Message of 1-15-15

Published: Thu, 01/15/15

A Daily Spiritual Seed
Thursday: January 15, 2015
Message of the Day

Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward things, in outward rules and forms of living and praying. . . The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer-book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there.
... William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer

(Awareness and honesty with oneself is foundational. How might you practice these virtues more diligently?)
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Lectionary Readings

HEB 3:7-14;    PS 95:6-11;    MK 1:40-45

R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”

Forty years I was wearied of that generation;
I said: “This people’s heart goes astray,
they do not know my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my anger:
“They shall never enter my rest.”

USCCB Lectionary
Reflection on the Gospel

How do you approach those who are difficult to love, or who are shunned by others because they are deformed or have some defect? Do you show them kindness and offer them mercy and help as Jesus did? The Lord is always ready to show us his mercy and to free us from whatever makes us unclean, unapproachable, or unloving towards others.

Lord Jesus, inflame my heart with your love and make me clean and whole in body, mind, and spirit. May I never doubt your love nor cease to tell others of your mercy and compassion."

DailyScripture.Net
Spiritual Reading

The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous

How a soul shall dispose it on its own part, for to destroy all witting and feeling of its own being.

BUT now thou askest me, how thou mayest destroy this naked witting and feeling of thine own being. For peradventure thou thinkest that an it were destroyed, all other lettings were destroyed: and if thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given of God, and thereto a full according ableness to receive this grace on thy part, this naked witting and feeling of thy being may on nowise be destroyed. And this ableness is nought else but a strong and a deep ghostly sorrow.

- Chapter 44
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