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Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion, as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We
know him in and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence.
… Thomas Merton (1915-1968), The Climate of Monastic Prayer Who do you say that you are? What do you know of yourself from your relationship with God? Compare the two lists and see how it
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Daily Readings
Isaiah 41:13-20
Psalm 145:1
and 9, 10-11, 12-13ab Matthew 11:11-15 Jesus spoke to the crowds: ‘I tell you solemnly, of all the children born of women, a greater than John the Baptist has never been seen; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is. Since John the Baptist came, up to this present time, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence and the violent are taking it by
storm. Because it was towards John that all the prophecies of the prophets and of the Law were leading; and he, if you will believe me, is the Elijah who was to return. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen!
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Matthew 11:11-15 (Jesus praises John the Baptist)
The figure of John the Baptist is one revered by the Church. John was apparently one of the greatest of Jewish prophets, one believed by many to be the messiah. The Church has long considered John the forerunner of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. In today's THE SEASON OF ADVENT reading Jesus himself identifies John as the spirit of Elijah who had been prophesied to usher in the new age. • The spirit of John the Baptist was a spirit of
boldness and courage which Winston Churchill maintained made all other virtues possible. Are you courageous in standing up for the gospel?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK VI: OF THE EXERCISES OF LOVE IN PRAYER Chapter 10: Of various degrees of this repose, and how it is to be preserved. The soul, then, to whom
God gives holy, loving quiet in prayer, must abstain as far as she is able from looking upon herself or her repose, which to be preserved must not be curiously observed; for he who loves it too much loses it, and the right rule of loving it properly is not to love it too anxiously. [293] And as a child who, to see where his feet are, has taken his head from his mother's breast, immediately returns to it, because he dearly loves it; so if we perceive ourselves distracted, through a curiosity to
know what we are doing in prayer, we must replace our hearts in the sweet and peaceable attention to God's presence from whence we strayed. Yet we are not to apprehend any danger of losing this sacred repose by actions of body or mind which are not done from lightness or indiscretion. For, as the Blessed Mother (S.) Teresa says, it were a superstition to be so jealous of this repose as not to cough, spit or breathe, for fear of losing it, since God who gives this peace does not withdraw it for
such necessary movements, nor yet for those distractions and wanderings of the mind which are not voluntary: and the will having once tasted the divine presence does not cease to relish the sweetness thereof, though the understanding or memory should make an escape and slip away after foreign and useless thoughts.
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