Monday Musings - Eucharistic Processions and Grace

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 13, 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.

Dan Burke and Connie Rossini 

“When we have too many vocal prayers to say, our goal easily changes to getting them done instead of praying them well. They become less, rather than more, contemplative. The Holy Spirt might be moving us to linger silently on the meditation of a mystery, but we feel that we can't stop or we will never fit all our prayers in. So we find ourselves working against the Holy Spirit...We forget that the very purpose of prayer is communing with the Lord."                                                           (From The Contemplative Rosary)

	Thomas Howard  "This is why Catholics genuflect when they come to church. They  know that this is a holy place, and  to be found on one’s knee is a  very good posture in such precincts. It says, ceremonially, not  verbally, I am a creature and thou art my Creator. I am thy child  and thou art my Father. I am a subject and thou art my Sovereign.  And, alas, I am a sinner, and thou art holy.’ To kneel, only briefly, in this fashion is to order one’s body as well as one’s mind to what is true."                                                            (From On Being Catholic)

Father Ambrose Criste, Norbertine priest 

“This island [New York City] and indeed, our entire post-modern western world — unbelievably rich and powerful as it is in terms of this world’s goods — will remain the poorest place on earth unless you, you and I engage in the sacred liturgy correctly, faithfully, internally, and with that millennia-long tradition of Holy Church. Our worshipping [of] God like this, correctly like this in the Holy Eucharist, then, makes us able to take our Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ out into the streets.”

                                                        (From CatholicVote)

Eucharistic Reflection - Words Outside of Time

"I came to Adoration tonight with my addled brain to talk to Jesus and see if He really wants me to continue with my apostolate. I prayed the Office and waited to hear what He had to say.

No new words, just silence. A calm. An eternity. A fatherly gaze of understanding—nothing so definite as that, just warmth. Less than that.

It was my intellect that told me He is in that monstrance and all His attention is on me. Knowing that enables me to feel it. A powerful whisper. Then a wordless sense of all the Scripture passages that move me, gathered together in His gaze.

How many mistakenly come to ask Jesus for guidance and hear nothing because they have not heard what He has said already in scripture. “We played the flute and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn,” and again, “If you had believed Moses, you would believe me now.”

How to encourage a hard heart to hear and to love? Maybe some do not want to hear because they want only a relationship with God on their terms. Can we accept a relationship with Him on His terms?

If He seems silent, let us have ready at hand his very words of love, encouragement, and hope—ancient words in scripture that he speaks to us now—he who is outside of time.

(Mrs. Rose Folsom, OP, Pius V Fraternity, Cantonville, MD, excerpted from Godhead Here in Hiding  Whom I Do Adore - Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration)

 

Monday Musings - Listen While You Still Can Hear

 

Eucharistic Reflection - A Place in the Heart

[What follows is one of the 175 Eucharistic Reflections in Godhead Here In Hiding Whom I Do Adore - Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration  that will grab your heart and stir your soul.] 

"There is a place in the human heart that can only be filled by You, Lord. Try as we might to fill that space with glittery goods or flatterers, it remains nothing but a vacant apartment, an echo chamber, without You.  It is a place at the core of my being; I am empty, lonely, without You there.

At Adoration, everything changes. If I let You in, You fill that insatiable yearning place.  You melt my iciness; my heart begins to glow.  In a mystical moment, I am warmed and satisfied in a way both quieting and yet passionate.

Adoration is my private door that I can open to you. Immediately, You sweetly and lovingly permeate every corner of my emptiness.  By a treasured grace, I learned of this door as a child.  In my long ago, my parents took my hand leading me regularly to Adoration in a beautiful, hushed church in Manhattan. There You were, on the altar, in the gilded monstrance, candles casting flickering shadows across Your gaze. Even then, I was struck by Your beauty and the mystery to be explored at each visit.  I wanted to visit You often so no one would put You back in the Tabernacle where You yearned for visitors.

