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One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off, and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is
prayer.
- St. Teresa of Avila (Sometimes all we can offer to God is our pain. In doing so, we discover that God is with us during our times of suffering.)
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Daily Readings
Is 7:1-9; PS 48:2-3a, 3b-4, 5-6, 7-8
Mt 11:20-24
Jesus began to reproach the towns
where most of his mighty deeds had been done,
since they had not repented.
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had
been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum: Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the nether world. For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom,
it would have remained until this day.
But I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for
you.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 11: 20-24 (Woes to towns) If we are waiting for a
greater gift from God than Jesus, we shall have to wait forever. This is the message Matthew shares in today’s reading. It is not that the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum reject Jesus but that they fail to reform. • Do you take your nationality for granted? Your faith? Jesus? Spend some time thanking God for these gifts. • Call to mind someone close to you who has drifted away in intimacy recently. Resolve to do something to make this relationship closer.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ Chapter 3: That holy complacency gives our heart to God, and makes us feel a perpetual desire in fruition.
The herb aproxis (as we have said elsewhere) has so great a correspondence with fire, that though at a distance from it, as soon as it sees it, it draws the flame and begins to burn, conceiving fire not so much from the heat as from the light of the fire presented to it. When then by this attraction it is united to the fire, if it could speak, might it not well say: my well-beloved fire is mine since I draw it to me and enjoy its flames, but I am also its, for though I drew it to me it reduced
me into it as more strong and noble; it is my fire and I am its herb: I draw it and it sets me on fire. So our heart being brought into the presence of the divine goodness, and having drawn the perfections thereof by the complacency it takes in them, may truly say: God's goodness is all mine since I enjoy his excellences, and I again am wholly his, seeing that his delights possess me.
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