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The Holy Spirit, out of compassion for our weakness, comes to us even when we are impure. And if only He finds our intellect truly praying to Him, He enters it and puts to flight the whole array of thoughts and ideas circling within it, and He arouses it to a longing for spiritual prayer.
- Evagrios the Solitary, in On Prayer: (Philokalia (Vol. 1), p. 63, text 63)
(Invite the Spirit to do so in your prayer time this day.)
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2 Cor 3:4-11; Psalm 99:5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Mt 5:17-19
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Matthew 5:17-19 (Jesus and the Law)
Today’s reading summarizes much of what the Gospel of Matthew is attempting to articulate: Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish expectations. Matthew constantly affirms the value of Jewish tradition and portrays Jesus as one who loved, rather than despised, Judaism.
• How do we teach one another to respect (or despise) the laws of God? Are you a model of most of these laws to your family? To those with whom you work?
• Who are the models to whom you look for inspiration in living out your faith? Why do these people inspire you?
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.
The great S. Augustine throws a great light on this reasoning, by his own arguments in Book XII. of the 'City of God,' Chapters vi., vii., viii., ix. For though he refers particularly to the angels, still he likens men to them in this point.
Now, after having taken, in the sixth chapter, two men, entirely equal in goodness and in all things, attacked by the same temptation, he presupposes that one resists, the other gives way to the enemy; then in the ninth chapter, having proved that all the angels were created in charity, stating further as probable that grace and charity were equal in them all, he asks how it came to pass that some of them
persevered, and made progress in goodness even to the attaining of glory, while others forsook good to embrace evil unto damnation, and he answers that no other answer can be rendered, than that the one company persevered by the grace of their Creator in the chaste love which they received in their creation, the other, having been good, made themselves bad by their own sole will.
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