Make it a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say: "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or at least a little better this day."
- Charles Kingsley
(A good resolution for today.)
|
Am 3:1-8; 4:11-12; Psalm 5:4b-6a, 6b-7, 8
Mt 8:23-27
As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.
Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea,
so that the boat was being swamped by waves;
but he was asleep.
They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.
The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this,
whom even the winds and the sea obey?”
Reflection on the Scriptures
Facing our defects can be painful. Amos’ warning was too much for the priests to countenance. They drove the shepherd from the temple to secure their façade.
Amos, the shepherd, unleashed fiery oracles tempered by recognition of God’s mercy. Amos wasn’t a genius. His prophecy did not arise from superhuman powers. His questions were simple to answer once you bother to ask them. Amos stayed close to God and paid attention to what was happening in the world. He did not close his eyes, plug his ears, and avoid difficult topics. It was
integrity, not brilliance, that marked his words. He would not accept corruption as “business as usual.” Amos calls out the con men.
The earth abounds with storms in our time. Some days the news is daunting. Will we make it through? Will creatures be crushed by the waves? Is God indifferent to our plight? Jesus says not to be terrified of the storm. Our God is near.
- by Jeanne Schuler
The Existence of God
by Francois Fenelon
SECTION XVIII. Of the Stars
But let us once more view that immense arched roof where the stars shine, and which covers our heads like a canopy. If it be a solid vault, what architect built it? Who is it that has fixed so many great luminous bodies to certain places of that arch and at certain distances? Who is it that makes that vault turn so regularly about us? If on the contrary the skies are only immense spaces full of
fluid bodies, like the air that surrounds us, how comes it to pass that so many solid bodies float in them without ever sinking or ever coming nearer one another? For all astronomical observations that have been made in so many ages not the least disorder or irregular motion has yet been discovered in the heavens. Will a fluid body range in such constant and regular order bodies that swim circularly within its sphere? But what does that almost innumerable multitude of stars
mean? The profusion with which the hand of God has scattered them through His work shows nothing is difficult to His power. He has cast them about the skies as a magnificent prince either scatters money by handfuls or studs his clothes with precious stones. Let who will say, if he pleases, that the stars are as many worlds like the earth we inhabit; I grant it for one moment; but then, how potent and wise must He be who makes worlds as numberless as the grains of sand that
cover the sea-shore, and who, without any trouble, for so many ages governs all these wandering worlds as a shepherd does a flock of sheep? If on the contrary they are only, as it were, lighted torches to shine in our eyes in this small globe called earth, how great is that power which nothing can fatigue, nothing can exhaust? What a profuse liberality it is to give man in this little corner of the universe so marvelous a spectacle!
|
|
