Monday Musings - You Have The Time

 

Monday Musings - To Be More Like You

“Lord, you know that I love You. But You also know that my love for You has not always been constant and unconditional.

I spend time each day in prayer but too often do so in a routine, haphazard, and inattentive manner - sometimes just to check “the prayer box off”. I rely too much on the words of others rather than those which have been birthed in my own heart.

You also know Lord that at times, I have acted in a manner inconsistent with my professed love for You and in ways that are inconsistent with what I profess to believe.

How many times Lord have you prompted me to do or not do something, to contact or assist someone – to love someone on Your behalf but I refused or failed to do so?

It is so easy Lord for me to mouth the words I Love You, but far more difficult to actually live out those words in my life. You loved me so much Lord that you died for me. No matter how many times I have sinned against You, You have always forgiven me when I sought your forgiveness in the confessional. Lord, I shudder when reflecting on how many times I could have gone to hell, but You withheld Your hand of justice and extended the arms of Your mercy.

Oh Lord, I've been reasonably faithful to a daily prayer routine for some time now, but many times that is all it is – routine. thoughtless and mechanical

“If you love Me,” You told St. Catherine of Siena, “you must love those who I have placed in your life, and treat them as you would treat Me.”

Teach me Lord how to truly love You and others, to treasure You and to be Christ-like at all times and under all circumstances. Take my words, Lord, and breathe life into them so that when people see me or hear me, they will actually see You and hear You.

 

Monday Musings - Jesus Standing Before Us

 

Monday Musings - How Christ-like Are You?

 

Monday Musings - The Essential Things We Must Do

 

Monday Musings - Pain and Sorrow Follow Love

As Only A Mother Can

(Originally posted on October 17, 2017)

While I was on retreat a few years ago at the Abbey of the Genesee, I paused (as I often do on my visits there) before the statue of our Blessed Mother which welcomes visitors to the monastery. 

It is a simple but beautiful image. I think you will agree.

On that day, as I prayerfully gazed into her eyes, these words came to me:

"Come closer my child. Draw near to me. I want to embrace and kiss you as only a Mother can."

What a gift to us "poor banished children of Eve"!

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - May 4, 2023

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

“To join two things together, there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.” 

(From thehookoffaith.com)

 

Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen 

“How God will judge my life I know not, but I trust he will see me with mercy and compassion. I am only certain there will be three surprises in Heaven. First of all, I will see some people whom I never expected to see. Second, there will be a number whom I expect who will not be there. And – even relying on God’s mercy – the biggest surprise of all may be that I will be there. When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. 1. As I see it. 2. As others see it. 3. As God sees it.”

 (From Treasures In Clay)

 

St. Josemaría Escrivá

"Going to Communion every day for so many years! Anybody else would be a saint by now", you told me, "and I … I’m always the same!" "Son," I replied, "keep up your daily Communion, and think: what would I be if I had not gone.”

(From The Way) 

Monday Musings - The Sweetest of All Messages

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 2, 2021

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.

 

 

Catherine Doherty de Heuck, Servant of God

"If you love Christ, if you enter His Heart, then you will find yourself in the loneliness of the garden, in the loneliness of all humanity. If you want to stay close to the Heart of Christ, then you have to go to where Jesus is - on the cross.

Christ left the other side of His cross open for you, so that you could hang there with Him, close to His Heart, for the sake of the world, loving all sinners, making your loneliness - Christ's loneliness - a prayer for all people."

(From In the Footprints of Loneliness)

 

Father Emile-Marie Briere

"No amount of  human appreciation, understanding or love can satisfy the human heart. We are made for God, for the Infinite, for a greater love affair than we can imagine.

God alone knows our name; He alone can know us completely. He alone can enter the enclosed garden. He alone - Lover, Gardener, Redeemer - can heal our deepest wounds by His secret grace and make us truly come alive.

Daily we make the grave mistake of hoping we will be fulfilled in other ways. We think we can find perfect peace and joy if only certain changes are made or happen.

We say to ourselves: 'Everything would be okay if only my husband showed greater appreciation...if only I had a better job...if only...'

As long as we really believe that all will be well 'if only' we haven't got the picture yet. As long as we strive to satisfy the immense longings of our hearts with anything less than God, our efforts are bound to be frustrated.

People can give us much, but they cannot give us everything. We need others, but they cannot fully satisfy us. They need us, but there are limits to what we can do for them.

As a matter of fact, true love, true communication, cannot take place unless each has filled his inner solitude with God - unless each seeks union with God as his basic purpose."

