Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 5, 2025

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.

Hubert Van Zeller, O.S.B. "The weight of evil in the world seems overwhelming. We feel it everywhere and our effort to resist is smothered. But God does not see things in this way. God must still see the world as good or he would not allow it to continue its existence. He prefers, so St. Augustine tells us, to draw good out of evil rather than not to permit any evil at all." (From The Mystery of Suffering)

Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B.  "Think of all of our omissions with regard to opportunities for and impulses toward prayer. All those free moments we have in the course of each day: we could use them for prayer, but we omit to do so…Think of all the inspirations of grace and all the impulses to good we neglect or to which we turn a deaf ear. We know that God is speaking to us in them and moving us, urging us on to do good. Our hope of making progress in the interior life depends entirely on the inspirations of God, that is to say, on how we attend to them and follow them." (From In Silence With God)

St. Catherine of Genoa "The greatest suffering of the souls in purgatory, it seems to me, is the awareness that something in them displeases God, that they have deliberately gone against His great goodness. I can also see that the divine essence is so pure and light-filled—much more than we can imagine—that the soul that has but the slightest imperfection would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than appear thus before the divine presence."

(An excerpt from Hungry Souls)