Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 29, 2024

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.

Caryll Houselander

"You see, God's will for you is to serve Him, in His way, as He chooses, now. It is only a want of humility to think of extreme vocations, like being a nun or a nurse, while you try to bypass your present obvious vocation, which is to restore your will to God's, so that you may become what He wants you to be, and may be able to use the faculties He has given  to you for His service."

(From The Letters of Caryll Houselander)

St. Paul of the Cross

"Build an oratory within yourself, and there have Jesus on the altar of your heart. Speak to Him often while you are doing your work. Speak to Him of His holy love, of His holy sufferings and of the sorrow of most holy Mary."

(From Flower of the Passion -Thoughts of St. Paul of the Cross)

St. Francis de Sales

"It is horrible irreverence to Him who with so much love and sweetness invites us to perfection, to say, 'I don't want to be holy, or perfect, or to have a greater share in Your friendship, or to follow the counsels You give me to advance in it."

(From Finding God's Will For You)

Monday Musings - How Do You Use Time?

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 22, 2024

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.

Father Francis Wendell, O.P.

"We live in a secularist society. Stated that bluntly it means very little. Actually, the implications are tremendous. St. Dominic, were he introduced to our society, would be amazed and aghast at the things that are commonplace today. God was a reality in the lives of the people of his age; for us God had become either a myth or has been relegated to the position of a peculiar old relative who is kept more or less hidden away upstairs."

(From Spiritual Powerhouse)

St. Paul of the Cross

"When you are alone in your room, take your crucifix, kiss its five wounds reverently, tell it to preach to you a little sermon, and then listen to the word of eternal life that it speaks to your heart; listen to the pleading of the the thorns, the nails, the precious Blood. Oh, what an eloquent sermon!"

(From Flowers of the Passion - Thoughts of St. Paul of the Cross)

St. Basil

"Men are accustomed to say that God is not just. Why is God not unjust in dispensing things to us unequally? The unjust one is not he. Why therefore are you enjoying abundance while that one begs, if not so that by dispensing life-sustaining food you may obtain the reward of life and he be crowned with the wreath of patience? Are you not the predator in appropriating what was entrusted to you to dispense? It is the bread of the needy that you hold back, the tunic of the naked  that you store in your closet, the shoes of the barefoot that you on rare occasion stroll in, the money of the indigent that you hide in the ground; that is why there are so many injuries as what you are able to give."

(From Sermon on Luke 16)

Eucharistic Reflection - O Wonderful Mystery!

(From Hands At Mass by Walter Nurnberg)

“It is a small thing to Him [God] to send His holy angels to honor and visit us,  but that He, the King of angels, should come to His own servants, that He should visit the sick, and comfort the weak, and lift up the fallen, and console the desolate, and give heart to them who despair, and instruct them all who doubt, and call back those that wander, and refresh them that hunger, and give warmth to them that are lukewarm; in a word, that He should heal all our lethargy, and all our sins, and this not by any strange medicine, but by His own precious Body and Blood!

O wonderful mystery, O most high Sacrament, O unspeakable love, O unheard of bounty, in which the Giver is Himself the Gift, the servant eats his Lord, the creature receives his Maker the minister is commanded to sit at the table of the most high King, and is filled to overflowing with divine food, in which man is fed with the Bread of angels,  the Father distributed the Body of His only Begotten Son,  and gave His friends to drink, in all abundance, of the precious Blood of His dear Son! 

Who has ever heard of a greater or more lavish bounty? Where is the understanding they can look into and grasp the mysteries of this wonderful Sacrament? What more could God have done for us? How could He have more closely joined to us His most high Godhead, than to become our food, and to incorporate us wholly into Himself? For as bodily food, when taken by man, falls down softly into his inward parts and marishes all his members, and at length passes into his substance, so, in like manner, Christ let Himself sink down into our souls, in order to fill us wholly with Himself, and He drew all our powers into Himself.”

(From Meditations on the Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ by John Tauler, O.P.)

Eucharistic Reflection - Visit Him!

"Nowhere have holy souls made more admirable resolutions than here at the feet of their hidden God. Out of gratitude to my Jesus, veiled in this great Sacrament, I must declare that it was through this devotion, visiting Him in the tabernacles, that I withdrew from the world where, to my misfortune, I had lived until the age of twenty-six. Happy will you be if you can separate yourself from it earlier than I did and give yourself wholly to that Lord who has given Himself wholly to you."

(From St. Alphonsus de Liguori on the Eucharist – EUCHARISTIC ADORATION (perpetualeucharisticadoration.com)

Monday Musings - What If?

 

My all time favorite one sentence sermon by Father Francis Hudson, S.C.J. :

What if God loved you, only as much as you loved Him?

Now there is some meat to ponder!

Be Merciful As I Am Merciful

 

Monday Musings - A Simple Question

(Image Source: pexels.com)

Can you answer this question affirmatively: "Does my body pine for You [O Lord] like a dry weary land without water (Psalm 63:1)?

                                                      Or

Do you just thirst for Him, when you are in need or in distress?

Eucharistic Reflection - Find Pleasure In His Company

"Good friends find pleasure in one another's company. Let us know pleasure in the company of our best Friend, a Friend who can do everything for us, a Friend who loves us beyond measure. Here in the Blessed Sacrament we can talk to Him straight from the heart."

(St. Alphonsus Liguori from Visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 1, 2024

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.

St. Augustine

We cannot keep ourselves on the road to perfection and prevent ourselves from failing except by efforts to climb higher. As soon as we begin to stop, we regress, with the result that, if we do not wish to fall back, we have to run ahead always, without slowing down."

(From Instructions for Novices by Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, O.P.)

St. Catherine of Siena

"If sensual affection wants to love sensual things, the eye of understanding is moved in that direction. It takes for its object only passing things with selfish love, contempt for virtue, and love of vice, drawing from these pride and impatience. And the memory is filled only with what affection holds out to it. This love so dazzles the eye that it neither discerns nor sees anything but the glitter of these things. Such is the glitter that understanding sees and affection loves them all as if their brightness came from goodness and liveliness. Were it not for this glitter, people would never sin, for the soul by her very nature cannot desire anything but good. But vice is disguised as something good for her, and so the soul sins. Her eyes, though, cannot tell the difference because of her blindness, and she does not know the truth. So she wanders about searching for what is good and lovely where it is not to be found."

(From Mary's Mantle Consecration- A Spiritual Retreat For Heaven's Help by Christine Watkins)

St. Augustine

"Remember this: When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.

(From Instructions for Novices by Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, O.P.)