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It was pride that caused the fall of Lucifer and Adam. If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the
second is humility, and the third is still humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not precede all that we do our efforts are fruitless.
- Augustine of Hippo - (What does humility mean to you? How might you be challenged to be more humble today? Pray for the grace to be so when the
time comes.)
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1 Tm 2:1-8; Ps 28:2, 7, 8-9
Lk 7:1-10 When Jesus had finished all his words to the people,
he entered Capernaum.
A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die,
and he was valuable to him.
When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him,
asking him to come and save the life of his slave.
They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying,
"He deserves to have you do this for him,
for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us."
And Jesus went with them,
but when he was only a short distance from the
house,
the centurion sent friends to tell him,
"Lord, do not trouble yourself,
for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.
Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to
come to you;
but say the word and let my servant be healed.
For I too am a person subject to authority,
with soldiers subject to me.
And I say to one, Go, and he
goes;
and to another, Come here, and he comes;
and to my slave, Do this, and he does it."
When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him
and, turning, said to the crowd following
him,
"I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith."
When the messengers returned to the house,
they found the slave in good
health.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 7: 1-10 (Jesus heals a Gentile’s servant.) “With God, all things are possible,” we say at one time or another. But do we believe this? Those who do may discover, as the centurion in today’s reading, that God cannot resist helping us when we are truly submissive to his will in faith and hope. • During which period of your life was your faith strongest? How would you
describe the strength of your faith at present? • Why did the Jews plead on behalf of the centurion? What does this say about the power of love? • Pray for the grace to grow more deeply in faith.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 2: How the soul grows cold in holy love.
We are rarely in this mortal life without many temptations. Now low and slothful hearts, and such as are given to exterior pleasures, not being accustomed to fight nor exercised in spiritual warfare, never preserve charity long, but let themselves ordinarily be surprised by mortal sin, which happens the more easily because the soul is more disposed by venial sin to mortal. For as that man of old, having continued to carry every day the same calf, bore him also when he
was grown to be a great ox, custom having by little and little made insensible the increase of so heavy a burden; so he that accustoms himself to play for pence will in the end play for crowns, pistoles and horses, and after his stud all his estate. [189] He that gives the reins to little angers becomes in the end furious and unbearable; he that addicts himself to lying in jest, is in great peril of lying with calumny.
In fine, Theotimus, we are wont to say that such as have a very weakly constitution have no life, that they have not an ounce, or not a handful of it, because that which is quickly to have an end seems indeed already not to be. And those good-for-nothing souls who are addicted to pleasure and set upon transitory things, may well say that they no longer have charity, for if they have it they are in the way soon to lose
it.
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