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When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead us to worship God, filling our inner being with a fullness we would never have thought possible. Awe prepares the way in us for the power of God to transform us and this transformation of our inner attitudes can only take place when awe leads us in turn to wonder, admiration, reverence, surrender, and obedience toward God.
... James Houston (b.1922), The Transforming Power of Prayer [1996]
(Attentiveness to God opens us to receive many gifts from God. Strive to keep this focus through the day today.)
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Ex 16:1-5, 9-15; Psalm 78:18-19, 23-24, 25-26, 27-28
Mt 13:1-9
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,
and when the sun rose it was scorched,
and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Matthew 13:1-9 (Parable of the sower)
Jesus reveals to us a God intent on communicating his love and vision. Because Jesus wants to reach more than the intellectuals of his day, he tells parables, simple stories, to describe the kingdom of God. Today’s parable of the sower and the seed is rich with meaning concerning social development as well as our spiritual growth.
• What sentiments have you expressed at home recently? Choose one or two people from home and count the number of times you have affirmed them during the past two days. How many times have you criticized them? Resolve to be more loving.
• Spend some time allowing God to work in the soil of your heart.
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 11: That it is no fault of the divine goodness if we have not a most excellent love
You see, Theotimus, the opinion of this man, who indeed was scarcely man, but a seraph upon earth. I know it was humility that moved him to speak thus of himself, yet nevertheless he believed for a certain truth that an equal grace granted by an equal mercy might be more faithfully employed by one sinner than by anothor. Now I hold for an oracle the sentiment of this great doctor in the science of the saints,
who, brought up in the school of the Crucifix, breathed nothing but the divine inspirations. And this maxim has been praised and repeated by all the most devout who have followed him, many of whom are of opinion that the great Apostle S. Paul said in the same sense that he was the chief of all sinners.
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