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Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can’t be God’s will? The God who made giraffes, a baby’s fingernails, a puppy’s tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite’s call, and a young girl’s giggle, has a sense of humor. Make no mistake about that.
- Catherine Marshall (1914-1983), “Joy,” in Christian Herald, v. 82
(How much fun and play is there in your life? How do these speak to you of God?)
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GN 18:16-33; PS 103:1B-2, 3-4, 8-9, 10-11
MT 8:18-22
When Jesus saw a crowd around him,
he gave orders to cross to the other shore.
A scribe approached and said to him,
“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
Another of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
But Jesus answered him, “Follow me,
and let the dead bury their dead.”
USCCB Lectionary
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Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain,
2018 (3rd ed.)
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Matthew 8:18-22 (The cost of discipleship)
At first glance, Jesus seems to be very hard on those he has invited to follow him. This passage, coming after accounts of healing, reveals that Jesus does not want people like the scribe to follow him on the impulse of the moment without first considering the cost. The man who wants to wait until he buries his father is not yet ready to leave home.
• What habit or relationship to which you have been clinging keeps you from making necessary changes in your life? Do something today to begin to grow out of this death-dealing security.
• Today is the first day of the rest of your life” is a familiar maxim. Spend some time thinking about your day. Resolve to live it fully.
Paperback, Kindle and eBook
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Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
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BOOK I: CONTAINING A PREPARATION FOR THE WHOLE TREATISE
Chapter 4: That love rules over all the affections and passions, and even governs the will, although the will has dominion over it.
For which cause the other passions and affections, are good or bad, vicious or virtuous, according as the love whence they proceed is good or bad; for love so spreads over them her own qualities, that they seem to be no other than this same love. S. Augustine reducing all these passions and affections to four, as did also Boetius, Cicero, Virgil, with the greatest part of the
ancients:—”Love,” says he, “tending to the possession of what it loves, is termed concupiscence or desire; having and possessing it it is called joy; flying that which is contrary to it, it is named fear; but if this really seizes it and it feels it, love is named grief, and consequently these passions are evil if the love be evil, good if it be good. The citizens of the heavenly city fear, desire, grieve, love, and because their love is just, all their affections are also just.
Christian doctrine subjects the reason to God that he may guide and help it, and subjects all these passions to the spirit, that it may bridle and moderate them and so convert them to the service of justice and virtue. The right will is good love, the bad will is evil love;” that is to say, in a word, Theotimus, love has such dominion over the will as to make it exactly such as it is
itself.
Hardback, paperback, eBook and free preview versions.
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