Message of 4-14-15

Published: Tue, 04/14/15

A Daily Spiritual Seed
Tuesday: April 14, 2015
Focusing as a Way to Inner Wisdom and Wholeness
- Webinar by Nick Morale
- April 23, 2015. 7:00 - 8:30 p.m., CST
- No registration fee; free-will donation requested.

Learn more about Focusing practice from an experienced guide and teacher. Live webcast with interactive opportunities. 

See http://shalomplace.com/inetmin/webinars/focusing.html for more information and registration.
Message of the Day

There are many things which a person can do alone, but being a Christian is not one of them. As the Christian life is, above all things, a state of union with Christ, and of union of his followers with one another, love of the brethren is inseparable from love of God. Resentment toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart with love to God. The personal relation to Christ can only be realized when one has “come to himself” as a member of His Body, the Christian fellowship.
-  William T. Ham

(How do you encounter Christ in community?)
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Daily Readings
 
ACTS 4:32-37;    PS 93:1-2, 5;    JN 3:7-15

R. The Lord is king; he is robed in majesty.

The LORD is king, in splendor robed;
robed is the LORD and girt about with strength.

And he has made the world firm,
not to be moved.
Your throne stands firm from of old;
from everlasting you are, O LORD.

Your decrees are worthy of trust indeed:
holiness befits your house,
O LORD, for length of days.

USCCB Lectionary
 Reflection on the Scriptures
Paragraph 950 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

Communion of the sacraments. "The fruit of all the sacraments belongs to all the faithful. All the sacraments are sacred links uniting the faithful with one another and binding them to Jesus Christ, and above all Baptism, the gate by which we enter into the Church. The communion of saints must be understood as the communion of the sacraments. .. The name 'communion' can be applied to all of them, for they unite us to God. .. But this name is better suited to the Eucharist than to any other, because it is primarily the Eucharist that brings this communion about."483

The sacraments are sacred links uniting the faithful and ultimately they unite us to God.  WOW!  It is my opinion that the attraction of Pope Francis is because he is such a powerful role model of the early Christian community that we read about today in the Acts of the Apostles.  He resonates with many of us as we are attracted to his genuineness.  He is a wonderful witness of unselfishness.  My prayer for myself and our present day Christian community is to become more open to the grace of the sacraments and the transformation power to become more like the early Christian community.

- by Jan Schnack

Creighton Online Ministries

Spiritual Reading

Stages of Growth in Christian Prayer
- by Philip St. Romain
  (based on the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross)

Transition From Active Prayer to Infused Contemplation (part three)

        It may happen that some experience the first two of St. John's signs but not
       the third.  What should one in this situation do?  

       The answer is to continue to live a life of faith and love, praying 
       as best you can.

       A regular practice of centering prayer can help prepare you to
       receive the gift of contemplation, but a much better preparation
       comes from your efforts to love other people.  Contemplation is
       a union of love between God and the soul that overflows to the
       intellectual and sensual faculties.  Therefore, love (not knowledge 
       or ascetical practices) is the best preparation for contemplation, 
       and the best way to live, at any rate.  A saint is not judged
       according to the degree of contemplative prayer evidenced but
       according to the love he or she has shown.


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