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ICome, Lord Jesus, and abide in my heart. How grateful I am to realize that the answer to my prayer does not depend on me at all. As I quietly abide in You and let Your life flow into me, what freedom it is to know that the Father does
not see my threadbare patience or insufficient trust, rather only Your patience, Lord, and Your confidence that the Father has everything in hand. In Your faith I thank You right now for a more glorious answer to my prayer than I can imagine. Amen. - Catherine Marshall
(Pray this prayer slowly, intentionally, in confidence of
God's goodness.)
Come Holy Spirit: a study series for the Easter season.
Free access to 16 video teachings on the Holy Spirit, with handouts
Two Zoom sessions for
discussion and sharing.
Registration is open.
https://shalomplace.com/inetmin/holyspirit.html
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Daily Readings
Is 49:1-6; Ps 71:1-2,
3-4a, 5ab-6ab, 15 and 17
Jn 13:21-33, 36-38
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
"Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,
was reclining at Jesus' side.
So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant.
He leaned back against Jesus' chest and said to him,
"Master, who is it?"
Jesus answered,
"It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it."
So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas,
son of Simon the Iscariot.
After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him.
So Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do
quickly."
Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him.
Some thought that since Judas kept the money bag, Jesus had told him,
"Buy what we need for the feast,"
or to give something to the poor.
So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.
When he had left, Jesus said,
"Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself,
and he will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
You will look for me, and as I told
the Jews,
'Where I go you cannot come,' so now I say it to you." Simon Peter said to him, "Master, where are you going?"
Jesus answered him,
"Where I am going, you
cannot follow me now,
though you will follow later."
Peter said to him,
"Master, why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you."
Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me?
Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow
before you deny me three
times."
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) John 13: 21-33, 36-38 (Judas betrays Jesus) It is very likely
that Judas was a man with many admirable qualities; otherwise Jesus would not have chosen him to be an apostle. Judas did not like the way things were turning out, however, and probably hoped that the confrontation he was forcing between Jesus and the authorities would put some sense into Jesus. Judas’ plan backfired, as we know, but Jesus views this betrayal as the beginning of his hour of glory. • What are some of the ways in which you betray Jesus? Make a list and pray for forgiveness. • Spend some time with the passage ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow me now though you will follow later.”
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 9: Of a certain remainder of love that oftentimes rests in the soul that has lost holy charity.
After a long habit of preaching or saying Mass with deliberation, it happens often that in dreaming we utter and speak the same things which we should say in preaching or celebrating; in the same manner the custom and habit acquired by election and virtue is, in some sort, afterwards practised without election or virtues since the actions of those who are asleep have, generally speaking, nothing of virtue save only an apparent image, and are only the
similitudes or representations thereof. So charity, by the multitude of acts which it produces, imprints in us a certain facility in loving which it leaves in us even after we are deprived of its presence. When I was a young scholar, I found that in a village near Paris, in a certain well, there was an echo, which would repeat several times the words that we pronounced in it: and if some simpleton without experience had heard these repetitions of words, he would have thought there was some one
at the bottom of the well who did it. But we knew beforehand by philosophy that it was not any one in the well who repeated our words, but simply that there were cavities, in one of which our voices were collected, and not finding a passage through, they, lest they might altogether perish and not employ the force that was left to them, produced second voices, and these gathering together in another concavity produced a third, the third a fourth, and so consecutively up to eleven, so that those
voices in the well were no longer our voices, but resemblances and images of them. And indeed there was a great difference between our voices and those: for when we made a long continuance of words, they only repeated some, they shortened the pronunciation of the syllables, which they uttered very rapidly; and with tones and accents quite different from ours; nor did they begin to form these words until we had quite finished pronouncing them. In fine, they were not the words of a living man,
but, so to say, of a hollow and empty rock, which notwithstanding so well counterfeited man's voice whence they sprang, that an ignorant person would have been misled and beguiled by them.
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