Monday Musings - May We Always Remember

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - August 23, 2018

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

"Christian prayer is above all about love, and therefore first and foremost it is about learning to love a person. Just as in human love, the more you love and are loved by another, then the more you forget yourself. The joy that you experience is the result or the by-product of loving and being loved. If you seek it for itself, you will lose it, if you find it in the first place. The moment that love is turned into its counterfeit is the moment when selfishness desecrates the only thing that makes life worth living. Christian prayer begins by getting to know Jesus Christ, as the first disciples came to know him, and love him, and then through his love, entered into him."

(From Wisdom of Christian Mystics - How To Pray The Christian Way)

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 Blaise Pascal

"There are only two kids of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think that they are righteous."

(From Pensees)

St. Vincent Ferrer

“Make it your constant effort to mortify and trample underfoot your own will, to such a degree as not to satisfy it in anything if it be possible. Be careful, therefore, to desire and rejoice that it may be often crossed; and when you see anyone oppose it either in temporal or spiritual things, follow his will rather than your own, if only his be good, even though your own be better.”

(From A Treatise on the Spiritual Life)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - January 4, 2018

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.

Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

A preacher endowed with learning but of only mediocre piety may be able to paint a picture of Christian Truth that will stir souls, bring them a little closer to God, even increase their faith. But if one is to fill souls with the life-giving savor of virtue, he must first have tasted the true spirit of the Gospel and made it enter into the substance of his own life by means of mental prayer. 

(From The Soul of the Apostolate) 

Not There Yet

In order to avoid spiritual complacency, we need periodic reminders from the spiritual masters of years gone by to keep us on the right track:

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - May 22, 2014

((Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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. Bernard

"If we shall have to account for idle words, consider how rigorously we shall be judged for lying, sharp and stinging, insulting and derisive, presumptuous, unbecoming, flattering, complaining or slanderous words! How true is the statement that in much speaking sin is unavoidable!"

(As quoted by Mother Julienne Morrell, O.P. in A Treatise on the Spiritual Life)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - May 8, 2014

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

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. Francis de Sales

"However small the sins that you may confess may be, always have sincere sorrow for them, together with a firm resolution to correct them in the future. Many who confess their venial sins out of custom and concern for order, but without thought of amendment, remain burdened with them for their whole lives and thus lose many spiritual benefits and advantages."

(From Introduction to the Devout Life)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 24, 2014

((Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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.

Blessed John Paul II

"...the numbing of conscience, their indifference to good and evil, their deviations, are a great threat for man. Indirectly, they are also a great threat for society, because in the the last analysis the level of morality of society depends on the human conscience."

(Angelus, March 15, 1981)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 10, 2014

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. Thomas Aquinas, O.P.

"Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so to pass on what one has contemplated is better than to merely contemplate."

(From Summa Theologica, II— II, 188)

Mother Julienne Morrell, O.P.

"He is not poor who never lacks anything but possesses an ample supply of everything. If we wish to be truly poor in spirit, we must be poor in fact, contenting ourselves, as do the poor, with having what is strictly necessary in regard to food, drink, clothes and bedding, neither seeking nor desiring anything superfluous but rather rejoicing when we lack for anything and are thereby enabled to practice this very precious virtue of poverty of spirit. "

(From Commentary, Chapter 1, A Treatise on The Spiritual Life by St. Vincent Ferrer)

Johann Tauler, O.P.

"Our Lord said one thing is necessary. What is this thing, which is so necessary? It is that you should know that you are nothing, That is what you have, that is what you are, and that is who you are of yourself: nothing."

(From Spiritual Conferences)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 3, 2013

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. Vincent Ferrer 

"...for when the soul is completely occupied by charity there is no longer any room in her for vanity. All that she thinks, says and does is inspired by charity...vanity finds no place in a heart filled with charity. What concern can he still have for temporal advantages, since he looks upon them as refuse? How can the desire for praise enter his heart, when he see himself before God as a vile dunghill, as a miserable sinner inclined toward every kind of sin and who would commit them all, did not the hand of the Creator constantly support him? How can he take pride in any good work when he sees clearer than daylight that he could do no  good if divine power did not impel him and constrain him, so to speak, at every moment?. How can he attribute anything whatever to himself when he has experienced not a hundred but a thousand times, his impotence do a do any good work, great or small..."

(From A Treatise On the Spiritual Life)

 

St. Francis de Sales

 "How offensive to God are rash judgments. The judgments of the children of men are rash because they are not the judges of one another, and when they pass judgment on others they usurp the office of our Lord. They are rash because the principal malice of sin depends on the intention and counsel of the heart, and to us they are 'the hidden things of darkness.' They are rash because every man has enough on which he ought to judge himself without taking it upon him to judge his neighbor. To avoid future judgment it is equally necessary both to refrain from judging others and to judge ourselves, Just as our Lord forbids the one, so also the apostle enjoins the other for he says: 'If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.' But, O God, how differently do we act! By judging our neighbor on every occasion we never stop doing what is forbidden and we never do what is imposed on us, namely, judge ourselves." 

(From Introduction to the Devout Life)

 

St. Catherine of Siena

“It [self-love] has poisoned the whole world and the mystical body of Holy Church and through it the garden of my spouse has run to seed and given birth to putrid flowers.”

(From The Dialogue)