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One of the principal rules of religion is, to lose no occasion of serving God. And, since God is invisible to our eyes, we are to serve him in our neighbor; which God receives as if done to himself in person, standing visibly before us.
- John Wesley
What kind of service to others are you called to these days?
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Daily Readings
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Psalm
139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab Matthew 23:27-32 Through towns and villages Jesus went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem. Someone said to him, ‘Sir, will there be only a few saved?’ He said to them, ‘Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.
‘Once the master of the house
has got up and locked the door, you may find yourself knocking on the door, saying, “Lord, open to us” but he will answer, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will find yourself saying, “We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets” but he will reply, “I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men!”
‘Then there will be weeping and grinding of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all
the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves turned outside. And men from east and west, from north and south, will come to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.
‘Yes, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be
last.’
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 23:27-32 (Jesus denounces
hypocrisy) It is unlikely that anyone has ever confronted a group of people with more fire and sting than Jesus did the scribes and Pharisees of his day. For a Jew to come into contact with a tomb was to become unclean and, hence, unable to share in the Passover feast. By calling the scribes and l~harisees whitewashed tombs,” Jesus is saying that their hypocrisy makes them and those they contact spiritually
unclean. • How do you feel about the way Jesus confronted the Jewish authorities? Are his actions in keeping with a God of love? • Write out a set of guidelines for confronting other people in a loving way. Make a resolution to practice these principles with someone you are concerned about during the next day.
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 6: That contemplation
is made without labour, which is the third difference between it and meditation. Now in all these divine mysteries, which contain all others, there is food provided for dear friends to eat and drink well, and for dearest friends to be inebriated. Some eat and drink, but they eat more than they drink and so are not inebriated: the others eat and drink, but drink more than they eat, and those are they who are inebriated. Now to
eat is to meditate, for in meditating a man doth chew, turning his spiritual meat hither and thither between the teeth of consideration, to bruise, break and digest it, which is not done without some labour. To drink is to contemplate, which we do without labour or difficulty, yea with pleasure and tranquillity. But to be inebriated is to contemplate so frequently and so ardently as to be quite out of self to be wholly in God. O holy and sacred inebriation, which, contrarily to corporal
inebriation, does not alienate us from the spiritual sense, but from the corporal senses; does not dull or besot us, but angelicizes and in a sort deifies us; putting us out of ourselves, not to abase us and rank us with beasts, as terrestrial drunkenness does, but to raise us above ourselves and range us with angels, so that we may live more in God than in ourselves, being attentive to and occupied in seeing his beauty and being united to his goodness by
love!
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