Worth Revisiting - Take Heart Amid the World's Current Confusion

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 21, 2017

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. Francis de Sales

"God detests failings because they are failings. On the other hand, however, in a certain sense, He loves failings since they give to Him an opportunity to show His mercy and to us an opportunity to remain humble and to understand and to sympathize with our neighbor's failings."

(As quoted by Servant of God, John Paul I in his September 20, 1976 General Audience)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 20, 2017

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

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. Leo the Great

"Whoever truly wishes to venerate the Passion of the Lord should contemplate Jesus crucified with eyes of his soul, and in such a way that he identifies his own body with that of Jesus."

(From Sermon 15 on the Passion)

St. Alphonsus Liguori

"But God is merciful. Behold another common delusion by which the devil encourages sinners to persevere in sin! A certain author has said that more souls have been sent to hell by the mercy of God than by His justice. This indeed is the case; for men are induced by the deceits of the devil to persevere in sin, through confidence in God's mercy; and thus they are lost."

(From Sermons For All the Sundays of the Year )

 
Servant of God, Madeleine Delbrel

"In the area of God's work we are all assigned precise tasks, for it is God who initiated each work and brings each to completion. He works unceasingly; He doesn't give us the leisure to mess around doing nothing."

(From The Joy of Believing)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 14, 2013

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.

Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel

 

“To the extent that our world tries to break itself away from God, that people believe that they can get by without God, that they can organize things apart from God, God becomes for the world something new, and the living God of the Gospel once again becomes news.”  

(From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets)

 

Benedict XVI

Today…it is particularly important to clarify the criteria used to distinguish the authentic sensus fidelium from its counterfeits. In fact, it is not some kind of public opinion of the Church, and it is unthinkable to mention it in order to challenge the teachings of the Magisterium, this because the sensus fidei cannot grow authentically in the believer except to the extent in which he or she fully participates in the life of the Church, and this requires a responsible adherence to her Magisterium.

 

From Address to the International Theological Commission, December7, 2012)

Dr. Ralph Martin

 

“How tragic if the promulgation of a theoretical or practical presumption that almost everyone will be saved actually became the cause of many people being lost.”  

(From“Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for The New Evangelization”)

 

 

Pondering Tidbits Of Truth - January 31, 2013

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.

Servant of God, Madeleine Delbrel

"The basic revelation of the Gospel is the overwhelming, penetrating presence of God. It is a call to encounter God, and God allows Himself to be encountered only in solitude."

(From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets)

John of Kronstadt, a Russian Orthodox priest and saint

"What would happen, O my Lord God, Jesus Christ, if You made the light of Your divinty to shine from Your most Holy Sacrament, when the priest brings It in his hands to a sick person? Before this light, all who would encounter It or see It would fall prostrate on the groune spontaneously, just as the angels cover their faces before this Sacrament. While on the other hand, so many treat this heavenly Sacrament with indifference."

(From Dominus Est - It Is The Lord! by Most Rev. Athansius Schneider)

 

 

 

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

 

"A prophet is a Divine Troubler, not a political troubler. He is always a disturber of worldy peace; he makes listeners feel uneasy."

 

(From Divine Troubler by Carl E. Olson, Our Sunday Visitor, October 3, 2013)

 

 

 



Pondering Tidbits Of Truth - January 3, 2013

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.

 

Madeleine Delbrel, Servant of God

 

“To take the Word of God seriously, we need all the strength of the Holy Spirit. If our witness is often mediocre, it is because we have not realized that the same kind of heroism is needed to be a witness as to be a martyr.”

(From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets)

 

Father Winfrid Herbst, S.D.S.

 

"I am sure many lost souls in hell right now would cry out to preachers and writers if they could: Oh, why did you not tell us more about the horrors of hell? Why did you not strike such fear into our hearts by your realistic description of hell that we would have made greater efforts to avoid it?...Why did you spare our feelings in a matter of such eternal moment? Oh, why did you not make hell a thousand times hotter than you did, then perhaps we would not be here today?" 

(From The Way To God)

 

Mike Aquilina

 “How much of my effort goes into securing prosperity and peace for myself and my family? How much of my effort goes into securing heaven for us?”

(From A Year with the Church Fathers)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 6, 2012

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.

