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An individual's personality actuates and quickens the whole body. If anyone said it was unsuitable for that person's power to be in the toe, it would be thought silly, because, while granting that a person penetrates and actuates the whole of the body, one denied presence in the part. Similarly, no one who admits the presence of the Word of God in the universe as a whole should think it unsuitable for a single
human body to be by Him actuated and enlightened.
- St. Athanasius (293-373), The Incarnation of the Word of God [4th century]
(Christ fills the universe and all its parts [Eph. 1:23] -- you being one such. Let this awareness stay with you this day.)
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JER 18:1-6; PS 146:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6AB
MT 13:47-53
Jesus said to the disciples:
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.
When it is full they haul it ashore
and sit down to put what is good into buckets.
What is bad they throw away.
Thus it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
“Do you understand all these things?”
They answered, “Yes.”
And he replied,
“Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven
is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom
both the new and the old.”
When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Matthew 13: 47-53 Parable of the dragnet
Today’s parable teaches us an important lesson. Jesus has come to transform humanity, but he also accepts the messiness of the world. So, too, are we invited to accept our messy world and broken lives as worthy of transformation.
• Imagine that God has cast a spiritual dragnet into your soul today. What would be pulled out? What would you most like to keep? What do you want to throw away?
• Pray for the grace to know that God loves you just as you are now.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
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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
Wherefore, as pearls are not only bred of dew but fed also with it, the mother-pearls to this end opening their shells towards heaven to beg, as it were, the drops which the freshness of the air makes fall at the break of day, so we, having received Faith, Hope and Charity from the heavenly bounty, ought always to turn our hears and keep them turned towards it, thence to obtain the continuation and augmentation
of the same virtues. "O, Lord," does holy Church our mother teach us to say, "give us the increase of faith, hope and charity." And this is in imitation of those that said to Our Saviour: Lord increase our faith, and following the counsel of S. Paul, who assures us that: God alone is able to make all grace abound in us.
It is God therefore that gives this increase, in consideration of the use we make of his grace, as it is written; For he that hath, that is, who uses well the favours received, to him shall be given, and he shall abound. Thus is Our Saviour's exhortation practised: Lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: as though he said: add ever new good works to the former ones; for fasting, prayer
and alms-deeds are the coins whereof your treasures are to consist. Now as amongst the treasures of the temple, the poor widow's mite was much esteemed, and as indeed, by the addition of many little pieces treasures become great, and their value increases, so the least little good works, even though performed somewhat coldly, and not according to the whole extent of the charity which is in us, are agreeable to God, and esteemed by him; in such sort that though of themselves they cannot cause any
increase in the existing love, being of less force than it, yet the divine Providence, counting, and out of his goodness, valuing them, forthwith rewards them with increase of charity for the present, and assigns to them a greater heavenly glory for the future.
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