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In this day, this season, miracles will grow within, unfurl, bear fruit. And the heart that makes time and space for Him to come will be a glorious place. A place of sheer, radiant defiance in the face of a world careening mad and stressed. Because each day of Advent, we will actively wait. We will wait knowing that the remaking of everything has already begun.
- Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift
(What kind of growth have you noticed in yourself during this Advent season?)
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MAL 3:1-4, 23-24; PS 25:4-5AB, 8-9, 10 AND 14
LK 1:57-66
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child
she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors,
and all these matters were discussed
throughout the hill country of Judea.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?"
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
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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Luke 1:57-66 (Zecbariah names his son)
Jews believed that a person's name influenced the development of his or her character. They believed that to know a person's name was to have entry into that person's soul. The story of the naming of John the Baptist points out the influence of God in the life of this last Jewish prophet.
• How did you get your name? What qualities of character does your name suggest to you? • Look in the mirror sometime today and tell yourself, 'God doesn't make junk.' Smile at yourself and pray for the grace to love yourself.
• Spend some time with the passage "The hand of the Lord was [is] with him [me]."
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 II: THE HISTORY OF THE GENERATION AND HEAVENLY BIRTH OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter 3: Of the divine providence in general
Thus, dear Theotimus, this providence reaches all, reigns over all, and reduces all to its glory. There are indeed fortuitous cases and unexpected accidents, but they are only fortuitous or unexpected to us, and are of course most certain to the divine providence, which foresees them, and directs them to the general good of the universe. These accidents
happen by the concurrence of various causes, which having no natural alliance one with the other, produce each of them its particular effect, but in such a way that from their concourse there issues another effect of a different nature, to which though one could not foresee it, all these different causes contributed. For example, it was reasonable to chastise the curiosity of the poet Æschylus, who being told by a diviner that he would perish by the fall of some house, kept himself all that day
in the open country, to escape his fate, and as he was standing up bareheaded, a falcon which held in its claws a tortoise, seeing this bald head, and thinking it to be the point of a rock, let the tortoise fall upon it, and behold Æschylus dies immediately, crushed by the house and shell of a tortoise. This was doubtless a fortuitous accident, for this man did not go into the country to die, but to escape death, nor did the falcon dream of crushing a poet's head, but the head and shell of a
tortoise to make itself master of the meat within: yet it chanced to the contrary, for the tortoise remained safe and poor Æschylus was killed. According to us this chance was unexpected, but in respect of the Divine providence which looked from above and saw the concurrence of causes, it was an act of justice punishing the superstition of the man. The adventures of Joseph of old were admirable in their variety and the way they passed from one extreme to the other. His brethren who to ruin him
had sold him, were amazed to see that he had become viceroy, and were mightily apprehensive that he remained sensible of the wrong they had done him: but no said he: Not by your counsel was I sent hither, but by the will of God. You thought evil against me, but God turned it into good. [63] You see, Theotimus, the world would have termed this a chance, or fortuitous event, which Joseph called a design of the sovereign providence, which turns and reduces all to its service. It is the same with
all things that happen in the world yea, even with monstrosities, whose birth makes complete and perfect works more esteemed, begets admiration, provokes discussion, and many good thoughts; in a word they are in the world as the shades in pictures, which give grace and seem to bring out the colours.
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