Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

( (Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) 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 “I long to see you making your home in the cell of self-knowledge, so that you may attain perfect love, for I know that we cannot please our Creator unless we love him, because he is love and wants nothing but love. If we do know ourselves we find this love. Why? Because we see our own nothingness, that our very existence is ours by grace and not because we have a right to it, and every grace beyond our existence as well - it is all given to us with boundless love. Then we discover so much of God's goodness poured out on us that words cannot describe it. And once we see ourselves so loved by God, we cannot help loving him. And within ourselves we love God and our own ratio­nality, and hate the sensuality that would take inordi­nate pleasure in the world.” (From...

The refrains of O Come Let Us Adore Him reverberate through many of our Churches and communities this Advent Season. For many, this is the most joyful time of year, filled with hope and love and thoughts which go beyond oneself and which seek to touch the hearts of others. But is it an authentic Joy? Truth be told a sense of Joy is absent from so many of us during the rest of the year. We are called to be joyful people, EVERY DAY, regardless of the individual circumstances and daily struggles of our lives. Not easy to do admittedly. We can never be truly joyful if we rely solely on ourselves.