Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

[The tabernacle should be a Bethany for us] a quiet and pleasant place where Christ resides. A place where we can tell Him about our worries, our sufferings, our desires, our joys, with the same sort of simplicity and naturalness as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.    (St. Josemaria Escriva from  Christ is Passing By)   PAUSE AND PONDER : Do I make a daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament a priority in my life? Do I look froward to spending time in His Presence? How comfortable am I in pouring my heart out to Him? [This is just one of the 150 challenging quotations you will find  in  Pondering Tidbits of Truth, Volume 6    to fuel your contemplation.] 

  ‘Going to Communion every day for so many years! Anybody else would be a saint by now’, you told me, ‘and I … I’m always the same!’ ‘Son,’ I replied, ‘keep up your daily Communion, and think: what would I be if I had not gone?'  (St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 534)

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 “To join two things together, there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.”   (From thehookoffaith.com )   Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen   “How God will judge my life I know not, but I trust he will see me with mercy and compassion. I am only certain there will be three surprises in Heaven. First of all, I will see some people whom I never expected to see. Second, there will be a number whom I expect who will not be there. And – even relying on God’s mercy – the biggest surprise of all may be that I will be there. When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a...

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. Frances de Sales "It is horrible irreverence to Him who with so much love and sweetness invites us to perfection, to say, ‘I do not want to be holy, or perfect, or to have a greater share in Your friendship, or to follow the counsels You give me to advance in it.”  (From Finding God’s Will For You)

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. Josemaria Escriva "Many Christians take their time and have leisure enough in their social life (no hurry here). They are leisurely, too, in their professional activities, at table and recreation (no hurry here either). But isn't it strange how those same Christians find themselves in such a rush and want to hurry the priest, in their anxiety to shorten the time devoted to the most Holy sacrifice of the altar." (From The Way )

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. Pius X "...men are only instruments which God makes use of for the salvation of souls We have to make sure those instruments are in a good state of repair so that God can use them." (From Encyclical - Haerent animo )

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. Alphonus Liguori “Good friends find pleasure in one another's company. Let us know pleasure in the company of our best Friend, a Friend who can do everything for us, a friend who loves us beyond measure. Here in the Blessed Sacrament we can talk to Him straight from the heart.”  (From Visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary ) St. Josemaria Escriva "For every soul is a wonderful treasure; every man is unique and irreplaceable. Every single person is worth all the blood of Christ." (From Christ Is Passing By ) St. Gertrude "They ought not to call my sweetest Jesus my only Son, but rather my first-born Son. I conceived Him first in my womb, but after Him, or rather, through Him, I conceived every one of you to be His brothers and to be my children, adoptin...

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. John of the Cross "Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction." (From  The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross )   St. John Paul II "We could say that suffering, which is present under so many different forms in our human world, is also present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one's 'I' on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love which stirs in his heart and actions." (From Apostolic Letter, Salvifici doloris ,...

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. Josemaria Escriva "...prayer is not a question of what you say or feel, but of Love. And you love when you try to say something to the Lord, even though you might not actually say anything." (From Furrow )  Vatican II "Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be the followers of the Lord, but they differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ Himself is divided. Certainly, such division openly contradicts the Will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the most holy cause, the preaching of the Gospel to every creature." (From Decree on Ecumenism)    St. John Paul II  "...the presence of the devil in the history of humanity is increa...

(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 St. Thomas Aquinas "To say that someone is full of mercy is like saying his heart is full of woe. He experiences the miseries of another with the same force and sadness as if they were His own. He makes His best effort to remedy the problem because it has become His problem. This is the effect of mercy. Of course, God does not become saddened by thus making His own the miseries of His creatures. Yet He does work to remedy those problems, those defects, because to act in this way does correspond to His Divine nature." (From Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 21, a.3)

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. Josemaria Escriva “This and no other is the end of the Church: the salvation of souls, one by one. For this the Father sent the Son. And, Jesus said, ‘even so I send you’ (John 20:21). From this rises the command to make His doctrine known and to baptize, so that the Most Blessed Trinity may reside in the soul, through grace.”  (From In Love With the Church )

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. Dom Eugene Boylan, O.C.R. "We have our own plans for our happiness, and too often we look upon God as someone who will help us to carry them out. The true state of affairs is invariably the reverse of this. God has his own perfect plans for our happiness, and is waiting for us to help Him carry them out. And let it be clear that we can in no way improve on God's plans." (From This Tremendous Lover ) St. Augustine "We cannot keep ourselves on the road to perfection and prevent ourselves from failing except by efforts to climb higher. As soon as we begin to stop, we regress, with the result that, if we do not wish to fall back , we have to run ahead always, without slowing down." (From Instructions for Novices by Blessed Hyaacinthe-Marie Cormier, O.P.)  St. Josemaria Escriva "It looks as if...

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 "How great is the stupidity of those who make themselves weak in spite of my strengthening, and put themselves into the devil's hands! I want you to know, then, that at the moment of death, because they have put themselves during life under the devil's rule (not by force, because they cannot be forced, as I told you; but they put themselves voluntarily into his hands), and because they come to the point of death under this perverse rule, they can expect no other judgment but that of their own conscience. They come without hope to eternal damnation. In hate they grasp at hell in the moment of their death, and even before they possess it, they take hell as their prize along with their lords as demons." (From T he Dialogue - Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena)

(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.   St. Augustine For while you give yourself up to evil, you come to consider yourself good, because you do not take the trouble to look at yourself. You reproach others and you do not take stock of yourself. You accuse others and you do not examine yourself. You place them before your very eyes and you place yourself behind your back. So when the time comes for me to reckon with you, I shall do the opposite; I will turn you around and confront you with yourself. Then you will see yourself and you will weep. (From Sermon 17 ) St. John Paul II "...we must pray too because we are fragile and culpable. We need to admit humbly and truly that we are poor creatures, with confused ideas...We are fragile and weak, and in constant need of interior strength and consolation. Prayer gives us streng...