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We are half-hearted creatures like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - C. S. Lewis
“But as it is written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him.” 1 Cor. 2,
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Daily Readings
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 69:8-10, 21-22, 31 and
33-34 Matthew 26:14-25 One of the Twelve, the man called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you prepared to give me if I hand him over to you?’ They paid him thirty silver pieces, and from that moment he looked for an opportunity to betray him.
Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to
Jesus to say, ‘Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the passover?’ ‘Go to so-and-so in the city’ he replied ‘and say to him, “The Master says: My time is near. It is at your house that I am keeping Passover with my disciples.”’ The disciples did what Jesus told them and prepared the Passover.
When evening came he was at table with the twelve disciples. And while they were eating he said ‘I tell you solemnly, one of you is
about to betray me.’ They were greatly distressed and started asking him in turn, ‘Not I, Lord, surely?’ He answered, ‘Someone who has dipped his hand into the dish with me, will betray me. The Son of Man is going to his fate, as the scriptures say he will, but alas for that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! Better for that man if he had never been born!’ Judas, who was to betray him; asked in his turn, ‘Not I, Rabbi, surely?’ ‘They are your own words’ answered
Jesus.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 26: 14-25 (The Passover meal
begins) The Passover was a Jewish feast recalling the historical Exodus of the Jews and their liberation from Egyptian domination and persecution. Jesus, a Jew, deeply loved this tradition and chose to share it with his most intimate friends, the 12 apostles. This particular Passover meal will take on a new meaning in the light of the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus. • How important to you is the sharing of a meal with friends and/or family? How does the sharing of a meal help to build relationships? • Look into the possibility of sharing a Passover meal with a church group or community.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK VI: OF THE EXERCISES OF LOVE IN PRAYER
Complacency for St. Francis de Sales means contentment to simply be with God, to rest in God. Chapter 1: A description of
mystical theology, which is no other thing than prayer.
We take not here the word prayer (oraison) only for the petition (priere) or demand for some good, poured out by the faithful before God, as S. Basil calls it, but as S. Bonaventure does, when he says that prayer, generally speaking; comprehends all the acts of contemplation; or as S. Gregory Nazianzen, who teaches that prayer is a conference or conversation of the soul with
God; or again as S. Chrysostom, when he says that prayer is a discoursing with the divine Majesty; or finally as S. Augustine and S. Damascene, who term prayer an ascent or raising of the soul to God. And if prayer be a colloquy, a discourse or a conversation of the soul with God, by it then we speak to God, and he again speaks to us; we aspire to him and breathe in him, and he reciprocally inspires us and breathes upon us.
But of
what do we discourse in prayer? What is the subject of our conference? Theotimus, in it we speak of God only: for of what can love discourse and talk but of the well-beloved? And therefore prayer, and mystical theology, are one same thing. It is called theology, because, as speculative theology has God for its object, so this also treats only of God, yet with three differences: for, 1. The former treats of God as God, but the latter treats of him as sovereignly amiable; that is, the former
regards the Divinity of the supreme goodness, and the latter the supreme goodness of the Divinity. 2. The speculative treats of God with humanity and amongst us, the mystical speaks of God with God, and in God himself. 3. The speculative tends to the knowledge of God, and the mystical to the love of God; that, therefore, makes its scholars wise, and learned, and theologians, but this makes its scholars fervent, and affectionate, lovers of God, a Philotheus or a
Theophilus. Now it is called mystical, because its conversation is altogether secret, and there is nothing said in it between God and the soul save only from heart to heart, by a communication incommunicable to all but those who make it. Lovers' language is so peculiar to themselves that none but themselves understand it. I sleep, said the holy spouse, and my heart watcheth. Ah! hark! The voice of my beloved knocking. [257] Who would
have guessed that this spouse being asleep could yet talk with her beloved? But where love reigns, the sound of exterior words is not necessary, nor the help of sense to entertain and to hear one another. In fine, prayer and mystical theology is nothing else but a conversation in which the soul amorously entertains herself with God concerning his most amiable goodness, to unite and join herself thereto.
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