Message of 3-20-15

Published: Fri, 03/20/15

You can also offer your prayers, obedience and endurance of dryness to Our Lord, for the good of other souls—and then you have practiced intercession. Never mind if it all seems for the time very second-hand. The less you get out of it, the nearer it approaches to being something worth offering—and the humiliation of not being able to feel as devout as we want to be, is excellent for most of us. Use vocal prayer... very slowly trying to realize the meaning with which it is charged . . .
- Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Letters of Evelyn Underhill

(So if your prayer life has been dry lately, here's an opportunity to grow. And if not . . . praise the Lord for that, too.)

Readings of the Day

WIS 2:1A, 12-22; PS 34:17-21, 23; JN 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

R. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

The LORD confronts the evildoers,

to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.

When the just cry out, the LORD hears them,

and from all their distress he rescues them.

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;

and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.

Many are the troubles of the just man,

but out of them all the LORD delivers him.

He watches over all his bones;

not one of them shall be broken.

The LORD redeems the lives of his servants;

no one incurs guilt who takes refuge in him.

USCCB Lectionary

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Gospel Reflection

No one can be indifferent with Jesus for very long. What he said and did - his miraculous signs and wonders - he did in the name of God. Jesus not only claimed to be the Messiah, God’s Anointed One - he claimed to be in a unique relationship of sonship with God the Father and to know him as no one else did. To the Jews this was utter blasphemy. The religious authorities did all they could to put a stop to Jesus because they could not accept his claims and the demands he made.

We cannot be indifferent to the claims which Jesus makes on us. We are either for him or against him. There is no middle ground. We can try to mold the Lord Jesus to our own ideas and way of thinking or we can allow his word of truth to free us from our own sinful blindness, stubborn pride, and ignorance. Do you accept all that Jesus has taught and done for you with faith and reverence or with disbelief and contempt? The consequences are enormous, both in this life and in eternity.

"Eternal God, who are the light of the minds that know you, the joy of the hearts that love you, and the strength of the wills that serve you; grant us so to know you, that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom, in Jesus Christ our Lord." (Prayer of Saint Augustine)

DailyScripture.net

Spiritual Reading

The Way of Perfection, by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Expounds these words of the Paternoster: "Fiat voluntas tua sicut in coelo et in terra." Describes how much is accomplished by those who repeat these words with full resolution and how well the Lord rewards them for it.

So I want you to realize with Whom (as they say) you are dealing and what the good Jesus offers on your behalf to the Father, and what you are giving Him when you pray that His will may be done in you: it is nothing else than this that you are praying for. Do not fear that He will give you riches or pleasures or great honours or any such earthly things; His love for you is not so poor as that. And He sets a very high value on what you give Him and desires to recompense you for it since He gives you His Kingdom while you are still alive. Would you like to see how He treats those who make this prayer from their hearts? Ask His glorious Son, Who made it thus in the Garden. Think with what resolution and fullness of desire He prayed; and consider if the will of God was not perfectly fulfilled in Him through the trials, sufferings, insults and persecutions which He gave Him, until at last His life ended with death on a Cross.

- Chapter 32

(Keep in mind that she is writing to sisters in a cloistered contemplative order.)

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