Pondering Tidbits of Truth - October 27, 2022

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 Marie Vianney

"I can't stop praying for poor sinners who are on the road to hell. If they come to die in that state, they will be lost for all eternity. What a pity! We have to pray for sinners! Praying for sinners is the most beautiful and useful of prayers because the just are on the way to heaven, the souls of purgatory are sure to enter there, but the poor sinners will be lost forever. All devotions are good but there is no better one than such prayer for sinners."

(From I Thirst For Your Love)

 

Alexander de Rouville 

My child, God will not allow you to be tempted, tested or tormented beyond your strength. His help will always be equal to the trial He sends. 

Give heed to His grace, for it already speaks to you, and respond to His inspirations. If God has more crosses in store for someone, He gives greater graces that the person may bear them.

Crosses are the most precious gifts God can give His creature; and the creature's acceptance of them is the most pleasing sacrifice it can offer its Creator. 

If the crosses He intends for you are heavy, that means He has great plans for your sanctification. Do you want to prevent those divine plans being fulfilled?

Your disturbance and fears will not take the crosses from you, whatever you do; you must carry them. What, then, is the wiser thing for you to do?

It is to submit, my child, to all that God bids you do. You must say: The Lord is the master; let Him do with me as He thinks best 9cf. Luke 1:38).

Then you will see God moved by your submission; faithful to His promises, He will make lighter than you thought possible the crosses which from a distance seemed so heavy. He will make them so light that you will say: Just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so too, through Christ, do we receive consolation in equal measure (2 Cor 1:5).

(From The Imitation of Mary)

 

 

Sister Lucia of Fatima

"Since we all need to pray, God asks of us, as a kind of daily installment, a prayer which is within our reach: the Rosary, which can be recited either in common or in private, either in church in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament or at home, either with the rest of the family or alone, either when traveling or while walking quietly in the fields. A mother of a family can say the Rosary while she rocks her baby’s cradle or does the housework. Our day has 24 hours in it. It is not asking a great deal to set aside a quarter of an hour for the spiritual life, for our intimate and familiar converse with God."

(From Daily Catholic Wisdom)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 19, 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.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

St. Francis de Sales

“Kiss frequently the crosses which the Lord sends you, and with all your heart, without regarding of what sort they may be; for the more vile and mean they are, the more they deserve their name. The merit of crosses does not consist in their weight, but in the manner in which they are borne…” 

(From A Year With The Saints - - A Virtue For Every Month of The Year)

Monday Musings - Crosses or Toothpicks

[The end of the Church's liturgical year seems like a good time to revisit an earlier post which also is a chapter in my book, Fleeting Glimpses of the Silly, Sentimental and Sublime.]

Let me repeat some obvious truths. God is more powerful than any of us. He draws each of us to Himself. He wants to excite our hearts. He longs to fill our minds and souls with the Truth. He desires that we yield ourselves totally to His will. We are often reluctant to do so because we know we may be mocked, laughed at and persecuted. 

In truth, our fidelity to God and His Word may bring us pain and suffering. It is so difficult to follow Him. At times we don’t want to do as He asks. What He wants from us sometimes seems too painful, too difficult, and too burdensome. We want to flee and hide from Him.  But we can’t. He is everywhere. He has given us Himself.  Our salvation and that of others hinges on our sharing and living this Truth. So we must go on - imperfectly and inconstantly no doubt - but we must go on, trusting that God will be at our side.

Crosses or Toothpicks?

Let me repeat some obvious truths. God is more powerful than any of us. He draws each of us to Himself. He wants to excite our hearts. He longs to fill our minds and souls with the Truth. He desires that we yield ourselves totally to His will. We are often reluctant to do so because we know we may be mocked, laughed at and persecuted. In truth, our fidelity to God and His Word may bring us pain and suffering. It is so difficult to follow Him. At times we don’t want to do as He asks. What He wants from us sometimes seems too painful, too difficult, and too burdensome. We want to flee and hide from Him.  But we can’t. He is everywhere. He has given us Himself.  Our salvation and that of others hinges on our sharing and living this Truth. So we must go on - imperfectly and inconstantly no doubt - but we must go on, trusting that God will be at our side.

One of the reasons we don’t always trust Him is our failure to understand the necessity and value of the suffering He asks of us.  In our current world, many of us do everything we can to avoid suffering. We see little meaning in it. Like Peter’s initial reaction, we often scold or mock those who talk of it or seek it. We look at suffering as men do not as God does. What reluctant and unwilling cross bearers many of us have been! But Jesus lets us know in today’s Gospel that we can not be His followers if we do not take up our crosses and follow Him.

So what are we reluctant cross bearers to do? Perhaps these words of St. Francis de Sales will help:

“The Everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His innermost heart. This cross He now sends you is considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands, to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His Holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with His consolation, taken one last look at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God. ”

By taking these words to heart, we might recognize some of the crosses we most dread to carry are no more than toothpicks and, by God’s grace, no cross He sends will ever be too heavy.