Pondering Tidbits of Truth - February 22, 2024

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.

Father Francis Wendell, O.P.

"We live in a secularist society. Stated that bluntly it means very little. Actually, the implications are tremendous. St. Dominic, were he introduced to our society, would be amazed and aghast at the things that are commonplace today. God was a reality in the lives of the people of his age; for us God had become either a myth or has been relegated to the position of a peculiar old relative who is kept more or less hidden away upstairs."

(From Spiritual Powerhouse)

St. Paul of the Cross

"When you are alone in your room, take your crucifix, kiss its five wounds reverently, tell it to preach to you a little sermon, and then listen to the word of eternal life that it speaks to your heart; listen to the pleading of the the thorns, the nails, the precious Blood. Oh, what an eloquent sermon!"

(From Flowers of the Passion - Thoughts of St. Paul of the Cross)

St. Basil

"Men are accustomed to say that God is not just. Why is God not unjust in dispensing things to us unequally? The unjust one is not he. Why therefore are you enjoying abundance while that one begs, if not so that by dispensing life-sustaining food you may obtain the reward of life and he be crowned with the wreath of patience? Are you not the predator in appropriating what was entrusted to you to dispense? It is the bread of the needy that you hold back, the tunic of the naked  that you store in your closet, the shoes of the barefoot that you on rare occasion stroll in, the money of the indigent that you hide in the ground; that is why there are so many injuries as what you are able to give."

(From Sermon on Luke 16)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 10, 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

 

 

 

Venerable Mother Julienne Morell, O.P.

“Through the eternal years, God’s thought of me has been for my happiness. He placed me, therefore, among the number of beings whom He determined to call into existence, and in the rank of those upon whom He was to let fall the shower of His mercies. He resolved to create me at that moment fixed by His own Wisdom, and to follow my creation by accomplishing in me all the designs of His Love. Did He place any condition? Yes, one only: That I would not, on my part, hinder His work within me by raising any obstacle to it, and that I would consent to follow the attractions of His grace, sweet and powerful.”

(From Meditations on Eternity for Religious)

 

Venerable Bruno Laneri

“I will plan the activities of my day so that I may more surely do the will of God and give Him glory in all that I do: not different things, but the same things done differently; not doing things simply out of habit, but out of love.”

(From Overcoming Spiritual Discouragement)

 

Robert Cardinal Sarah

“Were not Jesus, Mary and Joseph poor? Did they shout in protest against their poverty? So many monks and nuns, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her missionary sisters: Are they not poor, and are they not silent? But it is not just those in consecrated life. In Africa, in Asia and elsewhere, I have had the opportunity to meet with poor people who have great nobility and an incomparable dignity. Although they live in extreme material poverty, these people firmly believe in God and are radiant with joy, peace, and inner harmony. Man’s wealth is God. The most horrible and most inhumane poverty is the lack of God.”

(From The Power of Silence)

 

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Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 26, 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.

Catherine Doherty, Servant of God

"The acceptance of this truth [all that I am, all that I have is from God] will make you truly free, free to love and serve...It will also make you free to love and serve God more passionately, more constantly, more totally. You will then be on the threshold of this many-faceted, infinitely beautiful virtue and attitude of heart, state of life. That is poverty!

But still you will only have begun. I repeat, you will be only standing on the threshold of poverty's dwelling.

The next step is having a heart wide open to grace!

Now you will enter an unknown terrain through which God Himself will deign to lead you. All you have to do is to be open to grace."

(From Dearly Beloved, Volume 1) 

 Father Charles Arminjon

"Remove the fear of eternal punishment from mankind, and the world will be filled with crime...Hell will simply happen sooner; instead of being postponed until the future life, it will be inaugurated in the midst of humanity, in the present life." 

  

(From The End of the Present World)

 

 St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe

"[The apostolate] is a collaboration (if such is the correct word) with God Himself in the work of perfection, of sanctification…In view of this work, therefore, the Savior Himself expressly commanded His  apostles: ‘Remain in Me and I in you’ (Jn. 15:4-6)…The fruitfulness of the work, then, does not depend on ability, on energy, on money, although these, too, are gifts of God useful in the Catholic apostolate, but solely and exclusively depends on the degree of one’s union with God. Should this decrease, of if such be weakened, the other means will avail nothing…eloquent sermons and works divorced from prayer bear no fruit."

(From For the Life of the World – St Maximilian and the Eucharist by Jerzy Domanski, O.F.M. Conv.)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 28, 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.

Catherine Doherty, Servant of God

"One has to begin at the beginning. The beginning is to finally acknowledge your own immense poverty. Now you have to fully, deeply realize that all that you are, all that you have is from God! From this follows that you have and are nothing.

Once you make this truth of your own poverty before God the very marrow of your thoughts, your life, your love, your body, in a word, your very being, then you will become truly humble. Then you will walk in truth, walk in and with God..."

(From How Poor Can You Get? by Father David May)

Saint Maximilian Kolbe

"You [Jesus], however, did not stop with this [dying for love of us], but foreseeing all that would happen across 19 centuries from the moment of these outpourings of Your love to my appearance on earth, You desired to make provision even for this! Your heart was not satisfied that I should be nourished only with a memory of Your infinite love. You remained in this vale of tears in the most holy and singularly miraculous Sacrament of the Altar!"

(From For the Life of the World – St Maximilian and the Eucharist by Jerzy Domanski, O.F.M. Conv.)

 Cardinal Pietro Parolin

"In the midst of great concern and uncertainty about the future, what does Fatima ask of us? Perseverance in the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, shown by the daily recitation of the Rosary? And what if, despite our prayers, wars continue? Even though immediate results may not be evident, let us persevere in prayer. Prayer is never useless. Sooner or later, it will bear fruit…Prayer is capital in the hands of God: He turns it to good account in His own times and ways, which are very different from our own."

(From Homily at Fatima - May 12, 2017 Vigil Mass)