Monday Musings - St. Thomas Aquinas

On this memorial of the Angelic Doctor, let me re-share a short post I wrote 4 years ago:

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I read St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton. I highly recommend this book!

Although I do not know if the following tale Chesterton shares about our Angelic Doctor is true, I just had to share it with you:

"It was of him [St.Thomas Aquinas] that the tale was told, and would certainly have been told more widely among us if it had been told of a Puritan, that the Pope pointed to his gorgeous Papal Palace and said, "Peter can no longer say 'Silver and gold have I none;' " and the Spanish friar an­swered, "No, and neither can he now say, 'Rise and walk'."

St. Thomas Aquinas pray for us.

Worth Revisiting - What Kind of Soul Am I? - Part 2

Thank you Allison Gingras at Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb  for  hosting Catholic bloggers at Worth Revisiting. 

 

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Monday Musings - Which Kind of Soul Am I? - Part 2 

(Originally posted October 16, 2017)

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[In The Golden Key to Heaven – An Explanation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, St. Anthony Mary Claret discusses three distinct types of souls. Last week we looked at the first type (you can review that post here).  If you did not recognize yourself then, maybe what follows will be a more accurate description. This one might really smart - the Truth does that you know.]

"The second class of men consists of those who have a true will to aspire to perfection, but it is not an all-inclusive, generous will…Let us return to the example of sick persons.

Behold, my soul, another sick man very different from the first one. He desires to regain his health, and to achieve this he is ready to take medications and other remedies. But he is unwilling to take the iron or the caustic medications, or other similar disagreeable remedies. (He will take whatever medicine is prescribed, provided it does not taste bad.) Thus he, too, is unwilling to have all treatments that are necessary. What should be said of this sick man? It is true that he has a good will, but it lacks strength, whole-heartedness, and generosity.

A disposition resembling that of this sick man is that in which we find many spiritual people. They want to acquire perfection, and to obtain it they are ready to take some of the means, but not all. To bear up for many years with interior desolation and grave trials, to suffer humiliation and contempt without having given any occasion for it, and other things distasteful to corrupt nature, seems to these souls too great a burden for their shoulders. What should be said of these souls? One will say that they have some good will, but it is like that of the sick man unwilling to take all treatments that are necessary. What will follow for a will that holds back this way? Note this well, my soul and impress it well in your heart…Realize that:
 

Monday Musings - Where Is Your Soul Planted?

St. Catherine of Siena reminds us that it is not enough to be "a good person" or a "spiritual person". We must be "trees of love" free from deadly sin:

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“All of you are trees of love: You cannot live without love because I made you for love. The soul who lives virtuously sets her tree's root in the valley of true humility. But those who live wickedly have set their root in the mountain of pride, and because it is badly planted it produces fruit not of life but of death. Their fruits are their actions, and they are all poisoned by a multitude of different sins. If they do produce one or another fruit of good action, it is spoiled because the root from which it comes is rotten. In other words, if a soul is living in deadly sin, no good that she does has any value for eternal life because it is not done in grace.”