|
|
If there is only one thing I am called to say it is this: 'Feel free to desire, even to desire the Divine.' It's all right because the One whom we desire, desires us with even more fervor. It's all right because the body-spirit union, the human-divine union already exists and desire opens us to experience it.
- Mary Pinney Erickson -
(What do you desire? How free to you feel to give expression to your deepest desires? Rest awhile in the awareness of God's desire for you.)
|
Jon 4:1-11; Psalm 86:3-4, 5-6, 9-10
Lk 11:1-4
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test.”
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.)
Luke 11:1-4 (The Lord's Prayer)
Luke's version of the prayer of Jesus is shorter than Matthew's, characteristic of his commitment to simplify the words of Jesus. We are nevertheless left with the essentials emphasized in Matthew's version: praise, kingdom, dependence, forgiveness, and perseverance.
* Which phrase from the Lord's Prayer do you find easiest to pray? Which is most difficult? Why?
* What kind of God does Jesus reveal through this prayer?
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 14: Of the sentiment of divine love which is had by faith.
When God gives us faith he enters into our soul and speaks to our spirit, not by manner of discourse, but by way of inspiration, proposing in so sweet a manner unto the understanding that which ought to be believed, that the will receives therefrom a great complacency, so great indeed that it moves the understanding to consent and yield to truth without any doubt or distrust, and here lies the marvel: for God
proposes the mysteries of faith to our souls amidst obscurities and darkness, in such sort that we do not see the truths but we only half-see them. It is like what happens sometimes when the face of the earth is covered with mist so that we cannot see the sun, but only see a little more brightness in the direction where he is. Then, as one would say, we see it without seeing it; because on the one hand we see it not so well that we can truly say we see it, yet again we see it not so little that
we can say we do not see it; and this is what we call half-seeing. And yet, when this obscure light of faith has entered our spirit, not by force of reasoning or show of argument, but solely by the sweetness of its presence, it makes the understanding believe and obey it with so much authority that the certitude it gives us of the truth surpasses all other certitudes, and keeps the understanding and all its workings in such subjection that they get no hearing in comparison with
it.
|
|
|
