Message of 11-25-11

Published: Fri, 11/25/11


A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth


Message of the Day

You can deal with an enormous amount of success as well as an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the beloved. Long before your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your teachers, your church, or any people touched you in a loving as well as in a wounding way-long before you were rejected by some person or praised by somebody else-that voice has been there always. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." That love is there before you were born and will be there after you die.
   - Henri J. M. Nouwen

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

Dn 7:2-14;    Dn 3:75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81;    Lk 21:29-33

R. Give glory and eternal praise to him!

"Mountains and hills, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

"Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever.

"You springs, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

"Seas and rivers, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

"You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

"All you birds of the air, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

"All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."

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

The First Reading maybe a surprise for you as it was for me.  I had recalled that this type of dream is found in Revelations, not so.  This dream of Daniel's prophesies the coming of the "Son of Man" whose dominion shall not be destroyed.

Finally, in the Gospel, Christ reminds us that the Kingdom of God is near and there are signs wherever we choose to look, even in the "simple" process of the seasonal cycle of growing trees.  Our challenge is one of maintaining attention and intentional response.

-  by Maryanne Rouse

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Spiritual Reading

On Cleaving to God
     by St. Albert the Great

For this is the end of all spiritual exercises - to turn the mind to the Lord God and rest in him with a completely pure understanding and a completely devoted will, without the entanglements and fantasies of the imagination. This sort of exercise is not practised by fleshly organs nor by the exterior senses, but by that by which one is indeed a human being. For a human is precisely understanding and will. For that reason, in so far as one is still playing with the products of the imagination and the senses, and holds to them, it is obvious that he has not yet emerged from the motivation and limitations of his animal nature, that is of that which he shares in common with the animals. For these know and feel objects by means of recognised shapes and sense impressions and no more, since they do not possess the higher powers of the soul. But it is different with a person, who is created in the image and likeness of God with understanding, will, and free choice, through which he should be directly, purely and nakedly impressed and united with God, and firmly adhere to him.

- Chapter 4. How one's activity should be purely in the intellect and not in the senses.

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