Message of 9-12-11

Published: Mon, 09/12/11


A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth

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Message of the Day

The test of worship is how far it makes us more sensitive to the "beyond in our midst," to the Christ in the hungry, the naked, the homeless, and the prisoner. Only if we are more likely to recognize him there after attending an act of worship is that worship Christian rather than a piece of religiosity in Christian dress.
   - John A. T. Robinson (1919-1983), Honest to God

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Lectionary Readings of the Day
   http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month

1 Tm 2:1-8;    Ps 28:2, 7, 8-9;    Lk 7:1-10

R. (6) Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard my prayer.

Hear the sound of my pleading, when I cry to you,
lifting up my hands toward your holy shrine.

The LORD is my strength and my shield.
In him my heart trusts, and I find help;
then my heart exults, and with my song I give him thanks.

The LORD is the strength of his people,
the saving refuge of his anointed.
Save your people, and bless your inheritance;
feed them, and carry them forever!

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Reflection on the Gospel
  - from Daily Bread
   http://www.preacherexchange.com/daily_bread.htm

Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed.

While the centurion doubts his own worth, he has unshakable conviction in Jesus' saving power. His faith, in fact, is so strong he trusts that Jesus can heal from afar. Such certainty is admirable, yet there's something else at play. The centurion asks the Lord to heal his slave, but he does not see his own right to ask Jesus for any favors. He intercedes on his slave's behalf because he sees the slave's value. The elders of the Jews do the same for the centurion, attesting to his goodness and saying he "deserves" to have Jesus do this for him. Whether we ask for help or not, or deserve it or not, Jesus sees our worth. He stands ready to vouch for our goodness and to offer us healing and comfort.

For healing and hope, we pray.

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Spiritual Reading

The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
   by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381)

The person who lives in true obedience and in the moral virtues, according to the commandments of God, and besides this practices the inward virtues according to the teaching and stirring of the Holy Ghost, who is just in deed and in word, who seeks not his own, neither in time nor in eternity, who can bear with equanimity and with true patience, darkness and heaviness, and all kinds of miseries, and thanks God for everything, and offers himself up with humble resignation: he has received the first coming of Christ according to the way of inward exercise. And he has gone out from himself in the inward life, and has adorned with rich virtues and gifts his quickened heart and the unity of his body and senses. When such a man has been altogether purified and set at rest, and is gathered together into unity as regards his lower powers, he can be inwardly enlightened, if God deems that the time is fit and he craves it. It may also come to pass, that a man may be enlightened at the beginning of his conversion, if he yield himself wholly to the will of God and renounce all selfhood; all lies in this. Such a one, however, must afterwards pass through those degrees and ways of the outward and the inward life which have been shown heretofore; but this would be easier to him than to another, who mounts from below upwards, for he has more light than the other man.

- Chapter 34: Showing how one should live if he would be enlightened

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