Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
- William Blake
(Happy Valentine's Day!)
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GN 2:18-25; PS 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
MK 7:24-30
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
Reflection on the Scriptures |
Today’s Gospel story from Mark is sometimes confusing to people. I remember a time when I was outraged that Jesus would speak to anyone, let alone a woman, like that, calling her a dog. It made me question what could this story really be about? Her persistence in prayer? Maybe. And then when I read it alongside Matthew’s version (Mt 15:21-28 ), I found an invitation to greater
faith. Later, when I prayed with the story, I could see how it is showing Jesus expanding his ministry beyond the Jewish people, to the Gentiles. A message that he “came for all.” This was a little more consoling to me as well as a challenge for me to reach and minister beyond my own circle or tribe. There are all good perspective and invitations to continue with in prayer.
- by Amy Hoover
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 55
“Christ is our Way”—”Mankind shall be restored from double death”
For I saw full assuredly that our Substance is in God, and also I saw that in our sense-soul God is: for in the self-[same] point that our Soul is made sensual, in the self-[same] point is the City of God ordained to Him from without beginning; into which seat He cometh, and never shall remove [from] it. For God is never out of the soul: in which He dwelleth blissfully without end. And this was seen in the Sixteenth Shewing
where it saith: The place that Jesus taketh in our soul, He shall never remove [from] it. And all the gifts that God may give to creatures, He hath given to His Son Jesus for us: which gifts He, dwelling in us, hath enclosed in Him unto the time that we be waxen and grown,—our soul with our body and our body with our soul, either of them taking help of other,—till we be brought up unto stature, as nature worketh. And then, in the ground of nature, with working of mercy, the Holy Ghost graciously
inspireth into us gifts leading to endless life.
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