|
|
“Impassibility [apatheia] does not consist in mortifying the passionate part of the soul, but in removing it from evil to good and directing its energies toward
divine things.”
- St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads (How will you direct your energies to divine things this day?) |
Ex 32:15-24, 30-34; Ps 106:19-20, 21-22, 23
Mt 13:31-35 Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches." He spoke to them another parable.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened." All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 13: 31-35 Parables of
growth "Things take time,” proclaims a poster circulated widely today. Jesus would have concurred. Although beginning in relative obscurity, the influence of Christ through his Church has been a powerful leaven for good in the world. His influence in our lives can be no less encouraging. • Are you a better person now than you were six months ago? One year ago? Five years ago? How? • Spend some time with this passage from Paul’s writings: “Although the outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” 2 Corinthians 4:16.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 1: That as long as we are in this mortal life we may lose the love of God.
But, O eternal God! how is it possible, will one say, that a soul that has the love of God can ever lose it; for where love is it resists sin, and how comes it to pass then that sin gets entry there, since love is
strong as death, hard in fight as hell? How can the forces of death or hell, that is, of sins, vanquish love, which at least equals them in strength, and surpasses them in helps and in right? And how can it be that a reasonable soul which has once relished so great a sweetness as is that of heavenly love, can ever willingly swallow the bitter waters of offence? Children, though children, being fed with milk, abhor the bitterness of wormwood and of aloes, and cry themselves into convulsions when
they are made to take them. Ah! then, O true God! Theotimus, how can the soul, once joined to the goodness of the Creator, forsake him to follow the vanity of the creature?
. . .
Truly in this mortal life though our souls abound with heavenly love yet they are never so full of it but that by temptation this love may depart: in heaven, however, when the sweetness of God's beauty shall occupy all our understanding, and the delights of his goodness shall wholly satiate our wills, so that there shall be nothing which the fulness of his love shall not replenish, no object, though it penetrate even to our hearts, can ever draw or make run out one sole drop of the precious
liquor of our heavenly love. And to expect to give air above, that is, to deceive or surprise the understanding, shall no more be possible; for it shall be immovable in the apprehension of the sovereign truth. |
|
|
