Yes, it is very
possible for us to lose our salvation, to lose our way eternally. Our Lord
is crystal clear on this point in His many parables, as much as He is crystal
clear on the need for forgiveness and mercy. But the goal of God's justice is
not to separate us eternally but to restore us."
(By Father Dismas Sayre,
O.P. published in the July August 2025 issue of Light and Life entitled Is
God just, holy and merciful?)
We are often prone to despair and
self-pity. We are quick to abandon fundamental Truths when confronted with
adversity. We forget that we are the adopted children of God and think
that He has abandoned us. We don't believe that He has a
plan for our lives or that with Him all things are possible.
We refuse to
believe everything that God allows in our lives is intended to
assure our eternal salvation. So we avoid Him at all costs and go to
people, places and activities that can never make us truly happy. We convince
ourselves that we don't need God. We so despise ourselves that we hang our
heads low, fearful of seeing an image of ourselves in the glass panes of the
store fronts we walk by.
But we must look up. We must look into the cracked windows of our souls
so that we can see ourselves as God sees us - as unique, magnificent
treasures made in His image. Once we open our eyes to this Truth,
our lives will change. We will seek to see God in everyone else with whom we
interact, especially those whom the world consider "the least of us".
God doesn't make junk. He desires to
dwell within us here on this earth and to spend eternity with us in heaven -
that is why He created You.
So look up. See Jesus extending His
Holy Hands. Grab them. Hold onto them. There is no sin He will not forgive a repentant sinner. Keep your eyes on His and never again doubt how much He loves you - you whom he made in His image.
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God—in Christianity one does not.
Christianity might be described as a 'come as you are' party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Savior with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope…Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God’s love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God’s hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should…it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, 'Is it I, Lord' (Matt. 26:22).”
(An excerpt
from Peace of Soul)
“Many are heading straight on for purgatory. They live until their last hour, even though they are seriously ill, even on their deathbed, as if everything is all right. Exclusively directed to the earthly, they don’t think at all about calling upon the mercy of God. Although by doing so they would be spared at least a severe purgatory. For God is infinitely merciful for all who call upon Him and trust Him."
(An excerpt from The Interior Castle)
Ven. Fulton J. Sheen
“So long as mercy is
available for all who despair of their own confusion and conflicts and inner
incompleteness, it follows that sin is never the worst thing that can happen to
man. The worst thing is the refusal to recognize his sins. For if we are
sinners, there is a Savior. If there is a Savior, there is a Cross. If there is
a Cross, there is a way of appropriating it to our own lives and our lives to
it. When that is done, despair is driven out and we will have the 'peace which the world cannot give’.”
(From the Fulton Sheen Institute - March 17, 2024)
St. M. Faustina Kowalska
“[Let] the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy...Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me! To such souls, I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy...[b]efore I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice."
(From Divine Mercy in My Soul -
Diary 1146)
Ven. Fulton J. Sheen
“There is no power as
strong as the uplifted hand of an absolving priest. There is no joy like the
return of a prodigal. There is no peace like the peace of sin forgiven. There is
no hope like the hope the thief gives us: paradise may still be stolen.”
(From the Fulton Sheen Institute - March 12, 2024)
Jesus to Saint Catherine
of Siena
“I require that you should love Me with the same love with which I love you. This indeed you cannot do, because I love you without being loved. All the love you have for Me you owe to Me, so that it is not of grace that you love Me, but because you ought to do so, while I love you of grace, and not because I owe you My love. Therefore to Me, in person, you cannot repay the love which I require of you, and I have placed you in the midst of your fellows, that you may do to them that which you cannot do to Me, that is to say, that you may love your neighbor of free grace, without expecting any return from him, and what you do to him, I count as done to Me, which My Truth showed forth when He said to Paul, My persecutor - 'Saul, Saul why persecute you Me?' This He said, judging that Paul persecuted Him in His faithful. This love must be sincere, because it is with the same love with which you love Me, that you must love your neighbor.”
(From
The Dialogue)
John Tauler, O.P.
