Monday Musings - Jesus' Only Question

Image Source: Hands at Mass)

“Brothers and sisters, the call goes out to all the earth. Is it the love of God you seek? You will find it in the Eucharist. Do you hunger for a life greater than the whole world has to give you? You will find it in the Eucharist. What is the secret to the renewal of the world? You will find it in the Eucharist. Do you hunger for the bread from heaven? Do you long for the light of the world? Do you really want the resurrection and the life? You will find it all in the Eucharist. For in the Eucharist you will find Him – Jesus.

He has shown us where to find Him. His only question is this: where are you?

(Excerpted from The Sacrament of Charity by Father James Dominic Brent, OP, published on December 18, 2024 by spiritualdirection.com. Read entire article here.) 

Eucharistic Reflection - The Primary Injustice

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 24, 2022

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. Margaret Mary

"The Divine Heart is an ocean full of all good things, wherein poor souls can cast all their needs; it is an ocean full of joy to drown all our sadness, an ocean of humility to drown our folly, an ocean of mercy to those in distress, an ocean of love in which to submerge our poverty."

 (From The Heart of Prayer: The Essential Guide to Knowing God Through Prayer)

 

 Laura Catherine Worchacz

“[Our Blessed Mother) Mary devoted herself exclusively to the Eucharistic glory of Jesus. She knew it was the desire of the Eternal Father to make the Eucharist known, loved and served by all men; that the need of Jesus’ heart was to communicate to all men His gift of grace and glory…She was consumed with the desire to make Jesus and the Blessed Sacrament known to all, to inflame all hearts with His love, to see them enchained to His loving service…Eucharistic adorers share Mary’s life of mission and prayer at the foot of the Most Blessed Sacrament…We are called to prepare ourselves to receive Communion as if it would be our first or our last time. We are called to be, as much as possible, at the throne of mercy before the Blessed Sacrament.”

(From Consecration to Jesus Through Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament)

 

St. Augustine

“Speaking of the character true conversion, St. Augustine says, “he is truly converted who turns to God with his whole heart, who not only fears punishment but earnestly desires to merit God’s graces and favors. Should anyone turn to God in this way, even at the end of his life, we would have no reason to despair of his salvation. But as examples of this perfect conversion are very rare, we cannot but tremble for one who defers his repentance until the hour of death.”

(From The Sinner’s Guide by Venerable Louis of Granada, O.P.)

Eucharistic Reflection - Lose Yourself

"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 seen than in the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ. We might say of Him, if this were possible for anyone, that He had no self, so perfect was His union with the Father. He was utterly united to the Father because He denied Himself utterly…”

(Johann Tauler, O.P. from Spiritual Conferences)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 25, 2020

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.

Christine Watkins 

“For now, there is only one thing that is needed: to love God with all that we have, and to lover others as ourselves. If our day is spent in turmoil over tomorrow, our Father’s will has vanished in the clouds of worry.” 

(From Mary’s Mantle Consecration)

Father R. Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P.

"Preparation for the life of prayer depends not only on humility, but also on mortification...if our minds are preoccupied with worldly interests and affairs, and our souls agitated by too human an affection, by jealousy, by the memory of wrongs done to us by our neighbor, or by rash judgments, we shall not be able to converse with our Lord. If in the course of the day we criticize our superiors or fail in docility toward them, when evening comes we shall hardly be likely to find the presence of God in prayer. Therefore, all inordinate inclinations must be mortified so that charity may take the uncontested first place in our soul and rise spontaneously toward God in distress as well as in consolation."

(From The Three Ages of the Interior Life)

Father Gabriele Amorth "We have the gift of the Spirit, the Eucharist, the word of God, the power of the name of Jesus, the protection of the Blessed Virgin, the intercession of the angels and saints; is it not silly to fear the vanquished?"

 (From An Exorcist Tells His Story)