Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 13, 2023

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

"God invites us to accept the loneliness of walking alone with Him. He says: ‘Yes, you need help from other people, but first get it from Me. Attach yourself to Me. I will give you everything you need, for I am the Lord of everything. I will renew and restore you and you will have new eyes and new ears."

(From Are You Ever Lonely? March 2023 issue of Restoration)

 

St. John Marie Vianney

"What a sad life does he lead who wants both to please the world and to serve God! It is a great mistake to make, my friends.

Apart from the fact that you are going to be unhappy all the time, you can never attain the stage at which you will be able to please the world and please God. It is as impossible a feat as trying to put an end to eternity.

Take the advice that I am going to give you now and you will be less unhappy: give yourselves wholly to God or else wholly to the world.

Do not look for and do not serve more than one master, and once you have chosen the one you are going to follow, do not leave him.

You surely remember what Jesus Christ said to you in the Gospel: you cannot serve God and Mammon; that is to say, you cannot follow the world and the pleasures of the world and Jesus Christ with His Cross. Of course you would be quite willing to follow God just so far and the world just so far!

Let me put it even more clearly: you would like it if your conscience, if your heart, would allow you to go to the altar in the morning and the dance in the evening; to spend part of the day in church and the remainder in the cabarets or other places of amusement; to talk of God at one moment and the next to tell obscene stories or utter calumnies about your neighbor; to do a good turn for your next-door neighbor on one occasion and on some other to do him harm; in other words, to do good and speak well when you are with good people and to do wrong when you are in bad company."

(From The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars 1960)

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

"Every moment comes to you pregnant with a Divine purpose; time being so precious that God deals it out only second by second. Once it leaves your hands and your power to do with it as you please, it plunges into eternity - to remain forever whatever you made of it."

(From March 23, 2023 Reflection from The Sheen Institute)

Eucharistic Reflection - If You Believed That Jesus Is Really There

 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

"The Curé of Ars often pointed to the tabernacle, saying: ‘Jesus is really there, and if you knew how much He loves you, you would be the happiest person in the world'."                  (Father Florian Racine from Could You Not Watch One Hour With Me?)

Eucharistic Reflection - Reverence In Church

"And meanwhile, for the most part, we come to church without reverence, without love of God, without knowing even what we have come to do. Some let their minds and hearts dwell on a thousand worldly matters. Others are there reluctantly and are bored. There are some who scarcely kneel whilst a God pours out His precious Blood for their pardon, lastly others are in such haste to leave the church, they do not wait for the priest to come down from the altar. My God what little love Your children have for You, or rather, how they scorn You! Indeed, what a spirit of frivolity and distraction appears when people are in church. Some sleep, others converse together, and nearly everyone is taken up with what he has to do."

 

(From  THE EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS OF THE CURÉ D’ARS)

Eucharistic Reflection - The House of God

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

"Our churches are holy, consecrated, sacred, because God made man dwells there day and night. In early times, many Christians crossed the seas to see the holy places where the great mystery of our redemption was wrought. Oh, blessed places! they exclaimed, where so many wonders were worked to save us! And they could hardly tear themselves away from the Cenacle or the Garden of the Agony without shedding tears. On Calvary, when Jesus Christ endured such great sufferings for us, they felt their faith rekindled and their hearts burning with a new fire. But without going so far, or exposing ourselves like them to many dangers, have we not Jesus Christ in the midst of us, not only as God, but Body and Soul? Are not our churches as worthy of reverence as the holy places? What a blessed people are Christians, who see renewed each day on the altars all the wonders that Almighty God worked formerly on Calvary."

 (From  THE EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS OF THE CURÉ D’ARS)

Eucharistic Reflection - Food For The Soul

“When God desired to give a food to our soul to sustain it in the pilgrimage of life, He looked upon creation and found nothing that was worthy of it. Then He turned again to Himself, and resolved to give Himself…O my soul, how great you are, since only God can satisfy you! The food of the soul is the body and blood of a God. O glorious food! The soul can feed only on God; only God can suffice it; only God can fill it; only God can satiate its hunger. Its God is absolutely necessary to it.”

“O my soul, bless this God, who is so great! Come often to this divine banquet to take your fill of justice and holiness. Those who refuse to sit at this banquet, or who partake of it only at long intervals, condemn themselves to certain death or to wasting away; for we cannot live without eating, nor enjoy vigorous health without eating frequently.”

“My God, how can it be that Christians actually remain so long without giving this food to their poor souls? They leave them to die of want.”

“They are close to this glorious Sacrament, like a person dying of thirst by the side of a river, when he has only to bend his head…like a person remaining in poverty with a treasury close beside his hand. “My God, what misery and blindness…when they have so many remedies for healing their souls, and such food for preserving their health!...Alas! let us sorrowfully admit that man begrudges nothing to a body which sooner or later will be destroyed and eaten by worms; while a soul created in the image of God, a soul which is immortal, is despised and treated with the utmost cruelty”…

“Tell me what it can profit you to leave your soul in so unhappy a state by depriving it of the food which alone can create strength and give it vigor. You are contented and at peace, you say…Is it because your soul in only awaiting the moment when death will strike it and drag it to hell? Is it because you are vegetating in mediocrity and tepidity?”

(St. John Vianney from Eucharistic Meditations)

O Consecrated Host - My Loving God

“It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesday - May Tomorrow Not Just Be Another Routine Holy Thursday

Thanks to the generosity and encouragement of Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan, Catholic bloggers take the time each week to re-post their favorite articles on “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays.

Go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in Faith journey.

Be sure to regularly visit Allison at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb.  hey have much to offer you,

Here is what I am sharing this week:

May Tomorrow Not Just Be Another Routine Holy Thursday

(Originally published on April 2, 2012)

(A somewhat updated version of several posts from previous years)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

According to St. Pius X, our sanctity depends in large measure on the holiness of our priests. This Holy Thursday then is an appropriate time to reflect on our priests, the imperative that the Eucharist be the source, center and summit of their lives and ours, and our duty as lay men and women to treasure, encourage and support them.

We begin by recalling how eloquently St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Doctor of our Church, wrote of what it is to be a priest:

 “We must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others; we must be instructed to be able to instruct, become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring Him close to others, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently…I know God’s greatness and man’s weakness but also his potential. The priest is the defender of Truth, who stands with angels, gives glory with archangels, causes sacrifices to rise to the altar on high, shares Christ’s priesthood, refashions creation, restores it in God’s image, recreates it for the world on high and, even greater, is divinized and divinizes.”