Eucharistic Reflection - Give Him Five!

"There are 1440 minutes in each day. Can you give God just five of them?

Stop in and see Him! He's waiting for your visit."

Monday Musings - In Thanksgiving for our Almighty, Loving and Merciful God!

On November 6th my wife was called out to emergency “grandma” duty – something she enjoys and relishes. I headed for daily Mass without her. This rarely occurs. We share that blessing together. On this day, she needed to lend a helping hand.

As I started to leave the house, I remembered to go back and get my rosary (which I seldom  leave home without). This day I was also “prompted” to pick up a bottle of holy water and return that to our vehicle.

When Lonnie had completed her duties as the world’s number one mema, she returned home. We left for our favorite convenience store for two coffees, intending to take our treasured beverages to our dining room table – something we do most days since our retirement so many years ago.

I was anxious to hear how “Mema” saved the day.

We did not make it home. Some soul decided to ignore a stop sign and totaled our car. Unfortunately, we seventy-six year old fossils were still in it.

My wife and I were in shock and pain but alert enough to immediately thank God that we were alive. You can bet my rosary was put to overtime use during the nine hours we painfully awaited treatment and cat-scan results in the emergency room at our local hospital.

Pictures are often worth more than a thousand words. Take a gander at these two.

 

                                                    

Then join us in giving thanks to an Almighty and Loving God for this miracle of mercy and for those who prayerfully interceded on our behalf. 

Eucharistic Adoration - The Power Hour

[Excerpted from Godhead Here In Hiding Whom I Do Adore - Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration]

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

A promise of faith, hope, and love in this valley of tears, trials and strife. Where can we find our dear Lord Himself? Catholic tabernacles for sure offer Him Whom we seek. But a Holy Hour encounter in Eucharistic Adoration is where He awaits our visit so meek.

We cannot touch, hear or carry on a face-to-face conversation with the God Whom we visually do not see. Yet, we sit quietly and gaze on this Treasure of ours as He speaks to our souls, a comfort for me. With burdens of sin, guilt, sorrow, fear and pain, we believe and adore; we pray not in vain.

Help us, dear Lord, to find answers and peace as we sort out the trials of our earthly place. I don’t fully comprehend—don’t know if I ever will —The Gift resting before me in the Monstrance so bright. My worries and problems relax at the sight and my soul finds peace in that quiet light.

The answers are not always the ones I want to hear. However, time will show them to be more than true. Divine Providence it seems is always right. So, trust in His Will and His love for you. Come to Me all you who are burdened. I will give you rest.

Spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration—one with One. Lay everything before Him. Hold nothing back. Conclude your prayer in peace. Thy Will be done. Amen.

Rosemary Baunach, St. Martin de Porres Fraternity, New Hope, KY

Monday Musings - Jesus Standing Before Us

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 21, 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.

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)    Dom Lorenzo Scupoli  "No creature ever loved Jesus Christ more ardently, nor showed more perfect submission to His will, than Mary, His mother. If then, this Savior, immolated for us sinners, gave His mother to us, an advocate and intercessor for all time, she cannot but comply with His request, and will not refuse us her assistance. Let us, then, not hesitate to implore her pity; let us have recourse to her with great confidence in all our necessities, as she is an inexhaustible source of blessing, bestowing her favors in proportion to the confidence placed in her."  (An excerpt from The Spiritual Combat and A Treatise on Peace of Soul)

Rev. D. Chisholm

“If Christians only knew the immense treasure they possessed in the Holy Eucharist, and all they could obtain by going to Holy Communion, their joy would be so great that earth would be changed for them into Heaven itself; they would go in crowds to the Holy Table every day, and with hearts overflowing with love.”

 (From The Catechism in Examples)

 

 

 

Eucharistic Reflection - Treasure The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

"… I will treasure more than anything else the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is often said that it is the Mass that matters. This means that Mass is the most important thing in the world. It is very true. But I really think that sanctifying grace matters most of all. Still, where do I get that from if not through the Sacrifice of the Cross which is continued in the Sacrifice of the Mass. I am afraid.  I do not think as highly of Holy Mass as I should. And this reminds me of a story I have often read about the Sacred linen in Greenland. It was in the sixteenth century. There had been a religious persecution in the island and all priests had been killed or driven out, so that for fifty years there was no Mass at all in Greenland.

After fifty years, there were still some scattered Catholics left. They used to meet every year for a Christmas celebration in a lonely house almost covered by snow. On one such night they all gathered together in the house. First, they said some prayers. Then an old man arose, went to a bureau, and took from it what used to be a white cloth, like a big, square napkin. Now it was yellow with age and tattered. It was a corporal, that linen cloth on which, during Holy Mass, rest the Body and Blood of Christ. The old man said: ‘Brethren, fifty years ago Mass was last said in this country. I served that last Mass. Let us kneel down and thank God for this precious relic, on which rested the Body and Blood of Jesus. And let us pray that God may send us priests to offer the Holy Sacrifice in our midst again.’

Tears streamed from all eyes as they knelt to pray. And all around me there are now so many churches and so many Masses are being offered. I do not think I value enough the chances that I have to assist at Holy Mass. Where there is a persecution and hearing Mass is forbidden under pain of torture or death, good Catholics nevertheless go to Mass, even if it is in caves under the ground.

Those good people in Greenland knelt down and thanked God for that precious Sacred linen. How happy and how devout they would have been if they could have bowed down before Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament! And I am often so careless and thoughtless in my genuflections and in my way of kneeling or sitting or standing in the presence of my Eucharistic Savior. And it seems that the more I have to do around the Blessed Sacrament, the more like a pagan I become."

 

(The Way to God - Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.)

 

 

Monday Musings - Do WE Also Make So Little of It?

(Image Source)

[Father Windrid Herbt, S.D.S.(1891- 1988), was a renown spiritual writer and  included the following story about St. Alexis in his most excellent book, The Way To God, copies of which are difficult to find.

I received permission to include this poignant tale in my book, Stirring Slumbering Souls - 250 Eucharistic Reflections.

This story was intended when Father first shared it and is still intended now, to challenge each us to take an honest look at our relationship with our Lord and Savior present among us.]

"I recall the strange and touching story of Saint Alexis. When he was young he left home and then, because God inspired him to do so, came back to the house of his parents in Rome dressed up like a poor and unknown beggar. There he lived in some miserable old corner of the house for seventeen years; and his parents never knew that it was he.

But when he died they found out. It seems he left a note or something telling them what he had done in penance for his sins, because God wanted him to. How that mother wept when she found out that the beggar was her son. She had missed him so much and had so longed to see him. In agony, she cried out: ‘0 Alexis, my son! My son Alexis! Had I only known it was you! How I would have loved you and enjoyed your company! Now, alas! it is too late.’ 

This is a sad story. But I am afraid that if I do not appreciate my Eucharistic Savior here on earth, where He is hidden away in  the  poor tabernacle, where  He is in my very midst and I do not seem to know Him, the time will come, after my death, when I will cry out, seeing His adorable beauty in the life to come: ‘0 Jesus, if I had only known it was You!  How I would have loved You, Jesus all beautiful!.  How I would have enjoyed Your company! Oh, if I had only known!’

But I do know.

Faith tells me.

And I make so little of it…"