(From The Power of Love) 

 

  Catherine Doherty de Heuck, Servant of God

"What we need today is saints. Hundreds, thousands, millions more saints! All kinds of violence, hates and fears vanish like mist in the sun before saints, before men and women in love with God, men and women of sanctity.

Sanctity means much loving. That is what we have been created for - to love - to love our neighbor and, through him or her, to love God.

Loving is fun Loving is joy. Loving is peace. Loving means serving. Loving means forgetting self for others. Learn how to love, and all the rest will be added unto you.

We are almost beside ourselves today with fears. Our heads cannot rest anywhere, nor our hearts, nor our souls. We seek answers vainly in human solutions - political, economic, and ecological - knowing, even while we do all this, that we are shadow-boxing.

Nothing can save us except sanctity. That's why we need saints today. If St. Francis of Assisi had an atomic bomb, would anyone worry about it? No. Because being a saint, he loved much. And where love is, there cannot be fear or evil.

Ah, we need saints today! We need understanding, too, to realize that the greatest tragedy that can befall us is not to be saints."

(From the November 2021 issue of Restoration)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 10, 2021

 

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.

 

 

 

Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament

“Silence, love, and respect are needed, and without these three points you will learn nothing…Silence disposes you to listen. Love makes you embrace the instructions which God’s spirit gives you. And respect keeps you in a profound reverence for the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Consequently, be attentive to God who is present, with love and respect. Never forget these three points, which must never be separated from each other. For if you are attentive without love and respect, Jesus Christ’s words will not have the results they must have in you. If you are without attentiveness, you do not hear His voice. If you are without love, your action is without life or soul. Thus, love and respect are bounded inseparably to attention. This is the reason I have so often recommended loving attention to God who is present. Remember God with love and respect.

Therefore, be silent in your mind in order to hear God’s voice who speaks to souls in various ways: sometimes by distinct words, at other times by touches in the heart’s depth; sometimes by delicate invitations He makes felt in the apex of the soul, other times through His divine inspirations; sometimes by distinct words or actions, even outward, which we see or hear from others...And the great secret of the interior life is to listen well to these voices and to yield oneself to what they teach. It is also necessary to listen to His voice in afflictions, in insults, in contradictions, in sorrows, in disturbances…Voices, voices, voices everywhere, in heaven and on earth. An attentive soul listens only to the voices which invite it to love, adore and glorify the One who is. All these voices are calling you to see and to know God in all things, to make you worship His Holy hand which applies to you the cross, the nails, and the thorns, which tells you to suffer for pure love, which invites you to humble and reduce yourself to nothing beneath all creatures, which exhorts you to fidelity on all occasions.

 (From The Breviary of Fire)

 

Father Jacques Philippe

“…let us ask ourselves how we look upon others. Does our gaze, like God’s, give life, freedom, and encouragement; is it a look of hope? Or is it a look of judgment, condemnation, and constraint? A simple look can give life, but it can also give death. Let us ask for the grace to see each person with the eyes of Jesus, so that our eyes communicate life and hope to those we encounter.

 (From Fire & Light – Learning to Receive the Gift of God)

 

 St. Leonard of Port Maurice

“Now, tell me whether, when you enter church to hear Mass, you thoroughly well consider that you are going up as it were to Calvary, to be present at the death of the Redeemer. If so, would you go with behavior so unsubdued with dress, so flaunting? If the Magdalene had gone to Calvary, to the foot of the Cross, all dressed out, perfumed, and adorned, as when she associated with her lovers, what would have been said of her? What, then, shall be said of you who go to Holy Mass as if you were going to a ball [or the beach, a barbeque, a sporting event]? But what shall be said if you profane those functions of most dread sanctity with nods and becks, with tattle, with laughter, with the petty attentions of courtships, or with graver sacrileges of thought, word, or deed? Wickedness is hideous at any time, and in any place, and before the altar, draw down after them the curse of God…Think seriously upon this…

 (From The Hidden Treasure)

 

Monday Musings - We Must Love More If We Wish To Be Truly Free

"The only way to experience freedom that lasts and grows more and more intense is to love more and more. St. Paul tells the Corinthians it is not he who places restrictions on them but their own closed hearts (2 Cor 6:12). That is to say the lack of freedom arises from not loving enough. Love brings freedom. The more pure and intense love is, the more expansive is freedom. A loving heart is never closed. 

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

Such freedom can be acquired (unlike the freedom of omnipotence of which we sometimes dream), but that takes time. Moreover, it is a grace, a gift of God, a fruit of the Holy Spirit. But once we can truly love God with all our heart, love any man or woman, whoever he or she may be, and love ourselves - fully accept ourselves, that is - we then are truly free."

 (Father Jacques Philippe from "Fire & Light - Learning To Receive The Gift of God")