Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow.
 - Evelyn Underhill

(Be here now in love, and all shall be well.)

1 TM 1:1-2, 12-14;    PS 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 11;    LK 6:39-42

R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.

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.

You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.







If Christ has truly freed us from guilt and condemnation, then why is judgmentalism and a critical spirit so rampant today, even among Christians? "Thinking the best of other people" is necessary if we wish to grow in love. And kindliness in judgment is nothing less that a sacred duty. The Rabbis warned people: "He who judges his neighbor favorably will be judged favorably by God." How easy it is to misjudge and how difficult it is to be impartial in judgment. Our judgment of others is usually "off the mark" because we can't see inside the other person, or we don't have access to all the facts, or we are swayed by instinct and unreasoning reactions to people. It is easier to find fault in others than in oneself. Jesus states a heavenly principle we can stake our lives on:  what you give to others (and how you treat others) will return to you (Mark 4:24). The Lord knows our faults and he sees all, even the imperfections and sins of the heart which we cannot recognize in ourselves. Like a gentle father and a skillful doctor he patiently draws us to his seat of mercy and removes the cancer of sin which inhabits our hearts. Do you trust in God's mercy and grace? Ask the Lord to flood your heart with his loving-kindness and mercy that you may only have room for charity, forbearance, and kindness towards your neighbor.

"O Father, give us the humility which realizes its ignorance, admits its mistakes, recognizes its need, welcomes advice, accepts rebuke. Help us always to praise rather than to criticize, to sympathize rather than to discourage, to build rather than to destroy, and to think of people at their best rather than at their worst. This we ask for thy name's sake." (Prayer of William Barclay, 20th century)

Selected Quotes from St. John of the Cross on the Journey of the Soul to God by Contemplation

- from Dark Night of the Soul

Bk 1, Ch. 13.  #3. The soul loses the strength of its passions and concupiscence and it becomes sterile because it no longer consults its likings.

#5. It practices patience and long suffering.

#6. Four benefits of the dark night: delight of peace, habitual remembrance and thought of God, cleanness and purity of soul, and the practice of the virtues.

#10. Often God communicates to the soul, when it is least expecting it, the purest spiritual sweetness and love, together with a spiritual knowledge which is sometimes very delicate (and cannot be perceived by sense).

- compiled by James and Tyra Arraj