Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 29, 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.
David Torkington
“ ‘Prayer’, he [Cardinal Hume] said, ‘is trying to raise the
heart and mind to God.’…
The quality of our prayer is ultimately determined by the
quality of our endeavor. It was for this reason that the great Mystic and
mother Saint Angela of Foligno said that prayer is the School of Divine Love. In
other words, it is the place where we learn how to love God by trying daily to
raise our hearts and minds to him. I intend to introduce you to the different
means and methods that tradition is given us to help us keep trying to turn and
open our minds and hearts to God in this book but first let me say this. There
are no perfect means to help us keep trying to raise the heart and mind to God,
just different means. What helps you at the beginning, may not help you later.
What helps you in the morning, may not help you in the evening. What helps me
might not help you. Remember the famous words of Dom John Chapman, ‘Pray as you
can and not as you can't.’ The acid test is does this means of prayer help me
to keep trying to raise my heart and mind to God?”
(From The Primacy of Loving the Spirituality of the Heart)
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Venerable Fulton J. Sheen “The man who thinks only of
himself says only prayers of petition; he who thinks of his neighbor says
prayers of intercession; he who thinks only of loving and serving God, says
prayers of abandonment to God’s will, and this is the prayer of the saints.” |
(From Go to Heaven)
Father Donald Haggerty
"Work for God is too easily
considered by a standard of achievement in the world. But there are no real
successes in any spiritual work that are equivalent to an accomplishment in the
world. Certain patterns, however, begin to show after a time. A work desired by
God seems always to include some measure of frustration and failed exertion. At
the same time, failure in a work undertaken for God often conceals fruits whose
delay in manifesting themselves is only temporary. It is hard to accept these
patterns until they are observed over a certain length of time in our lives. Nothing
significant is ever done for God and for souls without some taste of
crucifixion and the offering it requires from us."
(From The Contemplative Hunger)