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Message of the Day
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- Faith seeks understanding.
"I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."
- St. Anselm -
(What does faith help you to understand? Ask the Holy
Spirit to help you find the answers.)
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Lectionary Readings
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2 KGS 24:8-17; PS 79:1B-2, 3-5, 8, 9; MT 7:21-29
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.
USCCB Lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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There is only one way in which a person's sincerity can be proved, and that is by one's practice. Fine words can never replace good deeds. Our character is revealed in the choices we make,
especially when we must choose between what is true and false, good and evil. Do you cheat on an exam or on your income taxes, especially when it will cost you? Do you lie, or cover-up, when disclosing the truth will cause you pain or embarrassment? A true person is honest and reliable before God, neighbor, and oneself. Such a person's word can be taken as trustworthy.What can keep us from falsehood and spiritual disaster? If we make the Lord and his word the rock and foundation of our lives, then nothing can shake us nor keep us from God's presence and protection. Is the Lord and his word the one sure foundation of your life? "Lord Jesus, you are the only foundation that can hold us up when trials and disaster threaten us. Give me the wisdom, foresight, and strength of character I need to do what is right and good and to reject whatever is false and contrary to your will. May I be a doer of your word and not a hearer only."
DailyScripture.Net
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Spiritual Reading
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The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous How a man should have him in beginning of this work against all thoughts and stirrings of sin.
AND from the time that thou feelest that thou hast done that
in thee is, lawfully to amend thee at the doom of Holy Church, then shalt thou set thee sharply to work in this work. And then if it so be that thy foredone special deeds will always press in thy remembrance betwixt thee and thy God, or any new thought or stirring of any sin either, thou shalt stalwartly step above them with a fervent stirring of love, and tread them down under thy feet. And try to cover them with a thick cloud of forgetting, as they never had been done in this life of thee nor
of other man either. And if they oft rise, oft put them down: and shortly to say, as oft as they rise, as oft put them down. And if thee think that the travail be great, thou mayest seek arts and wiles and privy subtleties of ghostly devices to put them away: the which subtleties be better learned of God by the proof than of any man in this life.- Chapter
31
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