Message of 11-18-11
Published: Fri, 11/18/11
A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
Annual Appeal
We've reviewed this week a few of the resources made available through our Internet Ministry, including the new web site on the First Great Commandment at http://philothea.net Now we'd like to hear from you. I've set up a short survey at http://shalomplace.com/seed/survey.html that will enable you to give me feedback concerning what you find most helpful and unhelpful about Daily Spiritual Seed. It will take you less than a minute to do the survey, and your suggestions will help to influence the future direction of this ministry.
Thanks again for being part of this ministry, and for your continuing support.
Phil St. Romain
Internet Ministry Coordinator
- - - Several ways you can support our Internet ministry:
a. Pray for us and for those make use of our services (that includes you, of course).
b. Tax-deductible donation or subscription: see
http://shalomplace.com/seed/donations.html (check payment information provided).
A special gratitude gift will be sent to all donors/subscribers.
c. Purchase an Amazon.com gift card:
- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00067L6TQ/?tag=christianspiritu
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Message of the Day
Be not afraid that thou art tempted, for the more thou art assailed by temptations, the greater friend and servant of God do I hold thee, and the greater love do I bear thee. Verily, I say to thee, let no on be deemed the perfect friend of God until he or she has passed through many temptations and tribulations... I am ready to endure patiently all things that my Lord would do with me.
- Ugolino of Montegiorgio (d.1274), The Little Flowers of St. Francis
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Lectionary Readings of the Day
http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
1 Mc 4:36-37, 52-59; 1 Chronicles 29:10-12; Lk 19:45-48
R. (13b) We praise your glorious name, O mighty God.
"Blessed may you be, O LORD,
God of Israel our father,
from eternity to eternity."
"Yours, O LORD, are grandeur and power,
majesty, splendor, and glory.
For all in heaven and on earth is yours."
"Yours, O LORD, is the sovereignty;
you are exalted as head over all.
Riches and honor are from you."
"You have dominion over all,
In your hand are power and might;
it is yours to give grandeur and strength to all."
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Reflection on the Scripture
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
As temples of God, we must remain fit and always become more holy. From time to time, we need to make changes in our lives - sometimes small, sometimes radical. It may be that all we need is the grace to be aware of the need for change, or we may need our tables overturned. We need not fear in either case, for Christ is committed to remain at our side to help us make whatever change of habit or heart that is needed.
It is well to remember that the effort itself is formative. That is what God is asking from us.
Our job will always be to keep our minds and hearts attentive to why God makes us a temple in the first place: to receive God's love and to return it by sharing it with others: our families and close circles of friends, our collaborators at work, the needy on the street, in the hospitals, soup kitchens, classrooms, or at any cross-roads we come to. God made us because God loves us. With that love comes a call: to be holy, prayerful, and ready to love others, even to the point of sacrificing ourselves for their sake. This call enables God to reach out, through us, with love for them and to help them become Holy. This is how the Kingdom of God grows.
- by Kevin Kersten, S.J.
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Spiritual Reading
On Cleaving to God
by St. Albert the Great
Happy therefore is the person who by continual removal of fantasies and images, by turning within, and raising the mind to God, finally manages to dispense with the products of the imagination, and by so doing works within, nakedly and simply, and with a pure understanding and will, on the the simplest of all objects, God. So eliminate from your mind all fantasies, objects, images and shapes of all things other than God, so that, with just naked understanding, intent and will, your practice will be concerned with God himself within you.
- Chapter 4. How one's activity should be purely in the intellect and not in the senses.
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