WWhen God saw that many people were lazy, and gave themselves only with difficulty to spiritual reading, He wished to make it easy for them, and added the melody to the words, that all being rejoiced by the charm of the music, should sing hymns to Him with gladness. - St. John Chrysostom (As St. Augustine put it, “the one who sings prays twice.” Take some time
today to sing songs of prayer and praise to God.) _____ Christianity and Spirituality monthly
forum Thursday, November 2, 2023: 7:30 - 8:30 CDT Open Forum: questions and topics for discussion welcomed Free sign up for Zoom link
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Rom 3:21-30; Ps 130:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab Lk 11:47-54 The Lord said:
"Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
'I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute'
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah
who died between the altar and the temple building.
Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with
their blood!
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter."
When Jesus left, the
scribes and Pharisees
began to act with hostility toward him
and to interrogate him about many things,
for they were plotting to catch him at something he might
say.
Reflection on the Scriptures
Have you a broken heart today? Even in the absence of recent ancestry with those who are current
victims of war, terrorism, oppression, isolation, even wanton neglect or persecution by their governments, my spirit cries out. These victims are children of God. Their location doesn't matter. How do we make sense of conflict that, when not fed by political aggression, is so often fed by religious beliefs and differences? How do we work for peace and reconciliation "there" and, perhaps as importantly, in our own neighborhoods in an effort to both influence globally and
prevent spill-over and expansion of hateful, hurtful, tragic consequences at home? The gospel lesson for today speaks to the generational devastation that can occur when we carry the pain of the "deeds of our ancestors."
Jesus' admonition as to bloodshed and responsibility for centuries of killing of prophets, resulted in even more hostility from the scribes and Pharisees present. So much fear and anger. My first reading of this lesson caused me to ache for all who are living, two-thousand years later, with such hostility that their homes and families are being devastated through terrorism, gang violence, political and military actions - many for whom efforts to flee such violence leads only to
additional rejection or persecution. How is this still the reality for so many, across so many continents of a world full of resources and compassionate, caring children of God? As humans, we haven't learned, still, to live with our arms open. To recall that Mother Teresa encouraged us to remember that "we belong to each other."
-by Kimberly Grassmeyer
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. Several words of clarification on this doctrine of St. John are in order.
First of all, faith as a proximate means of union with God was always understood by him to be working in and through love and never apart from it. Secondly, union with God, though it is beyond the natural capacity of humans, is still a real experience, in fact, the most real experience according to St. John. Divine union, however, transcends our natural power not only by the sublimity of its object but by the way it attains it. Ordinarily the intellect functions in a discriminatory
way; it breaks down the reality to be known into small insights or concepts, and then unite these concepts to form a more or less adequate judgment about the reality. The discursive intellect sees things piecemeal, as it were, not as wholes, not as possessing a within. We know about things and about people; we do not know people directly in their subjectivity, which is a great limitation, for it is there that they are most themselves. Still less do we know God from within, only at a distance in
the prism of creatures. St. John implies that the experience of contemplation is an intersubjective experience. The person experiences God within, not as an object or thing about which something is known, but simply as a whole, a
subject. God is present to him in a way analogous to the way he is present to himself. "At this time God does not communicate Himself through the senses as He did before, by means of the discursive analysis and synthesis of ideas,
but begins to communicate Himself through pure spirit by an act of simple contemplation, in which there is no discursive succession of thought."(11)s.
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