Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Strive to increase from day to day your faith in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and never cease to wonder at the miraculous mystery of it, reflecting on how God manifests Himself to you in the guise of bread and wine, and becomes essentially present in you, to make you more holy, righteous and blessed."                                       (From The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli)

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons) No caring person would allow an inattentive soul about to run off a cliff to do so without shouting and attempting to warn them of that danger and of their imminent demise.  Should we not do the same for those Catholic politicians and public officials who legislatively support intrinsic evils, who remain silent in the face of the dismemberment and sale of infant body parts, or who consent to the killing of children born alive? We would if we cared about them since there is nothing more important than the salvation of souls. Yet most of us are rarely reminded of this truth. Satan relishes his success in having convinced so many that hell does not exist and that no one inhabits it – even using the mouths and/or silence of some Catholic priests and Bishops to get his message out. "There is no such thing as sin," we are told. Are you prepared to tell that to Jesus Who suffered and died to redeem us from our sin...

We thank Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You  and Elizabeth Riordan at  Theology Is A Verb   for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. It is a privilege to share our work with them and their followers . Here is my contribution:  Monday Musings - Do You Really Love God? (Originally posted on December 3, 2018) Dr. Peter Kreeft - teacher and author extraordinaire -  is one of those gifted men blessed with the ability to answer complicated philosophical and theological truths with just a handful of words.  Let me illustrate this point by sharing the following two sentence paragraph excerpted from his book, Christianity for Modern Pagans , a commentary and explanation of  Blaise Pascal's classic, Pensees: "Here is a test whether you really love God. Have you done or avoided or given up a single thing today solely because you believed that God wanted you to?" Chew on this for awhile and then get a c...

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) "Try to set alight in yourself a warm desire for this Sacrament and to make progress every day both in your fervent readiness to do only God’s will, and in spiritual wisdom, making it the queen and ruler over all your actions of the spirit, the soul and the body. Every time you take Communion, while partaking of this bloodless sacrifice, offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, that is, profess your complete readiness to endure every affliction, every sorrow and every wrong you may meet in the course of your life, for the sake of the love of God, Who sacrificed Himself for us." (From Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli)