Wholeheartedness is a precious gift, but no one can actually give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably....It's like
someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart.
- Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape
(Open your heart to God in this moment. See how even your difficulties are not obstacles to this open-heartedness.) |
1 MC 4:36-37, 52-59; 1 CHR 29:10BCD, 11ABC, 11D-12A, 12BCD
LK
19:45-48
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out
those who were selling things, saying to them,
"It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves."
And every day he was teaching in the temple area.
The chief priests, the scribes, and the
leaders of the people, meanwhile,
were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose
because all the people were hanging on his words.
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
In the Gospel, we read about Jesus' response to what he's seeing in the Temple. He's been struggling with the "religious" people of his day who appeared to be "religious"without finding a place for mercy in their practice of religion. They were severe and judgmental. The law was their highest priority. They didn't like the way he ate and drank with sinners. They didn't like his care for the sick. They didn't like the focus he placed upon
compassion and care for the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the sinner. They certainly didn't like the way he identified himself with their way to true worship.
The "buying and selling" he saw in the outer court of the temple was all about sacrifice. Merchants were selling animals, down to pigeons for the poor, to purchase for sacrifice. And, since people came from
all over, there were money changers doing the currency exchange business. Jesus quotes Jeremiah, in chapter 7:11, in saying they had lost something of the meaning of sacrifice - as prayer - and had turned it to a "den of thieves."
We can let Jesus cleanse our temple. We can let Jesus help us examine what has become a "disease" to the genuine spirit of our faith and
commitment. We can ask for new graces, as we ask that we might be more of a "house of prayer" - in communion with him in our everyday lives. And, we can ask for the grace to allow us to be kind and merciful more and more, especially with those closest to us. Then, with his grace, we might more clearly hear and be open to the cry of the poor and be in the deepest communion with Jesus in that solidarity with the poor, the sick, with sinners, that allows our hearts to be like
his.
- by Andy Alexander, S.J.
Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 45
“All heavenly things and all earthly things that belong to Heaven are comprehended in these two
judgments”
GOD deemeth us [looking] upon our Nature-Substance, which is ever kept one in Him, whole and safe without end: and this doom is [because] of His rightfulness [in the which it is made and kept]. And man judgeth [looking] upon our changeable Sense-soul, which seemeth now one [thing], now other,—according as it taketh of the [higher or lower] parts,—and [is that which] showeth outward. And this wisdom [of man’s judgment] is mingled [because of the
diverse things it beholdeth]. For sometimes it is good and easy, and sometimes it is hard and grievous. And in as much as it is good and easy it belongeth to the rightfulness; and in as much as it is hard and grievous [by reason of the sin beheld, which sheweth in our Sense-soul,] our good Lord Jesus reformeth it by [the working in our Sense-soul of] mercy and grace through the virtue of His blessed Passion, and so bringeth it to the rightfulness.
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