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.
Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament
“Silence, love, and respect are
needed, and without these three points you will learn nothing…Silence disposes
you to listen. Love makes you embrace the instructions which God’s spirit gives
you. And respect keeps you in a profound reverence for the knowledge of Jesus
Christ. Consequently, be attentive to God who is present, with love and
respect. Never forget these three points, which must never be separated from
each other. For if you are attentive without love and respect, Jesus Christ’s
words will not have the results they must have in you. If you are without
attentiveness, you do not hear His voice. If you are without love, your action
is without life or soul. Thus, love and respect are bounded inseparably to
attention. This is the reason I have so often recommended loving attention to
God who is present. Remember God with love and respect.
Therefore, be silent in your mind
in order to hear God’s voice who speaks to souls in various ways: sometimes by
distinct words, at other times by touches in the heart’s depth; sometimes by
delicate invitations He makes felt in the apex of the soul, other times through
His divine inspirations; sometimes by distinct words or actions, even outward,
which we see or hear from others...And the great secret of the interior life is
to listen well to these voices and to yield oneself to what they teach. It is also
necessary to listen to His voice in afflictions, in insults, in contradictions,
in sorrows, in disturbances…Voices, voices, voices everywhere, in heaven and on
earth. An attentive soul listens only to the voices which invite it to love,
adore and glorify the One who is. All these voices are calling you to see and
to know God in all things, to make you worship His Holy hand which applies to
you the cross, the nails, and the thorns, which tells you to suffer for pure
love, which invites you to humble and reduce yourself to nothing beneath all
creatures, which exhorts you to fidelity on all occasions.
(From The Breviary of Fire)
Father Jacques Philippe
“…let us ask ourselves how we
look upon others. Does our gaze, like God’s, give life, freedom, and encouragement;
is it a look of hope? Or is it a look of judgment, condemnation, and
constraint? A simple look can give life, but it can also give death. Let us ask
for the grace to see each person with the eyes of Jesus, so that our eyes communicate
life and hope to those we encounter.
(From Fire & Light – Learning to Receive the Gift of
God)
St. Leonard of Port Maurice
“Now, tell me whether, when you
enter church to hear Mass, you thoroughly well consider that you are going up
as it were to Calvary, to be present at the death of the Redeemer. If so, would
you go with behavior so unsubdued with dress, so flaunting? If the Magdalene had
gone to Calvary, to the foot of the Cross, all dressed out, perfumed, and
adorned, as when she associated with her lovers, what would have been said of
her? What, then, shall be said of you who go to Holy Mass as if you were going
to a ball [or the beach, a barbeque, a sporting event]? But what shall be said
if you profane those functions of most dread sanctity with nods and becks, with
tattle, with laughter, with the petty attentions of courtships, or with graver
sacrileges of thought, word, or deed? Wickedness is hideous at any time, and in
any place, and before the altar, draw down after them the curse of God…Think
seriously upon this…
(From The Hidden Treasure)
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