Message of the Day
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We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.
- Thomas Aquinas - (How does this speak to you? What do those who disagree with you help you to learn?) |
Readings of the Day
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IS 49:1-6; PS 139:1B-3, 13-15; ACTS 13:22-26; LK 1:57-66, 80 R. I praise you, for I am wonderfully made. O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother's womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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What, then, will this child be?
This statement refers to Jesus' cousin, after Zechariah regains his ability to speak and declares the child's name to be John. The guests are amazed at the sign that God has something special in mind for this child to accomplish. All children are born with great expectations in the eyes of their parents, who have the primary responsibility to nurture the child's gifts. In addition, though, all in the community must help children reach their potential, whether we are teachers, doctors, coaches, pastors, musicians or artists. With the support of all these people, our children can become answers to prayers and bring peace and justice to our world. Lord, keep your hands on our children, we pray.
- by Portia Clark
My Daily Bread
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Spiritual Reading
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The Sparkling Stone, by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381) Now you may mark this: that some people receive the gifts of God as hirelings, but others as faithful servants of God; and these differ one from another in all inward works, that is, in love and intention, in feeling and in every exercise of the inward life.
Now understand this well: all those who love themselves so inordinately that they will not serve God, save for their own profit and because of their own reward, these separate themselves from God, and dwell in bondage and in their own selfhood; for they seek, and aim at, their own, in all that they do. And therefore, with all their prayers and with all their good works, they seek after temporal things, or may be strive after eternal things for their own benefit and for their own profit. These people are bent upon themselves in an inordinate way; and that is why they ever abide alone with themselves, for they lack the true love which would unite them with God and with all His beloved. And although these men seem to keep within the law and the commandments of God and of Holy Church, they do not keep within the law of love; for all that they do, they do, not out of love, but from sheer necessity, lest they shall be damned. And, because they are inwardly unfaithful, they dare not trust in God; but their whole inward life is doubt and fear, travail and misery. For they see on the right hand eternal life, and this they are afraid of losing; and they see on the left hand the eternal pains of hell, and these they are afraid of gaining. But all their prayers, all their labour and all the good works, whatsoever they do, to cast out this fear, help them not; for the more inordinately they love themselves, the more they fear hell. And from this you may learn that their fear of hell springs from self-love, which seeks its own.
- Chapter 6: "On the difference between hirelings and the faithful servants of God."
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