You must accept your cross; if you carry it courageously it will carry you to heaven. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.
-
St. Jean Vianney
(What worries can you release to God’s care?)
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GN 17:1, 9-10, 15-22; PS 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
MT 8:1-4
When Jesus came down
from the mountain, great crowds followed him.
And then a leper approached, did him homage, and said,
"Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."
He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
"I will do it. Be made clean."
His leprosy was cleansed immediately.
Then Jesus said to him, "See that you tell no one,
but go show yourself to the priest,
and offer the gift that Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them."
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
Jesus fulfilled law because he was the promise to humanity that we would be restored to a right standing with God. Without the compassion of Jesus on our infirmities, we are like lepers. So Jesus tells the leper to show himself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed in the law as proof for them that the law had been fulfilled. That was the new beginning for humanity. It wasn’t about the miracle of healing, but the message of wholeness that
the leper was called to deliver. The story tells us that the leper didn’t get it. He didn’t follow through, just went about proclaiming his miracle. But probably we don’t follow through either, most of the time. Every blessing, every favor, every answered prayer is not just a miracle. It is a call to a new beginning.
- by Barbara Dilly Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 40
“True love teacheth us that we
should hate sin only for love.”
“To me was shewed no harder hell than sin.”
“God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it”
THIS is a sovereign friendship of our courteous Lord that He keepeth us so tenderly while we be in sin; and furthermore He toucheth us
full privily and sheweth us our sin by the sweet light of mercy and grace. But when we see our self so foul, then ween we that God were wroth with us for our sin, and then are we stirred of the Holy Ghost by contrition unto prayer and desire for the amending of our life with all our mights, to slacken the wrath of God, unto the time we find a rest in soul and a softness in conscience. Then hope we that God hath forgiven us our sins: and it is truth. And then sheweth our courteous Lord Himself to
the soul—well-merrily and with glad cheer—with friendly welcoming as if it had been in pain and in prison, saying sweetly thus: My darling I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; and now seest thou my loving and we be oned in bliss. Thus are sins forgiven by mercy and grace, and our soul is worshipfully received in joy like as it shall be when it cometh to Heaven, as oftentimes as it cometh by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the virtue of
Christ’s Passion. |
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