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Unless we know the difference between flowers and weeds, we are not fit to take care of a garden.
It is not enough to have truth planted in our minds. We must learn and labor to keep the ground clear of thorns and briars, follies and perversities, which have a wicked propensity to choke the word of life.
- Evan S. Coslett, Leaves of Gold
(How do you experience these "chokers of the word of life" these days? Turn them over to God's care and re-focus in love.)
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IS 40:1-11; PS 96:1-2, 3 AND 10AC, 11-12, 13
MT 18:12-14
Jesus said to his disciples:
"What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost."
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 18:12-14 (The Good Shepherd)
God loves individuals. This is a revelation sometimes hard for us to grasp-we think that God is too busy running the universe to love us. Yet Jesus tells us that God's greatest joy comes when an individual decides to break from sin and join his Father fold.
• With whom do you identify most in today's parable: the stray sheep, the ninety-nine faithful ones, or the shepherd in search of the stray? Why?
• How do you usually feel when you hear others sharing their conversion experiences? Do you rejoice with them?
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 10: That the union to which love aspires is spiritual
But to what kind of union does it tend? Did you not note, Theotimus, that the sacred spouse expressed her desire of being united to her spouse by the kiss, and that the kiss represents the spiritual union which is caused by the reciprocal communication of souls? It is indeed the human who loves, but he loves by his will, and therefore the end of his love is of the nature of his
will: but his will is spiritual, and consequently the union which love aims at is spiritual also, and so much the more because the heart, which is the seat and source of love, would not only not be perfected by union with corporal things, but would be degraded.
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