The critical challenge of discernment-knowing whether our calls are true or false, knowing how and when to respond to them, knowing whether a call really belongs to us or not-requires that we also tread a path between two essential questions: 'What is right for me?' and 'Where am I willing to be led?' Discernment also requires that we ask these two questions continually and devotedly, in hopes that by doing so Providence will, in due course, be alerted to our desires and answers will find us.
- Gregg Levoy, Callings

(Two good questions to prayerfully consider when decisions need to be made. How do they call to you at this time?)

COL 1:1-8;    PS 52:10, 11;    LK 4:38-44

R. I trust in the mercy of God for ever.

I, like a green olive tree
in the house of God,
Trust in the mercy of God
forever and ever.

I will thank you always for what you have done,
and proclaim the goodness of your name
before your faithful ones.





When Jesus and the disciples sought a lonely place to regroup and rest, they found instead a crowd waiting for them! Did they resent this intrusion on their hard-earned need for privacy and refreshment? Jesus certainly didn't but welcomed them with open-arms. Jesus put human need ahead of everything else. His compassion showed the depths of God's love and concern for all who are truly needy. Jesus gave the people the word of God and he healed them physically as well as spiritually. We can never intrude upon God nor exhaust his generosity and kindness. He is ever ready to give to those who earnestly seek him out. Do you allow Jesus to be the Lord and Healer in your personal life, family, and community? Approach him with expectant faith. God's healing power restores us not only to health but to active service and care of others. There is no trouble he does not want to help us with and there is no bondage he can't set us free from. Do you take your troubles to him with expectant faith that he will help you?

"Lord Jesus Christ, you have all power to heal and to deliver. There is no trouble nor bondage you cannot overcome. Set me free to serve you joyfully and to love and serve others generously. May nothing hinder me from giving myself wholly to you and to your service."





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

Explains the meaning of mental prayer.

O miserable world! Give hearty praise to God, daughters, that you have left so wretched a place, where people are honoured, not for their own selves, but for what they get from their tenants and vassals: if these fail them, they have no honour left. It is a curious thing, and when you go out to recreation together you should laugh about it, for it is a good way of spending your time to reflect how blindly people in the world spend theirs.

- Chapter 22

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