Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

" O dearest Jesus, I am so very grateful for the times that I spend with You in Adoration. You have chosen to be a prisoner of the tabernacle for my sake, but You are not restrained there. Whether I kneel or sit, You are so very close to me, indeed, right by my side. I feel Your Presence with me. I am so blessed to have these encounters with You. What a privilege it is for me! Then I remember that so many of Your flock do not realize that You are waiting for this intimacy with them. Please, Lord, Your world needs You. Your people need You desperately. Many are lost and hurting. Good Shepherd, many have wandered from the fold, caught up in the distractions of the world. Let Your children experience Your Presence in their lives. Call them back home. Heal them in the manner that they need to be healed. Restore them to right relationship with You. Advent is a season of joyful anticipation of Your coming, and I pause then to reflect on Your three-fold coming that we celebrate. I ca...

"Home... That’s the word that the Lord lays on my heart when I walk into the Adoration Chapel. But it wasn’t always that way. For a couple of years, I went to Adoration, to beg, borrow, plead, and to try and 'make a deal' with God; what I’d do for Him, if He’d only do what I wanted for me. But that isn’t how God works. He loves us too much to give us what we 'want,' instead, in His Love for us, He gives us what we 'need.' And often times in my life, well, in my 'old' life, those two things were rarely the same. And so, I literally spent hundreds of hours in Adoration, trying to 'convince' God that I knew better. But today, I thank God without ceasing for loving me too much to give me what I 'thought' was best, instead; because of His love for me, He chose to give me more than I ever could have imagined or even conceived of asking Him for. And since He’s given these things to me, has my life smoothed out and gotten happy, or fun, or e...

    Oh, my dear silent One. Let me hear Your voice again. Let me rest my head so close on Your heart that I may HEAR the sound of Your heartbeat. Let it lull me to sleep, the sleep of the saints who rest in the peace that transcends understanding.   Let the sound of Your heart then move me to humility, obedience, charity. You sought the Lowest place. Here I am, may you once again reach down to me in mercy.   Move my heart from fear to trust, to transformation, to the union You desire with me.   Let me meet Your gaze with mine that I may SEE Your tender wounded heart and it’ transforming love for me. In my weakness Let me Adore this Sacred Heart in union with Mary and the Saints.   Let the sight of the thorns that surround Your heart, lead me to take but one and replace it with a Rose of Sacrifice.   With a Rose of Sacrifice, a sacrifice of a heart content with the prayer and trials You want to give me;...

 

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. Father Richard D. Breton "The Eucharist...challenges us to ask how we are giving ourselves to others. A Catholic cannot receive the Body of Christ and then refuse to become a gift to his family, his parish, his neighbor or the person who needs mercy. The Eucharist sends us forth. We come to the altar empty. We receive Christ. And we are sent back into the world to bring Christ with us. This is why Eucharistic devotion cannot end when Mass ends. The Church gives us the beautiful gift of Eucharistic adoration because the Eucharistic Lord remains with us. The tabernacle is not a decorative piece of furniture. It is a place of encounter. Jesus is there, waiting quietly and patiently for us." (From The Eucharist: When Heaven Comes Down to Earth , published in the September 17, 2026 issue of The Wanderer ) Dorothy Day, Servant of God "When ...

 

[The following is just one of 175 reflections on the Eucharist that are bound to touch your heart and stir your soul. You will find all of them in Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore - Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharisitc Adoration .] "The first time I witnessed people adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, was because I showed up for a novena where there just so happened to be Exposition - Jesus, in the Eucharist on the Altar, in the Monstrance. I did not know what to do or what it was. I found myself asking the question, “What is this?” I was amazed and I knew in my heart it was extraordinary, but I did not know what the monstrance was etc. I asked God to help me to pray and to understand. Later, I realized the real question to ask is “Who is this?” That was a long time ago. I now attend at least one hour of Eucharistic Adoration weekly and sometimes I ask questions but more often I hear the questions being asked by Jesus left alone on the Altar: “Who do you say that I ...

 

 

  “Faith in the Eucharist opens out the whole invisible world to us. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is nothing less than radiation therapy for our cancer of the eyes.  When we gaze upon the Eucharist the healing graces that come from it are the same as the grace that Jesus unleashed upon all of those blind men He healed in the Gospels.  It is the same healing, the same mercy, the same compassion, the same transformation that He offers to us in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. ‘Do this in memory of Me.’ … the Eucharist gives us a deep gaze into the invisible world and we can trust God Who has told us it is true.”  (Monsignor James Shea at the Eucharistic Conference, Fargo, ND, September 2022, as posted on Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration,com)   ·          

