Message of the Day
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"In the most noble part of the soul, the domain of our spiritual powers, we are constituted in the form of living and eternal mirror of God; we
bear in it the imprint of His eternal image and no other image can enter there. "
- John Rusybroeck: "The Mirror of Eternal Salvation," 14th C. -
(This is who we really are: mirror of God. Ask the Spirit to help you awaken to this reality.)
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Readings of the Day
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2 KGS 17:5-8, 13-15, 18; PS 60:3, 4-5, 12-13; MT 7:1-5
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God,
with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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As you judge, so will you be judged.
What we call the Sermon on the Mount continues. Jesus began with a series of blessings and then told the crowd they were salt and light. He told them that he did not come to abolish the law and prophets; in some ways, he raised the bar, making the law even more demanding. Do not be angry? Love our enemies? Do not judge? Really, Jesus? We may think Jesus is pushing an utterly unrealistic standard that we can't
possibly meet. But maybe Jesus believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. Maybe we are more capable of faithful discipleship than we think we are.
Lord Jesus, grant us wisdom and courage to walk in your way.
by Jeanne Lischer
Daily Bread
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Spiritual Reading
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The Book of Supreme Truth, by St. John of Rusybroeck
(1293-1381)
And after this there follows the union without distinction.
For you must apprehend the Love of God not only as an outpouring with all good, and as drawing back again into the Unity; but it is also, above all distinction, an essential fruition in the bare Essence of the Godhead. And in consequence of this enlightened men have found within themselves an essential contemplation which is above reason and without reason, and a fruitive tendency which pierces through every condition and all being, and through which they immerse themselves in a wayless abyss
of fathomless beatitude, where the Trinity of the Divine Persons possess Their Nature in the essential Unity. Behold, this beatitude is so onefold and so wayless that in it every essential gazing, tendency, and creaturely distinction cease and pass away. For by this fruition, all uplifted spirits are melted and noughted in the Essence of God, Which is the superessence of all essence. There they fall from themselves into a solitude and an ignorance which are fathomless; there all light is turned
to darkness; there the three Persons give place to the Essential Unity, and abide without distinction in fruition of essential blessedness. This blessedness is essential to God, and superessential to all creatures; for no created essence can become one with God's Essence and pass away from its own substance. For so the creature would become God, which is impossible; for the Divine Essence can neither wax nor wane, nor can anything be added to It or taken from It.
- Chapter 11: Of the one union, without difference or
distinction. Amazon.com link
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