Dom Maurus Wolter, O.S.B.
“My omnipotence is great, and grace will enable you to give Me what I ask of you.”
– Jesus to Sr. Consolata (p. 117, ‘Jesus Appeals to the World’)
Only Divine Love can transform the ruins of this fallen world. More than anything, the world needs saints! “Oh,” said Our Lord to St. Gemma Galgani, “that I could make all understand how incensed My Heavenly Father is by the impious world! There is nothing to stay His Hand, and He is now preparing a great chastisement for all the world.” (p. 175–176, ‘Life of St. Gemma Galgani’)
Trust in God, and He will see to your sanctification. What a sublime calling! What a great duty!
“I cannot bear tepid and cowardly souls.” (cf. Rev. 3:16)
– Jesus to St. Margaret Mary
‘And Christ died for all; that they also who live, may not now live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again.’ (2 Cor. 5:15) And how can we live unto Him, Who is Charity (1 Jn. 4:16), except by Charity? “Let your whole life,” said Jesus to St. Veronica Giuliani, “be one continual act of charity. I desire you in charity.”
“Fill yourself with this Love and diffuse it over the world.”
– Jesus to Ven. Louise Margaret de la Touche
Take heed of the following advice, dear reader – not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of those dear to you, and for all those who have been redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ.
(The following quotes have been taken from ‘The Principles of Monasticism’ by Dom Maurus Wolter).
Work Diligently
“The Lord couples sloth with wickedness, saying: Wicked and slothful servant.” (cf. Mt. 25:26)
– St. Basil the Great (p. 498)
Avoid Excessive Chatter
“Avoid excessive speaking for it extinguishes all reasonable thoughts and those which come to the heart from Heaven.”
– St. Dorotheus (p. 66)
Pray Frequently
“He who desires to pray frequently will find the mercy of Christ more abundantly.”
– St. Macarius (p. 139)
Join Prayer to Meditation
“Meditation and prayer are the two wings of charity.”
– Hugh of St. Cher (p. 214)
Love Silent Contemplation
“Arsenius, flee [men, the world], keep silence, and lead a life of silent contemplation, for these are the principles of salvation which prevent a man from committing sin.”
– Our Lord to St. Arsenius (p. 68)
Rid Yourself of Earthly Attachments
“Free yourself of the burden of this world’s goods, and I will personally fill you with those which are heavenly unto your soul’s supreme consolation.”
– Jesus to Ven. Juan de Jesus Maria (p. 280)
Seek God Alone
“And who can be more fortunate than he whose Creator becomes his wealth?”
– Julianus Pomerius (p. 293)
Bear with Humiliations
“If you long for the virtue of humility, you must not flee from the way of humiliation.”
– St. Bernard (p. 298)
Deny Yourself
“Unless a person renounces himself he cannot draw night to that which is above him.”
– St. Gregory the Great (p. 390)
Love Chastity
“O chastity, which begets spiritual joy and banishes sadness!”
– St. Ephraem (p. 374)
Avoid Gluttony
“We must take food not to the point of eating extravagantly or to the state of being glutted, but only so that the body can be properly sustained.”
– St. Isidore of Seville (p. 411–412)
Flee Idleness
“There is no thought so foul, so abominable, so evil and execrable to which idleness, which is so detestable, will not lead. For the heart of a man given to idleness is like a mill which, having no good grain to grind, but being nevertheless in continual motion, grinds on and wears itself out, even unto total destruction, unless such ruin is prevented by someone’s diligence. And it chops up dirty insects flying about just as readily as choice kernels of grain.”
– John Gerson (p. 505)
Admonish the Sinner
“If punishment lies in store for him who has the money and does not help with the same, shall there not be a greater punishment for him who has the opportunity to exhort and does not do so? In the former case the body is nourished, and in the latter, the soul; there you prevent temporal death, here, that which is eternal.”
– St. John Chrysostom (p. 629)
Know your Faith
“THE MAN WHO IS LACKING IN DOCTRINE WILL EVERYWHERE SUFFER DARKNESS.”
– St. Bede (p. 513)
Littlest Souls 
Hello to my dear spiritual mother, Julie!
Thanks for the great post!
Mary(inated) haha! I like the phrase. It sounds like “marinated”, and therefore leads well into your next comment about food.
