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When my enemies chase me down,
I run to Your arms,
where I can complain about my suffering
and You listen and incline Yourself to me.
You know exactly how to strum
the strings of my soul.
- Mecthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead
(What kinds of enemies of love and peace have been wearing you down lately? Complain to God about these things, and turn them over to God's care, then rest in God's loving awareness of
you.)
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Ezr 1:1-6; Ps 126:1-6
Lk 8:16-18 Jesus said to the crowd:
"No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel
or sets it under a bed;
rather, he places
it on a lampstand
so that those who enter may see the light.
For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible,
and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.
Take care, then, how you hear.
To anyone who has, more will be given,
and from the one who has not,
even what he seems to have will be taken
away."
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 8:16-18 (Parable of the lamp) God has blessed us with innumerable graces, bringing light to our lives. With grace comes the responsibility to extend grace to others. When we do so, we discover that special dynamism alluded to by Luke in today's reading. Those who risk and who engage themselves in life will grow in grace and experience; those who do nothing will regress. * Make a
list of the ten people to whom you are closest. How does each person enrich your life? What would your life be like without these people? Thank God for the graces they bring to you. * If you don't use it, you lose it" is an old biological dictum. Have you been remiss in investing any of your gifts in the service of the kingdom lately? Are you willing to let yourself regress in this
area?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 3: How we forsake divine love for that of creatures.
This misery of quitting God for the creature happens thus. We do not love God without intermission, because in this mortal life charity is in us as a simple habit, which, as philosophers have remarked, we use when we like and never against our liking. When then we do not make use of the charity which is in us, that is, when we are not applying our spirit to the exercises of holy love, but, when (keeping it busied in some other affair, or it being idle in itself) it
remains useless and negligent, then, Theotimus, it may be assaulted by some bad object and surprised by temptation. And though the habit of charity be at that instant in the bottom of our hearts and perform its office, inclining us to reject the bad suggestion, yet it only urges us or leads us to the action of resistance according as we second it, as is the manner of habits; and therefore charity leaving us in our freedom, it happens often that the bad object having cast its allurements deeply
into our hearts, we attach ourselves unto it by an excessive complacency, which when it comes to grow, we can hardly get rid of, and like thorns, according to the saying of Our Saviour, it in the end stifles the seed of grace and heavenly love. So it fell out with our first mother Eve, whose overthrow began by a certain amusement which she took in discoursing with the serpent, receiving complacency in hearing it talk of her advancement in knowledge, and in seeing the beauty of the forbidden
fruit, so that the complacency growing with the amusement and the amusement feeding itself in the complacency, she found herself at length so entangled, that giving away to consent, she committed the accursed sin into which afterwards she drew her husband.
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