Abp.Fulton J.Sheen-5

The following are the excerpts from the autobiography of Fulton J.Sheen.As he is one of the great Catholic apologists, his words in the autobiography are very inspiring and faith-filled.His words are filled with his intense love for Jesus and the Church.What is so telling about his life is that he used all his resources intellectual,administrative and financial for the spread of the Gospel.

Excerpts:

I know that I am not afraid to appear before Him. And this is not because I am worthy, nor because I have loved Him with deep intensity, but because He has loved me. That is the only reason that any one of us is really lovable. When the Lord puts His love into us, then we become lovable.(39)

All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament….the most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. When the general plan of the sermon has been formulated, I will then talk my thoughts to Our Lord, or at least meditate on it, almost whispering the ideas. It is amazing how quickly one discovers the value of the proposed sermon.

I am convinced that preaching and lecturing are impossible without much studying and reading. This perhaps is one of the weaknesses of the modern pulpit and lecture platform—the neglect of a continuing education. Books are great friends; they always have something worthwhile to say to you when you pick them up….When the intellectual larder is empty, it is difficult to prepare a homiletic meal.(76)

Evangelization is inseparable from professional teaching ever since the Word became flesh….Almost everything in the universe was made to be spent. Wealth hoarded makes its keeper a miser. University professors desiccate by never making their knowledge available to those who do not sit at desks.(105)

The world, to me, was suffering from two kinds of hunger. Our Western world, with its affluence, was suffering from hunger of the spirit; the rest of the world from hunger of bread.

On the day of my ordination, I made two resolutions:1. I would offer the Holy Eucharist every Saturday in honor of the Bl. Virgin Mary to solicit her protection on my priesthood. 2. I resolved to spend a continuous Holy Hour every day in the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament….Looking at the eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way as the face of Moses was transformed after his companionship with God on the mountain….the purpose of the Holy Hour is to encourage deep personal encounter with Christ…neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are preceded by a personal encounter with him….It is impossible for me to explain how helpful the Holy Hour has been in preserving my vocation.(192)

The Holy Hour kept my feet from wandering too far. Being tethered to a tabernacle, one’s rope for finding other pastures is not so long….Even when it seemed so unprofitable and lacking in spiritual intimacy, I still had the sensation of being at least like a dog at the master’s door, ready in case he called me….Making a Holy Hour every day constituted for me one area of life in which I could preach what I practiced.

Celibacy and marriage are both signs of God’s covenant with man. Each has its call to perfection. They are complementary, not competitive careers.(202)

If I had to select any scene in the Scripture which best depicts the struggle that goes on in the soul of a priest, it would be that of the spiritual experience of Jacob….We are at odds with ourselves and at odds with Him. We grope around in the darkness and forget that even in the darkness He is wrestling with us bidding us to return. When the conscience wrestles with the priest it is always in the form of Christ; He meets us in our silent hours; He speaks even amid the noises; He confronts us with the spectacle of what we might have been….The preservation of celibacy is a lifelong labor, partly because of the weakness of human nature.

The more we love Christ the easier it is to be His alone….The journey of a priest’s life is not to quagmire and the swamp, but to the ocean of love. I detect all the discords of my life, hearing the music of His voice. He folds me in his arms and I know the depth of my contrition. It is His beside His waters that I thirst. It is at the sight of His Eucharistic Manna that I hunger. And it is before His smile that I weep. It is because of His love that I loathe myself….I trust in His mercy and I love Him above all loves, and I can never thank Him enough for having given me the grace of priesthood. I came into it with a deep sense of unworthiness. I end it with a still deeper sense of unworthiness; and though I come in rags, I know that the prodigal son was clothed with the robe of righteousness.(213)

All of my retreats centered in one general resolution—namely, to make a continuous hour of meditation in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament every day.

(With regard to the conversions he has brought about): I am only a porter who opens the door; it is the Lord who walks in and does the carpentry and the masonry and the rebuilding on the inside. I have merely narrated cases where for the most part I had some success as a porter.(278)

(The Lighter Side):

His conversation with the Episcopalian clergyman: Remember,Bishop Sheen, I can do anything you can do…

“Madam, do not worry, the child is not disturbing me.” She said:“ No, but you are disturbing him.”!

“ How does a man get diabetes? I said: “ Oh, by getting drunk and paying no attention to his wife and children.” “Why did you want to know how a man got diabetes?” He said: “ I was just reading that the Pope had diabetes.!!

If we are right in a conflict, the Lord bids us absorb any wrongs like a sponge; if we are wrong, we are to see others as the instruments of working His Will.(312) If the stones are not due to us while they are being thrown, or for a particular act, they may be for something else we have done or will do at some other time.(314)

He will look at our hands to see if they have been scarred from giving, our feet to see the calluses from travel to preach His Gospel, and our side to see if we have loved to a point of sacrifice. Woe to us who come down from Calvary with hands unscarred and white.(338)

(Referring to the Look of Jesus at Peter): the experience of the Second Look is not unique in life; it happens many, many times, for we are always falling down and picking ourselves up. The Second Look meant to me what it always meant to all my brother priests—the joy of beginning again. Seventy times seven, you can always begin a new chapter, start a second mile, catch a second wind, launch out into the deep, excavate new layers for untold spiritual wealth. There is always, in the Church, that wonderful Land of Beginning Again. These prodigal robes can be thrown into the pile of our spiritual nakedness, our spiritual nakedness clothed and new trails found.(343)

The keeping of the scorecard of past wrongs, the chewing of a cud of resentment, licking of the wound, and the memories of how we received them, the playing of the tapes of injustices real or imagined, were so many proofs that I had not thoroughly digested what my Faith taught me and my lips confessed, that all trials come from the Hands of the Loving God.(345)

The crucifix, to me, is not something that happened; it is something that is happening, for Christ is crucified in every age by every one of us who sin. But it is also a Promise, for Our Lord never once spoke of His Death without speaking of His Resurrection.(350)