Message of 4-4-11
Published: Sat, 04/02/11
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
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MESSAGE OF THE DAY
Contrition, repentance, acknowledgement of personal responsibility
and sorrow over sin should never include massive self-hatred and
total self-rejection. God's conviction points to a specific sin, it
is sharp and accurate, going straight to the point where repentance
is needed. Truly understanding this principle will lead you into
freedom from your past so you can serve God and His people without
the fetters of constantly looking behind.
- Katherine Walden
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LECTIONARY READINGS FOR THE DAY
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/
Is 65:17-21; Ps 30:2 and 4, 5-6, 11-12a and 13; Jn 4:43-54
R. (2a) I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.
"Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper."
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
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REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL
- from "Daily Bread"
http://www.preacherexchange.com/daily_bread.htm
"Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth."
Isaiah proclaims the promise of that new earth where all achieve a
ripe old age living in their own house, eating from their own
vineyard. The simple and fulfilling life is not a life of leisure,
but of work that is satisfying, yielding pleasant shelter and good
food. We remember today St. Isidore (560-636), who was chosen as
patron of the Internet. He, who was a frustrated student, wrote
prolifically, including a 20-volume encyclopedia of all available
knowledge that was used as a textbook in seminaries for 900 years.
That is an impressive shelf life!
"St. Isidore, pray for us -- we who have easy access to knowledge,
but too often lack curiosity, discipline or passion."
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SPIRITUAL READING
The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
by St. John of Rusybroeck (1293-1381)
The "wound of love" as a metaphor for the rapturous yet piercing
entrance of Divine Love into the heart, meets us again and again in
the literature of mysticism. "God," says St Basil, "is the Perfect
Beauty which inflicts on the soul an ineffable wound of love." In
many cases, as for instance in the celebrated "transverberation" of
St Teresa, this image probably describes one of those
psycho-physical parallelisms--not uncommon in the records of high
religious experience--in which actual bodily pangs accompany the
spiritual crisis. Thus Richard Rolle says, "O thou everlasting
fairness, thou hast wounded my heart; scarcely I live for joy and
almost I die, for I may not in my deadly flesh suffer such a
sweetness of this great majesty." (The Mending of Life, cap. 11.)
Thus, too, St John of the Cross-- "O burn that burns to heal! O more
than pleasant wound! And O soft hand, O touch most delicate That
dost new life reveal, That dost in grace abound, And, slaying, dost
from death to life translate."
- Chapter 22: Of the third degree of the spiritual coming of Christ
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