🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by St. Francis of Assisi, St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. Francis de Sales
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = “Traditionis Custodes: Taking a Bulldozer to an Anthill”, by Pieter Vree (Part 2 of 2)
🍗The Meat = Book: ”The Prayer of the Presence of God, Why We Must Pray”, by Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart
🍰The Dessert = YouTube Video: “God’s Presence In Our Hearts”, by Fr. Jacques Philippe (Part 1of 8)
♠️ "It is impossible that those who have found the stability that comes from having their dwelling place in God will turn way from God. How can those who have actually found rest in God become satiated and be drawn away recklessly by desire? For by definition, satiety quenches appetite... Satiety comes about in two ways: either appetite is quenched because it desired things that are trivial, or because it becomes nauseous by being drawn to what is base and repugnant. In the latter case desire turns into loathing. But for those who enjoy fellowship with God who is infinite and beautiful, desire becomes more intense and has no limit." By St. Maximos the Confessor
🔶 “Many men keep the commandments in the way sick men take medicine: more from fear of dying in damnation than for joy of living according to our Savior’s will. Just as some persons dislike taking medicine, no matter how pleasant it is, simply because it is called medicine, so there are some souls who hold in horror things commanded simply because they are commanded . . . On the contrary, a loving heart loves the commandments. The more difficult they are, the sweeter and more agreeable it finds them, since this more perfectly pleases the Beloved and gives Him greater honor." By St. Francis de Sales
It is one of the greatest blessings one can receive, for time is surely not on our side. Days past like hours, and hours like seconds, so pray tell me, who have time to waste or misuse?
📖1 Corinthians 7:31 “those using the world as not using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away”
If the primary goal is eternal life, then what is more important to concentrate on, the things of this world that are seen, or on what in unseen? The invisible trumps the visible every time, all the time. It goes down to the wire and correctly ordered priority matters:
📖 Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”
Being too weak to choose rightly or operating with a lack of wisdom in which to choose the better part, will result in a hindrance to graces that can be essential to help us grow. Living that way, can surely be considered as one being spiritually handicapped. Any grace we miss out on, is tragic. For why is that? Because it is something that can’t be recaptured. Another thing is that we do not know if opportunity will knock twice, so it is wise to take advantage of every grace moment that comes our way. How worth it will it be, and happily so, at death’s hour when there will be no regrets, not having one single one will be blissful for sure!
📖 Luke 10:41-42 “The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
In my life, what a great need there is to be found laboring for improvement day by day. To be satisfied is to truly be deceived without a doubt. If we can only know the extent to which there is a great chasm between what we are and what we were created to be, what a difference that would make in how we live our spiritual lives. The comparison is against the saints, really against God Himself, and not against each other, or against what is inferior. For did He not say:
📖1 Peter 1:15-16 “but, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, “Be holy because I [am] holy.”
Is not Scripture to serve the purpose of teaching and training? Then when we read the Word of God we must consider this to be words of truth. If truth is being proclaimed, then not one word should be taken lightly or be easily dismissed.
📖2 Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness”
All of this being said, it is not to feel discouraged or overwhelmed about achieving the goal and reaching for the high mark. For this we can believe:
📖 Matthew 12:20 “A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory”
📖 Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
The battle is not ours, but it’s the Lord’s, so success is assured to those who abide in Him and let Him abide in them.
📖 2 Chronicles 20:15 “and he said: “Pay attention, all of Judah, inhabitants of Jerusalem, and King Jehoshaphat! The LORD says to you: Do not fear or be dismayed at the sight of this vast multitude, for the battle is not yours but God’s”
What is equally important is a total surrender and it’s imperative to follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. There must be an end to flying solo and doing our own thing.
📖 John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing”
📖Ephesians 3:20 “Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us”
We must have a great desire to want to climb the ladder of perfection and to glorify God to the fullest extent by how we live our lives. If we continue to faithfully and consistently put our two cents in the pot, the Lord God will not fail to put in the rest. With God on our side, eventually we can expect that success will come.
📖 Matthew 13:12 “To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away”
📖 Sirach 4:28 “Even to the death, fight for what is right, and the LORD will do battle for you”
If mediocrity is our thing, then forever we’ll be holding the short end of the stick. How foolish to be leaning on our own understanding, trying to enter closed doors, and bypassing the doors before us that are swung wide open.
📖 Matthew 7:14 “How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it”
Prayers that are fervent are in order, that all may come to a deeper understanding that everything is passing away and that the end will be here sooner than we think.
📖 1 John 2:17 “Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever”
So it is a grace and supreme blessing to hear the call of God and respond when everything around is whispering or speaking loudly to use but only those with spiritual ears wide open hear:
📖 Matthew 13:16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.
