St. Catherine of Siena - Open Our Ears Lord!

Today we Dominicans joyfully remember our beloved sister, St. Catherine of Siena. 

 

[I am re-publishing this post since the words of this fearless servant of God are as relevant today as they were when she wrote them more than 800 years ago.]

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

What a treasure St. Catherine of Siena is! One does not become a Doctor of the Church by being fearful to express, teach and live God's Truth in its entirety. 

How ill-advised we are to discount, ignore or try to nuance the wisdom God has shared over the centuries through such faithful servants as she.  Less likely would we be to commit this error if our primary concern was the salvation of souls. No wonder those who wish to only tickle our ears and destroy our consciences ignore these great spiritual writers, abandoning God's Truth for a less demanding and counterfeit one.

The following words  Jesus shared with St. Catherine in the 14th century are clear and unambiguous directions to his shepherds - not only those living then but for those among us today. May we and they be given the grace, humility and wisdom to hear and follow His Inerrant Voice:

"No rank, whether of civil or divine law, can be held in grace without holy justice.  For those who are not corrected and those who do not correct are like members beginning to rot, and if the doctor were only to apply ointment without cauterizing the wound, the whole, body would become fetid and corrupt.

So it is with prelates or with anyone else in authority. 

Eucharistic Reflection - A Few Questions

(Image Source: Cathopic.com)

What if, as Father Francis Hudson, S.C.J. once asked his parishioners, God loved you, only as much as you loved Him?

Do you believe that Jesus is really, truly and substantially present in every Catholic Church and in the Sacred Host placed on your tongue?

As you enter your parish Church are you struck with a sense of the Sacred and a realization that you are standing on holy ground? If not, why not?

What does Jesus see and hear from behind the locked Tabernacle doors when He gazes at those present? Is He pleased by what He hears and sees? If not, why not?

How important is it for you to spend some time in quiet prayer and reflection in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, before, during, after Mass and throughout the course of each week?

Are you satisfied with the manner in which you act and treat our Lord? If not, what changes do you intend to make?

What concrete things can you do to encourage yourself and others in your family and parish toward a greater reverence and belief in the God who dwells among us?

Of the 168 hours God gives you each week, how much of that time do you even think of, talk to, or visit Him?

How much do you love God?

 

(From my book, Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Relections)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 21, 2022

 

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 Louis of Granada, O.P.

“Reason and experience clearly prove that the happiness we seek is to be found only in God. Is it not madness to seek it elsewhere? ‘Go where you will,’ says Saint Augustine, ‘visit all lands, but you will not find happiness until you go to God’.”

(From The Sinner’s Guide)

 

Venerable Msgr. Aloysius Schwartz

 

"When you pray, you only have to ask for two things: You should ask for the light to see the will of God, and you have to ask for the courage to be able to do the will of God."

(From Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz by Kevin Wells)

 

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.

 “The Good News is not just that God loves us but that He is crazy in love with us. Us, who are not only stupid and shallow and silly but morally insane (that is, immorally insane), who choose the fearful over the cheerful, the misery of selfishness over the joy of selflessness, despite our universal experience of the results of that experiment."

 (From Doors in the Walls of the World)

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Come To Him

“The same Jesus who walked across the water and stretched out His hand to save a drowning Peter reaches out in the Blessed Sacrament to strengthen the weak and comfort the afflicted. Even if you think that you are the worst person in the whole world, you are that much more welcome to come to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He said that He has come not for the well but for the sick, because the well do not need a physician. Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the divine physician of our soul. The farther away you think you are from God, the more Jesus wants you to come to him in the Blessed Sacrament. He said that He has not come for the self righteous, but for sinners. 

(Image Source: cathopic)

 

In the 1960s there was song called ‘Suzanne’. The lyrics were: ‘And Jesus was a sailor and as He sailed across the waters, only drowning men could see Him.’

The greater our need and desperation, the more clearly we should see Jesus calling us to Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. From the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus says to us now what he said to Saint Peter then:

‘Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid!’ It is I! It is really the Jesus who loves you and who died for you who is truly present in the most Blessed Sacrament. We have nothing whatsoever to fear. We should not let our sins keep us from coming to Him because He is infinite mercy. We should not let the fact that we may not be able to pray well keep us from coming to Him, because the mere fact that we go to the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration is, in itself, a prayer of great faith. We should not let a busy schedule keep us from coming to Him because spending time with Jesus and in the Blessed Sacrament is the best and greatest time that we will ever spend on earth.”

(From Come to Me in the Blessed Sacrament)

Monday Musings - Essential Advice - Stop Worrying - Speak The Truth

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Why Don't We Care?

O Lord, open our eyes, hearts, minds and souls to the Truth and Treasure of Your Presence here among us: 

(Image Source: www. cathopic.com)

"Jesus Christ dwells in the midst of us in the same manner He dwelt at Nazareth amidst His relatives. He was there without being known by them, and without working in their favor, the miracles that He wrought elsewhere. Our blindness and evil dispositions prevent Him from letting us experience the wonderful operations with which He favors those whom He finds well disposed…

Why is it, then, that we have so little feeling, either for the neglect shown to Jesus Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament where He is visited by so few, or for the outrages He there endures, from the very persons who profess to believe in Him? Certainly because the faith of Christians on this point is very weak."

 

  (From Devotion to the Sacred Heart by Father John Croiset, S.J.)

 

 

(This is one of 250 Eucharistic Reflections  you will find in Stirring Slumbering Souls, recent recipient of the Catholic Writer's Guild's Seal of Approval)

Monday Musings - No Better Time

 

Pondering Tidbits Of Truth - April 7, 2022

 

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.

 

 

 

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.

The best reason for praying to saints in Heaven is that they, unlike friends on earth, never pray for anything outside God’s will, which is always the best thing for us; and since their prayers are thus more conformed to God’s will than ours are, they are (1) wiser than ours, (2) more powerful than ours, and (3) always effective, since they are one with God’s will, which is omnipotent.

(From Practical Theology)

 

Venerable Louis Granada, O.P.

“You must suffer. You cannot escape it, for it is a law your nature. Can you resist the almighty power of God when He is pleased to send you afflictions? Knowing these truths and knowing that your sins deserve more than you can bear, why will you struggle against your trials? Why not bear them patiently and thus atone for your sins and merit many graces? Is it not madness to try to escape them, and thereby lose the blessings that they can give, receiving instead a weight of impatience and misery which only adds to the load you must carry? Stand prepared, then, for tribulations, for what can you expect from a corrupt world, from a frail flesh, from the envy of devils, and from the malice of men, but contradictions and persecutions?

Act, therefore, as a prudent man, and arm yourself against such attacks, proceeding with as much caution as if you were in an enemy's country, and you will thus gain two important advantages: First, the trials against which you are forearmed will be easier to bear, ‘for a blow which we have anticipated.’ says Seneca, “falls less heavily.’…

Secondly, by anticipating in the spirit of resignation the afflictions which God may send you, you offer a sacrifice like that of Abraham, about to immolate his son. Nothing, in fact, is more pleasing to God, nothing is more meritorious for us, than the resignation with which we prepare ourselves to accept all the trials that may come upon us, either from the hand of God or the wickedness of men.”

 (From The Sinner’s Guide)

 G.K. Chesterton

 “A man’s soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies, memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes. All sanity in life consists in coming to the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others do not.”

(From The Essential Chesterton An Anthology of the Thought of G. K. Chesterton)