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Our loving Lord is not just present, but nearer than the thought can imagine - so near that a whisper can reach Him.
-Amy Carmichael
(So near!
Always.)
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Daily Readings
PRV 21:1-6, 10-13; PS 119:1, 27, 30, 34, 35,
44 LK 8:19-21 The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him
but were unable to join him because of the crowd.
He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.”
He said to them
in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 8: 19-21 (The Lord's family) It is typical of Luke that
he has taken the sting out of some of the more unsettling accounts about Jesus found in Mark and Matthew. Mark wrote that Jesus' family was concerned for his sanity, but Luke simply has them paying a visit to Jesus. Today's reading shows Jesus using the occasion to affirm the primacy of our brotherhood and sisterhood under God. * What does the communion of saints mean to you, especially that those who have died in Christ
continue to work with us and intercede for us as we struggle to do God's will? * Who is your favorite saint? How did this person reveal God? Thank God that such a person has blessed your life.
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.
OF THE LOVING CONDOLENCE BY WHICH THE COMPLACENCY
OF LOVE IS STILL BETTER DECLARED.
Now the same causes increase complacency. In proportion as a friend is more dear to us we take more pleasure in his contentment, and his good enters more deeply into our heart. If the good is excellent, our joy is also greater. But if we see our friend enjoying it, our rejoicing becomes extreme. When the good Jacob knew that his son lived,--O God! What joy! His spirit returned to him, he lived once more, he,
so to speak, rose again from death. But what does this mean,--he revived or returned to life? Theotimus, spirits die not their own death but by sin, which separates them from God, their true supernatural life, yet they sometimes die another's death; and this happened to the good Jacob of whom we speak, for love, which draws into the heart of the lover the good and evil of the thing beloved, the one by complacency, the other by commiseration, drew the death of the beloved Joseph into the loving
Jacob's heart, and, by a miracle impossible to any other power than love, the spirit of this good father was full of the death of him that was living and reigning, for affection having been deceived ran before the effect.
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