Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs. The future is not closed. . . Even a small number of people, firmly committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes.
- Walter Wink, The Powers that Be

(What do you hope for your life? Your family? The world? Invite the Spirit to help you envision this reality coming true. Feel yourself drawn into this future.)

SIR 4:11-19;    PS 119:165, 168, 171, 172, 174, 175;    MK 9:38-40

R. O Lord, great peace have they who love your law.

Those who love your law have great peace,
and for them there is no stumbling block.

My lips pour forth your praise,
because you teach me your statutes.

May my tongue sing of your promise,
for all your commands are just.

I long for your salvation, O LORD,
and your law is my delight.

Let my soul live to praise you,
and may your ordinances help me.





Gregory of Nyssa, an early church father (330-395 AD), comments on this passage: "God never asks his servants to do what is impossible. The love and goodness of his Godhead is revealed as richly available. It is poured out like water upon all. God furnished to each person according to his will the ability to do something good. None of those seeking to be saved will be lacking in this ability, given by the one who said: 'whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.'" Ask the Lord to increase your generosity in doing good for others.

"Lord Jesus, fill me with your Holy Spirit that I may radiate the joy of the gospel to others. May your light and truth shine through me that others may find new life and freedom from sin and the corruption of evil."





The Way of Perfection, by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

(Describes how, in one way or another, we never lack consolation on the road of prayer. Counsels the sisters to include this subject continually in their conversation.)

It matters little if you are considered ill-bred and still less if you are taken for hypocrites: indeed, you will gain by this, because only those who understand your language will come to see you. If one knows no Arabic, one has no desire to talk a great deal with a person who knows no other language. So worldly people will neither weary you nor do you harm- and it would do you no small harm to have to begin to learn and talk a new language; you would spend all your time learning it. You cannot know as well as I do, for I have found it out by experience, how very bad this is for the soul; no sooner does it learn one thing than it has to forget another and it never has any rest. This you must at all costs avoid; for peace and quiet in the soul are of great importance on the road which we are about to tread.

- Chapter 20

(Keep in mind that she is writing to sisters in a cloistered contemplative order.)