📖 Acts of the Apostles 28:27 “Gross is the heart of this people;they will not hear with their ears;so they may not see with their eyesand hear with their earsand understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them”
That the following might be our motivation in season and out of season for good and God’s glory
📖 Matthew 19:28-29” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life”
The ball is in our courts, and as a result may we never ever let the cares of this world totally distract us from the goal, or our energy be misdirected and spent in the wrong way.
📖Matthew 13:4 “And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up”
📖 Matthew 13:15 “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, and hear with their earsand understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them”
What we do want to do is keep our eyes on Jesus, hearing Him, thereby hearing the Father and working out our salvation to the fullest with fear and trembling. That is a manner that is in no way slack or haphazard.
📖 Philippians 2:12 “So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling”
📖John 10:27 “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me”
Info from this site:
www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/traditionis-custodes-taking-a-bulldozer-to-an-anthill/
“Read any traditionalist publication or visit any traditionalist website and you’ll see this is true. Many actively seek to widen the wedge between their followers — whom they obsequiously flatter as the “true church” or “faithful remnant” — and the Church at large, including the present Magisterium and the past six pontiffs. The Remnant, for example, recently called Francis an “idolater” who “continually betrays the Body of Christ” (May 15). For such as these, “tradition” and the TLM have themselves become objects of worship. They are, for some, symbols of defiance, badges of belonging to a select group that has exclusive access to the sole path to salvation. These attitudes and tendencies contravene the spirit and letter of Summorum Pontificum, which Benedict XVI expected would “enable…all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.” He even held out hope that “the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite” — ordinary (Novus Ordo) and extraordinary (TLM) — would “be mutually enriching.” Save for isolated exceptions, it wasn’t to be.
“Regrettably, the pastoral objective of my Predecessors,” Francis notes in his letter accompanying Traditionis Custodes, “has often been seriously disregarded. An opportunity…intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.” These attitudes and tendencies aren’t limited to the most vociferous of public radical-traditionalist mouthpieces. It can be found in various traditionalist communities as well (though, of course, not in all of them). Just ask Rachel Dobbs, a former traditionalist who spent decades in such communities before becoming disillusioned by the tired triumphalism of what she terms “quasi-schismatic groups.” She and her trad cohort saw themselves as “the true Catholics preserving tradition. I saw myself that way. I remembered how I looked down on all those ‘other’ Catholics,” she writes (WherePeterIs.com, Aug. 17). “I took part in many conversations that were nothing but complaints. There wasn’t a Sunday that went by that we didn’t discuss how awful the regular ‘Novus Ordo’ Mass was…. I believed that the Tridentine aesthetics were more Catholic and more authentic…. I was sure that the future of the Church laid in returning to the Tridentine Mass and tradition.”
Even after Summorum Pontificum, Dobbs writes, “The emphasis on the ‘superiority’ of the Tridentine Mass over the ‘Novus Ordo’ remained,” and traditionalist groups were still “isolated from much of parish life.” So much for mutual enrichment. When Francis was elected, Dobbs recounts, “many traditionalists began expressing hostility toward the pope, in some cases considering him a heretic or worse. In fact many of these communities, far from sharing in and enriching parish life, devolved into toxic cultures of sexism, racism, homophobia, antisemitism, contempt for the Pope, and contempt for anyone who doesn’t think like them.” So much for attaining and retaining unity. And so, Francis concludes, “In defense of the unity of the Body of Christ, I am constrained to revoke the faculty granted by my Predecessors. The distorted use that has been made of this faculty is contrary to the intentions that led to granting the freedom to celebrate the [Traditional Latin] Mass.”
There are no clear-cut protagonists in this latest episode in the drama over the Church’s liturgical rites, only antagonists. Nobody comes out clean — neither traditionalists, who are acting out the role of nose-thumbing rebellious children, nor Francis, who is acting as an intractable disciplinarian dad. It goes without saying that the TLM is of immense value to the Church, even unto today. The problem, as Pope Francis and former traditionalists like Rachel Dobbs understand, is with the ecclesially (and often personally) damaging subset of manias that has infected the traditionalist movement: deification of the abstract concept of “tradition” and its attendant form of worship; an elitism inimical to the nature and history of the Catholic Church; rejection of liturgical and doctrinal development; contempt for every pope since Pius XII; moral rigorism; and a marked lack of Christian charity toward those with whom they disagree.
