Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

O nce again we thank Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan for inviting Catholic bloggers to re-post their favorite articles on "Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays.  Do yourself a favor - go there now (and every Wednesday) and gouge yourself on a feast of spiritual treasures. Be sure to visit Allison at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb during the rest of the week.  You will find much spiritual nourishment and encouragement there. Good Friday - Gazing Upon The Face of Christ It is only with much perseverance and undeserved grace that our meditation and contemplation will bear fruit - fruit which we should share with those around us. On those occasions when we are so blessed, most of us will resort to sharing our experience with written or spoken words. A rare few who ponder persistently the mysteries of our Faith and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ, and who have been blessed with artistic gifts, will receive a greater grace...

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) Last week I suggested that our individual and collective loss of any sense of sin and the moral decline in our current culture might well be attributed to our failure and reluctance to ponder the Passion, Sufferings and Death of Our Lord.  If you missed that short post you can find it here. In thinking further about this point, I recalled reading an excerpt some time back from an an article in an old issue of  The Sacred Heart Messenger, entitled "The Guilty One".   This compelling reflection may explain our reluctance to spend time at the foot of Christ's Cross . I hope it, and the words of Monsignor Hugh F. Blunt which it quotes, will provide additional fruit for your contemplation : "And we - who are we? - We are the ones who murdered her [Mary's] Son. That is another fact we too often forget! It was just after we had spiked Him to His deathbed and just before He died that He made the bequest [Son, beh...

(Source: Wikimedia Commons ) 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. Jose Orlandis "A Christianity from which we tried to remove the cross of voluntary mortification and penance under the pretext that these practices are the remains of the dark Ages or of an outworn Medieval era, quite inappropriate for a modern Humanistic Age, would be an insipid Christianity, a Christianity in name only. It would not have kept intact the doctrine of the Gospels, nor would it serve to induce men to follow in Christ's footsteps." (From The Eight Beatitudes )  

(Source: Wikimedia Commons ) 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. Rev. Daniel Considine S.J. “There is more danger of our not hoping enough than of our hoping too much. Don’t put your standard so low. If you want to go high, the higher the things you think God wants of you, the better. Breathe the air of God’s promises, and raise your hearts high. God wants a great deal of us. You have never hitherto believed that He really does. You say to yourself, if God wanted me to be a saint, He should have given me a very different character. Whether you are a Carmelite or living in the world, there is not the smallest difference in the love God wants of you. Hitherto I have not realized what God wants of me. The highest gifts of prayer, what are they compared with the gift of His Body and Blood!