Eucharistic Reflection - Don't Stay Away

…For sinners, the door of His heart is always open, so that He will never drive them away, however miserable they may be. 

He so earnestly desired the salvation of sinners that He did not cease until He was nailed to a cross between two thieves and shed His Precious Blood for them. Not content with this, having finished the course of His earthly life, He instituted this Sacrament [the Eucharist] by which He might remain among men, so that all who need a remedy would always find it. The same cause that led Him to die for sinners, led Him to institute this Sacrament. It was love that brought Him down to earth and put Him in the hands of sinners; it is love also that brings Him back again and puts Him in the same hands. There was no other cause for this Great work but love on His part and need on our part. Therefore, this Sacrament is a common remedy for the just and for sinners. 

This is what they do not understand who stay away from this Sacrament. They do not realize that this Sacrament was instituted not only as food for the healthy, but as medicine for the sick; not only as a gift for the just, but as a remedy for repentant sinners. And he who is weaker needs this Sacrament more. The weak man is much less able to live than the strong. The strong man can go for a longer time without help, but he who is so weak that as soon as God’s eyes are turned from him he begins to fall away, where will he end if he does not use this aid?

Therefore, the Lord especially compassionated this type of person when He said: ‘If I let them go away hungry, they will fall by the wayside, because some of them have come from afar.’ Then as now those who have come from afar were in greater danger because they have had a longer journey; so also the weak suffer more because they have yet a long way to travel before they reach the perfection of charity. And since this heavenly bread was meant as a help for such as these, it is not temerity but a very salutary prudence to make use of this remedy and medicine which has been provided by Him at the cost of no less love than blood. One of the great faults of men and for which they shall one day have to give an accounting, is that they have not taken advantage of the remedy of the Blessed Sacrament. 

(Summa of a Christian Life – Preparation for Communion - Venerable Louis of Granada, O.P.)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - April 21, 2022

 

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.

Venerable Louis of Granada, O.P.

“Reason and experience clearly prove that the happiness we seek is to be found only in God. Is it not madness to seek it elsewhere? ‘Go where you will,’ says Saint Augustine, ‘visit all lands, but you will not find happiness until you go to God’.”

(From The Sinner’s Guide)

 

Venerable Msgr. Aloysius Schwartz

 

"When you pray, you only have to ask for two things: You should ask for the light to see the will of God, and you have to ask for the courage to be able to do the will of God."

(From Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz by Kevin Wells)

 

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.

 “The Good News is not just that God loves us but that He is crazy in love with us. Us, who are not only stupid and shallow and silly but morally insane (that is, immorally insane), who choose the fearful over the cheerful, the misery of selfishness over the joy of selflessness, despite our universal experience of the results of that experiment."

 (From Doors in the Walls of the World)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - March 10, 2022

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 de Heuck Doherty, Servant of God

“True, silence is sometimes the absence of speech - but it is always the act of listening. The mere presence of noise (which is empty of our listening to the voice of God) is not silence. A day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence, if the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God. When we speak of ourselves and are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind. When we repeat intimate words of God that He has left within us, our silence remains intact.”

(From The Celebration of Discipline)

 

St. Peter Chrysologus

“True love of God finds nothing hard, nothing bitter, nothing difficult. What weapon, what wounds, what pains, what death, can conquer true love? As an impenetrable armor it defies all attacks, and fears not even death, but triumphs over all things.”

(From Sermon 147)

 

Venerable Louis of Granada, O.P.

"Reflect on this. Men act freely when they sin, for no man is forced to do wrong. But when they have fallen, they cannot rise without the Divine assistance. Now, God owes this to no man. It is His gratuitous gift when he restores a sinner to His favor. Hence, He but exercises His justice when he permits him to remain in his misery, and even to fall lower."

(From The Sinner’s Guide)