This excess baggage weighing down the traditionalist movement is one of the factors that has impeded the TLM from becoming a force multiplier in the life of the Church. But it is not sufficient reason to abandon the project of reviving and expanding the celebration of the TLM, which is one of the great treasures of Catholicism, as Pope Benedict well understood. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful,” he wrote. “It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.” What Francis has done is akin to taking a bulldozer to an anthill, rather than calling the colony to conversion. (Ants, after all, have their place and purpose in the natural order.) As Gerhard Cardinal Müller has written, it is “simply unjust to abolish celebrations of the ‘old’ rite just because it attracts some problematic people: abusus non tollit usum [the misuse of something is no argument against its proper use]” (TheCatholicThing.org, July 19).
And Francis is delusional if he thinks what he has done is to “provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the [ordinary form of the] Roman Rite.” We are now 50 years past the imposition of the Novus Ordo Mass. That there’s still a troublesome traditionalist movement that nobody knows how to handle should give pause to anyone — including the Pope — who entertains the fanciful notion that traditionalists en masse will return “in due time” to what they’ve obstinately rejected for five decades. Most would rather die on this particular anthill. The Holy Father’s ham-handedness won’t change that. On the contrary, it will further harden the already hard-of-heart. As Cardinal Müller said, “Papal authority does not consist in superficially demanding from the faithful mere obedience, i.e., a formal submission of the will, but, much more essentially, in enabling the faithful also to be convinced with consent of the mind.” In matters liturgical, Francis has failed spectacularly to do this. If, with a stroke of his pen, Francis can undo what Benedict has done, what’s to prevent Francis’s successor, if he’s got traditionalist sympathies, from undoing what Francis has done? And so forth and so on with successive pontiffs, until a new council is convened to settle the matter once and for all? At that point, the question will be whether the council is called Trent II or Vatican III.”
“The reasons for praying are as numerous as they are imperative. They correspond to all our needs without exception, and to all occasions. They are also in accord with the favours we receive in answer to our prayers and to God's rights over his creatures. Our divine Master's word has explored and lighted up everything, our human world and God's world. He revealed the powerlessness of the first when he said: Without me, you can do nothing
📖 John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing”
We have read these words often enough, but without penetrating them. We no more understand the `nothing' than we do the `All'. The nature of our being does not allow us to understand it. We do not look at our tiny being as it actually is in the light of the `All'. We do not compare the hours of our life, so short and transient, with God's changeless eternity. We do not see the place we occupy in the universe as compared to his immensity, which infinitely overflows our tiny universe, and could embrace numberless others, far greater than ours. Above all, we forget that our being is not ours. Moment by moment we receive the tiny drop of being that God designs to give us. The only reason we have it is because he gives it to us; and having received it, immediately it begins to dissolve; it slips through our fingers and is replaced by another which escapes us with the same rapidity. All this being comes from God and returns to him; it depends upon him alone.
We are like vessels into which he pours that being drop by drop, so as to create a bond of dependence upon him, whereby his Being is manifested and made known and, when lovingly welcomed, is glorified.
Prayer is this intelligent vessel, which knows, loves, thanks and glorifies. It says, in effect: My God, the present moment and the light by which I am aware of it, comes from you. My mind, which appreciates it; the upward leaping of my heart which responds to that recognition and thanks you for it; the living bond created by this moment-all is from you. Everything comes from you. All that is within me, all that is not you; all created beings and their movements; my whole being and its activities all is from you. Without you nothing exists; apart from you is just nothingness; apart from your Being there is merely non- existence.
How this complete dependence, upon which I have so often and so deeply meditated, ought to impress me! I feel that it plunges me into the depths of reality, into truth. Nevertheless, it does not completely express that reality. There was a time when this nothingness rose up in opposition to 'Him who is'. It wanted to be independent of him; it put itself forward, refused to obey him and cut itself off from him. It made war on him and became his enemy. It destroyed his image in the heart's citadel where hitherto he had reigned, and usurped his throne. These are only metaphors, and they do not do justice to the real horror of the plight created by sin; but we must be content with them, as they are all we have. We must remember, however, that they are completely inadequate.
And every day we add to this predicament, already so grave. Every personal sin of ours is an acceptance of this state: we choose it, we love it and prefer it to union with God. We lap up, as it were, these sins like water. We take pleasure in plunging into them as into a stream, the waters of which rise persistently, and in time overwhelm us and carry us away. They toss us about like a straw, and submerge us. Thoughts, feelings, words, really bad acts and innumerable omissions fill our days and nights, and intermingle, more or less consciously, with our every movement, and at all hours. They spoil the purity of our ordinary actions such as eating and drinking; they introduce themselves into our sleep and mix with our waking movements, and with our external acts as with our most intimate thoughts. Because of our fallen state, everything becomes matter and occasion to drag us down further into evil.”
Video link:
youtu.be/acB8i8ptzuA