"And because she [our Blessed
Mother] was full of the Holy Ghost, she had known from the prophets that her
Son was to die, and that it was for this that He had taken a mortal body, and
that so it seemed good to His Heavenly Father. Therefore, it was that she knew
not how to desire anything else.
Hence, even as Christ Jesus gladly
offered Himself to the Father as a living Victim for the salvation of men, so
also the most Blessed Virgin Mary offered her own Son for the salvation of the
human race; and it was far more pleasing to her to be deprived of His
consolation, than to hinder man's redemption....But because she understood that
it was God's will that she should suffer together with her Son, she gladly
offered herself for this, for she was ready, indeed, to die with her sweet Son
Jesus, for the salvation and redemption of wretched men. Moreover, she kept
back her sorrow within the secret places of her heart, because she desired no
outward comfort from men, seeking rather to abide in that sorrow until our Lord
Himself delivered her and consoled her."
(From 40 Day Meditations On the
Life and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ)
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
“So long as such mercy is available
for all who despair of their own confusion and conflicts and inner
incompleteness, it follows that sin is never the worst thing that can
happen. The worst thing is the refusal to recognize sins. For if we
are sinners, there is a Savior. If there is a Savior, there is a Cross. If
there is a Cross, there is a way of appropriating it to our lives, and our
lives to it. When that is done, despair is driven out and we have the “Peace
which the world cannot give.”
(From Path to Peace)
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.
Antony The Great
“Antony said, ‘Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their prayer chambers or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of their inner peace. So, like a fish going toward the sea, we must hurry to reach our prayer chamber. If we delay outside, we will lose our interior watchfulness’.”
(From The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers)
Father Peter Hannah, O.P.
"[Pope Benedict XVI reminds us]: Truth should be spoken with charity; but charity demands that one is actually speaking truth. Charity, Benedict wrote, ‘is of fundamental importance in human relations’, but ‘without truth, charity degenerates to sentimentality…more or less interchangeable with a pool of good feelings, helpful for social cohesion but of little relevance’ (Caritas in Veritate, #3).
Benedict’s warning deserves attention. There can be a temptation, when desiring someone to come over to one’s own view - in this case, not one's own view only, but the Catholic faith - to forsake critical aspects of the faith so that they become more ‘amenable’ to the person receiving. But then one is actually not persuading the other of the truth but enervating and misrepresenting the truth in order to elicit acceptance and encourage ‘good relations.’ This was not the vision of John XXIII [when he convened Vatican II]; nor is it the way of Our Lord. In the Gospels we see Jesus ready to receive anyone who approaches Him with a genuine and open disposition. But He does not alter the message itself when His audience is confused or taken aback.
When Jesus speaks maybe the most important truth of all so far as the Church’s life goes - His own flesh as the life of the world - those around Him are immediately offended. ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ (John 6: 60). Our Lord's response is not to respond by feeding His followers half-truths that they can accept, ‘adjusting Himself’ to their sensibilities, and leaving the full truth out of it. He rather repeats it, fully aware of their difficulty in accepting: ‘Do you take offense at this?...no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.’ Then, we are told, ‘many of His disciples drew back and no longer went about with Him (John 6: 66). Jesus is ‘inclusive’ of all who are open to the truth; but also realizes not all will accept it and discover the life He brings."
(Excerpted from May-June 2022 edition of Light & Life – Voice of the Rosary Center & Confraternity)
Venerable Luis of Granada, O.P
"Certainly God, who is so merciful, takes no pleasure in our afflictions, but in His love He sends us these necessary remedies to cure our infirmities. Thus suffering purifies the stains of sinful pleasures, and the privation of innocent gratifications expiates unlawful indulgence. He punishes us in this world, that He may reward us in the next; He treats us with merciful rigor here to save us from His wrath in eternity. Hence Saint Jerome says that God's anger against sinners is never more terrible then when He seems to forget them during life. It was through fear of such a misfortune that Saint St Augustine prayed, ‘Here Oh Lord burn, here cut, that Thou mayst spare me in eternity.’
(From The Sinner’s Guide)
"The Eucharist is alive. If a stranger who knew nothing about the Eucharist were to watch the way we receive, would he know...
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