Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Thank you RAnn at "This That and the Other Thing" for hosting this site and for providing a welcoming place for so many talented Catholic Bloggers to share their work. It is an honor to be here. I offer the following this week: Monday Musings - Just Eat The Pork Under Protest Eucharistic Reflection - Be Conscious That Christ Is Within You

“How to find Christmas peace in a world of unrest? You cannot find peace on the outside but you can find peace on the inside, by letting God do to your soul what Mary let Him do to her body, namely, let Christ be formed in you. As she cooked meals in her Nazarene home, as she nursed her aged cousin, as she drew water at the well, as she prepared the meals of the village carpenter, as she knitted the seamless garment, as she kneaded the dough and swept the floor, she was conscious that Christ was in her; that she was a living Ciborium, a monstrance of the Divine Eucharist, a Gate of Heaven through which a Creator would peer upon creation, a Tower of Ivory up whose chaste body He was to climb ‘to kiss upon her lips a mystical rose.’ As He was physically formed in her, so He wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew He was seeing through your eyes, you would see in every fellowman a child of God. If you knew that He worked through your hands, they would bless all the day ...

(Biblebios.com) If God used Balaam’s donkey to get that prophet’s attention, I guess he can use me to get yours. May these periodic postings on the second and fourth Mondays of each month (God willing) generate fruitful discussion and faithful change. One of my favorite characters in the Old Testament (2 Maccabees 6:18-31) is Eleazar, a ninety year old Jewish scribe, a “teacher of the Law.” He was ordered to eat pork in violation of the Mosaic Law or be killed. He preferred death rather than offend God. He was well respected not only among the Jews but even by some of those charged with killing him. They pulled him aside, spoke to him outside the hearing of his fellow Jews and urged him to eat some other type of meat not prohibited by Jewish dietary law and pretend it was pork. They advised him to act this way not only because they wanted to save his life, but because they assumed most of his fellow Jews, believing their well-respected leader ate pork to save his lif...

(Abbey at Genesee, Piffard, NY) Thank you RAnn at "This That and the Other Thing" for hosting this site and for providing a welcoming place for so many talented Catholic Bloggers to share their work. It is an honor to be here.   My three submissions follow: Eucharistic Reflection - Don't Ever be A Hissing Candle Got To Keep Loving Those Dominicans Pondering Tidbits of Truth - June 20, 2013

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.   St. Teresa of Avila “The highest perfection consists not in interior favors or in great raptures but in the bringing of our wills so closely into conformity with the Will of God that, as soon as we realize that He wills anything, we desire it ourselves with all our might.” (Book of Foundations)   Tertullian   “We ourselves, though we’re guilty of every sin, are not just a work of God; we’re image. Yet we have cut ourselves off from our Creator in both soul and body. Did we get eyes to serve lust, the tongue to speak evil, ears to hear evil, a throat for gluttony, a stomach to be gluttony’s ally, hands to do violence, genitals for unchaste excesses, feet for an erring life? Was the soul put in the body to think up traps, fraud and injustice? I don’t think so.” (Tertullian On The Shows: An Anaylsis - The Jour...

  The good Dominican nuns at Summit give us even more reasons to love those Dominican Friars! Click here and discover what they are!    

 (Adoration Chapel-St. Agatha's) “But anyone who would approach this gracious sacrament while guilty of deadly sin would receive no grace from it, even though such a person would really be receiving Me as I am, wholly God, wholly human. But do you know the situation of the soul who receives the sacrament unworthily? She is like a candle that has been doused with water and only hisses when it is brought under the fire. The flame no more than touches it but it goes out and nothing remains but smoke. Just so, this soul brings the candle she received in holy baptism and throws the water of sin over it, a water that drenches the wick of baptismal grace that is meant to bear the light. And unless she dries the wick out with the fire of true contrition by confessing her sin, she will physically receive the light when she approaches the table of the altar, but she will not receive it into her spirit.   If the soul is not disposed as she should be for so great a mystery, this tr...