Message of the Day
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Faith is the capacity to transcend all the changes of history and to project an ultimate source and end of temporal and historical reality. Hope is the capacity to transcend all the confusions of history and project an ultimate end of all historical existence, that which does not annul history but fulfills it. Love is the capacity to recognize the social substance of human existence, and to realize that the unique self is intimately related to all human creatures. These capacities relate the self to the eternal world and are its keys to that world.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, "A View of Life from the Sidelines"
("Pro-level" definitions by a first-rate theologian and spiritual writer. How do they speak to you?)
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Readings of the Day
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NM 11:4B-15; PS 81:12-17; MT 14:13-21 R. Sing with joy to God our help. "My people heard not my voice,
and Israel obeyed me not;
So I gave them up to the hardness of their hearts;
they walked according to their own counsels."
"If only my people would hear me,
and Israel walk in my ways,
Quickly would I humble their enemies;
against their foes I would turn my hand."
"Those who hated the LORD would seek to flatter me,
but their fate would endure forever,
While Israel I would feed with the best of wheat,
and with honey from the rock I would fill them."
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.
What person responsible for the well-being of others has not felt like Moses? President, pastor, principal or parent at some point feels the weight of those who are charged to his or her care. When we're young -- whether running for office or waiting for our first pastorate or school or baby -- we think we'll avoid the mistakes of our predecessors. But when we are in the throes of duty and office, we discover that the work of leadership and caregiving is wearying and complicated and sometimes we fail, despite our good intentions.
For political leaders and citizens; for pastors and people; for principals, teachers and parents and the children they love ... for God's grace to do our duty and for gratitude for those who do ... we pray.
My Daily Bread
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Spiritual Reading
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The Sparkling Stone, by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381) And so there is a great difference between the secret friends and the hidden sons of God. For the friends feel nought else but a loving and living ascent to God in some wise, but, above this, the sons experience a simple and death-like passing which is in no wise.
The inward life of the friends of our Lord is an upward-striving exercise of love, wherein they desire to remain for ever with their own selfhood; but how one possesses God through bare love above every exercise, in freedom from one self, this they do not feel. Hence they are always striving upwards towards God in true faith, and await God and eternal blessedness with sincere hope, and are fastened and anchored to God through perfect charity. And therefore good things have befallen them, for they please God, and God is complaisant unto them: yet for all this, they are not assured of eternal life, for they have not entirely died to themselves and to all selfhood. But all those who abide and endure in their exercise and in that turning to God which they have chosen above all else, these God has chosen in eternity, and their names together with their works are written from eternity in the living book of the Providence of God. But those who choose other things, and turn their inward faces away from God toward sin, and endure therein (even though their names were written and known of God because of the temporal righteousness which they had practised before), their names shall be blotted out and erased from the Book of Life because they did not persevere unto death, and they shall never more be able to taste of God, nor of any fruit which springs from virtue. And therefore we must needs observe ourselves with diligence, and adorn our turning towards God, from within with inward love, and from without with good works: thus we can await in hope and joy the judgment of God and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But could we renounce ourselves, and all selfhood in our works, we should, with our bare and imageless spirit, transcend all things: and, without intermediary, should be led of the Spirit of God into the Nudity. And then we should feel the certainty that we are indeed the sons of God: for as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God, says the Apostle St Paul.
- Chapter 8: "On the difference between the secret friends and the hidden sons of God."
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