Message of 9-28-12
Published: Fri, 09/28/12
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
Message of the Day
God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(And yet we have received revelation of the matters that influence divine judgment. For this we can be grateful and orient our lives accordingly.)
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Lectionary Readings of the Day
http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
Eccl 3:1-11; Ps 144:1b and 2abc, 3-4; Lk 9:18-22
R. (1) Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!
Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
my mercy and my fortress,
my stronghold, my deliverer,
My shield, in whom I trust.
LORD, what is man, that you notice him;
the son of man, that you take thought of him?
Man is like a breath;
his days, like a passing shadow.
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Reflection on the Scriptures
- http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
The reading form Ecclesiastes begins with "There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for everything under the heavens," and proceeds to list divergent phrases such as "a time to be born and a time to die." Ask any mother and she will agree that there was a time for her child to be born and she did not really have any choice on that timing. We all know that we will die, but we do not have control over that timing and generally do not even know what the timing will be. Many of the other divergent phrases refer to things that we can control such as, "A time to speak and a time to be silent." . . .
"A time to kill" is more difficult to understand as is " a time to hate" and "a time for war." Shouldn't all time be for healing, loving and peace? Obviously in our imperfect and human world there are times for killing, war, and hatred; we see and hear this on the news every day. However, I would have to disagree with the author of this book of the Bible, when he follows the list of divergent times with the phrase that "He (God) has made everything appropriate to its time." The times for hatred, killing, and war are not predestined; God does not make these happen. They occur because of very human choices.
- by Susan Tinley
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Spiritual Reading
On Cleaving to God
by St. Albert the Great
There is nothing therefore which draws us away from the exterior senses to within ourselves, and from there to Jesus Christ and things divine, more than the love of Christ and the desire for the sweetness of Christ, for the experience, awareness and enjoyment of the presence of Christ's divinity. For there is nothing but the power of love which can lead the soul from the things of earth to the lofty summit of heaven. Nor can anyone attain the supreme beatitude unless summoned to it by love and yearning. Love after all is the life of the soul, the wedding garment and the soul's perfection, containing all the law and the prophets and our Lord's teaching. That is why Paul says to the Romans, Love is the fulfilling of the law, (Rom. 13.8) and in the first letter to Timothy, The end of the commandment is love. (1 Timothy 1.5)
- Chapter 12. How powerful the love of God is.
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