Monday Musings - What Do We Need Most To Save Society?

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 2, 2017

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.

Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

"Preaching by example will always be the foremost instrument of conversion…Lectures, good books, Christian newspapers and magazines, and even fine sermons must gravitate around this fundamental program: that we need to influence people by an apostolate of good example, the example of fervent Christians, who make Jesus Christ live again on this earth by spreading about them the good odor of His virtues." 

(From The Soul of the Apostolate)

St. Vincent de Paul

"Believe me, we will never be of any use in doing God’s work until we become thoroughly convinced that, of ourselves, we are better fitted to ruin everything than to make a success of it." 

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J.

"The soul that does not attach itself solely to the will of God will find neither satisfaction nor sanctification in any other means however excellent by which it may attempt to gain them. If that which God Himself chooses for you does not content you, from whom do you expect to obtain what you desire? . . . No soul can be really nourished, fortified, purified, enriched, and sanctified except in fulfilling the duties of the present moment."

(From Abandonment to Divine Providence)

Getting Our Lives In The Right Order

Worth Revisiting - A Heart Consumed

Thank you Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Reardon for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. 

Please visit them regularly at Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb, respectively.

May you find the following contribution worthy of your time:

Eucharistic Reflection – A Heart Consumed

(Originally posted September 17, 2015)

"When a preacher or catechist retains, in himself the warm life of the Precious Blood, when his heart is consumed with the fire that consumes the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, what life his words will have: they will burn, they will be living flames! And what effects the Eucharist will have, radiating throughout a class for instance, or through a hospital ward, or in a club, and so on, when the ones God has chosen to work there have nourished their zeal in Holy Communion, and have become Christ-bearers!"

(From The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)

Monday Musings - Don't Look The Other Way!

How difficult it is to be content with the present moment; our minds race to what is to follow, often uncomfortable staying put and savoring what is before us.

O, how many graces we have lost. O, how many await us!

Worth Revisiting - Of Mute and Silent Tabernacles and Lifeless Hosts

Thank you Allison Gingras  (Reconciled To You) and Elizabeth Riordan (Theology Is A Verb) for another opportunity to re-publish our favorite posts on Worth Revisiting.

Stop for a visit now (and every Wednesday). The gifted hostesses and other writers who post each week will no doubt have much of value to offer you..

[I share the following thoughts with a renewed sense of urgency. We are spinning our wheels and jeopardizing souls if we do not become lovers of the Eucharist.]

Eucharistic Reflection - Of Mute and Silent Tabernacles and Lifeless Hosts 

(Originally posted September 22, 2015)

“We ministers of the Lord, for whom the Tabernacle has become mute and silent, the stone of consecration cold, the Host a venerable, but lifeless, memento: have been unable to turn souls from their evil. How could we ever draw them out of the mire or forbidden pleasures?

And yet we have talked to them about the joys of religion and of good conscience. But because we have not known how to slake our own thirst at the living waters of the Lamb, we have mumbled and stuttered in our attempts to portray those ineffable joys, the very desire of which would have shattered the chains of the triple concupiscence much more effectively than all our thundering tirades about hell…Our lips have been unable to speak the language of the Heart of Him Who loves men, because our converse with Him has been as infrequent as it has been cold.

Let us not try to shift all the blame onto the profoundly demoralized state of society. After all, we have only to look, for example, at the effect on completely de-Christianized parishes of the presence of sensible, active, devoted, capable priests, but priests who were, above all, lovers of the Eucharist.”

(From  The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)

Eucharistic Reflection – Enter The Tabernacle

“The efficacy of an apostolate almost invariably corresponds to the degree of Eucharistic life acquired by a soul. Indeed, the sure sign of a successful apostolate is when it makes souls thirst for frequent and fruitful participation in the Divine Banquet. And this result will never be obtained except in proportion as the apostle himself really makes Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament the source and center of his life.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

Like St. Thomas Aquinas, who practically entered the Tabernacle, so to speak, when he wanted to work out a problem, the apostle also will go and tell all his troubles to the Divine Guest, and his action upon souls will be simply his conversations with the Author of Life put into practice.

Our wonderful Father and Pope, Pius X, the Pope of Frequent Communion, was also the Pope of the interior life. ‘Re-establish all things in Christ’ was the first thing he had to say, above all to active workers. It summarizes the program of an apostle who lives on the Eucharist and who sees that the Church will gain successes only in proportion as souls make progress in the Eucharistic life.

Eucharistic Reflection – A Heart Consumed

"When a preacher or catechist retains, in himself the warm life of the Precious Blood, when his heart is consumed with the fire that consumes the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, what life his words will have: they will burn, they will be living flames! And what effects the Eucharist will have, radiating throughout a class for instance, or through a hospital ward, or in a club, and so on, when the ones God has chosen to work there have nourished their zeal in Holy Communion, and have become Christ-bearers!"

(From The Soul of The Apostolate by Jean Baptiste Chautard, OCSO)

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - December 6, 2012

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.

 

 

Madeleine Delbrel, Servant of God
 

 “Once we have heard God’s Word, we no longer have the right not to accept it; once we have accepted it, we no longer have the right not to let it become flesh in us; once it has become flesh in us, we no longer have the right to keep it for ourselves alone. Henceforward, we belong to all those who are waiting for the Word.” 
 

(From We, the Ordinary People of the Streets)

Sister Josefa Menendez

 “I saw several souls fall into Hell, and among them a child of fifteen, cursing her parents for not having taught her to fear God, and that Hell actually exits.”

(From The Way of Divine Love)

Anne Costa

 

“There are no unforgivable sins, only unconfessed ones, and there are no sins greater than God’s mercy.”

 (From Lord, I Hurt!)

 

 

Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

 

 “It is impossible to meditate upon the consequences of the dogma of the Real Presence, of the Sacrifice of the Altar, and of Communion without being led to the conclusion that Our Lord wanted to institute this Sacrament in order to make it the center of all action, of all loyal idealism, of every apostolate that could be of any real use to the Church.

(From The Soul of the Apostolate)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - Week of August 16, 2012

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.

From Scripture (Hebrews 13:3)

“Be as mindful of prisoners as if you were sharing their imprisonment, and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you may yet suffer as they do.

From Saint Edmund Campion

[When asked to save his life by renouncing his Catholic Faith, this saint had this to say;]

“Your Majesty, for the past ten years I have given this matter thought. I thought about it seriously when I left the Church of England and went to the continent to be reconciled with Rome. I thought of it seriously when I entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest. And ever since I have been back in England, how many times I thought that I could indeed save my life if I turned traitor to my Lord Christ and His Church! But He Himself has said to us all: ‘He who would save his life must lose it.’

I remain true to Christ and His Church.”

(From Edmund Campion-Hero of God’s Underground by Harold C. Gardiner, S.J)

From Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

“It is impossible to meditate upon the consequences of the dogma of the Real Presence, of the Sacrifice of the Altar, and of Communion without being led to the conclusion that Our Lord wanted to institute this Sacrament in order to make it the center of all action, of all loyal idealism, of every apostolate that could be of any real use to the Church.”

(From The Soul of the Apostolate)