You gave me two joyful parents whose love for You was clear.  At Adoration, they never tried to keep me entertained, never stuffed crayons into my hands, never gave me childish books to distract me from you. Instead, they would whisper the amazing story of Your Love. Each visit with You became an adventure.  “Talk to Jesus, dear,” they would say.  “He loves you so much, and He wants to take you by the hand on a great happy journey filled with beautiful flowers and laughter.  Jesus will teach you to make those flowers into a crown for our heavenly Mother.  He will take you to His sweet Father, Our Father, who loves you more than you can imagine. Later, on the way home, tell us about all the places where Jesus takes you.”   And I did.

Even then, Adoration was a safe place to open the door of my heart to Jesus so neither of us would be lonely. Jesus would fill my emptiness, stir my deepest longings, and instill a holy curiosity.  If I grew tired, my parents were never angry; they would hold me and tell me: “That’s all right honey; just sleep in the arms of Jesus.”  Ever since, what peaceful and stirring communion with You I experience at Adoration. 

So, from an early age, I learned of the adventure of seeking out Your presence.  I knew You were wildly happy to see me.  My heart is still filled with awesome anticipation as I enter a church where You wait for me.  You yearn for me, me! In each visit, You take me to beautiful and mysterious places paradoxically of both adventure and protection. There is an anticipatory joy knowing I am about to be led further into your heart, Jesus, and deeper into the mystery of the family communion which You share with Our Father and the Holy Spirit. Trinitarian Love is never just transactional; it is participatory and mutual.

Oh Jesus, across the globe, there are so many who yearn to keep You company in Adoration but there are no churches.  We have so many places to adore You within a few miles of home or work; yet few come to keep You company, to console You, to enter into that dialogue of the greatest love story ever told.

If only others knew the places we travel together in that sacred chamber of the heart.  I never tire of this exploration, though on some days, I fear I will never be worthy of this shared journey.  Then You look at me with Your piercing eyes of purest mercy, and in that gaze I know I can do all things in You.  Sometimes You have me wait for answers, seeking to tame my impatience.  “Not yet, not yet, my dear one.  Give Me your freedom. Wait until the time to know more has come. “Trust Me.”  And how can I not trust You, Lord?  I have been created out of dust; yet, despite my insignificance, I have been created out of Love, for Love.  Born with enslaving weights of original sin, You free me. In Your Presence, I see the promise of becoming all I can be through Your grace.

Monday Musings - The Holy Hour

 (Sources: GabiAfterHours and Apostolate of Eucharistic Adoration

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 30, 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. 

St. John of the Cross

"What more do you want, o soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfactions, fullness and kingdom - your Beloved Whom you desire and seek? Be joyful and gladdened in your interior recollection with Him, for you have Him so close to you. Desire Him there, adore Him there. Do not go in pursuit of Him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and wearied thereby, and you shall not find Him, nor enjoy Him more securely, nor sooner, nor more intimately than by seeking Him within you."

(From Spiritual Canticle)

Thomas a Kempis "You must first have peace in your own soul before you can make peace between other people. Peaceable people accomplish more good than learned people do. Those who are passionate often can turn good into evil and readily believe the worst. But those who are honest and peaceful turn all things to good and are suspicious of no one. ... It is no test of virtue to be on good terms with easy-going people, for they are always well liked. And, of course, all of us want to live in peace and prefer those who agree with us. But the real test of virtue and deserving of praise is to live at peace with the perverse, or the aggressive and those who contradict us, for this needs a great grace. ... in this mortal life, our peace consists in the humble bearing of suffering and contradictions, not in being free of them, for we cannot live in this world without adversity. Those who can best suffer will enjoy the most peace, for such persons are masters of themselves, lords of the world, with Christ for their friend, and heaven as their reward."                                      (From Imitation of Christ)

St. Lawrence Justinian

"The Mass is the most excellent, the most holy, the most acceptable to God and useful to us, that can be imagined. And so,  while it is going on, the angels assist in crowds, with bare feet, with earnest eyes, with downcast brows, with great silence, with incredible amazement and veneration. With what purity, attention, devotion and reverence, then, ought the priest to celebrate it?"

(From A Year With The Saints)