That is a great insight from the priest you mentioned. There is so much light in this doctrine that it is blinding. I still remember the first time I read the Council of Trent’s document on the Eucharist, which says that we receive Jesus, whole an entire, finger-nails and all. At first, I was confused; but, that was largely because I forgot that we receive the Risen Lord, Whose body is able to pass through matter (e.g. the door of the Upper Room).
Yes, I know Scott Hahn – what a great man 🙂
Thank you for the article; it contain some very important considerations! If we give Jesus the key to our mind, He will see to it that it is preserved from voluntary evil thoughts. Obviously we cannot be perfect, though.
All the best, Julie! I assure you and your husband of my prayers.
PAX.
Ben
My dear consecrated son Ben,
I pray for you today especially, because it’s Tuesday.
… In January you wrote:
“Stay close to Mary, Help of Christians, and you will be saved; not only that: you will become a Saint; you will save many souls, and your death will be a most glorious one, a cause of delight to the Courts of Heaven!”
These words encouraged me greatly today as I read them again. You are so (Mary)inated in the words given from heaven to the Saints, that it’s hard for me to distinguish nowadays your writing from their’s!
At one of the memorial masses for mother Angelica on EWTN, Father Mark noted that Father Miguel Marie had blown him away with something he said about the Eucharist. He said everything we eat is dead. We eat steak or elk and it is dead meat. The food that we eat becomes part of who we are. But the Eucharist is actually the LIVING flesh of Christ, who said “eat my flesh and drink my blood and you shall have life in you.” At another EWTN mass, the priest noted the recent Eucharistic miracle in Poland where a host that was dropped Christmas of 2013 had turned into bloody flesh. A piece was sent off to a scientific laboratory and the recent announcement from the bishop of that diocese, was that the material was found to be heart muscle, which had been stressed. The priest noted, “we say in mass ‘we lift up our hearts to the Lord.’ Not only do we give HIM our heart, but God exchanges it for His Son’s own LIVING Heart. His living heart draws us up into the Father and we become Divinized.” The original Adam wanted to become Divinized, only, without God. God wants us to be Divinized IN Him. It is His plan to share His glory with us. (This was another sentence I heard from Scott Hahn. I’m sure you have heard of him. He is a Protestant minister converted over to Catholicism. Man, is he ever on fire for God! Nobody can remain a lukewarm Cathlic after hearing him even once.)
Now when I receive the Eucharist, I look at it, and I imagine the living heart of Jesus, pulsating with Love, right in front of me!
Then today I read an extraordinary article. It convicted me of how important it is to discipline my every thought. I thought I would attach it for you (as if you didn’t have enough piled up on your reading table already).
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Charisma News
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Is the Tragic Mistake of Noah’s Generation Happening Again?
8:00AM EDT 4/25/2016
Tim Rowe
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Noah’s ark
Is our generation like Noah’s? (YouTube)
Are we living in another generation like Noah’s, when toxic thinking is destroying our entire culture?
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was continually only evil. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart” (Gen. 6:5-6).
It is sobering to see what happened to the human heart because of a reckless thought life. It did not take long after sin had poured into the human race in the Garden of Eden for men’s and women’s thinking to go down the tubes. Almost immediately, Adam and Eve let fear dominate their thinking when they hid from the presence of God. God was no longer the focal image of their thoughts. Corrupt thinking only worsened as Cain murdered Abel when thoughts of jealousy and anger shaped his heart into a killer. Sin was crouching at the door of Cain’s thought life, and he failed to master it. Each succeeding generation continued to allow sin to crowd God out of their thinking.
The Days of Noah: The Point of No Return
In Genesis 6, people’s thought lives had so corrupted their hearts that they reached a point of no return. Every thought, imagination and intention of their human thinking was consistently and totally evil. The Bible does not say some of the imaginations and thoughts of the human race were continually evil, but all of their images, desires, intentions and inclinations in every single thought, were evil.
This was not just some weekend fling. It was their thinking from the time they got up in the morning until the time they went to bed at night. There was not a moment in the day when this evil thought process was not actively controlling their minds and shaping their hearts. They wanted absolutely nothing to do with God in their thinking and ultimately in their hearts.
The psalmist affirms this destructive habit of wrong thinking to the human heart:
“The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek God; God is not in all his thoughts” (Ps. 10:4).
This wicked and rebellious people in the time of Noah did not seek God in their thinking. God was not in one single thought. God is the most awesome thing we can ever think about, but these people were so deceived that they did not believe they needed God.
