For God does not hear us as humans hear. Unless you shout with your lungs and chest and lips, a mere man does not hear; whereas to God your very thoughts shout.
- St. Augustine -
(Thoughts really are communications sent out into the "beyond." Each carries something of your attention and intention. Careful what you put out there, for thoughts produce effects.)
Lenten Retreat (Zoom and on-site)
Lessons from the Passion of Christ
March 12, 2022 (Saturday)
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CST
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Is 55:10-11; Psalm 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19
Mt 6:7-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
“If you forgive others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive them,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
Reflection on the Scriptures
God changed by our requests and maybe even more by the sincerity or intensity and love of our words and feelings? I pray for many things and many persons of course. Then I come to the awareness that maybe I am praying with a good spirit and heart to receive the “daily bread” of absolute dependence. Just maybe, I am, in a way, praying to myself, or with myself and so am invited to eat the “daily Bread” of God’s
being God and I am the God-Loved me. I pray, usually, because that’s all I can do, not with babbling, but with the tears of concern, but not always with assurance that I will get what I will to get.
God’s “Will” is to be the God, who does not love, but is Love and can only be Who God is. Yes, I pray for a friend to recover from cancer, but more truthfully, I pray that she receives her “daily bread” of God’s being God each day. We pray that the Kingdom of God’s Love come all over the world as God’s “will” is in God eternally. For the most times, because we are loving, relational, caring persons we want
to pray when our “crying” does not work. That “crying” is a wordless prayer from our hurting hearts and is also a prayer blessed by the Holy Water flowing from our eyes and spirits.
This Reflection ends with my still crying/praying, because I am not God. Crying is not babbling, but the wordless admission of our dignity as belonging to the family of God whose on-going Creator, Jesus called Father.
- by Larry Gillick, S.J.
The Existence of God
by Francois Fenelon
SECTION VII. Third Comparison, drawn from a Statue.
If a man should find in a desert island a fine statue of marble, he would undoubtedly immediately say, "Sure, there have been men here formerly; I perceive the workmanship of a skilful statuary; I admire with what niceness he has proportioned all the limbs of this body, in order to give them so much beauty, gracefulness, majesty, life, tenderness, motion, and action!"
What would such a man answer if anybody should tell him, "That's your mistake; a statuary never carved that figure. It is made, I confess, with an excellent gusto, and according to the rules of perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it. Among so many pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the mountains; a violent storm
has thrown it plumb upright on this pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place. It is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese. You would think, it is true, that this figure walks, lives, thinks, and is just going to speak. But, however, it is not in the least beholden to art; and it is only a blind stroke of chance that has thus so well finished and placed it."
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