Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

"And meanwhile, for the most part, we come to church without reverence, without love of God, without knowing even what we have come to do. Some let their minds and hearts dwell on a thousand worldly matters. Others are there reluctantly and are bored. There are some who scarcely kneel whilst a God pours out His precious Blood for their pardon, lastly others are in such haste to leave the church, they do not wait for the priest to come down from the altar. My God what little love Your children have for You, or rather, how they scorn You! Indeed, what a spirit of frivolity and distraction appears when people are in church. Some sleep, others converse together, and nearly everyone is taken up with what he has to do."   (From  THE EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS OF THE CURÉ D’ARS )

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) "Our churches are holy, consecrated, sacred, because God made man dwells there day and night. In early times, many Christians crossed the seas to see the holy places where the great mystery of our redemption was wrought. Oh, blessed places! they exclaimed, where so many wonders were worked to save us! And they could hardly tear themselves away from the Cenacle or the Garden of the Agony without shedding tears. On Calvary, when Jesus Christ endured such great sufferings for us, they felt their faith rekindled and their hearts burning with a new fire. But without going so far, or exposing ourselves like them to many dangers, have we not Jesus Christ in the midst of us, not only as God, but Body and Soul? Are not our churches as worthy of reverence as the holy places? What a blessed people are Christians, who see renewed each day on the altars all the wonders that Almighty God worked formerly on Calvary."   (From  THE EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS OF THE C

  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 Thomas Dubay, S.M. “There is a great gap for most people between prayer and performance. At our devotions we can say sublime things about loving God with our whole heart, and then ten minutes later divide that heart with selfish overeating—or any one of a dozen other petty clingings.” (From Deep Conversion Deep Prayer )     Johann Tauler, O.P. “Our wretched nature is so possessive and so utterly self-centered that it creeps in everywhere to arrogate to itself what does not belong to it. It spoils and sullies the gifts of God and hinders Him in His noble work. Our nature is completely permeated with the poison of original sin, with the result that it seeks its own satisfaction in everything. St. Thomas says that on account of this same poison, man loves himself more than God, or His angels, or anything else that God eve

"It is wonderful, my Lord, to be alone in my cell and converse there with You in the silence of the night - and You are there as God, and by Your grace. But to stay in my cell when I could be before  the Blessed Sacrament - why, it would be as though St. Mary Magdalene had left You on Your own when You were at Bethany to go and think about You alone in her room!  (Photo©Michael Seagriff) It is a precious and devout thing, O God, to go and kiss the places You made holy during Your life on earth - the stones of Gethsemane and Calvary, the ground along the Way of Sorrows, the waves of the Sea of Galilee - but to prefer it to the tabernacle would be to desert the Jesus living beside me, to leave Him alone, going away to venerate dead stones in places where He is no longer. It would be to leave the room He is in - and with it His divine companionship - to go kiss the floor of a room He was in, but is in no longer. To leave the tabernacle to go and venerate statues would be to leave t

  Just Eat The Pork Under Protest!  (Originally posted on June 30, 2013. Tragically not much has changed since then.) (Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) One of my favorite characters in the Old Testament (2 Maccabees 6:18-31) is Eleazar, a ninety year old Jewish scribe, a “teacher of the Law.” He was ordered to eat pork in violation of the Mosaic Law or be killed. He preferred death rather than offend God.

“To you I consecrate all the powers of my soul and body, my whole being. Would that I could infuse into all hearts a burning love for You. What great glory would be given You on earth, if every heart were an altar on which every human will were laid in perfect conformity with Your will to be consumed by the fire of Your love.”   (St. John Neumann from Saint John N. Neumann’s Favorite Prayers Taken From His Diary )