Within your own soul resides divine aid, and sovereign succour. Retreat within it, and all will be quiet, secure, peaceable, and calm. Thus, by means of mental silence, which can only be attained with divine help, you may look for tranquillity in tumult: solitude in company; light in darkness; forgetfulness in pressures: vigour in despondency; courage in fear; resistance in temptation; and quiet in
tribulation.
- François Fénelon (1651-1715), A Guide to True Peace, or a Method of Attaining to Inward or Spiritual Prayer.
(Be still . . . attentive for that inner place of rest.)
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2 SM 7:18-19, 24-29; Psalm 132:1-2, 3-5, 11, 12, 13-14
MK 4:21-25
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket
or under a bed,
and not to be placed on a lampstand?
For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible;
nothing is secret except to come to light.
Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.”
He also told them, “Take care what you hear.
The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you,
and still more will be given to you.
To the one who has, more will be given;
from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
Reflection on the Scriptures |
Today’s image is a lamp, a light which, when lit, is not meant to be hidden in a tub or under a bed. Simple and clear enough in the hearing, but, what if we want more, a better lamp, light! Jesus tells His disciples that, what is hidden will be revealed and what is secret will be disclosed. To this we respond, “ah good, God is going to give us more, clearer, enough!” We
will never have enough to complete Him on earth, one cookie, such as yourself, myself, is what He asks us to be and to share and not from under a tub or bed. Two cookies are always better than one and yet the one, limited, seems to be enough for Jesus to share with us.
Early in Mark’s Gospel four fishermen were called out of their boats and away from their nets. These cookies were being formed by their listening to Jesus, to be distributed, shared. They hear many things, are given much and more is coming, but only depending on how they reveal outwardly all they have inwardly received. Jesus’ relationship with them, and of course, with the readers
or listeners to this Gospel, is oriented for display, for showing up and out and not showing off. His giving is for their living and the more will be given depending on its being lived.
In short, nothing of His, is mine! I am finishing this Reflection, because I do not have anything more or better to say and of course, I wish there were more. He gives the increase, I offer this one cookie-worth for you to munch. If it is good then it is from Him and for His sisters and brothers through you. Go! Let the secret out in the simplicity and crumbliness and goodness of your
good-enough life.
- by Larry Gillick, S.J.
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 69
"I was delivered from the Enemy by the virtue of Christ's Passion"
After this the Fiend came again with his heat and with his stench, and gave me much ado, the stench was so vile and so painful, and also dreadful and travailous. Also I heard a bodily as if it had been of two persons; and both, to my thinking, jangled at one time as jangling, if they had holden a parliament with a great busy-ness; and all was soft muttering, so that I understood nought that they said. And all this
was to stir me to despair, as methought,— seeming to me as [though] they mocked at praying of prayers which are said boisterously with [the] mouth, failing [of] devout attending and wise diligence: the which we owe to God in our prayers.
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