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Where do you stand in your relationship with the Lord? People often say, God is good to me, by which they mean that they have experienced good health or prosperity. What a person
possesses is not always a safe measure of his dedication to the Lord. - Theodore Epp
(How do you evaluate
where you are in your relationship with God?)
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TB 6:10-11; 7:1, 9-17; 8:4-9; PS 128:1-5; MK
12:28-34
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways! For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork; Blessed shall you be, and favored.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the recesses of your home; Your children like olive plants around your table.
Behold, thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD. The LORD bless you from
Zion: may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life.
USCCB Lectionary
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What does God require of us? Simply that we love as he loves! God is love and everything he does flows from his love for us. God
loved us first and our love for him is a response to his exceeding grace and kindness towards us. The love of God comes first and the love of neighbor is firmly grounded in the love of God. The more we know of God's love and truth the more we love what he loves and reject what is hateful and contrary to his will.
What makes our love for God and his commands grow in us? Faith in God and hope in his promises strengthens us in the love of God. They are essential for a good relationship with God, for being united with him. The more we know of God the more we love him and the more we love him the greater we believe and hope in his promises. The Lord, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, gives us a new freedom to love as he
loves. Do you allow anything to keep you from the love of God and the joy of serving others with a generous heart? Paul the Apostle says: hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us (Romans 5:5). Do you know the love which conquers all?
"We love you, O our God; and we desire to love you more and more. Grant to us that we may love you as much as we desire, and as much as we ought. O dearest friend, who has so loved and saved us, the thought of whom is so sweet and always growing sweeter, come with Christ and dwell in our hearts; that you keep a watch over our lips, our steps, our deeds, and we shall not need to be anxious either for our souls
or our bodies. Give us love, sweetest of all gifts, which knows no enemy. Give us in our hearts pure love, born of your love to us, that we may love others as you love us. O most loving Father of Jesus Christ, from whom flows all love, let our hearts, frozen in sin, cold to you and cold to others, be warmed by this divine fire. So help and bless us in your Son." (Prayer of Anselm, 1033-1109)
DailyScripture.Net
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The Cloud of Unknowing, by
Anonymous
Of divers unseemly practices that follow them that lack the work of this book.
MANY wonderful practices follow them that be deceived in this false work, or in any species thereof, beyond that doth them that be God’s true disciples: for they be evermore full seemly in all their practices, bodily or ghostly. But it is not so of these other. For whoso would or
might behold unto them where they sit in this time, an it so were that their eyelids were open, he should see them stare as they were mad, and leeringly look as if they saw the devil. Surely it is good they be wary, for truly the fiend is not far. Some set their eyes in their heads as they were sturdy sheep beaten in the head, and as they should die anon. Some hang their heads on one side as if a worm were in their ears. Some pipe when they should speak, as if there were no spirit in their
bodies: and this is the proper condition of an hypocrite. Some cry and whine in their throats, so be they greedy and hasty to say that they think: and this is the condition of heretics, and of them that with presumption and with curiosity of wit will always maintain error.
- Chapter 53 |
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