Message of 6-8-12
Published: Fri, 06/08/12
A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
Message of the Day
Sometimes we are unduly excited when things go well, and at other times we are too alarmed when things go badly. . . We ought to establish our hearts firmly in God's strength, and struggle, as best we can, to place all of our hope and confidence in the Lord so that we shall be like him, as far as it is possible, even in his unchanging rest and stability."
- Bl. Jordan of Saxony -
(Does your faith help you to find a certain stability and equanimity through the ups and downs of life? Give your full attention to God, that you may know God's "unchanging rest and stability.")
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Lectionary Readings of the Day
http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
2 Tm 3:10-17; Ps 119:157, 160, 161, 165, 166, 168; Mk 12:35-37
R. (165a) O Lord, great peace have they who love your law.
Though my persecutors and my foes are many,
I turn not away from your decrees.
Permanence is your word's chief trait;
each of your just ordinances is everlasting.
Princes persecute me without cause
but my heart stands in awe of your word.
Those who love your law have great peace,
and for them there is no stumbling block.
I wait for your salvation, O LORD,
and your commands I fulfill.
I keep your precepts and your decrees,
for all my ways are before you.
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Reflection on the Scriptures
- http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
Our readings today are challenging and complex. The first reading tells us of suffering and persecutions and of wicked people and charletans who go from bad to worse. It challenges us to remain faithful in the midst of all this. The responsorial psalm echoes the idea that peace comes to those you are faithful and follow the law. Regardless of the persecutors, they will not create a stumbling block if we keep our focus and our hearts full of awe.
It is the gospel that was most complex for me to understand. Jesus appears to be disputing the claims of the scribes about the relationship with David. I believe it is trying to explain the irony of Jesus being from the house of David (son of David) yet David refers to him as my Lord. David gives homage to him in anticipation of his coming. It is David who actually descends from the Lord.
- by Nancy Shirley
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Spiritual Reading
On Cleaving to God
by St. Albert the Great
What is more, if someone, out of weakness or from lack of intellectual practice, is detained longer in the contemplation of created things, this supreme, true and fruitful contemplation may still be seen as possible for mortal man, so that there may take place an upward leap in all his contemplations and meditations, whether about created things or the Creator, and the appreciation of God the Creator himself, the One and Three, may surge up within so that he come to burn with the fire of divine love and the true life in himself and in others, in such a way as to make him deserving of the joy of eternal life.
- Chapter 9. How much the contemplation of God is to be preferred to all other exercises.
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