"It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter.
- Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement

Breathprayer:
May I see your face (breathing in)...in every face (breathing out).

Reflection question for journaling:
In what simple ways have you practiced hospitality this week?

(Thanks to Sr. Joel Christoph, OP for this quote and exercise in 1998.)

BAR 1:15-22;    PS 79:1-5, 8, 9;    LK 10:13-16

R. For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.

O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the corpses of your servants
as food to the birds of heaven,
the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the earth.

They have poured out their blood like water
round about Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury them.
We have become the reproach of our neighbors,
the scorn and derision of those around us.
O LORD, how long? Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire?

Remember not against us the iniquities of the past;
may your compassion quickly come to us,
for we are brought very low.

Help us, O God our savior,
because of the glory of your name;
Deliver us and pardon our sins
for your name's sake.







Today's readings are not what I anticipated on the Memorial of Saint Francis. The first reading expounds upon disobedience to the Lord and the failure of the kingdom of Israel to listen to the prophets through the ages. Ancient Israel is taken to task in Baruch for its evil ways and failure to please God. As I turn to the Psalms the theme continues. The Gospel of the day heeds a similar warning. However, reading the gospel in context of Luke's chapter 10 does present a different picture.

The passage is sandwiched between the mission of the seventy-two and the return of the seventy-two. As the disciples are sent out they are also told they will be rejected and if so shake the dust off your feet and move on to the next town. As the disciples return the report to the Lord "even the demons are subject to us because of your name." Understanding the context of the readings gives hope to us on earth and myself personally.  Even in my worst moments when I reject Christ and fail to follow God, I'm given confidence that in his name all things are possible. So on a daily basis I know that as the responsorial to the psalm proclaims, "For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us", that I too can call upon God in my daily life to help protect and guide me as I move forward in my spiritual life

- by Joe Zaborowski

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. 2, Ch. 3. The night of sense should be called a kind of correction and restraint of the desire rather than purgation. 

   #2. A period of tranquility comes after the first night.

Ch. 5. This dark night is an inflowing of God into the soul called infused contemplation or mystical theology. God secretly teaches the soul and instructs it in perfection of love, without its doing anything. It is the loving wisdom of God, and He prepares it for the union of love with God. 

   #2. This Divine wisdom is night and darkness for the soul, and affliction and torment. 

   #5. When this pure light assails the soul, in order to expel its impurity, the soul feels itself to be so impure and miserable that it believes God to be against it, and thinks that it has set itself up against God.

- compiled by James and Tyra Arraj