god of gold and money. To the world I am as a nobody, because I was born in a stable and lived in the obscurity of Nazareth; because I died in the destitution of Calvary; because I continue to relive these humiliations in the Eucharist. I am a rejected pauper and the miserable, perishable goods of this world are preferred to Me.” (From Twenty Holy Hours by Rev. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, SS.CC.)

 

 

    “A God gives Himself entirely to us through Holy Communion, all that He is and all that He has, as if He were not completely content and happy in Himself unless He possessed our hearts!. Let us give them to Him, my Sisters, and through faithfully dying to ourselves, make Him our absolute Master… My sisters, let us go before this adorable Sacrament to learn our obligations. The Eucharist is the great book of life open to everyone…It will instruct us and teach us all we must do. How great are our blessings!”   (Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament from The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love )

 

  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 Mother Julienne Morell, O.P. “Through the eternal years, God’s thought of me has been for my happiness. He placed me, therefore, among the number of beings whom He determined to call into existence, and in the rank of those upon whom He was to let fall the shower of His mercies. He resolved to create me at that moment fixed by His own Wisdom, and to follow my creation by accomplishing in me all the designs of His Love. Did He place any condition? Yes, one only: That I would not, on my part, hinder His work within me by raising any obstacle to it, and that I would consent to follow the attractions of His grace, sweet and powerful.” (From Meditations on Eternity for Religious )   Venerable Bruno Laneri “I will plan the activities of my day so that I may more surely do the will of God and give Him glory in all that I do

"Long ago and far away, an ordinary man called John laid his head on the breast of Christ and listened to the heartbeats of the Lord. Who can venture to guess what that man felt as he heard the beat of that mighty heart? None of us can ever be in his place but all of us could hear - if we would but listen - the heartbeats of God, the song of love that He sings to us, who He has loved so much. If we but meditated on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, we would not only hear His heartbeats, we would hear our own hearts beating in unison with His. We would be united with our Lord and our God. God's heart is the only true resting place for all of us, the real oasis to which God calls us. But the key to His heart is identification with Him and with all those He calls His little ones. This deep love of humanity requires an enlargement of heart that is so great that we could not aspire to it unless God showed us the way. We must pray for that enlargement of heart." (Servan

[I have shared this post before. Its content is forever relevant and worthy of our consideration.] The gifts of the Magi - gold, frankincense, and myrrh - were expensive and very significant physical gifts. But they pale in comparison to the spiritual gifts we can give our Infant, Crucified, and Risen Lord – if we would but choose to do so. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) The gifts I am about to describe, when given to our Lord in love and gratitude, weekly (daily if possible), will not only please Him, but will result in our being united more intimately with the Prince of Peace. What follows are some concrete suggestions as to what each of us can and should do every time we attend Mass, if we are serious about loving God as He deserves and as we ought. We don’t need any one’s permission to do any of these things.  We will just do these things out of love and reverence and let God do the rest:        Read and ponder the Mass readings several times before