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Although we are distinguishable by our very different personalities -- as were for instance Peter, John, Thomas, or Matthew -- yet we are merged as it were in a single body in Christ by feeding on his unifying body."
- Cyril of Alexandria, "Commentary on John" -
(How are you nourished in Christ? How do you know when you're hungry? What is your current appetite like?)
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1 Sm 4:1-11; Psalm 44:10-11, 14-15, 24-25
Mk 1:40-45
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Mark 1: 40-45 (Jesus cures a leper)
The gospels do not include a single instance when Jesus refuses to heal someone who requests wholeness. The prayer of the leper in today's reading should be a model for all of us because the leper makes his request in great humility and leaves the matter in Jesus' hands.
* Do you believe that God answers your prayers? What kinds of prayers do you find answered most often?
* What are some reasons why you are usually afraid to reach out to others? Pray for the grace to overcome these resistances.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
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BOOK II: THE HISTORY OF THE GENERATION AND HEAVENLY BIRTH OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter 17: That the love which is in hope is very good, though imperfect
This love, then, which we term hope, is a love of cupidity, but of a holy and well-ordered cupidity, by means whereof we do not draw God to us nor to our utility, but we adjoin ourselves unto him as to our final felicity. By this love we love ourselves together with God, yet not preferring or equalizing ourselves to him; in this love the love of ourselves is mingled with that of God, but that of God floats on
the top; our own love enters indeed, but as a simple motive, not as a principal end; our own interest has some place there, but God holds the principal rank. Yes, without doubt, Theotimus: for when we love God as our sovereign good, we love him for a quality by which we do not refer him to us but ourselves to him. We are not his end, aim, or perfection, but he is ours; he does not appertain to us, but we to him; he depends not on us but we on him; and, in a word, by the quality of sovereign good
for which we love him, he receives nothing of us, but we receive of him. He exercises towards us his affluence and goodness, and we our indigence and scarcity; so that to love God under the title of sovereign good is to love him under an honorable and respectful title, by which we acknowledge him to be our perfection, repose and end, in the fruition of which our felicity consists.
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