We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others.
- St. Clare of Assisi
(The transformative power of love! Let this be the story of your day today.)
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Jas 1:12-18; Psalm 94:12-13a, 14-15, 18-19
Mk 8:14-21
The disciples had forgotten to bring bread,
and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.
Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out,
guard against the leaven of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.”
They concluded among themselves that
it was because they had no bread.
When he became aware of this he said to them,
“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?
Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
Reflection on the Scriptures
In the Gospel reading today we hear Jesus trying to teach his disciples a very important message, they he repeats on several occasions throughout his life. The lesson is one of abundance versus scarcity. Jesus is trying to tell them that God works from a stance of abundance, while our human tendency is to only see the scarcity of life. The leaven that he speaks of from the Pharisees and Herod is like the
Halloween candy in my pillowcase. If we are looking to earthly matter for sustenance, we will always go hungry because it is a finite supply and will eventually run out. But God has a whole different operating system. Scarcity is not even a consideration – only abundance.
As an adult, I sometimes catch myself leaning towards these behaviors of scarcity out of the same fear I had that my candy was eventually going to run out. I am afraid that I will not have enough time to do the things I think are important, I am afraid that I am not doing enough to help at work or home, I am afraid that I do not have enough money, I am afraid that if I do something wrong people will not like me, I
am afraid that if I do not pay attention to my health that I will get sick, I am afraid of the unknown, and on and on. These are the realities of our humanity, and yes we need to attend to them. But, making decisions and living based on fear of “not having enough” is exactly what Jesus is telling us not to do. There will always be “enough” to sustain us if we can get past our way of seeing that only focuses on the limitations of life. God is abundance and we just need to use our “eyes to see”
and our “ears to hear” and we will also know.
- by Tom Lenz
The Existence of God
by Francois Fenelon
SECTION. IV. All Nature shows the Existence of its Maker.
But, after all, whole nature shows the infinite art of its Maker. When I speak of an art, I mean a collection of proper means chosen on purpose to arrive at a certain end; or, if you please, it is an order, a method, an industry, or a set design. Chance, on the contrary, is a blind and necessary cause, which neither sets in order nor chooses anything, and which has neither will nor understanding.
Now I maintain that the universe bears the character and stamp of a cause infinitely powerful and industrious; and, at the same time, that chance (that is, the blind and fortuitous concourse of causes necessary and void of reason) cannot have formed this universe. To this purpose it is not amiss to call to mind the celebrated comparisons of the ancients.
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