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Patriotism is one of the powerful underground pseudo-religions of to-day, not merely nationalism. The fundamental notion that the Christians are a “peculiar people” that never is identical, or even can be, with a people in the biological, national sense of the word, is largely asleep. It can only become awake
by a new grasp of the biblical truth that the Church is the “people of God,” an elect race composed of people out of all nations, transcending all nations and races.
... Hendrik Kraemer (1888-1965), A Theology of the Laity [1958]
(Even patriotism can become a form of idolatry when it emphasizes national identity over one's true identity in God. Where do you see this happening these days?)
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Tb 3:1-11a, 16-17a; Psalm 25:2-3, 4-5ab, 6 and 7bc, 8-9
Mk 12:18-27
Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection,
came to Jesus and put this question to him, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
‘If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child,
his brother must take the wife
and raise up descendants for his brother.’
Now there were seven brothers.
The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants.
So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants,
and the third likewise.
And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?
For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?
When they rise from the dead,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven.
As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob?
He is not God of the dead but of the living.
You are greatly misled.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Mark 12:18-27 (The life to come)
The Sadducees were a small but powerful group of Jewish religious leaders. They rejected all traditions except those articulated in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which give no hint of the immortal nature of the human spirit. Today’s reading describes a trap set for Jesus by the Sadducees. Jesus tells them that their God is too small.
• What do you believe heaven is like? Is your idea of heaven merely an image of your own notions of Utopia?
• "Heaven begins on earth, or it does not begin at all,” Louis Evely wrote. Do you believe this?
• Pray for the grace to love God above all things.
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 10: How we often repulse the inspiration and refuse to love God.
Wo to thee, Corozain, wo to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes. Such is the word of Our Saviour. Hark I pray you, Theotimus, how the inhabitants of Corozain and Bethsaida, instructed in the true religion, and having received favours so great that they would effectually have
converted the pagans themselves, remained nevertheless obstinate, and never willed to use them, rejecting this holy light by an incomparable rebellion. Certainly at the day of judgment the Ninivites and the Queen of Saba will rise up against the persecutors of Christ, and will convict them as worthy of damnation: because, as to the Ninivites, though idolators and barbarians, at the voice of Jonas they were converted and did penance; and as to the Queen of Saba, she, though engaged in the affairs
of a kingdom, yet having heard the renown of Solomon's wisdom, forsook all, to go and hear him. Yet the Jews, hearing with their ears the heavenly wisdom of the true Solomon, the Saviour of the world; seeing with their eyes his miracles; touching with their hands his virtues and benefits; ceased not for all that to be hardened, and to resist the grace which was proffered them. See then again, Theotimus, how they who had less attractions are brought to penance, and those who had more remain
obdurate: those who have less occasion to come, come to the school of wisdom, and those who have more, stay in their folly.
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