Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

"The more food is chewed the more it loses of its former nature. Dear child, if you want to be drawn into and transformed into God, you must lose your former nature, yourself, your self-love, your absorption and satisfaction in your own activity, in fact every form of self-obsession.  You must be prepared for all of this. ‘Two lives and two forms cannot exist together in one being’; if heat is to enter, cold must of necessity go out; and if God is to enter, the creature’s love of itself and clinging to itself must go out. If God is really to perform His works in you, you must be purely passive. All your powers must quite abandon their own activities and preoccupations and must be kept utterly free of yourself. You must deny all your own powers and be content to be purely and entirely nothing.   The more the depths of your soul are emptied of all that is yourself, the truer and more essential will your union with God be. This selflessness was never more purely and truly see...

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. ...

“When the fire of God's love has cleansed a man of all unlikeness to God, and such a man receives the Blessed Sacrament, he loses himself in God’s divinity. This is what our Lord told St. Augustine: “I am the food for grown men. Grow and feed on Me. Instead of transforming Me into yourself, you will be transformed into Me.” But, children, before this can happen your natures have to die many a death and we must travel along many a rough and unknown path, along which God draws us, teaching us to die.