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Vulnerability . . . is the willingness and ability to be seen as well as to see, to be touched as well as to touch. Vulnerability is the giving up of control.
- Carter Heyward
(How are you being challenged to do this in your life? What good fruit do you experience from doing so?)
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ACTS 9:1-20; PS 117:1BC, 2
JN 6:52-59
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture |
"Jesus...appeared to you..." —Acts 9:17
The Lord Jesus has enemy-converting power. The fury of enemies cannot stand against the Lord. Saul saw Jesus, or at least the blinding flash of Jesus, the Light (Jn 9:5). This vision of Jesus remained with Saul the rest of his life. Throughout the rest of his life, Saul (later called Paul) would experience sporadic eye problems limiting his physical sight (see Gal 4:13-15; 6:11). However, his spiritual vision was a perfect 20-20; Paul never took his eyes off Jesus again. Paul came face-to-face
with Jesus, and his life was forever transformed. Coming face-to-face with Jesus is fundamental to our faith. Pope St. John Paul II taught that an encounter with Jesus Christ is the key to our faith walk (Church in America, 3).
Seek the face of the Lord (Ps 27:8). Allow Him to look at you with love (Mk 10:21). Let the loving gaze of Jesus heal, renew, and restore you.
Prayer: Father, send the Holy Spirit to make my desires focused on Jesus alone.
Presentation Ministries
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
- by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
CHAPTER II. THE DIVINE ACTION WORKS UNCEASINGLY FOR THE SANCTIFICATION OF SOULS.
SECTION X.God Makes Known His Will Through Creatures.
In the present moment are made manifest the name of God, and the coming of His Kingdom.
It was for this reason that Job blessed the name of God in his utter desolation. Instead of looking upon his condition as ruin, he called it the name of God and by blessing it he protested that the divine will under whatever name or form it might appear, even though expressed by the most terrible catastrophes, was holy. David also blessed it at all times, and in all places. It is then, by this continual
recognition of the will of God as manifested and revealed in all things, that He reigns in us, that His will is done on earth as it is in Heaven, and that our souls obtain nourishment. The whole matter of that incomparable prayer prescribed by Jesus Christ is comprised and contained in abandonment to the divine will. Many times daily it is recited vocally by the command of God and of Holy Church, but we repeat it at every moment in the centre of our hearts when we love to do, or to suffer
whatever this holy will ordains. That which takes time to repeat in words, the heart pronounces at every moment, and it is in this way that simple-minded souls are called to bless God. Nevertheless they cannot bless Him as much as they desire, and this inability is a subject of grief to them; so true is it that by the very means that seem like privations, God bestows graces and favours on faithful souls. To enrich the soul at the expense of the senses, filling it by so much the more as they
experience the more terrible emptiness, is a secret of the divine wisdom.
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