Webinar: God, and the Problem of Suffering |
August 27, 2015: 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. CDT Free-will donation
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Breath in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
- Augustine
(Amen!) |
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JOS 3:7-10A, 11, 13-17; PS 114:1-6; MT 18:21–19:1
R. Alleluia!
When Israel came forth from
Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of alien tongue, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his domain.
The sea beheld and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like the lambs of the flock.
Why is it, O sea, that you
flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? You mountains, that you skip like rams? You hills, like the lambs of the
flock?
USCCB Lectionary
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Mercy is the flip-side of God's justice. Without mercy justice is cold, calculating, and even cruel. Mercy seasons justice as salt seasons meat and gives it flavor. Mercy follows justice and perfects it. Justice demands that the wrong be addressed. To show
mercy without addressing the wrong and to pardon the unrepentant is not true mercy but license. C.S. Lewis, a 20th century Christian author wrote: "Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety." If we want mercy shown to us we must be ready to forgive others from the heart as God has
forgiven us. Do you hold any grudge or resentment towards anyone? Ask the Lord to purify your heart that you may show mercy and loving-kindness to all - and especially to those who cause you grief and ill-will.
"Lord Jesus, you have been
kind and forgiving towards me. May I be merciful as you are merciful. Free me from all bitterness and resentment that I may truly forgive from the heart those who have caused me injury or grief." DailyScripture.Net
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The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous
Now truly I trow, that who that will not go the strait way to heaven, that they shall go the soft way to hell. Each man prove by himself, for I trow that all such heretics, and all their favourers, an they might clearly be seen as they shall on the last day, should be seen full soon cumbered in
great and horrible sins of the world in their foul flesh, privily, without their open presumption in maintaining of error: so that they be full properly called Antichrist’s disciples. For it is said of them, that for all their false fairness openly, yet they should be full foul lechers privily.
- Chapter 56 |
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