Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 28, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving!

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.

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

"When you fail to measure up to your Christian privilege, be not discouraged for discouragement is a form of pride. The reason you are sad is because you looked to yourself and not to God; to your failings not to His love. You will shake off your faults more readily when you love God than when you criticize yourself. You have always the right to love Him in your heart even though you do not love Him in your acts. God is biased in your favor. God is more lenient than you because he is perfectly good and therefore loves you more. Be bold enough then to believe that God is on your side, even when you forget to be on His."

(From Remade for Happiness: Achieving Life's Purpose through Spiritual Transformation)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 25, 2019

(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.

Saint Theophan the Recluse

When your mind does wander during prayer, bring it back. When it wanders again, bring it back again. Each and every time that you read a prayer while your thoughts are wandering (and consequently you read it without attention and feeling,) then do not fail to read it again. Even if your mind wanders several times in the same place, read it again and again until you read it all the way through with understanding and feeling. In this way, you will overcome this difficulty so that the next time, perhaps, it will not come up again, or if it does return, it will be weaker.

(From Homily I Beginning to Pray)

Monday Musings - What?

Worth Revisiting - Have We Forgotten The Guilty One?

Once again, I thank Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for their weekly invitation to re-post our favorite articles on Worth Revisiting.

Go here now (and every Wednesday) and let an interesting group of Catholic bloggers nourish you in your Faith journey.

Visit Allison at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of each week.  They have much to offer.

I decided to share the following:

Have We Forgotten The Guilty One?

(Originally posted August 2, 2015)

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

Last week I suggested that our individual and collective loss of any sense of sin and the moral decline in our current culture might well be attributed to our failure and reluctance to ponder the Passion, Sufferings and Death of Our Lord. 

 

If you missed that short post you can find it here.

 

In thinking further about this point, I recalled reading an excerpt some time back from an an article in an old issue of The Sacred Heart Messenger, entitled "The Guilty One".  

 

This compelling reflection may explain our reluctance to spend time at the foot of Christ's Cross. I hope it, and the words of Monsignor Hugh F. Blunt which it quotes, will provide additional fruit for your contemplation:

 

What Brings Our Lord Great Joy?

Shameful, is it not, that some within our Church have misrepresented the teachings of the Vatican II Council by discouraging Catholics from meditating on the Passion and Sufferings of Our Lord and Savior - describing such ancient pious practice as morbid and archaic for our times. 

Look around and see what fruits that poor and inaccurate advice have produced. Then read what Jesus told St. Faustina: