Occupy your mind with good thoughts, or the
enemy will fill them with bad ones. - Thomas More
(Prayers of praise are especially effective in helping to resist negative thinking.)
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Sir 50:22-24; Psalm 145:2-11; 1 Cor 1:3-9 Lk 17:11-19 As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem,
he traveled through
Samaria and Galilee.
As he was entering a village, ten persons with leprosy met him.
They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying,
“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said,
“Go show yourselves to the priests.”
As
they were going they were cleansed.
And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply,
“Ten were cleansed, were they
not?
Where are the other nine?
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
Then he said to him, “Stand up and go;
your faith has saved you.”
Reflection on the Scriptures
A blessed day to all readers, and particular to those in the United States who celebrate it, a blessed Thanksgiving Day. I have no special insight into what really transpired at that first Thanksgiving
feast. Perhaps the folklore has grown legs over the past four centuries, broadening our imaginations as to what took place that early harvest celebration. But what has stuck with me into adulthood is the very idea of it. The ideal of it: that two sets of peoples (at minimum) who had no basis for trust or friendship, came together anyway. They shared their bounty, some of their customs, their time and their very selves. On those few harvest days (and for a period of
truce thereafter?), at least in my ideal vision, there was no 'other' to degrade or oppress, there was only an 'other' with whom to break bread. . . . So, on this Thanksgiving Day, I ask God's forgiveness for the many ways that I fall short of these ideals, but also ask for God's guidance and grace that I might do better tomorrow and every day
thereafter. Will you join me? Amen. - by Kimberly Grassmeyer
Also reprinted in Critical Questions in Christian Contemplative Practice, by James Arraj and Philip St. Romain. Bernadette Roberts as a Catholic and someone relatively unfamiliar with Buddhism has rendered an important testimony to the universality of this kind of mystical experience. But inevitably, she has had to face the question of its relationship to her own Christian contemplative heritage, and it is here that her conclusions need a careful examination. Since she had a deep life of prayer in the Christian contemplative tradition before she went on this journey that
ended in the experience of no-self, it is understandable that she will see this experience as the next stage in the Christian contemplative journey, and a stage that the Christian mystics like John of the Cross know very little about. (The one exception is Meister Eckhart, a predilection which is shared by D.T. Suzuki.) Thus she is forced to put the no-self experience at a level higher than the spiritual marriage described by John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and therefore place her own
experience above that of the Church's mystical doctors. I don't think this interpretation is correct. This mysticism of the no-self, as well as Zen enlightenment, is not a supernatural mysticism that comes from grace and leads to an experience of God's presence and of sharing in His life. It is a very different kind of experience that attains to the absolute, to God, but through emptiness. (For details on this position see God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, and Mysticism,
Metaphysics and Maritain, both by James Arraj.)
-continued next week
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