The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your
own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey (Open your mind and heart to the goodness of life this
day.) |
1 COR 2:10B-16; PS 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13AB, 13CD-14 LK 4:31-37 Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.
He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.
In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon,
and he cried out in a loud
voice,
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of
him!”
Then the demon threw the man down in front of them
and came out of him without doing him any harm.
They were all amazed and said to one another,
“What is there about his
word?
For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits,
and they come out.”
And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region. Reflection on the Scriptures
Tending to and living a spiritual life heightens our senses to recognize the demons present within ourselves and around us. We recognize the things that lure us from the goodness and love of God. With grace, and belief in the Spirit of God within, we can cast them out. We can choose life, forgiveness, love, choose God.
True, too, evil dwells in our world but we can by living faithful to God’s word, overcome it as well. The Psalm for today invites us to pray:
The Lord is faithful to all his words and holy in all his works.
The Lord
lifts up all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.
In another passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus’ final discourse, Jesus tells us whoever believes in me will do the works that I do. With Faith, and the power of the Spirit within us, we can carry out the words and works of Jesus and overcome the demons and
evil in our world.
Let us pray that individually we might be interiorly cleansed from all demons or evil that haunts us, leads us from God, Love, and come to know the power of the Spirit living within.
by Candice Tucci, O.S.F.
The Existence of God by Francois Fenelon SECTION XXI.
Wonders of the Infinitely Little. On the other hand the work is no less to be admired in little than in great: for I find as well in little as in great a kind of infinite that astonishes me. It surpasses my imagination to find in a hand-worm, as one does in an elephant or whale, limbs perfectly well organised; a head, a body, legs, and feet, as distinct and as well formed as those of the biggest animals. There are in
every part of those living atoms, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries, blood; and in that blood ramous particles and humours; in these humours some drops that are themselves composed of several particles: nor can one ever stop in the discussion of this infinite composition of so infinite a
whole. |
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