Message of 7-14-15

Published: Tue, 07/14/15

Message of the Day

Sometimes we don’t need another chance to express how we feel or to ask someone to understand our situation. Sometimes we just need a ﬁrm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then lets see something to prove it.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(What “something” would you like to do to express your faith today?)

Daily Readings

EX 2:1-15A; PS 69:3, 14, 30-31, 33-34; MT 11:20-24

R. Turn to the Lord in your need, and you will live.

I am sunk in the abysmal swamp

where there is no foothold;

I have reached the watery depths;

the flood overwhelms me.

But I pray to you, O LORD,

for the time of your favor, O God!

In your great kindness answer me

with your constant help.

But I am afflicted and in pain;

let your saving help, O God, protect me;

I will praise the name of God in song,

and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.

“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;

you who seek God, may your hearts revive!

For the LORD hears the poor,

and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”

USCCB Lectionary

Reflection on the Scriptures

In the gospel, Jesus seems quite upset. I always try to pay attention when Jesus is showing great emotion. I have to ask, "Is he talking to me?" The historical reality Jesus is dealing with is quite applicable to us today. He has literally worked miracles in some of the towns he has visited and brought the Good News of God's love. And the response has been quite disappointing. When I was reading Pope Francis' encyclical, "Laudato Si: On Our Care for Our Common Home," I got to the part where the Holy Father lays out this incredible story of what has happened to our planet and to the poor on the margins everywhere, and how the evidence of the degradation is so clear, and so much of the world seems not to want to respond. We deny that we are to blame and we sure don't believe we should have to change our consumption patterns to save anyone else. There is too often an indifference to the suffering and the chain reaction of consequences. I wondered what Pope Francis would do at that point in his letter. I was getting discouraged myself. I was so surprised and comforted, inspired and lifted up, because Francis expresses deep hope. There is hope that some people are responding. There is hope that small, local efforts are making a difference. There is hope that a number of conferences have raised the issues to a transnational level. He sees hope in the fact that many are beginning to see this as our common home and that dialogue is beginning. And, I see hope that Pope Francis is calling us to this dialogue and to a personal, local, national and international response, His heart must be full of grace. Even though he knows it will be a slow response, he trusts that God will bring healing and peace, rescuing us from what we have done and what we have failed to do.

- by Andy Alexander, S.J.

Creighton Online Ministries

SPIRITUAL READING

Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich

Chapter 2

“A simple creature unlettered.—Which creature afore desired three gifts of God”

The Second came to my mind with contrition; freely desiring that sickness [to be] so hard as to death, that I might in that sickness receive all my rites of Holy Church, myself thinking that I should die, and that all creatures might suppose the same that saw me: for I would have no manner of comfort of earthly life. In this sickness I desired to have all manner of pains bodily and ghostly that I should have if I should die, (with all the dreads and tempests of the ﬁends) except the outpassing of the soul. And this I meant for [that] I would be purged, by the mercy of God, and afterward live more to the worship of God because of that sickness. And that for the more furthering in my death: for I desired to be soon with my God.

These two desires of the Passion and the sickness I desired with a condition, saying thus: Lord, Thou knowest what I would,—if it be Thy will that I have it—; and if it be not Thy will, good Lord, be not displeased: for I will nought but as Thou wilt.

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