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IPurity of heart and simplicity are of great force with Almighty God, who is in purity most singular, and of nature most simple.
... St. Gregory the Great (540-604)
A cluttered heart and complicated lifestyle are the opposite. Time to de-clutter and
simplify! |
Daily Readings
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 Luke
16:19-31 Jesus said to the Pharisees: ‘There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast magnificently every day. And at his gate there lay a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even came and licked his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.
‘In his torment in
Hades he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus in his bosom. So he cried out, “Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.” “My son,” Abraham replied “remember that during your life good things came your way, just as bad things came the way of Lazarus. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony. But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone,
if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours, and to stop any crossing from your side to ours.”
‘The rich man replied, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.” “They have Moses and the prophets,” said Abraham “let them listen to them.” “Ah no, father Abraham,” said the rich man “but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Then Abraham said
to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”’
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 16: 19-31: The rich man and
Lazarus The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus teaches us that the real value of our lives must be weighed against the inevitability of death and the prospect of judgment before God. The surest way to guarantee repose in the “bosom of Abraham” is to love God and neighbor. • What kinds of situations make you feel insecure? When do you feel most secure?
What is the primary source of your security? • How do you feel about the prospect of coming before God’s judgment when you die?
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK VI: OF THE EXERCISES OF LOVE IN PRAYER Chapter 14: On some other means by which holy love wounds the heart. S. Peter was quite sure that Our Lord, knowing all things, could not
be ignorant how much he was loved by him, yet because the repetition of this demand: Peter, dost thou love me? had some appearance of distrust, S. Peter is greatly grieved by it. Alas! that poor soul who feels that she is resolved rather to die than offend her God, and yet feels not a spark of fervour, but on the contrary an extreme coldness, which so benumbs and weakens her that at every step she falls into very sensible imperfections,--this soul I say, Theotimus, is all wounded: for her
love is exceedingly in pain to see that God lets himself look as if he did not see how much she loves him, leaving her as a creature not belonging to him; and she fancies that amid her failings, her distractions and coldness, Our Lord smites her with this reproach: How canst thou say that thou lovest me, seeing thy soul is not with me? And this is a dart of pain through her heart, but a dart of pain which proceeds from love; for if she loved not, she would not be afflicted with the fear that she
loved not. Sometimes this wound of love is made merely by the remembrance we have that there was a time in which we loved not our God. "Oh! too late have I loved thee, beauty ever ancient and ever new," said that saint who for thirty years was a heretic. The past life is an object of horror to the present life of him who has passed his previous life without loving the sovereign goodness.
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