🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., St. Basil the Great, and
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = “Silence -A Series of Conferences”, by a Camaldolese Hermit
🍗The Meat = "Prudence in Action", by Thomas À Kempis
🍰The Dessert = YouTube video: "Spiritual theology Series, Levels of Prayer", by Fr. Ripperger
🎚Mark 11:17 “And he taught, saying to them: Is it not written, My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves”
🧀"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love." By St. Basil the Great
🍤”Avoid duplicity, that is, do not let your heart be divided between attachment to God and attachment to earthly things, You cannot serve God and mammon.
🎚Matthew 6:24 “Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters.m He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon”
Cling to God alone, put your trust in Him alone; for the Devil, by inciting us to duplicity, seeks himself to gain possession of our heart, which is single and indivisible”. By St. John of Kronstadt
🎚1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath”
🎚1 Timothy 6:13-16 “I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time - God the blessed and only Ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen”
🎚Revelation 22:12-13 Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
~The Second Coming ~ ~That Is Really Going To Be Something~
🐾WBY= Turning and turning in the widening gyre
🐾Tmm= Thing are comin down to the wire
🐾WBY=The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
🐾Tmm= Not in the least, no sir, no sir
🐾WBY=Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Tmm= Like a pancake they fold
🐾WBY=Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
🐾Tmm= Tensions are so twisted tight and curled
🐾WBY=The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
🐾Tmm= How few who truly care
🐾WBY=The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
🐾Tmm= Wrong over right is crowned
🐾WBY=The best lack all conviction, while the worst
🐾Tmm= They get to push their agenda first
🐾WBY=Are full of passionate intensity.
🐾Tmm= Towards the morbid there is an increased propensity
🐾WBY=Surely some revelation is at hand;
🐾Tmm= For the astute the writing can be seen in the sand
🐾WBY=Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
🐾Tmm= Where oh where will many land
🐾WBY=The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
🐾Tmm= Slow but sure, coming without a doubt
🐾WBY=When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
🐾Tmm= Makes it's appearance on a Sunday
🐾WBY=Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
🐾Tmm= Many signs have posted that serves to alert
🐾WBY=A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
🐾Tmm= Believe it, you most certainly can
🐾WBY=A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
🐾Tmm= Definitely to be considered the most powerful one
🐾WBY=Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
🐾Tmm= From disbelief, might we all desist
🐾WBY=Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
🐾Tmm= Time for the unfolding of truthful words
🐾WBY=The darkness drops again; but now I know
🐾Tmm= Things are not just an empty show
🐾WBY=That twenty centuries of stony sleep
🐾Tmm= Now over, have taken what appears to be a gigantic leap
🐾WBY=Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
🐾Tmm= When seen in context, we become very, very, grateful
🐾WBY=And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
🐾Tmm= Whose light will spring forth overcoming darkness with a blast
🐾WBY=Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
🐾Tmm= Now ending for some what could have been an eternity to groan & mourn
“The Second Coming”, By WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Biographical Note
“These conferences were given at Holy Family Hermitage in 1986. The author died in 1996. They were edited by Holy Family Hermitage for publication in 2011, cum permissu superiorum. Before becoming a Camaldolese, the author spent a quarter century as a missionary in Western Europe, far from his native land and acquainted with difficulties and dangers. The following episode was one of the more dramatic of those years. In the early 1940’s, he was serving as a hospital chaplain in France. It was the time of the turbulent German occupation and Gestapo terror. One day, while on an upper floor of the hospital, he heard commotion below and looked down at the courtyard. It was filling up with storm troopers and Hitler youth. He rightly guessed that they had come to arrest everybody, and he also resolved not to surrender.
A soldier reached the upper-storey room, where the chaplain was, as the arrests were concluding. As he entered, he got a welcome he had not bargained for. The priest began to berate him, in perfect German, for his imperialism. “What? You speak German?” “Certainly, because when I was a boy, you occupiers made me go to a German school!” The dumbfounded soldier left the room without even attempting an arrest. The chaplain again looked below and saw that the arrested were being loaded into vans, to be taken away to the death camps. He courageously rushed down and, as they were being driven off, gave them a blessing. Years later, a woman who survived returned to thank him. “You’ll never know how much that blessing meant to us!”
“Today we begin a long series of conferences about the spirit of silence. As we know, there is an exterior and an interior silence. Both are important for a life such as ours, but the interior silence is the more important. The exterior silence can be an expression of the interior silence, but often it can also be the expression of a sinful interior disposition, a lack of brotherly love, or the manifestation of an imperfect and self-centered soul. We shall speak about the silence of our senses, about the silence of our interior faculties from the lowest to the highest. In order to become men of prayer and men of God, we must give up everything, even our own judgment and our own will. All must be purified and entirely submitted to God. We cannot make any conditions with God, we cannot hold back for ourselves anything, still less impose our own will or our psychological disturbances upon others.
Everything in us must be brought to silence, and only then will we be free for God and for the needs of others. We must strive toward purity of heart. A silent man will be able to listen to the Holy Spirit and to follow His inspiration. Silence, of course, is not an end in itself. It is only a means to something greater and more important. Silence cannot remain empty, for it must be filled with something greater, as for instance prayer, in all its forms, or the study of Divine Revelation, or prayerful work. Silence is vital in our life. It has a very deep meaning. Silence is compatible with action. God is infinitely silent and infinitely active. All the universe, all mankind, and all creatures depend on Him. He takes care of all in greatest silence and peace, with infinite love. We also should learn to combine the spirit of silence with our daily occupations in such a way that we do not lose interior recollection or become noisy. We do all we are supposed to do.
Silence is compatible with joy. Silence should make us joyful. Our cell should become a paradise. It is a bad sign when silence makes us sad, when we begin to meditate on the complaints of our fallen nature instead of meditating on God and His infinite Love. Silence is a challenge for all. Some become happy, some unhappy. In solitude and silence we can see what we really are, or better, who we really are. It can be said that God loves silence. The mystery of the Incarnation was accomplished in greatest silence. In the Eucharist, where Christ is really present, He is the example of Christian Silence. Always substantially one with the Father, serving as Mediator between God and us, He becomes also the spiritual food for many. He is always ready to console and to help all those in need who have recourse to Him.
O admirable Mystery, O most perfect example for all of us! In silence we should adore God and be united with Him; in silence we should pray and offer ourselves for the salvation of many; in silence we should be patient and bear all insults and offenses as Christ does in the Eucharist. Our Blessed Mother is the singular and most perfect example of Christian silence. She spoke only a few words. She was always united with God but had her eyes and heart open to the needs of others [as at the wedding feast of Cana]. She is the perfect contemplative, adoring God in silence, and pondering all things in her heart. Let us imitate Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and our holy founders in their spirit of silence. Amen.
"Do not yield to every impulse and suggestion but consider things carefully and patiently in the light of God’s will. For very often, sad to say, we are so weak that we believe and speak evil of others rather than good. Perfect men, however, do not readily believe every talebearer, because they know that human frailty is prone to evil and is likely to appear in speech.
Not to act rashly or to cling obstinately to one’s opinion, not to believe everything people say or to spread abroad the gossip one has heard, is great wisdom.
Take counsel with a wise and conscientious man. Seek the advice of your betters in preference to following your own inclinations.
A good life makes a man wise according to God and gives him experience in many things, for the more humble he is and the more subject to God, the wiser and the more at peace he will be in all things."
YouTube video link:
youtu.be/WeOLenpKta8