Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

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. Patrick Stewart     “…the most important thing about the duty of the moment is this: the duty of the moment is where we meet Christ. He’s waiting for us in the duty of the moment, in His will for us. Where am I supposed to be  now ? What am I supposed to be doing  now ? That’s where Christ is. That’s where He is waiting for me. Not in the chapel. Of course, He’s in the chapel, but if I’m supposed to be chopping wood right now, he’s not in the chapel waiting for me. He’s at the woodpile. If I’m supposed to be cleaning the dorm, that’s where He is waiting for me. Where am I going to meet my Beloved? Wherever I am supposed to be. It’s so simple. And so wonderful.”  (From the July-August 2022 issue of  Restoration , the monthly newspaper of the Madonna House Apostolate ( https://www.madonnahouse.org ).   Willia...

 

( Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) A few nights ago, several of us got together online to engage in an informal Lectio Divina exercise. Let me share a bit of that experience with you. The moderator chose the well-known story of the Samaritan woman at the well - a passage most of us have read many times (see John:4:7-26).   The exercise prompted these thoughts: “How often I have been unwilling to come to the well, to ask for the spiritual nourishment I so deeply need. How foolish it would be for me to now offer Jesus excuses as to why I had not come to Him. He knows! I was afraid to ask for that living water – afraid I would be unwilling to drink the cup He would give me. For a fleeting second, I then recalled the few times in my life where I did drink gluttonously of that living water and relived the amazing things God did in, and through me, when I simply did as He had asked.” Later in the session, our spiritual adviser emphasized that our Lord never seeks or desir...

 

 

  My all time favorite one sentence sermon by Father Francis Hudson, S.C.J.   : What if God loved you, only as much as you loved Him? Now there is some meat to ponder!

"Smile upon me, face of God, and know You Christ, Love Incarnate, are loved by my puny heart. Make my will show that love in all circumstances that present themselves after I depart from You in this Holy Tabernacle. Know that I long for eternity but willingly and patiently wait and finish the earthly work You have given me. I am grateful for Your unrelenting excessive Trinitarian love for us all. I am grateful for Your excessive forgiveness for us all. I continue to be fascinated by the orderliness of Your creation and by your enduring patience with all as the future unfolds and races toward the end of time. I am sorry that it took me so long to understand the richness before me in Jesus Christ, the God-man. I pray that my offspring will be quicker to comprehend the gift of Love Incarnate in Christ. Smile on me, face of God. When I am able to see Your Face in eternal life, I think I will still keep my head bowed. Proximity to Love Incarnate will be enough for me....

"It is nightfall...One by one, the lights go out in the dwellings of men...Millions of stars twinkle in the vast vault of heaven...But on earth, one only star still glimmers — the tiny star of light in the sanctuary lamp. Its feeble rays struggle through the windows of a little church...it moves unsteadily to and fro...until it reaches you...Do you not see it? Jesus sends it to tell you that He never rests, that day and night, year in and year out, His heart is busy loving you, and the poor, and the unhappy — yes, even those who crucify Him."  (From Eucharistic Whisperings - Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.)

 

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 .       Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) "God’s love can only unleash its power when it is allowed to change us from within. We have to let it break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires."  (From Signs of New Life: Homilies on the Church’s Sacraments)     St. Anthony Mary Claret  "...the most important point on which depends your whole welfare in the spiritual life: this point is that one must tread in the footsteps which Jesus Christ left before us, and keeping Him faithful company, patiently bear the desolation and affliction in one’s spirit, pain and hardships in one’s body, outrages, injuries, ill-will and persecution from wha...