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Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy, puddly shore at low tide, littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends -- a distressing sort of spectacle. And then the
tide of worship comes in, and it's all gone: the dead sea-urchins and jelly-fish, the paper and the empty cans and the nameless bits of rubbish. The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot. So we are released from a narrow, selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship. Our little human affairs are reduced to their proper proportion when seen over against the spaceless Majesty and Beauty of God.
- Evelyn
Underhill
(How does liturgy and public worship draw you closer to God?)
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EZ 36:23-28; PS 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19 MT
22:1-14 Jesus again in reply spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people in parables saying,
“The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who gave a wedding feast for his son.
He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast,
but they refused to come.
A second time he sent other servants, saying,
‘Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet,
my calves and fattened cattle are killed,
and everything is ready; come to the feast.”’
Some ignored the invitation and went away,
one to his farm, another to his business.
The rest laid hold of his servants,
mistreated them, and killed them.
The king was enraged and sent his troops,
destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
Then the king said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come.
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you
find.’
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests.
But when the king came in to meet the
guests
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?’
But he was reduced to
silence.
Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet,
and cast him into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’
Many are
invited, but few are chosen.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 22:1-14 (The great banquet) Today’s parable gives us another important insight into the heart of God, teaching us that God is extremely eager to share blessings with us. If we are to gain access to these blessings, we must put on the garment of faith, without which we shall never appreciate the things of God. • What are some of the blessings you have received from the Church during the
past month (Church meaning people of God”)? Thank God for these blessings. • Ignatian spirituality holds that joy springs from gratitude, which springs from awareness of grace, which springs from faith. Are you a joyful person? What does this say about the way you recognize grace?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK III: OF THE PROGRESS AND PERFECTION OF LOVE Chapter 1: That holy love may be augmented more and more in each one of us Such is the love which God bears to our souls, such his desire to make us increase in the love which we owe to him. The divine sweetness renders all things profitable to us, takes all to our advantage, and turns all our endeavours, though never so lowly and feeble, to our gain.
In the action of moral virtues little works bring no increase to the
virtue whence they proceed, yea, if they be very little, they impair it: for a great liberality perishes if it occupies itself in bestowing things of small value, and of liberality becomes niggardliness. But in the actions of those virtues which issue from God's mercy, and especially of charity, every work gives increase. Nor is it strange that sacred love, as King of virtues, has nothing either great or small which is not loveable, since the balm tree, prince of aromatic trees, has neither bark
nor leaf that is not odoriferous: and what could love bring forth that were not worthy of love, or did not tend to love?
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