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The problem with prayer is heightened by the fact that people often succumb either to the extreme of all form and no freedom, or the opposite extreme of all freedom and no form. The first extreme leads to a rote or impersonal approach to prayer, while the second produces an unbalanced and undisciplined prayer life that can degenerate into a litany of one 'gimme' after another.
- Kenneth Boa, Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship
(Form vs. freedom: how do keep these together in your prayer life?)
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Luke 21:1-4 (True giving)
During this last week of the Church’s liturgical year, we will consider some of the most important of all Christian truths. Today’s short reading teaches us that when we give of our excess we have given very little of ourselves. Real giving involves risk— not only of financial resources, but of mental and spiritual resources also.
• "The door into the kingdom of God opens from the inside out” is a popular saying. “You may have an abundance for every good work,” Paul added (2 Corinthians 9:7). How do you understand these adages? Have you experienced these truths working in your life recently? How can you work them today?
• Pray for the grace to recognize opportunities to give of yourself.
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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Luke 18: 35-43 (The blind see)
Today we reflect on another example of the value of persistence. The blind man will not he denied his opportunity to meet Jesus and request healing from him. Jesus rewards his faith by granting his request.
• Jesus must have known what the blind man wanted, so why did he ask, “What do you want me to do for you?”
• Do you find it difficult to articulate your needs to others? If so, how are they to know how you need them to love you?
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 9: That love tends to union
When the Holy Ghost would express a perfect love, he almost always employs words expressing union or conjunction. And the multitude of believers, says S. Luke, had but one heart and one soul. Our Saviour prayed for all the faithful that they all may be one. S. Paul warns us to be careful to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” These unities of heart,
of soul, and of spirit signify the perfection of love which joins many souls in one. So it is said that Jonathan’s soul was knit to David’s, that is to say, as the Scripture adds, He loved him as his own soul. The great Apostle of France (S. Denis) as well according to his own sentiment as when giving that of his Hierotheus, writes a hundred times, I think, in a single chapter of the De Nominibus Divinis, that love is unifying, uniting, drawing together, embracing, collecting and bringing
all things to unity! S. Gregory Nazianzen and S. Augustine say that their friends and they had but one soul, and Aristotle approving already in his time this manner of speech: “When,” says he, “we would express how much we love our friends, we say his and my soul is but one.” Hatred separates us, and love brings us into one. The end then of love is no other thing than the union of the lover and the thing loved.
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