Prayer is a choice. For us to pray, to give thanks, or to voice our questions and doubts shows that we are choosing to leave an opening in our spirits. Without this opening, there is no vessel, no place into which God can breathe.
- Joanna Laufer (God respects our freedom and waits for this opening. Take time for prayer this day.)
|
Eph 4:1-7, 11-13; Ps 19:2-3, 4-5 Mt 9:9-13 As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, "Follow me."
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
He heard this and said,
"Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
Reflection on the Scriptures
Today’s gospel presents the call of Matthew, whose feast we celebrate today. Matthew was called from the
“customs post” where he was collecting taxes from his people for their Roman overlords. This was not a popular position for a Jewish man. The tribute exacted went into the coffers of an occupying government, with a little left over to compensate Matthew and his fellow tax collectors. It is an odd preparation for a calling toward apostleship! But Matthew’s call shows us grace at work, drawing us to a closer relationship with God. Can you imagine the scene at Matthew’s house? Tax collectors and fellow outcasts are glad to be sharing friendship with one another, something all people need in order to thrive. But our Lord is showing them a friendship based on something deeper than their camaraderie and the material
comforts provided by their work. We don’t know his exact words, but they were likely truthful and genuine. Those tax collectors could tell when someone was putting them on! Our Lord was not doing that. He was real. But he was also calling them to something higher, greater, and better that what they knew. Matthew was able to respond to that call. We might see something of ourselves in those tax collectors, who were physically comfortable but spiritually needy. We might also see ourselves in the Pharisees, who sealed themselves off from those who needed God’s love the most. We would do well to ponder Jesus’ instruction to them: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy and not
sacrifice.”
-by Ed Morse
St. John of the Cross and the Beginning of Contemplation by James Arraj From St. John of the Cross and Dr. C. J. Jung, Part II, Chapter 3. Inner Growth Books, 1986.
Meditation as
described in the Ascent centers around the faculty of imagination. But the imagination is not conceived of in isolation. It draws its raw material from the senses and then elaborates and develops these images through the use of the intellect, memory and will. Meditation embraces all the kinds of prayer that a person can make by his own efforts.
If meditation is the spiritual activity of the beginner, then the "longings of love" represent how the soul is acted upon. The two go together to form a harmonious unity which is best described as sensible spirituality or sensible religious experience. Before conversion the beginner was bound to the world, and his attention, affection, energy and faculties were
devoted to worldly things by means of the senses; the beginner looked outward through the senses toward the world. Conversion alters this picture 180°,and now the new spiritual yearnings take the place of the attraction of the
world. The beginner turns his attention, energy and faculties to spiritual things but, and here is the crucial point, he does it again by means of the senses, that is, by the natural faculties that work through the senses. The new attraction that arises in the spiritual part of the soul begins to counterbalance the sensible attraction for the world and soon overpowers it. The focus of attention and desire begins to rotate like a compass needle under a greater magnetic force. Attention and energy
turn inward but it is attention, energy and natural operation of the faculties that only know how to operate through the senses. Therefore, the net effect of initial conversion is that the desire for temporal things becomes a sensible appreciation of spiritual things, the two being, in fact, opposite perspectives from the same vantage point.
|
|
