Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 16, 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.

 

 

Catherine Doherty, Servant of God

“I had worked with Catherine for many years in our gift shop and handicraft department. One day, Catherine stopped to dictate an article for our paper Restoration, probably concerning our needs for craft materials and gift shop items. It was a fairly extensive article, but she dictated it aloud, without pausing.

I was somewhat astonished that she could do this and I asked, “B, how can you create that way? Don’t you have to be in the mood to write? Don’t you need time to think about what you want to say and just how to say it?

Catherine looked at me, as she often did, with a look that betrayed a combination of disappointment and despair in her spirit. 'Sweetheart, don’t you understand? This is God’s work. I simply say a prayer to do it well. I know He will give me the grace to do so, so I proceed in peace. I just do it. I suggest you learn to do the same.'

(Susanne Stubbs, member of Madonna House, from Was Catherine a Mystic?)

 

Johann Tauler, O.P.

“Children, if you want to grow in holiness and become saints, remember these two little points. First, that you keep your heart free from all created things, even from yourself, and observe due order in all things, in thought and in deed, so that there may be nothing to hinder the work of the Holy Ghost in you. The other is that you take good care to receive whatever may befall you, inwardly or outwardly, as coming direct from God and no one else. Take everything as sent by Him to prepare you for His gifts, which are supernatural and wonderful and to which you could never come except by suffering and assaults from the devil and from churlish people.”

(From Spiritual Conferences)

 

St. Peter Julian Eymard

“We sometimes hear people say: ‘What harm, after all, can sin do to God? It does not destroy nor actually touch the essence of God; it takes away nothing from His happiness. What can pygmies accomplish against a giant?’

That is the reasoning of the world. It also exists, more or less, among religious, as an excuse for their sins.

Here is the answer: in order for God to show exactly what sin meant to Him, He gave His own Son to pay exactly its debt and to expiate it in a manner equal to the offense. Sin called for all that Jesus had to suffer: God did not do anything but satisfy the exigencies of His justice in condemning Him to that terrible Passion and to that death on Calvary.

Jesus came and, having taken upon Himself our sins, making Himself our respondent, He submitted to all that we would have had to suffer. If then you wish to understand the enormity of the evil, you have only to study the enormity of the atonement: sin means Jesus Christ crucified.”

(From The Eucharist and Christian Perfection II)