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"What has happened to the old-fashioned, spiritual Christmas? The cause is our disregard of Advent. The church set aside this four-week pre-Christmas season as a time of spiritual preparation for Christ's coming. It is a time of quiet anticipation. If Christ is going to come again into our hearts, there must be repentance. Without repentance, our hearts will be so full of worldly things that there will be ‘no
room in the inn' for Christ to be born again.…We have the joy not of celebration. Which is the joy of Christmas, but the joy of anticipation."
- John R. Brokhoff, Preaching the Parables
(How are you making more room in your heart for Christ these days?)
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Is 26:1-6; Psalm 118:1 and 8-9, 19-21, 25-27a
Mt 7:21, 24-27
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them
will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
"Thou shalt keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on Thee."
This passage from today's Is. reading was given to my wife and I in a nicely framed poster when we got married 45 years ago. We liked it so much that we hung it in our living room next to the front door so that whenever we'd leave the house, we'd have a chance to be reminded of its message. Down through the years, I've been impressed again and again with this truth: God's peace surpasses all understanding, but worldly
peace is always tinged with anxiety. * How can you keep your mind fixed on God this day?
* "Let us trust in you for ever, for you, Our God, are an everlasting Rock."
In what part of your life do you need to trust more in God this day?
Pray for the grace to do so.
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 16: How love is practices in hope
This desire is just, Theotimus, for who would not desire so desirable a good? But it would be a useless desire, and would be but a continual torment to our heart if we had not assurance that we should at length satiate it. He who on account of the delay of this happiness, protests that his tears were his ordinary bread day and night, so long as his God was absent, and his enemies demanded: where is thy God?
--Alas! what would he have done if he had not had some hope of one day enjoying this good, after which he sighed. The divine spouse goes weeping and languishing with love, because she does not at once find the well-beloved she is searching for. The love of the well-beloved had bred in her a desire, that desire begot an ardour to pursue it, and that ardour caused in her a languishing which would have consumed and annihilated her poor heart, unless she had hoped at length to meet with what she
sought after. So then, lest the unrest and dolorous languor which the efforts of desiring love cause in our souls should make us fail in courage or reduce us to despair, the same sovereign good which moves in us so vehement a desire, also by a thousand thousand promises made in his Word and his inspirations, gives us assurance, that we may with ease obtain it, provided always that we will to employ the means which he has prepared for use and offers us to this effect.
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