While watching Raymond Arroyo's, World Over Live on EWTN (and preparing for tomorrow's slow-cooker dinner, and washing clothes), I was led to a website with an interesting quote. I don't want to reveal who wrote it or when. Just read it and I'll reveal the author at the end.....
Gluttony
If there is any indication of the present degeneration of society better than another, it is the excess of luxury in the modern world. When men forget their souls, they begin to take great care of their bodies. There are more athletic clubs in the modern world than there are spiritual retreat houses; and who shall count the millions spent in beauty shops to glorify faces that will one day be the prey of worms?
It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend three or four hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer, they protest that it is too long. Added to this is the shocking amount that is yearly spent, not in the normal pleasure of drinking, but in its excess.
The scandal increases when one considers the necessary wants of the poor which could have been supplied by the amount spent for such dehumanization. The divine judgement upon Dives is bound to be repeated upon many of our generation, who will find that the beggars for whose service they refused to interrupt their luxuries will be seated at the banquet of the King of Kings, while they, like Dives, will be beggars for but a drop of water.
Some reparation had to be made for gluttony, drunkenness and excessive luxury. That reparation began at the birth of our Lord, when He who might have pulled down the heavens for His houstop and the stars for His chandeliers, chose to be rejected by men and driven as an outcast in the hillsides of the least of the cities of Israel.
Who wrote this?
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.
Go check out the interesting website set up for his cause for beatification & canonization. Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR, often seen on EWTN, is the Vice-Postulator. He was ordained by Bishop Sheen.
ArchbishopSheenCause.org
Source page for the quote: http://archbishopsheencause.org/meditations.html
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