Showing posts with label Vocal Prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vocal Prayer. Show all posts

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - May 8, 2025



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. 

Raoul Plus, S.J

"That is the essential word: mission. Everyone who is baptized, if he understands the part he has to play, is a missionary. He may not be called upon to go to foreign lands; his apostolate may be destined only to affect his near neighbors. But he must understand that wherever he may happen to be, he has a function to perform there: he not only has to save himself, but he also has to sanctify and save his brethren."

 (An excerpt from How To Pray Always)

St. Francis de Sales

 

If during vocal prayer your heart is drawn to mental prayer, do not restrain it, but let your devotion take that channel, omitting the vocal prayers which you intended to say: that which takes their place is more acceptable to God, and more useful to your own soul." 

(From Introduction to a Devout Life)


Thomas à Kempis

"Jesus has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few cross-bearers. Many desire His consolation, but few His tribulation. Many will sit down with Him at table, but few will share His fast. All desire to rejoice with Him, but few will suffer for Him. Many will follow Him to the breaking of the bread, but few will drink the bitter cup of His Passion. Many revere His miracles, but few follow the shame of His cross. Many love Jesus when all goes well with them, and praise Him when He does them a favor; but if Jesus conceals Himself and leaves them for a little while, they fall to complaining or become depressed. They who love Jesus purely for Himself and not for their own sake bless Him in all trouble and anguish as well as in time of consolation. Even if He never sent them consolation, they would still praise Him and give thanks. Oh how powerful is the pure love of Jesus, when not mixed with self-interest or self-love!" 

(From Imitation of Christ)

 

Pondering Tidbits of Truth - November 18, 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.

 

 

 

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

"God’s love can only unleash its power when it is allowed to change us from within. We have to let it break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires." 

(From Signs of New Life: Homilies on the Church’s Sacraments)

 

 

St. Anthony Mary Claret

 "...the most important point on which depends your whole welfare in the spiritual life: this point is that one must tread in the footsteps which Jesus Christ left before us, and keeping Him faithful company, patiently bear the desolation and affliction in one’s spirit, pain and hardships in one’s body, outrages, injuries, ill-will and persecution from whatever source they come. One who has no willingness to walk this road will never find God, and much less will he come to a pure and perfect love for Him."

(From The Golden Key to Heaven)

 

 Father Thomas Dubay, S.M.

“The excessive multiplication of vocal prayers (even aside from time of mental prayer) can likewise impede growth. There are people who get into a set habit of adding litany upon litany, devotion upon devotion, to the point where they leave little or no time for God to give what He wants to give. They do not understand contemplation, and they think that unless they are vocalizing, they are not praying.”

 (From Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and the Gospel on Prayer)


 

Eucharistic Reflection - Would A Stranger Know?

  "The Eucharist is alive. If a stranger who knew nothing about the Eucharist were to watch the way we receive, would he know...