Pondering Tidbits of Truth - September 7, 2017

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. John Chrysostom

"Necessity obliges us to pray for ourselves. Fraternal charity obliges us to pray for others. God finds the prayer motivated by charity to be more meritorious than the prayer motivated by necessity."

(From St. Bernard's Sermon on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

A Mistress of Novices for the Intsitute of the Blessed Virgin Mary

"...There is no health  of soul nor hope of eternal life but in the Cross. The more the flesh is brought down by affliction, the more is the spirit strengthened by interior grace. We are not exhorted to pray for the Cross, but we may and ought to pray for a love of the Cross. The price of great graces is humiliation - The Royal Way of the Cross. Humiliations are precious drops from the chalice of our Lord's Blood.

When our Lord  loves anyone, He presses him to His Heart as a tender friend would do; but round Jesus' Heart there is a crown of thorns, and the more He presses us to His Heart, the more these thorns enter into ours. How many - even Religious - there are who only seek the shadow of the Cross, how many who lean against it, how few who climb up and are fastened to it!"

(From Meditation on the Passion)

St. Basil

"The vendor does not become sad that he has to barter the goods he has at fairs to acquire the merchandise he wants; but you become sad at exchanging the chance of eternal life for a handful of dust."

(From Catena Aurea, Vol. VI, 313)