Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 10, 2021

 

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)