Message of 10-26-2021

Published: Tue, 10/26/21

A Daily Spiritual Seed
Tuesday:October 26, 2021

Message of the Day

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

- Blaise Pascal

(Jesus said the truth would set us free. What helps you stay attuned to truth?)

Daily Readings

Rom 8:18-25; Psalm 126:1b-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6

Lk 13:18-21

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like?
To what can I compare it?
It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden.
When it was fully grown, it became a large bush
and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?
It is like yeast that a woman took
and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

USCCB readings

Reflection on the Scriptures

I have found myself long attracted to the eighth chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. It began with a fascination with the word “groaning” applied to the Holy Spirit. (“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”) What are those groanings and how do they affect us as we become award of them?

But it’s not only the Holy Spirit groaning on our behalf. Both we ourselves and the whole of creation also groans. So, the plot thickens! How do we deal with this unusual word applied to us, to creation, and to God? And how does it affect the relationship between God and ourselves?

The word connotes deep and full experience of longing for engagement with and for something. In the Romans letter it seems to express something further and even deeper. I’m sure that at some point in my life I groaned, but it is difficult to speculate about it because of its profundity.

However difficult to understand, St. Paul convinces me of how important it is to discover the working of God with us who seek to discover God interacting with us.

- by Tom Shanahan, S.J.

Creighton Online Ministries

Spiritual Reading

The Son of God Became Human

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church

- https://amzn.to/38srWWD

Part One, Section Two, Chapter Three

Article 8: I Believe in the Holy Spirit

IV. THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME

"Rejoice, you who are full of grace"

723 In Mary, the Holy Spirit fulfills the plan of the Father's loving goodness. Through the Holy Spirit, the Virgin conceives and gives birth to the Son of God. By the Holy Spirit's power and her faith, her virginity became uniquely fruitful.105

724 In Mary, the Holy Spirit manifests the Son of the Father, now become the Son of the Virgin. She is the burning bush of the definitive theophany. Filled with the Holy Spirit she makes the Word visible in the humility of his flesh. It is to the poor and the first representatives of the gentiles that she makes him known.106

(Footnote references in the Catechism.)

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