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God never simply buries our dead and broken dreams because He’d be burying our hearts along with our dreams. One of two positive things will happen. Either the dream will become fertilizer for something even better, or the Lord will give me the gumption and oomph to bring my dream to fruition. I can’t lose either way! - Noni Joy Tari (What dreams of growth and service are stirring in you these
days?)
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Daily Readings
Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17; Psalm 104:1-2a, 27-28,
29bc-30
Mark 7:14-23
Jesus called the people to him and said, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into a man from outside can make him unclean; it is the things that come out of a man that make him unclean. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this.’ When he had gone back into
the house, away from the crowd, his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Do you not understand either? Can you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot make him unclean, because it does not go into his heart but through his stomach and passes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he pronounced all foods clean.) And he went on, ‘It is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. For it is from within, from men’s hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication,
theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.’
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Mark 7:14-23 (On what makes for
uncleanness) Jewish dietary laws were initially established for a variety of reasons, many related more to health than to piety. It is because many Jews believed that holiness depended upon observing such rules and regulations, rather than being pure of heart, that Jesus criticizes the dietary law observances. • Let your imagination take you to the recesses
of your heart. What do you see there? • Pray for the grace to recognize your mixed motives.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ Chapter 10: How the desire to praise God makes us aspire to heaven.
The
heart, then, that in this world can neither sing nor hear the divine praises to its liking, enters into unutterable desires of being delivered from the bonds of this life to pass to the other, where the heavenly well-beloved is so perfectly praised: and these desires having taken possession of the heart, often become so strong and urgent in the breast of sacred lovers, that banishing all other desires they cause disgust of all earthly things, and render the soul languishing and lovesick: yea,
sometimes the holy passion goes so far, that, God permitting, one dies of it.
So that glorious and seraphical lover S. Francis, having been long torn with this strong affection for praising God, in the end, in his last years, after he had had assurance, by a special revelation, of his eternal salvation, could not contain his joy, but wasted daily, as if his life and soul had burnt away like
incense, upon the fire of the ardent desires which he had to see his Master, incessantly to praise him: so that these ardours taking every day a fresh increase, his soul left his body by a passionate movement which he made towards heaven; for the divine Providence thought good that he should die pronouncing these sacred words: Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the just wait for me, until thou reward me. [252] Behold, Theotimus, I beseech you, this soul, who, as a heavenly
nightingale shut up in the cage of his body, in which he cannot at will sing the benedictions of his eternal love, knows that he could better trill and practise his delicious song if he could gain the air, to enjoy his liberty and the society of other philomels, amongst the gay and flowery hills of the land of the blessed; wherefore he cries: Alas! O Lord of my life, ah! by thy sweet goodness, deliver poor me from the cage of my body, free me from this little prison, to the end that released
from this bondage I may fly to my dear companions, who expect me there above in heaven, to make me one of their choirs, and environ me with their joy. There, Lord, according my voice to theirs, I with them will make up a sweet harmony of delicious airs and words, singing, praising, and blessing thy mercy. This admirable Saint, as an orator who would end and conclude all he had said in some short sentence, put this happy ending to all his wishes and desires, whereof these last words were an
abridgment; words to which he so firmly attached his soul, that in breathing them he breathed his last. My God, Theotimus, what a sweet and dear death was this! a happily loving death
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