 

 

Madeleine Delbrel, Servant of God
 

 “Once we have heard God’s Word, we no longer have the right not to accept it; once we have accepted it, we no longer have the right not to let it become flesh in us; once it has become flesh in us, we no longer have the right to keep it for ourselves alone. Henceforward, we belong to all those who are waiting for the Word.” 
 

(From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets)

Sister Josefa Menendez

 “I saw several souls fall into Hell, and among them a child of fifteen, cursing her parents for not having taught her to fear God, and that Hell actually exits.”

(From The Way of Divine Love)

Anne Costa

 

“There are no unforgivable sins, only unconfessed ones, and there are no sins greater than God’s mercy.”

 (From Lord, I Hurt!)

 

 

Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

 

 “It is impossible to meditate upon the consequences of the dogma of the Real Presence, of the Sacrifice of the Altar, and of Communion without being led to the conclusion that Our Lord wanted to institute this Sacrament in order to make it the center of all action, of all loyal idealism, of every apostolate that could be of any real use to the Church.

(From The Soul of the Apostolate)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 8, 2012

A Reminder: The Purpose of Pondering Tidbits of Truth

We are all busy people. Many of us have convinced ourselves that we simply do not have the time to read, ponder and reflect on the Scriptures and the wealth of spiritual wisdom our Church has accumulated over the centuries. Yet, we owe God and ourselves this reflective time.

If we spend little or no time, pondering the truths and mysteries of our Faith, we are not going to progress spiritually - a growth essential to our eternal well-being and that of those around us.

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. Rarely will they share a common thread. Today is an exception.

Every other Thursday, I will offer some quotations for your reflection. This is my challenge to you. Read and ponder them. Invest at least five minutes of your time on each of them over the course of two weeks, asking God to let you understand what He wants you to learn from this material.

I suspect if you give Him these minutes, you will be hungry for additional nourishment and eager to give Him even more of your time. You may even want to share what you have learned – at least we hope you will.

(Note: Normally, I offer only three quotations. Given the events of this week, I was prompted to expand this week's offerings.)

Scripture

 

“…It is easy for many to be overcome by a few; in the sight of Heaven there is no difference between deliverance by many or by few; for victory in war does not depend on the size of the army, but on strength that comes from Heaven.” 

(From 1 Maccabees 3:18-19)

 

 

Pope Paul VI

 "[The Church] exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection." 

(From Evangelii Nuntiandi)

 

Father Giovanni Salerno
 

“For Missionary Servants of the Poor it is a great privilege to represent the Church and the Holy Father in the midst of the poor. When the missions of the Third World are spoken of, many think that the best way to help the poor is to address their material needs: clothing, medicine, food, etc. In my life as missionary, after forty-six years, I have realized that the greatest gift we can give the poor is God and His divine grace through the Sacraments of the Church.” 

(From Letter to Abbot at Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey)

 

Father Peter John Cameron, O.P.
 

“We live in an age that is preoccupied with social questions, and Catholics are being challenged to justify their faith by its concrete success in dealing with these questions. Aware of the great contributions which the Church’s doctrines have in fact to make in this sphere, Catholics may be led to speak and act as if it were the main concern of the Church instead of the secondary, if important, one. As the Second Vatican Council has vigorously reasserted, the real mission of the Church is to bring the world back to God, to make it conscious of him as the supreme, adorable reality and its own highest good."

(From Editorial - Magnificat – Year of Faith Companion)

  

Fulton J. Sheen, Servant of God

 

"He [Jesus] refused to lead any revolutionary movement even among a conquered people and His own people. At no time did He take a stand in the quarrel between Herod and Pilate, or against the numerous political scandals that were so rampant in Judea. He never raises his voice against crucifixions, which he knew well as a boy when 3000 were crucified in the town easily visible from Nazareth. He was indifferent to power, except to affirm that all power comes from God."  

(From Those Mysterious Priests)

 

Madeleine Delbrel,  Servant of God

 

“Saving the world does not mean making it happy; it means showing the world the meaning of its suffering and giving it a joy that “nothing can take away.” If we must fight against the misery and misfortune which Christ took so seriously as to speak of judging us in the end solely by what we did for others in this regard, we must keep in mind that what is at stake is ultimately not solving these problems and constructing a second earthly paradise; rather, what is at stake is eternal life.” 

(From We the Ordinary People of the Streets)