Journeying With The Saints

Welcome, fellow Pilgrims, how is the journey going today? I hope things are well and if not well then I hope God is giving you the grace to shoulder what you are struggling through.  Today, St. Francis gives three acts to do to wrap up any meditation time. This is another very practical reading from him and, so, I'm not sure there is much I could expand on. As you can see, when you are dealing wit...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. I hope this day is treating you well. So, the last couple of readings, St. Francis has been coaching Philothea, or us, you might say, in how to meditate. We've learned that it is worthwhile to pick out something in the Bible, especially, some point in Christ's life and meditate on it. We are to use our imagination to place ourselves in the scene and we are to meditate, no...

My fellow Pilgrims, welcome. We have another very short reading today which is, again, very straightforward. You may be wondering why all these short readings, but we must remember that St. Francis is teaching Philothea about the devout life. So, he's leading her, step-by-step to an understanding. Some of these steps are very practical and some are going to be more philosophical and theological. T...

Welcome to our reading today, Catholic Pilgrims. Our focus for today is on the third point of preparing to meditate. As a refresher, first we are to recognize that God is present, then we are to offer an invocation to show the genuineness of our desire to enter into mediation and, today, we St. Francis wants us to set forth the mystery. In essence, he wants us to use our imagination to see the pla...

Hello, hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Today, St. Francis is giving us the second point in preparing to enter into prayer or meditation. Remember last time, he wants us to place ourselves in the presence of God or recognize that God is present–either spiritually, as in He is everywhere, or physically, if you happen to be at church in front of the tabernacle or a monstrance.  The second point is on the i...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, and welcome. Today, St. Francis is going to be giving us some pointers for preparing to enter into meditation. If you remember last time, we talked about the necessity of prayer and there are a lot of people that just don't know what to do. Unless you are a spiritual heavyweight, most people need guidance when it comes to prayer. It's something that, in many ways, has to...

Welcome, my Catholic Pilgrim friends. We have reached the Second Part of the book, which is a nice milestone for us to celebrate. My son is in his first year of ever playing baseball, which is thrilling to me because I loved playing softball. I, also, enjoy watching baseball games. It's, also, exciting to me because with my girls, most of their sports were in things that I couldn't help with. But,...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, welcome back. Today is our last reading in the First Part which is a pretty big deal. After today, we will have read through 24 chapters already, if you can believe that.  There is a quote that is wrongly attributed to Marilyn Monroe that says, "If you don't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." Now, on first blush, there is some truth to this, as we shou...

It's a beautiful day and a perfect time for our reading from "Introduction to the Devout Life."  In ten years of posting online for my Catholic Pilgrim page, I've learned that the slightest criticism of certain forms of entertainment will bring down the wrath of the internet upon your head. People DO NOT want to be told that they are too devoted to a certain form of entertainment. They don't want...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. We have a more indepth reading lined up for today. It's going to be on venial sins. Growing up Protestant, I was taught that all sins are equal. A sin is a sin is a sin. While it is true that all sin offends God, we know instinctively that some sins are worse than others. Of course, murder is worse than stealing a candy bar and we punish these sins–or crimes–differ...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Good to have you here. So, today is going to be very light. I know the last couple of readings have been light and we haven't really gone into depth with them. That will change very soon and we will get into the more meaty readings. Today, we are reading the conclusion to the first purification. It's going to tie up everything we've read about so far and draw it into a co...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. I hope all of you are well today. Last time, in our readings, St. Francis mentioned that he wanted us to make a protestation as a conclusion to our contrition. To the modern reader, a protestation sounds negative and like we are protesting against something that we disagree with. That's not what is meant here. What is meant is a solemn or earnest declaration or affirmatio...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims, to the first reading after our meditations. Our topic today is going to be on General Confession. So, if you aren't familiar, a General Confession is where you go to Confession and confess all your mortal sins. Going through the meditations hopefully made us detest our sins or made us detest them even more than we did before and St. Francis is encouraging us to mak...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims, to the Tenth Meditation. Today, we conclude the meditations we've been going through to help rid us of our affection to sin and I think today's meditation is supremely excellent. I took it with me to church to read it over and if you really try to visualize the things St. Francis gives us for contemplation, I think you will find them excellent situations to think about...

Hey, there, fellow Pilgrims. Welcome back. Today, we are reading the ninth Meditation, which means we only have one more meditation after this. The topic today is on the choice of Paradise. So, often, people accuse God of claiming to be a loving God and, yet, sending some people to Hell. What those people fail to see is that it is our choice whether we wind up in Heaven or not. If we have lived a...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome back for the Eighth Meditation.  Like I promised you, today, the topic is more uplifting. It's on Paradise. This is our end goal, to be with God in Paradise. We should think on Heaven and all its glory, knowing that we can't possibly imagination all that it will entail. It's good to think on it, though, because you can't reach a goal, if you never think about it....

Hello, out there in the world, welcome back. Our meditation today will be very short. The topic is on Hell. Now you may be thinking, "All these heavy topics for mediation. Ugh." But, rest assured, we will move on to more joyful things. We must think on these things, though, because Hell is a reality and it is our mortal sins alone that send us to Hell, as St. Francis told us last time.  Sometimes,...

Fellow Pilgrims, welcome. Today we are going to be doing the Sixth Meditation of the First Part. This one is thinking on our future judgment. And last like time, this isn't the most uplifting topic, but it is one that we need to think about. So, just like the last five meditations, I'll read it and offer no reflections. I can't stress how important these meditations are and how much we really need...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank you for joining me today. Our topic for today's meditation is one that you may feel a bit nervous about exploring. The topic is our death and while I know this isn't the most uplifting topic, it is one that we need to think about especially considering that our attachment to sin can have a very negative outcome for us when our judgment comes. In many ways, death sca...

It's that time, Catholic Pilgrims, to enrich our lives with a reading from St. Francis' book "Introduction to the Devout Life." We are still on the meditations with today being Meditation Four and its topic is sin. As a reminder, for the meditations, I'm not offering any reflections because I think they need to stand completely on their own. Also, as a reminder, these meditations are to help us pu...

Welcome to the Third Mediation where we will be focusing on the mercies of God. Everyone can find examples of where God has been merciful to them. Even when, and I stress this, even when we feel like we are really going through a trial. I encourage again with these meditations to enter into prayer with God, and if need be, pause so that you can truly meditate on what St. Francis is saying. Grab yo...

Welcome to the Second Mediation, Catholic Pilgrims. Today, we will be thinking about the end to which we were created. I'd definitely challenge you to think about the ways in which we waste precious time here on earth with meaningless amusements. Not all amusements are bad, but some are so utterly meaningless that I'm sure we will get to the end of our lives and regret that wasted time. One more n...

Welcome to the First Mediation, Catholic Pilgrims. Today, I will offer no reflection after the readings. I encourage you to listen to the meditation and feel free to pause between thoughts and think about what St. Francis has given us to meditate on. I will give a short break between each number so as to give you a bit of time. Like I said last time, I encourage you to enter into a place of prayer...

Hello, fellow Pilgrims, welcome to another reading from St. Francis de Sales. The point of reading these deep spiritual books is to allow them to transform our lives and help us to imitate Christ better and conform our will to His. These readings can merit great graces for us so long as we approach them with a heart ready to be taught. Today, our reading is on how to go about ridding ourselves of...

You would be hard pressed to find a Christian that says that they have an affection for the sin that they engage in, but, the hard truth is: There are some sins that we struggle to let go of because we like them. We may even let them go and cease committing them, but our heart may desire to commit them. And that is what we will be talking about today. We will be reading from Chapter Seven of the F...