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You can deal with an enormous amount of success as well as an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the beloved. Long before your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your teachers, your church, or any people touched you in a loving as well as in a wounding way-long before you were rejected by some person or praised by somebody else-that
voice has been there always. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." That love is there before you were born and will be there after you die.
- Henri J. M. Nouwenm "Moving from solitude to community to ministry."
(Take time in prayer to get in touch with this deepest of all identities -- of being a beloved of God. Ask the Spirit to awaken you to this awareness.)
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JAS 2:14-24, 26; Ps 112:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
MK 8:34–9:1
Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the Gospel will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
What could one give in exchange for his life?
Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words
in this faithless and sinful generation,
the Son of Man will be ashamed of
when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
He also said to them,
“Amen, I say to you,
there are some standing here who will not taste death
until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.”
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture
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"If anyone in this faithless and corrupt age is ashamed of Me and My doctrine, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes with the holy angels in His Father's glory." —Mark 8:38
We are never to be ashamed of Jesus (Mk 8:38), His words, or the Gospel (Rm 1:16). We should never be ashamed "of the law of the Most High and His precepts, or of the sentence to be passed upon the sinful" (Sir 42:2). We should never be ashamed of taking measures to be just, cautious, and discreet (Sir 42:3-8).
We should always be ashamed of immorality, falsehood, flattery, crime, disloyalty, lying, stealing, overeating, stinginess, aloofness, impure glances, thoughts and actions, harsh words, insults, and betraying secrets (Sir 41:15-24; cf Gal 5:19-21).
By believing in Jesus, loving Him, and not being ashamed of Him, we receive the grace to resist temptations and not fall into the shameful consequences of sin. "There is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rm 8:1). Without a total commitment to Jesus, shame or a dead conscience is inevitable. Only in Christ are we truly shameless (see Ps 34:6) and living in the full dignity of a child of
God. In Christ, live shamelessly.
Prayer: Father, exterminate shame from my life.
Promise: "Be assured, then, that faith without works is dead as a body without breath." —Jas 2:26
Presentation Ministries
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
- by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
BOOK II,
CHAPTER II. THE DUTIES OF THOSE SOULS CALLED BY GOD TO THE STATE OF ABANDONMENT
SECTION III. The Different Duties of Abandonment. The active exercise of abandonment either in relation to precept, or to inspiration.
It is necessary to remark that there are souls that God keeps hidden and little in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Far from giving them striking qualities, His design for them is that they should remain in obscurity. They would be deceived if they desired to attempt a different way. If they are well instructed they will recognise that fidelity to their nothingness is their right path, and they will find
peace in their lowliness. The only difference, therefore, in their way and that of, apparently, more favoured souls, is the difference they make for themselves by the amount of their love and submission to the will of God; for, if they surpass in these virtues the souls that appear to work more than they exteriorly, their sanctity is, without doubt, so much the greater. This shows that each soul ought to content itself with the duties of its state, and the over-ruling of Providence; clearly God
exacts this equally from all. As to attraction and the impressions received by the soul, these are given by God alone to whom He pleases. One must not try to produce them oneself, nor to make efforts to increase them. Natural effort is in direct opposition and quite contrary to infused inspirations, which should come in peace. The voice of the divine Spouse will awaken the soul, which should only proceed according to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, for, if it were to act according to its
own ideas it would make no progress.
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