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Prayer frees us to be controlled by God. To pray is to change. There is no greater liberating force in the Christian life than prayer. To enter the gaze of the Holy is never to be the same. To bathe in the Light in quiet wonder and glad surrender is to be slowly, permanently transformed. There is a richer inward orientation, a deep hunger for communion. We feel as if we are being taken over by a new control
Center, and so we are.
- Richard Foster
(Take some extra time to "enter the gaze of the Holy" this day.)
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Fire of Love: Encountering the Holy Spirit, by Donald Goergen, OP.
Book available via Amazon.com and other sellers as paperback and digital.
Facilitated by Philip St. Romain
Dates: Thursdays October 7, 14, 21, 28 November 4 and 11
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Central via Zoom
Fee: $25.00 - Registration
Reflects on the Spirit’s influence in our individual lives, in the Church, other world religions and the cosmos. Fr. Goergen brings a lifetime of theological study and practical ministry experience to help us become more aware of and open to the gifts of the Spirit.
Participants will need to obtain their own copy of this book in advance.
Zoom links will be sent weekly to participants.
1 Thes 2:9-13; Psalm 139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab
Mt 23:27-32
Jesus said,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside,
but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.
Even so, on the outside you appear righteous,
but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You build the tombs of the prophets
and adorn the memorials of the righteous,
and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors,
we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’
Thus you bear witness against yourselves
that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets;
now fill up what your ancestors measured out!”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Matthew 23:27-32 (Jesus denounces hypocrisy)
It is unlikely that anyone has ever confronted a group of people with more fire and sting than Jesus did the scribes and Pharisees of his day. For a Jew to come into contact with a tomb was to become unclean and, hence, unable to share in the Passover feast. By calling the scribes and phharisees whitewashed tombs,” Jesus is saying that their hypocrisy makes them and those they contact spiritually unclean.
• How do you feel about the way Jesus confronted the Jewish authorities? Are his actions in keeping with a God of love?
• Write out a set of guidelines for confronting other people in a loving way. Make a resolution to practice these principles with someone you are concerned about during the next day.
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 12: That divine inspirations leave us at full liberty to follow or repulse them.
To conclude, if any one should say that our free-will does not co-operate in consenting to the grace with which God presents it, or that it could not reject and deny consent thereto, he would contradict the whole Scripture, all the ancient Fathers, and experience, and would be excommunicated by the sacred Council of Trent. But when it is said that we have power to reject the divine inspirations and motions, it
is of course not meant that we can hinder God from inspiring us or touching our hearts, for as I have already said, that is done in us and yet without us. These are favours which God bestows upon us before we have thought of them, he awakens us when we sleep, and consequently we find ourselves awake before we have thought of it; but it is in our power to rise, or not to rise, and though he has awakened us without us, he will not raise us without us. Now not to rise, and to go to sleep again, is
to resist the call, seeing we are called only to the end we should rise. We cannot hinder the inspiration from taking us, or consequently from setting us in motion, but if as it drives us forwards we repulse it by not yielding ourselves to its motion, we then make resistance. So the wind, having seized upon and raised our apodes, will not bear them very far unless they display their wings and co-operate, raising themselves aloft and flying in the air, into which they have been lifted. If, on the
contrary, allured may be by some verdure they see upon the ground, or benumbed by their stay there, in lieu of seconding the wind they keep their wings folded and cast themselves again upon the earth, they have received indeed the motion of the wind, but in vain, since they did not help themselves thereby. Theotimus, inspirations present us, and even before they are thought of make themselves felt, but after we have felt them it is ours either to consent to them so as to second and follow their
attractions, or else to dissent and repulse them. They make themselves felt by us without us, but they do not make us consent without us.
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