|
|
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry;
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide;
Take not Thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
- G. K. Chesterton
(Invite the Spirit to teach you true humility this day.)
|
Acts 20:28-38; Psalm 68:29-30, 33-35a, 35bc-36ab
Jn 17:11b-19
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying:
“Holy Father, keep them in your name
that you have given me,
so that they may be one just as we are one.
When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me,
and I guarded them, and none of them was lost
except the son of destruction,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you.
I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the Evil One.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth.
Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
John 17:11-19 (Jesus consecrated for us)
The work of love is to unify people in a dynamic relationship of growth and development. In today’s reading Jesus prays that we will be united with the Father in truth, and he offers the gift of his life to make this unity possible. This is the supreme act of love.
• How does the world hate you because of your fidelity to God’s commandments? What do you think Jesus means by this?
• Hear the words of the psalmist describing the love of God, I have loved you with Ian everlasting love; so I have kept my mercy toward you” (Jeremiah 31:3). Bask in the mystery of this great love.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
____________
BOOK II: THE HISTORY OF THE GENERATION AND HEAVENLY BIRTH OF DIVINE LOVE
Chapter 9
And truly we should well deserve to remain abandoned of God, when with this disloyalty we have thus abandoned him. But his eternal charity does not often permit his justice to use this chastisement, but rather, exciting his compassion, it provokes him to reclaim us from our misery, which he does by sending us the favourable wind of his most holy inspirations, which, blowing upon our hearts with a gentle
violence, seizes and moves them, raising our thoughts, and moving our affections into the air of divine love.
|
|
|
