Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

FOR ONE WHO LOVES (From Father Mark)   When you come into My presence to adore Me, and prefer Me to the other things that solicit your attention and make claims upon your time, I am consoled and glorified.   The proof of friendship is the choice of one's friend over all else. I want you to prefer Me, to give Me time that could be given to other persons and things. In so doing, you will show Me your love and offer Me the consolation of a true friendship.   I would ask this preferential love of all My priests. Friendship, if it is to thrive, must be practiced. This is as true of friendship with Me as it is of human friendships. I wait for the companionship of My priests.   With them I hold My priesthood in common -- and My victimhood. This is what makes the friendship of My priests so precious to My Sacred Heart.   With them too I share the purest joy of living in the presence of My Immaculate Mother and of exper...

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 St. Thomas Aquinas “ Man should not consider his material possessions his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. ” From St. Claude de la Colombiere, S.J. “Imagine the anguish and tears of a mother who is present at a painful operation her child has to undergo. Can anyone doubt on seeing her that she consents to allow the child to suffer only because she expects it to get well and be spared further suffering by means of this violent remedy? Reason in the same manner when adversity befalls you. You complain that you are ill-treated, insulted, slandered, robbed. Your redeemer (the name is a tenderer one than that of father or mother), your Redeemer is a witness to all you are suffering. He who loves you and has emphatically declared that whoever touches you touches the appl...

Pardon the self-promotion but there is only one way to sell a book - let as many people and groups know about it! I was privileged to be profiled in  this month's issue of the Catholic Writers' Guild (CWG) Member Newsletter. In the event you have not seen it or are not yet a CWG member, the Profile follows: (Excerpted from CWG Member Newsletter Issue #52- July 2012) MEMBER PROFILE – MICHAEL SEAGRIFF Author and Lay Dominican Maria: Michael, you recently had a book published “Forgotten Truths to Set Faith Afire: Words to Challenge, Inspire and Instruct.” Congratulations! When did you feel receive God’s inspiration to write this book? How did it “come to you,” as they say? Michael: Over the past fifteen years, God placed a tremendous hunger in my heart to study the Truths of our Catholic Faith. During that time, I highlighted and made photocopies of thousands of passages from various articles a...

    "O inestimable charity! Even as You, true God and true Man, gave Yourself entirely to us, so also You left Yourself entirely for us, to be our food, so that during our earthly pilgrimage we would not faint with weariness, but would be strengthened by You, our celestial Bread. O man, what has your God left you? He has left you Himself, wholly God and wholly Man, concealed under the whiteness of bread. O fire of love! Was it not enough for You to have created us to Your image and likeness, and to have recreated us in grace through the Blood of Your Son, without giving Yourself wholly to us as our Food, O God, Divine Essence? What impelled You to do this? Your charity alone. It was not enough for You to send Your Word to us for our redemption; neither were You content to give Him us as our Food, but in the excess of Your love for Your creature, You gave to man the whole Divine essence . . ."   (St. Catherine of Siena )   (Source of image: Real Prese...

Today our Dominican family celebrates the memorial of St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617). She was the first canonized saint of the Western hemisphere, a contemporary of St. Martin DePorres and Saint John Macias , and “patron saint of Lima, Peru, all the Americas, the Phillippines, India, florists, gardeners, and people ridiculed for their piety” .   The Office of Readings today offers this excerpt from her writings for our fruitful meditation and response:   Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase. Let men take care not to stray and be deceived. This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.” When I heard these words, a strong force came upon me an...

"Why did Jesus not limit His Eucharistic Presence to the solemn moments of Holy Mass? Why does He not continue it only during those hours when, amid lights and flowers, He receives the adoration and homage of His sons? Why does He remain also during the nights, even in tabernacles where He is abandoned and forgotten and sometimes subjected to sacrilegious profanation?" "It would seem that this persistent miracle of the Real Presence of Jesus under the appearances of the consecrated bread, even in times of profanation, is an excessive prodigality, both useless and incompatible with the Divine Majesty." "And yet, this is the very reason why Jesus chose to do so; to love with a love that knows no measure and does not shrink from excess. This was the purpose for which He invented and “instituted the Holy Eucharist as we have it. ‘He loved to the end.’” (From The Holy Eucharist by Jose Guadalupe Trevino)

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 t...