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One of the greatest paradoxes of the mystical life is this: that one cannot enter into the deepest center of oneself and pass through that center into God, unless one is able to pass entirely out of oneself and give oneself to other people in the purity of a selfless love.
- Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation
(Love of others opens us to the love of God, and vice versa. We can practice this all day long!)
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JAS 1:12-18; Ps 94:12-13A, 14-15, 18-19
MK 8:14-21
The disciples had forgotten to bring bread,
and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.
Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out,
guard against the leaven of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.”
They concluded among themselves that
it was because they had no bread.
When he became aware of this he said to them,
“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?
Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
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 8: 14-21 Jesus warns his disciples to be on guard)
Although Jesus’ disciples loved him dearly, there were times when they found it hard to comprehend the symbolic language of their master. When Jesus tries to warn them about the influence of the Pharisees and Herod, they misinterpret his words. They really do not understand him.
• List a few destructive yeasts in our society that erode faith. With which of these do you struggle most intensely?
• Thank God for things which you have taken for granted recently.
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 11: That there are two portions in the soul, and how
Secondly, we have in us the sensitive appetite, whereby we are moved to the seeking and avoiding many things by the sensitive knowledge we have of them; not unlike to the animals, some of which have an appetite to one thing, some to another, according to the knowledge which they have that it suits them or not. In this appetite resides, or from it proceeds, the love which we call
sensual or brutish, which yet properly speaking ought not to be termed love but simply appetite.
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