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.
"The abominable sin of detraction is so prevalent at the present day that there is scarcely a society. a family an individual not guilty of it. There are some persons so perversely inclined that they cannot bear to hear any good of another, but are always alive to their neighbors faults, always ready to tear his character to pieces.
Detraction is committed when we tell another’s real faults; calumny, when the fault we mention is not real but the invention of our malicious lies. Thus though we may not be guilty of calumny, how often does it happen that a person, from criticizing the failings of others which are generally known, is gradually led to mention some hidden and grave sin which robs him of his reputation and his honor! That the fault revealed is true in no manner saves the detractor from the guilt of mortal sin…
Henceforward consider your neighbor's character as a forbidden tree which you cannot touch. Be no less slow in praising yourself than in censoring others, for the first indicates vanity and the second a want of charity. Speak of the virtues of your neighbor, but be silent as to his faults. Let nothing that you say lead others to think that he is aught but a man of virtue and honor.”
(From The Sinner’s Guide)
St. Francis of Paola
“I earnestly admonish you, therefore, my brothers, to look after your spiritual well-being with judicious concern. Death is certain; life is short and vanishes like smoke. Fix your minds, then, on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Inflamed with love for us, he came down from heaven to redeem us. For our sake he endured every torment of body and soul and shrank from no bodily pain. He himself gave us an example of perfect patience and love. We, then, are to be patient in adversity."
(From Office of Readings for April 2nd, the memorial of St. Francis of Pala)
Robert Cardinal Sarah
“Silence is not the exile of speech it is the love of the one Word. Conversely, the abundance of words is the symptom of doubt. Incredulity is always talkative.
We often forget that Christ loved to be silent. He set out for the desert not to go into exile but to encounter God. And at the most crucial moment in His life, when there was screaming on all sides, covering Him with all sorts of lies and calumnies, when the high priest asked Him: ‘Have you no answer to make Jesus’ preferred silence.
It is a case of true amnesia. Catholics no longer know that silence is sacred because it is God's dwelling place. How can we rediscover the sense of silence as the manifestation of God? This is the tragedy of the modern world: man separates himself from God because he no longer believes in the value of silence.
Without silence, God disappears in the noise. And this noise becomes all the more obsessive because God is absent. Unless the world rediscovers silence, it is lost. The earth then rushes into nothingness.”
(From The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise)
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