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IWaiting on God is a bore; but what fun to argue, to score off opponents, to lose one’s temper and call it ‘righteous indignation,’ and at last to pass from controversy to blows, from words to what St. Augustine so deliciously described as the ‘benignnant asperity’ of
persecution and punishment.”
- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy - (Waiting on God . . . how are you practicing this discipline these days?)
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Daily Readings
Is 40:25-31; Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 8 and
10 Mt 11:28-30 Jesus said to the crowds:
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 11:28-30 (The gentle Christ) We sometimes hear
people sharing their confusion and struggle as they try to discover what God's will is for them. Today's reading reminds us that God's will is meant to be refreshing, not burdensome. God is a loving support, not a judgmental taskmaster. • What does Jesus mean when he says his yoke is easy, his burden light? How do you experience this? • Spend some time with the words "Come
to me." Let yourself feel God's desire for you to he with him.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ Chapter 8: How benevolence produces the praise of the divine well-beloved.
Thus then the soul
who has taken a great complacency in God's infinite perfection, seeing that she cannot wish him any increase of goodness, because he has infinitely more than she can either wish or conceive, desires at least that his name may be blessed, exalted, praised, honoured and adored ever more and more. And beginning with her own heart, she ceases not to provoke it to this holy exercise, and, as a sacred bee, flies hither and thither amongst the flowers of the divine works and excellences, gathering from
them a sweet variety of complacencies, from which she works up and composes the heavenly honey of benedictions, praises, and confessions of honour, by which, as far as she is able, she magnifies and glorifies the name of her well-beloved: in imitation of the great Psalmist, who having gone round, and as it were in spirit run over the wonders of the divine goodness, immolated on the altar of his heart the mystic victim of the utterances of his voice, by canticles and psalms of admiration and
benediction: I have gone round, and have offered up in his tabernacle a sacrifice of jubilation: I will sing, and recite a psalm to the Lord. [246] But, Theotimus, this desire of praising God which holy benevolence excites in our hearts is insatiable, for the soul that is touched with it would wish to have infinite praises to bestow upon her well-beloved, because she finds his perfections more than infinite: so that, finding herself to fall far short of being able to satisfy her desire, she
makes extreme efforts of affection to praise at least in some measure this goodness all worthy of praise, and these efforts of benevolence are marvellously augmented by complacency: for in proportion as the soul finds God good, relishing more and more his sweetness, and taking complacency in his infinite goodness, she would also raise higher the benedictions and praises she gives him. And again, as the soul grows warm in praising the incomprehensible sweetness of God, she enlarges and dilates
the complacency she takes in him, and by this enlargement she more strongly excites herself to his praise. So that the affection of complacency and that of praise, by these reciprocal movements and mutual inclinations, advance one another with great and continual increase.
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