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It is not a matter of thinking a great deal but of loving a great deal, so do whatever arouses you most to love.
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I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
- St. Teresa of Calcutta
(When in doubt about which way to go, follow the way of love. Ask the Spirit to show you this way.)
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1 SM 1:9-20; SAMUEL 2:1, 4-8
MK 1:21-28
Jesus came to Capernaum with his followers,
and on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
All were amazed and asked one another,
“What is this?
A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.
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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Mark 6:34-44 (Jesus feeds thousands)
Mark 1: 21-28 (An exorcism)
The people of Jesus' time believed that myriad evil spirits ruled the earth. Some of these spirits, they believed, were angels who had fallen from grace, while others were evil people who had died. Jesus' healings were thus understood in terms of displacing an evil spirit with the Holy Spirit.
* What kind of evil spirit keeps you from loving yourself as God loves you? What changes in your self and/or the circumstances in which you live would make it easier for you to love yourself? Make a plan to begin working toward these changes.
* Spend some time with the verse, "What have you to do with me, Jesus of Nazareth?" Listen to your thoughts as Jesus responds.
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
Now I say that when the soul practises love by actions which are sensual, and which carry her below herself, it is impossible that thereby the exercise of her superior love, should not be so much the more weakened. So that true and essential love is so far from being aided and preserved by the union to which sensual love tends, that it is impaired, dissipated and ruined by it. Job’s
oxen ploughed the ground, while the useless asses fed by them, eating the pasture due to the labouring oxen. While the intellectual part of our soul is employed in honest and virtuous love of some worthy object, it comes to pass oftentimes that the senses and faculties of the inferior part tend to the union which they are adapted to, and which is their pasture, though union only belongs to the heart and to the spirit, which also is alone able to produce true and substantial
love.
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