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Measure not God’s love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof.
- Richard Sibbes
(Faith is not a feeling, and neither is the sense of God’s presence. Believe that God is with you whether you feel it or not, and act as though God loves you no matter what.)
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1 THES 3:7-13; PS 90:3-5A, 12-13, 14 AND 17
MT 24:42-51
Jesus said to his disciples:
"Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of this: if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when
the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
"Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant,
whom the master has put in charge of his household
to distribute to them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on his
arrival finds doing so.
Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.
But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is long delayed,'
and begins to beat his fellow servants,
and eat and drink with drunkards,
the servant's master will come on an unexpected day
and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely
and assign him a place with the hypocrites,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."
USCCB Lectionary
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Matthew 24:42-51 (Faithful servants)
We now begin to reflect on Jesus’s promise to return again. “Stay awake!” he counsels us, for we do
not know when he will come nor when we will die. But the best reason for being faithful is not fear of punishment; we are to be faithful because we are people of integrity.
* During a ball game, a saint was asked what he would do if he knew that the Lord would return to earth in fifteen minutes. “I’d finish this
game of ball,” he replied. Does this describe your attitude?
* “One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living,” Dale Carnegie wrote. Resolve to make the most of this day. Paperback, Kindle
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God and I: Exploring the Connections between God, Self and Ego, by Philip St. Romain, 2016 (2nd ed.) ____________ Chapter 5: The Journey to Egoic Authenticity This present chapter focuses only on fostering Egoic authenticity, the primary obstacle to which is the false self conditioning we have internalized. The process by means of which we have all been wounded was described in Chapter 4, but can be summarized as an excessive attachment by the Ego to projecting an image to the outer world that will enhance the likelihood of gaining approval and/or avoiding criticism. Such an Ego is
strongly identified with this Persona or mask, repressing thoughts and feelings that are incongruent with the desired Persona. An inner climate of disquietude prevails, with judgmentalism and preoccupation about identity keeping the intellect perpetually employed with trying to resolve the issue, “I’ll be OK when _______.”
Hardback, paperback, eBook and free preview versions.
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