Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Another week and an additional opportunity to t hank Elizabeth Riordan at  Theology Is A Verb  and Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You for  hosting Catholic bloggers at  Worth   Revisiting . We appreciate sharing our work with them and their readers each week.  Stop by for a visit now .   Here is my contribution, soon to be included in Volume 5 of my book series entitled Pondering Tidbits of Truth. Pondering Tidbits of Truth (Originally published 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...

(St. Joseph's Parish, Oneida, NY) "If the Blessed Sacrament is Jesus all for us, is it not the most legitimate of conclusions that we should be all for Him? We should be all for Jesus, if Jesus is our all. And what does this mean? Surely, among other things, that the Blessed Sacrament should be to us just the single overpowering fact of the world. Our hands hold Him; our words make Him; our tongue rests Him; our body compasses Him; our souls feel Him; our flesh feeds upon Him, Him, the Infinite, the Incomprehensible, the Immense, the Eternal. Must not all life be looked at in this light, just as the whole Church lies in this light and has no other?" (The Blessed Sacrament , by Fr. Frederick Faber)

(Source: Wikimedia Commons ) “…the Blessed Sacrament is the magnet of souls. There is a mutual attraction between Jesus and the souls of men. Mary drew Him down from heaven. Our nature attracted Him rather than the nature of angels. Our misery caused Him to stoop to our lowness. Even our sins had a sort of attraction for the abundance of His mercy and the predilection of His grace. Our repentance wins Him to us. Our love makes earth a paradise to Him; and our souls lure Him as gold lures the miser, with irresistible fascination. This is the attraction on our side. On the other hand, He draws us to Himself by grace, by example, by power, by lovingness, by beauty, by pardon, and above all by the Blessed Sac­rament. Every one who has had anything to do with ministering to souls has seen the power which Jesus has.” (Father Frederick Faber from The Blessed Sacrament )

  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.         Mary Comm “We (the church) have been an unintentional accomplice to the millions of lives lost and to the multiplied millions of lives devastated by abortion. We didn’t want them to abort. We didn’t mean for them to abort. But, because of our lack of knowledge, because of our fear, we have continued to stand by and do nothing. We, God’s hands and feet in this dark and hurting world, have been unintentional, unknowledgeable accomplices, but an accomplice nonetheless.”                                          ( From In Our Midst Ministries, Inc.)     Dietrich Bonhoeffer “In New York,...

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. Catherine of Siena "We've had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence." Father Frederick Faber If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God's truth, which is the worst of all impurities. Yet how light we make of it! We look at it and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it and have no fear. We see it touch holy th...