We want to avoid suffering, death, sin,
ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
- Elisabeth Elliot
(How might you pour out your life for others this day?) |
ROM 15:14-21; PS 98:1, 2-3AB, 3CD-4
LK 16:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples, "A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property.
He
summoned him and said,
'What is this I hear about you?
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.'
The steward said to himself, 'What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me?
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.'
He called in his master's debtors one by
one.
To the first he said, 'How much do you owe my master?'
He replied, 'One hundred measures of olive oil.'
He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note.
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.'
Then to another he said, 'And you, how much do you owe?'
He replied, 'One hundred measures of wheat.'
He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.'
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.
For the children of
this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation
than the children of light."
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
I have just returned from a Creighton immersion in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Here I found many of the same socioeconomic problems we see in today’s parable, including extortionary loan interest, corrupt bribery, and an inequitable system in which management and consumers rake in profits and cheap products while factory and farm laborers struggle to eke out a living. Nor am I somehow an innocent
bystander. My American government, my American corporations, and my Catholic church have all been key actors in the DR/Haiti drama. During a factory tour, I even realized that the Hanes t-shirt on my back was made in the Dominican Republic!
I was
intellectually aware of all of these issues prior to this trip. But meeting people in the flesh sparked a new sense of urgency. Like the steward, I am a cog in a much bigger system that I do not control. But also like the steward, I am called to respond in tangible ways to the injustices that surround me. The steward made his decision. What will we do?
- by Jay Carney Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43
“Prayer uniteth the soul to God”
And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it. And this is wrought, and shall be, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, so long till we shall die in
longing, for love. And then shall we all come into our Lord, our Self clearly knowing, and God fully having; and we shall endlessly be all had in God: Him verily seeing and fully feeling, Him spiritually hearing, and Him delectably in-breathing, and [of] Him sweetly drinking.
And then shall we see God face to face, homely and fully. The creature that is made shall see and endlessly behold God which is the
Maker. For thus may no man see God and live after, that is to say, in this deadly life. But when He of His special grace will shew Himself here, He strengtheneth the creature above its self, and He measureth the Shewing, after His own will, as it is profitable for the time.
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