Message of the Day
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Love is sweeter than life.
Sweeter still, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb
is the awareness of God when love is born.
Love is not loth to accept the hardest of deaths
for those it loves.
Love is the child of knowledge. . .
Lord, fill my heart with eternal life.
- Isaac of Nineveh, "Ascetic Treatises," 38
Amen!
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Readings of the Day
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EPH 2:1-10; PS 100:1B-2, 3, 4AB, 4C-5; LK
12:13-21
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Sing joyfully to the LORD all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come
before him with joyful song.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him; bless his name,
for he is good:
the LORD, whose kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Gospel
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"That is the way it works with the man who grows rich for himself instead of growing rich in the sight of God." –Luke 12:21
Every culture has its strengths and weaknesses, its insights and blind spots. Every culture clashes with the Gospel in some areas. Jesus is a Sign of contradiction (Lk 2:34). If we are true followers of Jesus, we are not trapped in our culture, but by grace we are freed to see and accept the full truth of the Gospel.
What will you do with today's Gospel reading? Rather, what will you let it do with you? What are we to do with Jesus, Who refuses to let us make Him in our image and likeness? The message of today's Gospel reading is a fantastic opportunity or a terrible stumbling stone. Jesus said: "Blest is the man who finds no stumbling block in Me" (Mt 11:6). Accept Jesus as Lord of your life and your culture.
PRAYER: Father, may every culture bend at the name of Jesus (see Phil 2:10-11).
PROMISE: "We lived at the level of the flesh, following every whim and fancy, and so by nature deserved God's wrath like the rest. But God is rich in mercy; because of His great love for us He brought us to life with Christ when we were dead in sin."
–Eph 2:3-5
PRAISE: St. Paul advised: "Conceal yourselves in Jesus crucified, and hope for nothing except that all men be thoroughly converted to His will."
mycatholic.com
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Spiritual Reading
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Freedom from Codependency, by Philip St.
Romain Chapter 6: What is Christian Love?
- part 12 of 12
- The Nature of Christian Love -
One way of pulling all this together is to realize that God has put us here to grow. Love is pro-growth. We need love to grow as plants need water and sunshine. We also need pruning; that is, we need to learn from the consequences of our behavior. Because God wants us to grow to become fully mature in Christ, God allows us to suffer. Enabling behavior is different in that it prevents
people from growing and taking responsibility for their behavior by removing their suffering.
What about the death of Christ? We say that he died for our sins. Does this mean that he took responsibility for our behavior?
As these questions show, there is a co-dependent way of looking at the death of Christ. The difference is this: enablers do for others what they can and should do for themselves. It is not enabling to do for others what they cannot do for themselves.
The Redemption does for us what we could
not do for ourselves--namely, enter the life of the Trinity. By taking on our nature and living our life, God, in Christ, has opened the way for the human race to experience the inner life of God. As any practicing Christian knows, faith does not leave one free from sin; the struggle with sin continues, and Christ does not take this away. Rather, he gives us his Spirit to overcome sin. Without his Spirit, we cannot live his life. Therefore, his incarnation, death,
resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit are gifts, not enablements.
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