Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) The visit to the Blessed Sacrament…is a great treasure of the Catholic Faith. It nourishes social love and gives us opportunities for adoration and thanksgiving, for reparation and supplication. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Hours and Eucharistic processions are likewise precious elements of your heritage – in full accord with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Every act of reverence, every genuflection that you make before the Blessed Sacrament, is important because it is an act of faith in Christ, an act of love for Christ. And every sign of the Cross and gesture of respect made each time you pass a Church is also an act of faith. May God preserve you in this faith – this holy Catholic faith – this faith in the Blessed Sacrament. (St. John Paul II, Phoenix Park, Ireland 1979)

There was a time when everyone entering a Catholic Church knew enough to genuflect, to remain silent and to spend time in intimate interior conversation with their Loving Lord locked behind the tabernacle doors. God deserves nothing less today. (Photo©Michael Seagriff) Back in that day, everyone knew they were there in the Presence of God to adore and worship Him, not to visit with their neighbor. Somehow, they were able to enter, remain and exit the Church in reverent silence and postpone their socialization and greetings until they were out on the sidewalk. God deserves nothing less today. These same individuals knew enough to refrain from receiving our Lord in Holy Communion unworthily. Our priests reminded them of that obligation, not only out of loving concern for the salvation of their souls but as a bulwark and protector against Eucharistic sacrilege. God deserves nothing less today  If necessary, these truths were reinforced from the pu...

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 Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B. "The thought of the punishment we deserve for our sins helps us to face the daily difficulties and deprivations and struggles without which there cannot be any real freedom from sin or any perfect union with God. We always have, indeed, plenty of reason to be penetrated with the fear of God, when we consider the many occasions of sin that lie all around us, our own extreme weakness, the strength of our inordinate attachments and habits, our natural inclination to self-indulgence, the pull of our own concupiscence from within and the attractions of the world without, our many faults and defects and the plain carelessness of which we are guilty every day." (From Frequent Confessions )

Thank you Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb for hosting "Revisiting Wednesday" each week and those Catholic bloggers who re-post their favorite articles there.  Go there now. (and every Wednesday). You will be inspired by the variety of spiritual insights these authors share.  I am sharing the following post: Stop Searching For Loopholes and Make The Salvation of Souls Priority Number One!  (Originally posted in a slightly different form on April 19, 2013) More than fourteen months ago, I offered my few cents on the unprecedented attack on our religious liberty. Sad to say, not much has changed since I wrote those words. If you not already done so, I suggest you read those comments here if the rest of this entry is to make sense.   The current Administration still refuses to acknowledge our God-given right to freely practice our religion. In fact, it has expres...

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) “Here is a good thought which is not often mentioned: receive Communion not only for yourself , in order to have this immense grace, but for Jesus, in order to respond to His desire to come down into you, to give Him the joy of descending into your heart, which is a heaven for Him. Perhaps you will say, ‘What, My poor heart, so miserable, so unworthy, a heaven for Jesus?’ Yes, if you call upon Him to make your heart a heaven for Him. Listen to little Therese : ‘I offered myself to Jesus, not as a person who desires to receive His visit for my own consolation, but on the contrary, for the pleasure of Him who gives Himself to me. It is not in order to remain in the golden ciborium that He comes down each day from Heaven, but in order to find another heaven, the heaven of our souls, made in His image, the living temple of the adorable Trinity’ .’’ (From I Believe in Love , as quoted in I The Lord Am With You Always – Prayers and Medi...

I am humbled every time I am privileged to serve as a Lector and altar server. I usually exercise this great gift on Tuesdays in my parish. Believe me, I know I am unworthy to be in the sanctuary that close to the Holy Sacrifice. I am painfully aware that the tongue which reads forth the Word of God is one that also yells out in anger and  criticizes others. Yes, I have no business proclaiming the Word of God – no human does. This is the reason I try not to take such an undeserved privilege for granted. Nothing prepared me for what happened in the sacristy after Mass yesterday. Sweet little Mary had been picking up the hymnals and returning them to their proper place when a broken and presumably consecrated host fell out of the hymnal and into her hand. (Image sourc e: Wikimedia Commons ) Dear God no! Not here in this Church, Not in this parish. No one would treat You so contemptuously with such disdain and irreverent conduct. But obviously someo...

Let someone dare suggest that this nation has the absolute moral right and legal obligation to regulate the manner and numbers of individuals who seek to immigrate to this country and a hoard of Bishops will trip over their brothers' feet to get to a microphone and condemn the heartless Catholics who make such a suggestion.  Yet, let Planned Parenthood kill and cut human beings into parts for resale and nary a prolonged and outraged episcopal whisper is heard. Suggest doubling the hourly wage, providing free health care, or increasing welfare benefits and find an army of prelates insisting we have an absolute moral obligation to do so.  Few of these same  men will utter a single word about salvation, sin, hell or such intrinsic evils as cohabitation, contraception, in-vitro fertilization,  euthanasia or the active homosexual lifestyle. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Social justice" - not the salvation of souls - has become the eternally bankr...