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Stir up the fire of your faith! Christ is not a figure of the past. He is not a memory lost in history. He lives! As Paul says, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today - yes, and forever!’
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Escriva ("He lives!" How is Christ alive in you, and you in Christ?)
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Daily Readings
1 Cor 6:1-11; Ps 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and
9b
Lk 6:12-19
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named
Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. And he came down with them and
stood on a stretch of level ground.
A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem
and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were
cured.
Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 6: 12-19 (Jesus chooses the Twelve) Jesus knew that he
would one day die, and he knew that he would not even begin to scratch the surface of a populated earth without the continuous ministry of his followers through the ages. That is why he called the Twelve to be his followers; that is why he still calls us to minister. • If someone were to ask you who you are and what is important in this worldl, how would you answer? •
Spend some time being present to God’s healing Spirit.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ Chapter 4: Of the loving condolence by which the complacency of love is still better declared.
FOF THE LOVING
CONDOLENCE BY WHICH THE COMPLACENCY OF LOVE IS STILL BETTER DECLARED.
Compassion, condolence, commiseration, or pity, is no other thing than an affection which makes us share in the suffering and sorrow of him whom we love, drawing the misery which he endures into our heart; whence it is called misericorde, or, as it were, misere de coeur: as complacency draws into the lover's heart the pleasures and contentments of the thing beloved. It is
love that works both effects, by the virtue it has of uniting the heart which loves to the thing loved, thus making the goods and the evils of friends common; and what happens in compassion much illustrates what regards complacency. Compassion takes its greatness from the love which produces it. Thus the condolence of mothers in the afflictions of their only children is great, as the Scripture often testifies. How great was the sorrow
of Agar's heart upon the pains of her Ismael, whom she saw well-nigh perish with thirst in the desert! How much did David's soul commiserate the misery of his Absalom! Ah! do you not mark the motherly heart of the great Apostle, sick with the sick, burning with zeal for such as were scandalized, having a continual sorrow for the ruin of the Jews, and daily dying for his dear spiritual children. But especially consider how love draws all the pains, all the torments, travails, sufferings, griefs,
wounds, passion, cross and very death of our Redeemer into his most sacred mother's heart. Alas! the same nails that crucified the body of this divine child, also crucified the soul of this all-sweet mother; she endured the same miseries with her son by commiseration, the same dolours by condolence, the same passions by compassion, and, in a word, the sword of death which transpierced the body of this best beloved Son, struck through the heart of this most loving mother, [235] whence she might
well have said that he was to her as a bundle of myrrh between her breasts, [236] that is, in her bosom and in the midst of her heart. You see how Jacob, hearing the sad though false news of the death of his dear Joseph, is afflicted with it. Ah! said he, I will go down mourning into hell, that is to say, to Limbo into Abraham's bosom, to my son. [237]
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