"Certainly, I think that if we were to approach the most Blessed Sacrament with great faith and love, once would be enough to make us rich. How much richer from approaching so many of times as we do. The trouble is we do so out of routine and it shows.” St. Teresa of Avila

"In our self-center ed culture and classic American emphasis on work, we often feel we have to accomplish something during our times of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. We rate our experience by how 'good' our prayer was, how heartfelt our devotion was, or how focused we could remain. Yet prayer and contemplation are fundamentally God's work, in which we are invited to participate. We need only to give Him the opening, and He will do the rest. By coming to adoration, we are handing Him the keys to our hearts, allowing the rays of His love and grace to bathe our souls in the light of His Presence, as the rays of the sun bathe our bodies in light. If we can take the time to pull away from the busyness and distractions of life and just sit at His feet, He will lead us."   (From Manual for Eucharistic Adoration -  Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration )

"There are some people who go to Holy Communion to gain the esteem of the world. It avails them nothing. Others go out of habit. Poor Communions, they have not the right intention. Go to Communion to obey Jesus Christ, who has commanded you to do so, under pain of not having eternal life. Go to Communion to obtain the graces that you need, humility, patience, purity. Go to the Holy Table to unite yourself to Jesus Christ so that He will make of you other Christ’s, which happens to those who receive Him worthily. When you go to Holy Communion you should always have an intention, and say when about to receive the Body of Our Lord: 'O my good Father, who art in heaven, I offer you, at this moment, your dear Son, such as He was when He was taken down from the Cross, and laid in the arms of the Holy Virgin, and as she offered Him to You in sacrifice for us. I offer Him to You by the hands of Mary, to obtain such or such graces, faith, charity, humility.'  My children, listen we...

(Image Source: Hands At Mass ) Oh, how beautiful will be a soul that has often and worthily received the good God! It will be united to the soul of Our Lord. Then it will enjoy a happiness pure and perfect. It will shine like a beautiful diamond, because God will be reflected in it.  When the soul of a Christian who has received Our Lord enters Paradise, it adds to the joy of heaven. The Angels and the Queen of Angels come to meet it because they recognize the Son of God in this soul. Those who receive. Holy Communion at the moment of death are very fortunate. At the particular judgment which takes place immediately after death God the Father sees His Son in them! He cannot condemn them, Oh! no. (From The Eucharistic Reflections of the Cure of Ars )

It [Holy Communion] repairs the strength and appeases the hunger of the soul, and enables it to carry out joyfully and with fervor all the duties of the Christian life. When you have had the happiness of receiving the good God, you feel, for some time, a joy and comfort in your heart. Pure souls are always in that state, this union is their strength and their happiness.  Oh! how sweet is this life of union with the good God! It is heaven on earth. There are no more troubles, no longer any crosses! Without the Blessed Eucharist there would no longer be any happiness in this world, life would be unbearable. When we receive Holy Communion we receive our joy and all our good... Oh! if you knew how this heavenly Bread sweetens the sorrows of life! Oh! If once you had tasted how kind and generous Jesus Christ is to those who receive Him in Holy Communion! . . . Go, my children, eat this Bread of the strong and you will return filled with joy and courage, you will desire more sufferings, ...

 

"It is for us that...our divine Savior has remained day and night on our altars, that we may have recourse to Him in all our needs; and nothing so much afflicts His divine Heart as our ingratitude for such a favor, and our neglect to visit Him and ask His blessing. If we knew how profitable those visits are, we should be constantly prostrate before the altar. The Saints understood this truth; they knew that Jesus Christ is the source of all grace, and whenever they encountered any difficulty or wished to obtain any particular favor, they ran to Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.  St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis Regis and others spent whole hours during the day and, frequently, a great part of the night at the foot of the altar; it was in these long interviews with Jesus Christ that they advanced the good works they had in hand, converted sinners, and obtained success in all their undertakings for the glory of God and their own sanctification." (Blessed J. B. Marcellin Cha...

 

(Image Source: Hands at Mass ) "A Christian on leaving the holy place moved by the holy thoughts that have been aroused in him by the sight of the ceremonies he has seen, and the prayers that he has said, ought to say to himself: 'I have just come from assisting at Holy Mass, a God has immolated Himself for me; He has shed His Blood for the salvation of our souls; what more could He do?'  Oh! how miserable I am, I who for so many years have refused Him my heart, which He has created for Himself and which He asks of me only in order to make it happy. I have just celebrated the praises of God with this same mouth that I had often sullied by all sorts of sins. Oh! my God, shall I always then beg from creatures the peace they are powerless to give me! My tongue shall it serve sometimes to praise You, sometimes to mispraise You.  No, Lord, I now wish only to bless and to love You.  Any Christian who has not, in going over these thoughts in his heart, assisted at the Holy Mass ...