This is the tragic height of selfishness. This is the ultimate ego trip. This is the most dangerous thinking pattern on the planet. Without God in our thoughts, we have written the death sentence to the magnificent purpose God has prepared for our lives. To never know Him is the greatest catastrophe of the ages. He deserves the honor to be first in our thinking.
Our thoughts are a mighty weapon that can forge our hearts into a steel fortress for our God, or they can be a stealth bomber that penetrates our inner lives and destroys our hearts. Thoughts are a much more powerful weapon than any nuclear bomb. They are the critical component to our spiritual growth. We must have a disciplined thought life that is focused like a laser on God and His Word, or our hearts will become a mush of spiritual apathy and worldly lusts.
The devil is a master general at attacking the thought life of a Christian. His war strategy involves tactics of deception, pressure, and enticement to turn our thinking away from God and toward his kingdom. The devil knows that every action that flows out of the human heart originates from our thoughts. He knows that our moral character is an exact image of our thinking. Our thoughts determine whether our character drifts toward good or evil.
The devil knows that in order for a person to do evil, he must first think evil.
Within 10 generations after the fall in the garden, the devil was so successful that only one person on the entire Earth had godly thoughts. Sin had spread like wildfire and contaminated every single thought of what was probably between 235 million and 7 billion people. To imagine that only one person out of this massive population had his thought life together is mind-boggling. Nothing in their thoughts reflected the image of God and not one thought brought glory to God. They were wise, rich, sophisticated and cultured for their time, but the defining characteristic of their age was wickedness because of their thinking.
A civilization that is centered on an ungodly thought life is built on sinking sand. This civilization in the days of Noah received the fruit of their thoughts, which was wickedness and corruption that multiplied on the face of the Earth.
Only Noah was thinking rightly and found favor with God. No one else held the image of God and His words as the standard for their thoughts. No one else was guarding their thoughts. No one else cared that their thought life had nothing good in it, but was a breeding ground for evil. Only Noah had righteous thoughts that built his faith and fueled his obedience to God. Noah’s thought life was pure and free from evil because he walked with God.
Genesis 6:6 reveals how the toxic thinking of the human race affected God’s heart. These verses contain the first usage of the word heart in the Bible, and they describe a heart that is in deep sorrow.
“The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart” (Gen. 6:6).
The toxic thought life of His precious creation broke God’s heart. God’s heart was in horrible agony and pain as He groaned in sorrow over the condition of the heart of every member of the human race. He cried in agony that His people refused to honor Him with even one thought.
Are our thought lives any better today? Does our thinking bring great agony to the heart of God? How God must grieve today over the thought lives of so many Christians and the toxic thinking of this generation.
God is sounding out a clarion call to all who would listen that what we think is critically important to the heart of God. He knows He cannot have your heart if He does not first have your thoughts.
I don’t want to break the heart of God because of my toxic thinking. I want to bring glory to God with my thinking. I want to honor Him with every thought. I do not want any virus to infect my thinking and take out the operating system of my heart. A reckless thought life led to the annihilation of an entire civilization. Is it happening again?
With his Doctorate of Jurisprudence as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies, History and Classics, Tim Rowe has practiced law for 31 years. He was host of the television show, Faith and the Law, which aired on Lesea Network. Rowe’s latest book is entitled “The Heart: The Key to Everything in the Christian Life.” Rowe is president of Goodness of God Ministries which offers free devotionals and other resources in both English and Spanish. The ministry also supplies Bible instruction, English lessons and food to the needy, the poor and the children in northwest Ecuador. Visit thegoodnessofgod.net.
With the affection of Christ Himself, your spiritual mother, Julie
You’re welcome, dear Julie!
I agree; I think God is tremendously pleased with the little things we offer Him with love.
You are in my prayers.
“I am the Almighty, raising to Myself what is but dust…”
– The Eternal Father to Sr. Jeanne Benigne Gojos
Pax!
Such gems of wisdom!! Would that I could act on each. It reminds me that I am just dust.
Yesterday, we were telling our 5 grandbabies goodbye and the 2 year old ran outside and grabbed two bare sticks off a bush, and then presented them to me, saying “from me, to you!”. Those bare sticks were as precious as two dozen roses!! I think God loves all of the bare sticks we offer, but the intention must always be love. God bless you dear Ben for the gems you lay along our feet to aid us on our journey! Julie