Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 21, 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.

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 - July 2, 2015

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. Catherine of Siena

“0 blind humanity, to have so lost sight of your dignity! You who were so great have become so small! You who were in command have' sold yourselves into servitude to the vilest power there is, for you have become the servants and slaves of sin. Yes, you have become a nothing, since you become like what you serve, and sin is nothingness. It has taken life from you and given you death in its place.”

(From The Dialogue)

 

St. Augustine

"I ask you, Christian soul: if you were told, as was that rich man, 'You also, go, sell all that you possess and you will have treasure in heaven, and come and follow Christ, would you go away sad as he did?"

(From Sermon)

Rev. M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.

“We moderns shrink from pain; we shun all that can afflict body or mind. We have forgotten that we were saved by the Body's agony and the Mind's torture. We have forgotten that the problem of evil was solved by ropes, whips, and thorns, by nails that were pounded through the flesh of God and by three hours of anguish such as no other human has or ever will know. We have forgotten that pain has a sacred purpose; that all suffering can be and should be sublimated into Sacrifice - His Sacrifice. We have forgotten that we are Christians - members of a Body whose Head is thorn-crowned! We have forgotten that since there is sin, there must be suffering that will atone.”

(From God, A Woman, and The Way)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - May 21, 2015

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.

Monsignor Ronald A. Knox

“Why did the Lord include so many fishermen among his Apostles? ... What were the good points that He saw in them? I think there was one thing which He specially appreciated in those who were to be his Apostles: an unshakeable patience ... They had worked all night and had caught nothing; long hours of waiting after which the grey light of dawn was to bring them their reward; but there was none.

What a lot of waiting the Church of Christ has had to endure throughout the centuries ... patiently extending her invitation and leaving grace to do its work! ... What does it matter if she has worked very hard in one place or another and reaped very little for her Master? On the basis of his word; in spite of everything, she will launch her nets again until such time as His grace, the limits of which are in no way proportioned to human efforts, brings her again a new catch of fish.”

(Sermon preached on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1947)