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Message of the Day
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Without beauty religion becomes moralistic, flat. Do you wonder how beauty works with goodness and truth? Beauty is the persuasive power of God's truth and goodness. So beauty is in the end about honesty, about seeing what is actually there and being true to one's response to it. - Catherine Michaud, The Art of Making Life Beautiful (Look for the beauty within and about you this day . . . starting now.)
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Lectionary Readings
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ACTS 22:30; 23:6-11; PS 16:1-2, 5, 7-11; JN 17:20-26
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge; I say to the LORD, "My Lord are you."
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup, you it is who hold fast my lot.
I bless the LORD who counsels me; even in the night my heart exhorts me. I set the LORD ever before me; with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence; Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.
USCCB Lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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Jesus' prayer on the eve of his sacrifice shows the great love and trust he had for his beloved disciples. He knew they would abandon him in his hour of trial, yet he entrusted to them the great task of spreading his name throughout the world and to the end of the ages. The Lord Jesus entrust us today with the same mission - to make him known and loved by all. Jesus died and rose again that all might be one as he and the Father are one. Do you love and accept all baptized Christians as your brothers and sisters in Christ?
The Lord Jesus included each one of us in his high priestly prayer at the last supper. He continues his high priestly office this very day as our intercessor at the right hand of the Father before the throne of heaven. Paul the Apostle tells us that it is "Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (Romans 8:34; see also Hebrews 7: 25). Do you join in Jesus' high priestly prayer that all who profess Jesus as Lord may grow in love and unity together as brothers and sisters who have been redeemed through the precious blood shed for us on the cross?
"Heavenly Father, have mercy on all your people and heal the divisions in the body of Christ. May all Christian people throughout the world attain the unity for which Jesus prayed on the eve of his sacrifice. Renew in us the power of the Spirit that we may be a sign of that unity and a means of its growth. Increase in us a fervent love for all our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ."
DailyScripture.net
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Spiritual Reading
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The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous That in the time of this word all the creatures that ever have been, be now, or ever shall be, and all the works of those same creatures, should be hid under the cloud of forgetting.
For although it be full profitable sometime to think of certain conditions and deeds of some certain special creatures, nevertheless yet in this work it profiteth little or nought. For why? Memory or thinking of any creature that ever God made, or of any of their deeds either, it is a manner of ghostly light: for the eye of thy soul is opened on it and even fixed thereupon, as the eye of a shooter is upon the prick that he shooteth to. And one thing I tell thee, that all thing that thou thinketh upon, it is above thee for the time, and betwixt thee and thy God: and insomuch thou art the further from God, that aught is in thy mind but only God.
Yea! and, if it be courteous and seemly to say, in this work it profiteth little or nought to think of the kindness or the worthiness of God, nor on our Lady, nor on the saints or angels in heaven, nor yet on the joys in heaven: that is to say, with a special beholding to them, as thou wouldest by that beholding feed and increase thy purpose. I trow that on nowise it should help in this case and in this work. For although it be good to think upon the kindness of God, and to love Him and praise Him for it, yet it is far better to think upon the naked being of Him, and to love Him and praise Him for Himself. - Chapter 5
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