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If you were to rise early every morning, as an instance of self-denial, as a method of renouncing indulgence, as a means of redeeming your time, and fitting your spirit for prayer, you would find mighty advantages from it. This method, though it might seem such a small circumstance of life, would in all probability be a means of great piety.… It would teach you to exercise power over yourself, and make you able by degrees to
renounce other pleasures and tempers that war against the soul.
- William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
(Try it. It works.)
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DT 10:12-22; PS 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
MT 17:22-27
As Jesus and his disciples were gathering in Galilee,
Jesus said to them,
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men,
and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.”
And they were overwhelmed with grief.
When they came to Capernaum,
the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said,
“Does not your teacher pay the temple tax?”
“Yes,” he said.
When he came into the house, before he had time to speak,
Jesus asked him, “What is your opinion, Simon?
From whom do the kings of the earth take tolls or census tax?
From their subjects or from foreigners?”
When he said, “From foreigners,” Jesus said to him,
“Then the subjects are exempt.
But that we may not offend them, go to the sea, drop in a hook,
and take the first fish that comes up.
Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax.
Give that to them for me and for you.”
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 17: 22-27 (The temple tax)
Although Jesus has been careful to avoid proclaiming himself the Son of God, today’s reading alludes to this claim. Because the Temple is considered God’s house, he explains, he, the true of the King of creation, should not have to pay the temple tax. Only Matthew relates this story and the account of Peter’s extracting the coin from a fish (perhaps an allusion to Peter’s trade).
• How do you feel about cheating on income taxes?
• God helps those who help themselves” is a popular saying. Do you believe this? Why? Why not?
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 6: How the love of God has dominion over other loves
Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were supernatural children; for their mothers, Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, being sterile by nature, conceived them by the grace of the divine goodness, and for this cause they were established masters of their brethren. Similarly, divine love is a child of miracle, since man’s will cannot conceive it if it be not poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost. And as
supernatural it must rule and reign over all the affections, yea, even over the understanding and will.
And although there are other supernatural movements in the soul,—fear, piety, force, hope,—as Esau and Benjamin were supernatural children of Rachel and Rebecca, yet is divine love still master, heir and superior, as being the son of promise, since in virtue of it heaven is promised to man. Salvation is shown to faith, it is prepared for hope, but it is given only to charity. Faith points
out the way to the land of promise as a pillar of cloud and of fire, that is, light and dark; hope feeds us with its manna of sweetness, but charity actually introduces us into it, as the Ark of alliance, which makes for us the passage of the Jordan, that is, of the judgment, and which shall remain amidst the people in the heavenly land promised to the true Israelites, where neither the pillar of faith serves as guide nor the manna of hope is used as food.
Hardback, paperback, eBook and free preview versions.
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