|
|
“In Christ, therefore, do I understand and possess all truth that is in heaven and earth and hell, and in all creatures; and so great is the truth and the certainty that were the whole world to declare the contrary I would not believe it, yea, I should mock at it.”
- Blessed Angela of Foligno - (Open yourself to the guidance of Christ's truth. Let his truth set you
free."
|
Daily Readings
IJer 23:5-8; Ps 72:1-2, 12-13,
18-19 Mt 1:18-25 "This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph; being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do
not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ Now all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet:" The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son
and they will call him
Emmanuel, "a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’ When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home."
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 1:18-24 (The angel and Joseph) Joseph and Mary were
betrothed when Mary became pregnant with Jesus. To Joseph, this indicated that Mary had been unfaithful, so he wanted to break off the relationship. This tradition and the story of the angelic appearance in today's reading give us a clue to the Messiah's identity: He is a child of the Holy Spirit. • Pray that the Messiah will come to your family
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.
So nightingales, according
to Pliny, take such complacency in their songs, that, by reason of this complacency, for fifteen days and fifteen nights they never cease warbling, forcing themselves to sing better in emulous striving with one another; so that when they sing the best, they take a greater complacency, and this increase of complacency makes them force themselves to greater efforts of trilling, augmenting in such sort their complacency by their song and their song by their complacency, that it is often found that
they die and their throats burst with their singing. Birds worthy the fair name of philomel, since they die thus, of and for the love of melody!
|
|
|
