The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check, and this check is to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. We must look at our talent for analysis of character as a dreadful
possibility of huge uncharitableness. We are sure to continue to say clever things, so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis; and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. We must grow to something higher, and something truer, than a quickness in detecting evil.
- Frederick W. Faber
(Thou shalt not judge! What a great discipline to practice this Lenten season.)
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DT 30:15-20; PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
LK 9:22-25
Jesus said to his disciples:
"The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised."
Then he said to all,
"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?"
Reflection on the Scriptures |
Luke . . . tells us that to truly follow God one must “deny himself and take up his cross daily.” This gives a much richer explanation of what it is to truly follow God, sacrificing one’s own needs and leaving your desires behind for the benefit of others, all with no guarantee of earthly blessing. Quite the contradiction from what is often promoted on the airwaves, but in that calling
lays the truth.
So as preparations begin for Lent, it is a good time to take stock of where I am at in following God’s commandments and exploring the reason I strive to obey them. Am I expecting God to pour Blessings upon me as a reward for my faithful efforts or am I truly giving of myself to serve the Lord out of love without expectations, trusting that God is with me when hardships
appear?
- by Tom Drzaic
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 56
“God is nearer to us than our own soul”
“We can never come to full knowing of God till we know first clearly our own Soul”
God is nearer to us than our own Soul: for He is [the] Ground in whom our Soul standeth, and He is [the] Mean that keepeth the Substance and the Sense-nature together so that they shall never dispart. For our soul sitteth in God in very rest, and our soul standeth in God in very strength, and our Soul is kindly rooted in God in endless love: and therefore if we will have knowledge of our Soul, and communing and dalliance
therewith, it behoveth to seek unto our Lord God in whom it is enclosed. (And of this enclosement I saw and understood more in the Sixteenth Shewing, as I shall tell.)
And as anent our Substance and our Sense-part, both together may rightly be called our Soul: and that is because of the oneing that they have in God. The worshipful City that our Lord Jesus sitteth in is our Sense-soul, in which He is enclosed: and our Kindly Substance is enclosed in Jesus with the blessed Soul of Christ sitting in rest in the Godhead.
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