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)