Message of 7-9-12
Published: Mon, 07/09/12
A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
Message of the Day
If my work does not come from God, I would consent to its ruin. I would join our enemies in destroying it if I thought it did not have God as its author, or that God did not will its progress. But if God declares Himself its defender, let us fear nothing: no arm can uproot what God has planted; no hand can snatch away what God holds in His.
- St. John Baptist de La Salle -
(Offer your work and play to God, that it may bear good fruit.)
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Lectionary Readings of the Day
http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
Hos 2:16, 17-18, 21-22; Ps 145:2-9; Mt 9:18-26
R. (8a) The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
Generation after generation praises your works
and proclaims your might.
They speak of the splendor of your glorious majesty
and tell of your wondrous works.
They discourse of the power of your terrible deeds
and declare your greatness.
They publish the fame of your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your justice.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
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Reflection on the Gospel
- from Daily Bread
http://www.preacherexchange.com/daily_bread.htm
Courage, daughter!
Today's Gospel story, which also appears in Mark and Luke, is rich in detail and feeling. A woman has suffered physically and socially for 12 years and is desperate for relief. A young girl -- Luke says she is only 12 -- is dying, and her father, an important man in the synagogue, is desperate for a miracle. Both the woman and the father reach out to this itinerant rabbi, risking ridicule, hoping for the impossible. Each time I read this story, I am struck by different details. Today, perhaps because the story appears on my rather significant birthday, I am touched that Jesus addresses the woman by the intimate "Daughter." This unlikely woman, made an outcast by her malady, is loved just as Jairus loves his little girl.
For women of the church: for persistence and courage.
- by Paige Byrne Shortal
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Spiritual Reading
The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381)
Now all holiness and all blessedness lie in this: that the spirit is led upwards, through likeness and by means of grace or glory, to rest in the essential unity. For the grace of God is the way by which we must always go, if we would enter into the naked essence in which God gives Himself with all His riches without means. And this is why the sinners and the damned spirits dwell in darkness; for they lack the grace of God, which should enlighten them, and lead them, and show them the way to the fruitive unity. Yet the essential being of the spirit is so noble, that even the damned cannot will their own annihilation. But sin builds up a barrier, and gives rise to such darkness and such unlikeness between the powers and the essence in which God lives, that the spirit cannot be united with its proper essence; which would be its own and its eternal rest, did sin not impede it. For whosoever lives without sin, he lives in likeness unto God, and in grace, and God is his own. And so we have need of grace, which casts out sin, and prepares the way, and makes our whole life fruitful. And this is why Christ always comes into us through means, that is, through grace and multifarious gifts; and we too go out towards Him through means, that is, through virtues and diverse practices. And the more inward gifts He gives and the more deeply He stirs us, the more inward and delightful are the workings of our spirit, as you have already heard in all the ways which have been shown forth before. And here there is a perpetual renewal; for God ever gives new gifts, and our spirit ever turns inward in such wise as it is invited and as is bestowed on it by God, and in that meeting it always receives a higher renewal. And thus one grows continually into a higher life. And this active meeting is altogether through means; for the gifts of God and our virtues and the activity of our spirit are the means. And these means are necessary for all men and all spirits: for, without the mediation of God's grace and a loving turning to Him in freedom, no creature shall ever be saved.
- Chapter 60: Showing how we have need of grace of God, which makes us like unto God and leads us to God without means.
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