Message of 10-14-11

Published: Fri, 10/14/11


A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth

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Message of the Day

I believe that we all have this dark underestimation of ourselves. Sometimes it is masked as arrogance, overestimation, superiority, but underneath the brashness the problem is insecurity and only unqualified, unmerited, unconditional love can assuage it.
  - Madeleine L'Engle

(Let yourself be loved by God this day.)

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

Rom 4:1-8;    Ps 32:1b-2, 5, 11;    Lk 12:1-7

R. (see 7) I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.

Blessed is he whose fault is taken away,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed the man to whom the LORD imputes not guilt,
in whose spirit there is no guile.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
my guilt I covered not.
I said, "I confess my faults to the LORD,"
and you took away the guilt of my sin.

Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you just;
exult, all you upright of heart.

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Reflection on the Scripture
   http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html

As much as I do not want to see myself as being like the Pharisees in today's gospel, I am. I am not just trying to put on a good face for those around me, I am trying to fool myself. Ah, wouldn't it be easy to be like the trees in the fall, true to themselves and giving glory to God in their natural beauty. Obviously that would not be true to myself because God has given me the gift of being human, made in His image and likeness, much more complicated than the trees. With that gift, I have the potential for a relationship with Him that will fulfill all my wants and desires, if I can only figure out how to get out of the way. God's fall gifts help me to get the false self out of the way at least part of the time.
- by Susan Tinley

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Spiritual Reading

On Cleaving to God
     by St. Albert the Great

Since indeed the Lord God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth, in other words, by knowledge and love, that is, understanding and desire, stripped of all images. This is what is referred to in Matthew 6.6, 'When you pray, enter into your inner chamber,' that is, your inner heart, 'and having closed the door,' that is of your senses, and there with a pure heart and a clear conscience, and with faith unfeigned, 'pray to your Father,' in spirit and in truth, 'in secret.' This can be done best when one is disengaged and removed from everything else, and completely recollected within. There, in the presence of Jesus Christ, with everything, in general and individually, excluded and wiped out, the mind alone turns in security confidently to the Lord its God with its desire. In this way it pours itself forth into him in full sincerity with its whole heart and the yearning of its love, in the most inward part of all its faculties, and is plunged, enlarged, set on fire and dissolved into him. 

- Chapter 1, On the highest and supreme perfection of man, in so far as it is possible in this life.

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