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Authentic spiritual practice is nothing other than consecration in action. It is feeling your deepest desire, claiming it as freshly born hope, offering it to God, and consciously living it as fully as you can. At its best, practice is the active seeking of soul-space and heart-freedom, to ache and to sing, to suffer and to play.
- Gerald May, The Awakened Heart (Consecrate yourself and your actions to God today. Let this passage from Dr. May show you the way.) |
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Rv 4:1-11; Psalm 150:1b-2,
3-4, 5-6 Lk 19:11-28 While people were listening to Jesus speak,
he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem
and they thought that the Kingdom of God
would appear there immediately.
So he said,
“A nobleman went off to a distant
country
to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return.
He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins
and told them, ‘Engage in trade with these until I return.’
His fellow citizens, however, despised him
and sent a delegation after him to announce,
‘We do not want this man to be our king.’
But when
he returned after obtaining the kingship,
he had the servants called, to whom he had given the money,
to learn what they had gained by trading.
The first came forward and said,
‘Sir, your gold coin has earned ten additional ones.’
He replied, ‘Well done, good servant!
You have been faithful in this very small matter;
take charge of ten cities.’
Then the second came and reported,
‘Your gold coin, sir, has earned five more.’
And to this servant too he said,
‘You, take charge of five cities.’
Then the other servant came and said,
‘Sir, here is your gold coin;
I kept it stored away in a
handkerchief,
for I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man;
you take up what you did not lay down
and you harvest what you did not plant.’
He said to him,
‘With your own words I shall condemn you,
you wicked servant.
You knew I was a demanding man,
taking up what I did not lay down
and harvesting what I did not plant;
why did you not put my money in a bank?
Then on my return I would have collected it with interest.’
And to those standing by he said,
‘Take the gold coin from him
and give it to the servant who has ten.’
But they said to
him,
‘Sir, he has ten gold coins.’
He replied, ‘I tell you,
to everyone who has, more will be given,
but from the one who
has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
Now as for those enemies of mine who did not want me as their king,
bring them here and slay them before me.’”
After he had said this,
he proceeded on his journey up to
Jerusalem.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture
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“We will not have this man rule over us.” —Luke
19:14
The evil in the world is so massively powerful and well-funded that despair and discouragement are natural reactions. Worldly people hate the Lord and will not accept His kingdom in secular society (Jn 15:18ff). They oppose the Kingdom of God with all their strength.
In today’s Gospel parable, Jesus
proclaims that He understands this worldly opposition, prophesied by Simeon while He was just a Baby (Lk 2:34). This coming Sunday is the Feast of “Christ the King, Lord of the Universe.” If King Jesus chose, He could crush evil underfoot in a moment. Yet when Jesus had that chance, He did not crush evil in worldly strength (Jn 18:36). Rather, Jesus crushed evil in the ultimate spiritual war; He destroyed the devil’s works (1 Jn 3:8). Jesus said: “It is much better for you that I go” (Jn 16:7). Mysteriously, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (see Rm 5:20). Allow King Jesus to reign over you as He sees fit. Serve King Jesus faithfully and with confidence. Prayer: King Jesus, we do want You to rule over us. “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt
6:10). Promise: “O Lord our God, You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power! For You have created all things; by Your will they came to be and were made!” —Rv 4:11 Presentation Ministries
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From Meditation to Contemplation by James Arraj (all rights reserved) The Experience of Infused Contemplation Contemplation does not come through the
senses and thus to the rational faculties following the usual pattern of knowing, but rather it comes from behind, so to speak. It is infused directly into the rational faculties at their root, or center, so that the person receiving this knowledge does not understand how it got there except that it is the work of God and the presence of God. The basic human orientation of the rational faculties to knowledge which is sense-related plays havoc with the reception of contemplative knowledge; the
whole tonality of the intellect looks towards the senses, and effectively blinds it to knowledge coming in any other way. It is literally looking in the wrong direction and does not know that there is another direction, and if it did know of this other direction, it would look at it with its conceptualizing and discriminating eyes and thus not see anything. “So delicate is this refreshment that ordinarily, if a man have desire or care to experience it, he experiences it not; for, as I say, it
does its work when the soul is most at ease and freest from care; it is like the air which, if one would close one’s hand upon it, escapes.”(“Dark Night of the Soul,” 1, 9, 6) Online book
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