Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 26, 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.

But first a heartfelt prayer for a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!

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

"So long as God, who is all good, wills a thing, we are fools if we do not say Fiat – and thus will it with Him. The lone exception is sin."

(From God, A Woman and The Way)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - July 30, 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. Gregory the Great

There are some who wish to be humble, but without being despised, who wish to be happy with their lot, but without being needy, who wish to be chaste without mortifying the body, to be patient without suffering. They want both to acquire virtues and to avoid the sacrifices those virtues involve; they are like soldiers who flee the battlefield an try to win the war from the comfort of the city.”

(From Moralia)

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska

“I will thank the Lord Jesus for every humiliation and will pray specially for the person who has given me the chance to be humiliated. I will immolate myself for the benefit of souls. I will not count the cost of any sacrifice, I will cast myself beneath the feet of the sisters, like a carpet on which they can not only tread, but also wipe their feet. My place is under the feet of the sisters. I will make every effort to obtain that place unnoticed by others. It is enough that God see this.”

(From Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska)

St. Francis de Sales

"So you want to know the best time to serve the Lord? It is the present time, which is in your possession here and now. The past is no longer yours; the future has not come yet and is uncertain. The best time is really the present, which you should spend in serving God. If you want to recover the lost time, do your best, with fervor and diligence, in the time that still remains to you."

(From Sermons)

Eucharistic Reflection - Do You Busy Yourself With Other Things?

“

“I desire to unite Myself to human souls; My great delight is

to unite Myself with souls. 

Know, my daughter, that when I

come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are

full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul.

But souls do not even pay attention to Me; they leave Me to

myself and busy themselves with other things. 



Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize Love! 


They treat me as a dead object.”

(Jesus to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska)          

Visit The Imprisoned

When we read or hear the Scriptural reminder of the eternal consequences for our failing to visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25: 31-46) more often than not the image that first comes to mind is of those locked behind bars in the far too numerous Federal and State prisons and local jails that saturate the landscape of this nation – some 2,266,800 adults in 2010 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. More than 2 million! Many of them are Catholic and none of them are there voluntarily!

Admittedly, Jesus is not calling every Catholic to be His representative and ambassador to our forgotten convicted brothers and sisters. Certainly though more are being invited to this needed ministry than are responding. Is God calling you? Is fear holding you back?

But there is one prisoner you need not fear. One that each and everyone who professes to be Catholic,

without exception, is being called to visit. He has been imprisoned and been ignored for more than

two thousand years. Unlike his 2,266,800 incarcerated brothers and sisters in the U.S., He is

imprisoned voluntarily and out of love. Yet, the majority of those He loves and who profess to

love Him ignore Him, and rarely if ever visit Him.

He is in every Catholic Church where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved - but for all practical

purposes, in too many instances – He is alone and abandoned. Even the few inclined to visit Him, often

find the Church doors locked. How can that be for a Church and its members who are called to

make the Eucharist, the source, center and summit of their lives? How can Love Himself be in our midst

and so few care to be in His Presence?

Go visit your imprisoned Lord who longs to see you, listen to you, talk to you, and make you whole. He awaits you in the locked tabernacles of His Churches

or exposed in a Sacred Monstrance.

During your visits, bless His ears and warm His Sacred Heart by repeating the loving words St. Maria Faustina offered Him:

"O Jesus, Divine Prisoner of Love, when I consider Your love and how You emptied Yourself for me, my senses deaden. You hide Your inconceivable majesty and lower Yourself to miserable me. O king of Glory, though You hide Your beauty, yet the eye of my soul rends the veil. I see the angelic choirs giving You honor without cease, and all the heavenly Powers praising You without cease, and without cease they are saying: Holy, Holy, Holy...I adore You, Lord and Creator, hidden in the Most Blessed Sacrament."

Visit this Prisoner as often as you can. Love requires nothing less.

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