Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other- it doesn't matter
who it is- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.
--Mother Teresa
(Another simple practice that can make a big difference. Give it a try today and see what happens.) |
BAR 1:15-22; PS 79:1B-2, 3-5, 8, 9
LK 10:13-16
Jesus said to them,
"Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented,
sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
at the judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum, 'Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the netherworld.'
Whoever listens to you
listens to me.
Whoever rejects you rejects me.
And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
Western society tends to emphasize the
individual over the tribe. So it follows that our understanding of sin tends to be about those individual acts we do or fail to do. Yet the Church also recognizes the reality of social sin, which arises out of individual acts to form structures of sin. These include racist and sexist attitudes that keep us from recognizing the dignity of all people, policies that oppress the poor, and the systematic failure to care for our common home, the Earth. Reflecting on my complicity in these structures
of sin elicits a deeper sense of my own guilt and shame. But it’s a guilt and shame that I share with all those who also recognize their own complicity in these structures of sin. Jesus’ cries of lamentation take on a deeper meaning, prompting me to repentance and to accept the mercy and healing Jesus offers. Then I am ready to work, with my sisters and brothers, for God’s justice on Earth, dismantling those structures of sin.
- by John Shea, S.J. Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 42
“Prayer is a right understanding of
that fulness of joy that is to come, with accordant longing and sure trust”
For prayer is a right understanding of that fulness of joy that is to come, with well-longing and sure trust. Failing of our bliss that we be kindly ordained to, maketh us to long; true understanding and love, with sweet mind in our Saviour, graciously maketh us to trust. And in these two workings our Lord
beholdeth us continually : for it is our due part, and His Goodness may no less assign to us.
Thus it belongeth to us to do our diligence; and when we have done it, then shall us yet think that [it] is nought,—and sooth it is. But if we do as we can, and ask, in truth, for mercy and grace, all that faileth us we
shall find in Him. And thus signifieth He where He saith: I am Ground of thy beseeching. And thus in this blessed word, with the Shewing, I saw a full overcoming against all our weakness and all our doubtful dreads. |
|
|
