PathToHoliness » Spiritual Reading

True Devotion To Mary During May

Chuck — Mon, 10 May 2010 20:18:50 +0000

May is the month dedicated to Mary. Pope Paul VI said the following about it in his encyclical, Mense Maio.

. . . a month which the piety of the faithful has long dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. Our heart rejoices at the thought of the moving tribute of faith and love which will soon be paid to the Queen of Heaven in every corner of the earth. For this is the month during which Christians, in their churches and their homes, offer the Virgin Mother more fervent and loving acts of homage and veneration; and it is the month in which a greater abundance of God’s merciful gifts comes down to us from our Mother’s throne.

For spiritual reading during this month a great book to consider is “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin” by St. Louis de Montfort. You can find a pdf of it on the Montfort Missionaries website or buy it on Amazon. I also found it in the Amazon Kindle e-books and loaded it on my iPad.

Spiritual Reading For Lent

Chuck — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:10:35 +0000

Here’s some good spiritual reading for Lent.

In this book, Fr. de la Palma provides an aid for meditating on the Passion. He recreates the events of Jesus’ life beginning with Holy Thursday and concluding with the burial of Our Lord and a powerful evocation of the coming resurrection. With vivid detail and a constant recognition of the role the Blessed Mother played in those days, Fr. de la Palma helps the reader enter into the Last Supper, the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist, the arrest of Our Lord, the denial of St. Peter, the trials before Caiaphas and Pilate, the scourging and mocking, and finally, the Crucifixion. His meditations hew closely to the Gospel accounts, adding to them insights from other scriptures and frequently culminating in fervent prayers to Our Lord and Our Lady. Fr. de la Palma emphasizes that through it all, Jesus was offering Himself to the Father of His own fee will for the salvation of the world. This book is a striking reminder of the immensity of that offering of love.

Available from Scepter Publishers.

Interior Freedom

Chuck — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:20:41 +0000

If you’re working on developing your interior life then a good book to consider adding to your spiritual reading list is Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe.

I’m working my way through the book now and can tell you that he has really put together some very comforting and sensible thoughts on this topic. We all experience trials and so many times we let it disturb our inner peace. By meditating on sections of this book you will find ways to be more happy in your faith. He lets us discover that there is a place of freedom within us that no one or no circumstances can take away since its source is God.

Read About The Cure d’Ars

Chuck — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:42:39 +0000

In this Year for Priests a good book for spiritual reading is “The Cure D’Ars : St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney” by Abbe Francois Trochu. Here’s a description of the book.

The definitive life, based on the official “Process of Beatification and Canonization,” and thus totally factual and documented. Of humble education and assigned to a forgotten farmers’ village, he attracted the whole world to Ars and was proclaimed “Patron Saint of Parish Priests” in 1929. Ate one meal a day, slept only a few hours a night, heard confessions up to 17 hours a day, converted thousands. His body remains incorrupt. A grace-filled story of total love of God!

He is the patron saint of priests and the book is a very good look at his life like the description says. I’m only part way through it now but it is great reading and I highly recommend it.

Necessity of Interior Life

Chuck — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:30:41 +0000

In my current spiritual reading I’m learning of the necessity of a well developed interior life in order to be an effective evangelist. It’s surprising to read about how ineffective people are when they don’t practice what they preach. We hear that a lot but do we really understand it?

I started this blog because I didn’t think that I was doing enough to evangelize the faith. I reasoned that since God has blessed me with the talent to communicate using new online tools like blogging, that this is something I can and should do. I quickly realized that just having a blog and posting things wasn’t working. By that I mean that I wasn’t devoting time to it, including meditating on what I would post here. That’s because I was only doing the minimum in keeping up with my daily devotions and not spending enough time in personal reflection and meditation which is so necessary to develop in interior life.

If I’m going to be a good example for others then I have to take time for prayer, spiritual reading, spiritual direction, reading of scripture and all the things that help me develop my own faith. I see how lots of “actions” can be a real waste of time, even if they’re for very good causes, if the person doing them doesn’t have a well developed interior life of prayer.

Avoiding Discouragement

Chuck — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:28:44 +0000

How often do you get discouraged? Maybe things aren’t going well at work or you fail at a resolution you’ve made. At this time of year a lot of people are making resolutions and many won’t keep them. This is where a developed interior life comes in to play.

I know I have lots of discouragements and many of them are my own responsibility. In fact, by doing a good daily self examination it’s easy to see how much I am responsible for things that go wrong or how I could have done things differently.

One of my resolutions has been to be more diligent in my devotions and that includes my daily prayers and spiritual reading. In the “Soul of the Apostolate” Chautard has a chapter on the danger of the active life without the interior life. The last section deals with discouragement and how a well developed interior life is a defense against discouragement. It’s really difficult to be discouraged when we speak directly with God and spend time with Him. I know that’s hard for anyone who hasn’t done so to understand.

One of my prayers for people today is that they will take time to meditate more on their life and their relationship with God. Then I believe they won’t be so discouraged.

Develop Your Interior Life First

Chuck — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:51:02 +0000

I just heard an advertisement for the People Magazine’s Best of 2008 issue that contains things like the top 25 celebrity quotes of the year and a whole bunch of other inane listings. It just made me consider how much our society seems obsessed with what other people are doing, saying, thinking or feeling. Then when I was working out at the YMCA I could see a certain cable news channel group of anchors sitting on a couch pontificating about their thoughts on “news” items. That brought up the same thoughts I’d had earlier. Our new information age seems to be focused on what everyone is doing (activities) and not much on how everyone is drawing closer to God on a personal level.

How about looking inside ourselves to figure out what we’re feeling and why and by the way, what about our relationship with God?

My latest spiritual reading is “Soul of the Apostolate” by Jean-Baptiste Chautard. I’m finding it a great read since it really helps you understand the absolute necessity of a well developed interior life. All the activity we participate in, including good works, can actually become a danger to our salvation if we don’t first devote time and attention to our interior life.

Somehow I think we’d all care less about what others do if we spent more time contemplating what we’re doing first.