Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

[What follows is a slightly modified version of a presentation I made to the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapter of The Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic in Charlottesville, Virginia on  Saturday September 8, 2018]   (Photo©Michael Seagriff) God loves each and every one of us and is waiting for and thirsting for each of us to love Him in return. My comments today and the reason I wrote and edited Stirring Slumbering Souls – 250 Eucharistic Reflections and I Thirst for Your Love is to address what I believe are the two most pressing problems in our Church today – the loss of the sense of the sacred in our churches AND the lack of belief in, and reverence for, our Eucharistic Lord! I am a simple sinful man – too simple perhaps for some of you and no doubt more sinful than I ought to be. Just ask my wife and daughter. Second thought don’t. But if God were to wait for only sinless and intellectual people to speak of Him, the world would be quite silent n...

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 . Mother Mary Francis “When great masterpieces of art are restored, layers and layers of the overlay are removed before the real panting is found. So, it is with our sins. We ask God to take off one coat after another of sin and pretense until His real image is visible again.” (From A Time of Renewal )

T hank you Elizabeth Riordan at  Theology Is A Verb for hosting Worth Revisiting each week. It is a privilege to share our work with you and your followers .  The Painful and Shameful Truth (Originally posted on November 4, 2019 Let us have an adult conversation: Our God does not need any of us, not even for a millisecond. Yet, as Jesus hung from the cross more than 2000 years ago, He let us know He was thirsty – not a physical thirst - but an unquenchable spiritual thirst as our Lord, Savior and Redeemer to be loved by those He created and for whose eternal benefit He died.  In the ensuing centuries, not enough of us have made sufficient effort to quench His thirst. For the most part, many of us ignore His plea to love Him as He loves us. He still thirsts for our love. He is still waiting for us to love Him! Has He not waited long enough? Why have so many of us been unwilling to quench His thirst? There is only one credible and h...

“The soul that loves the Eucharist must likewise attend to the interests of this adorable Sacrament. The first of these interests, the most dear to Jesus, is the priesthood. Through the priests, the Blessed Sacrament is given us, comes into us; through them, Jesus receives the sacramental life which He consecrates to the glory of his Father; through them, He is glorified more than He can be by the faithful, even the most pious. He has given them all His rights and His power. If we love the Eucharist, if we wish to see it served, preached, adored by all, let us without ceasing ask Jesus through Mary for holy priests, apostolic laborers, faithful adorers; on such do the glory of the Blessed Sacrament and the salvation of the world depend.” (From In Light of the Monstrance   by St. Peter Julian Eymard)