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Message of the Day
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We must learn to pass through situations like a fish, rather than carrying them all with us like a snail. We should certainly emerge with a little bit more experience of life, but there is no need to carry more with us than we have to — each situation carries quite enough trouble with it by itself!
- Simon Tugwell, Prayer (What extra
burdens do you need to lay down these days?)
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Readings of the Day
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Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6,
8-9 John 5:1 - 3, 5-16 There was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem there is a building, called Bethzatha in Hebrew, consisting of five porticos; and under these were crowds of sick people – blind, lame, paralysed – waiting for the water to move. One man there had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years, and when Jesus
saw him lying there and knew he had been in this condition for a long time, he said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets there before me.’ Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping-mat and walk.’ The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and walked away.
Now that day happened to be the sabbath, so
the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; you are not allowed to carry your sleeping-mat.’ He replied, ‘But the man who cured me told me, “Pick up your mat and walk.”’ They asked, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Pick up your mat and walk”?’ The man had no idea who it was, since Jesus had disappeared into the crowd that filled the place. After a while Jesus met him in the Temple and said, ‘Now you are well again, be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen
to you.’ The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him. It was because he did things like this on the sabbath that the Jews began to persecute
Jesus. USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture
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“I saw water trickling.” —Ezekiel 47:2
In the town of Lourdes, France, in the year 1858, there was a town dump named Massabielle, a name which means Big
Rock. The large rock overhang towered above the area where townspeople left their trash. It was in this dank area that the Blessed Mother Mary appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous. After one of these apparitions, Our Lady of Lourdes directed St. Bernadette to dig in the dirt. A trickle of water appeared in that literal “wasteland” (see Ez 47:1-2). That small trickle in the wasteland soon became a flow of miraculous healing water which has touched the entire world (cf Ez
47:8-9).
The trickling of the waters of Lourdes resembles the trickle of water from the temple into the harsh wasteland of the desert (Ez 47:1-2). These trickles miraculously multiply God’s “power now at work in us,” leading to growth in the Spirit which is “immeasurably more than we ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20). As the mustard plant grows into a tall shrub from the tiniest of seeds (Mt 13:32), so our Baptism gives “fresh,” abundant life
where there once was desolation (Ez 47:9). Renew your Baptism today and at Easter. “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22). Let the living water of the Spirit become a river within you, flowing from you “to provide eternal life” (Jn 4:14), healing, and fruit (Ez 47:12) to increase the Kingdom of God. Prayer: Father, may rivers of Your life-giving water flow through me (Jn 7:38) to
transform the culture of death into a civilization of love (see Ez 47:8-9). Promise: “God is our Refuge and our Strength, an ever-present Help in distress.” —Ps 46:2 Presentation Ministries
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Spiritual Reading
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The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence (1611 - 1691). Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
https://ccel.org/ccel/lawrence/practice/practice Second Letter
Difference between himself and others. * Faith alone consistently and persistently. * Deprecates this state being considered a delusion. As for my set hours of
prayer, they are only a continuation of the same exercise. Sometimes I consider myself there, as a stone before a carver, whereof he is to make a statue: presenting myself thus before GOD, I desire Him to make His perfect image in my soul, and render me entirely like Himself. At other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit and all my soul lift itself up without any care or
effort of mine; and it continues as it were suspended and firmly fixed in GOD, as in its centre and place of rest. I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and self-love: I confess that it is a holy inactivity, and would be a happy self-love, if the soul in that state were capable of it; because in effect, while she is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by such acts as she was formerly accustomed to, and which were then her
support, but would now rather hinder than assist her. Yet I cannot bear that this should be called delusion; because the soul which thus enjoys GOD desires herein nothing but Him. If this be delusion in me, it belongs to GOD to remedy it. Let Him do what He pleases with me: I desire only Him, and to be wholly devoted to Him. You will, however, oblige me in sending me your opinion, to
which I always pay a great deference, for I have a singular esteem for your reverence, and am yours in our Lord.
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