Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place   where you are sure to find something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! Here is what I posted this week: Monday Musings - Are You A Scoundrel?  Do You Believe? Making Charity Concrete and Unambiguous  Eucharistic Reflection - With A Heart Humbled and Broken With Grief Thanking Him Who Is Mad With Love

This Thanksgiving Day take some time to ponder He Who created you from nothing, He Who suffered and died for you, He Who watches over you, He Who longs to hold you in His loving arms for all eternity. If you have not contemplated these Truths in a while, now would be a great time to spend a few silent moments doing so. May the following words of St. Teresa of the Andes fuel your reflection. Thank our Lord for all that He has given you and especially for loving you, even during those times when you may not have loved Him as you ought.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) Most adorable and most amiable Jesus! Ever full of love for us, ever touched with compassion for our miseries, ever actuated by the desire of making us partakers of Thy treasures, and of giving Thyself wholly to us: Jesus, my Savior and my God, Who, through an excess of the most ardent and most won- derful love, hast placed Thyself in the condition of a victim, in the Adorable Eucharist, where Thou offers Thyself for us in sacrifice so many times every day, what must be Thy sentiments in this state, at finding no return for all this, in the hearts of the greater part of men, but hardness, forgetfulness, ingratitude and  contempt!   Was it not enough. Oh my God, to have taken the most painful means of saving us, when Thou could have shown us Thy excessive love at much less cost ? 

No generalities here. No mistaking what is expected of us. No wiggle room for misunderstanding.

(Image Source ) I have been working my way through a second reading of Finding God’s Will For You by St. Francis de Sales. His explanations of fundamental Truths always challenge his readers to reassess their relationship with the God they claim to love and serve. This gifted spiritual adviser always provides much fruit for contemplation. God has a plan for each of us – one that will lead to eternal happiness. He provides us with the graces sufficient to discover, accept and live out that plan. At the same time, He gave us free will and allows us to reject the path He sets before us. Many in our contemporary world (even among some clergy and members of our Church) ridicule and reject that which He calls us to believe and live. “Dogma” and “Doctrine” have become dirty words and those who dare treasure and teach God’s Truths are often ridiculed and attacked for doing so.

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) It's Sunday and time to join an interesting group of Catholic bloggers at RAnn's place  where you are sure to find something that will touch your heart and stir your soul. Take a few minutes and visit! This is what I shared: Faith Is Like A Dark Tunnel Eucharistic Reflection - Why Do We Limit God's Power? Have You Accepted His Invitation?  Pondering Tidbits of Truth-November 20, 2014  

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) 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. Pius X "When vice runs wild, when persecution hangs heavy, when error is so cunning that it threatens her destruction by snatching many children from her bosom (and plunges them into the whirlpool of sin and impiety) - then, more than ever, the Church is strengthened from above. Whether the wicked will it or not, God makes even error aid in the triumph of Truth whose guardian and defender is the Church. He puts corruption in the service of sanctity, whose mother and nurse is the Church. Out of persecution He brings a more wondrous 'freedom from our enemies.' For these reasons, when worldly men think they see the Church buffeted and almost capsized in the raging storm, then she really comes forth fairer, stronger, purer, and brighter with the luster of distinguished virtues." ...