Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one
loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.
- Thomas Merton
(How can you be more loving today?)
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2 SM 7:18-19, 24-29; PS 132:1-2, 3-5, 11-14; MK 4:21-25
R. The Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father.
LORD, remember David
and all his anxious care;
How he swore an oath to the LORD,
vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob.
“I will not enter the house where I live,
nor lie on the couch where I sleep;
I will give my eyes no sleep,
my eyelids no rest,
Till I find a home for the LORD,
a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
The LORD swore an oath to David
a firm promise
from which he will not withdraw:
“Your own offspring
I will set upon your throne.”
“If your sons keep my covenant,
and the decrees which I shall teach them,
Their sons, too, forever
shall sit upon your throne.”
For the LORD has chosen Zion,
he prefers her for his dwelling:
“Zion is my resting place forever;
in her I will dwell, for I prefer her.”
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Reflection on the Scriptures |
The experience of King David in the today’s first reading, and in the psalm that reflects on that experience, illustrates this reality vividly. David was nursing his bold plan of building a proper house (temple) for God, but God, through the prophet Nathan, answers that, no, in fact, he (God) is going to build David a “house,” but not a temple. What God will build is a “house” in the sense of a dynasty, beginning with his son
Solomon--and, as it turns out, climaxing in Jesus of Nazareth, who will shepherd the people (including us gentiles!) in a whole new way of “walking”—“walking in the Spirit,” as St. Paul will teach us to say.
This is the point of Jesus’ saying in
today’s Gospel, “Take care what you hear (or listen to).” For what we listen to leads to how we will “walk.” So living out that little verse from Ps 119 entails responding to God’s initiative—in the story of Israel, and the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and in our own experience, especially as interpreted by the authoritative teachers in the community of faith today, not least Pope Francis. Oh, and how does this relate to the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas? He was the great teacher
who best developed the insight that God is the ultimate initiator of everything that is.
- by Dennis Hamm, S.J.
Revelations of Divine Love - by Julian of Norwich
Third Revelation, Chapter 11
“All thing that is done, it is well done: for our Lord God doeth all.” “Sin is no deed”
AND after this I saw God in a Point, that is to say, in mine understanding,—by which sight I saw that He is in all things.
I beheld and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and thought: What is sin? For I saw truly that God doeth all-thing, be it never so little. And I saw truly that nothing is done by hap nor by adventure, but all things by the foreseeing wisdom of God: if it be hap or adventure in the sight of man, our blindness and our
unforesight is the cause. For the things that are in the foreseeing wisdom of God from without beginning, (which rightfully and worshipfully and continually He leadeth to the best end,) as they come about fall to us suddenly, ourselves unwitting; and thus by our blindness and our unforesight we say: these be haps and adventures. But to our Lord God they be not so.
Wherefore me behoveth needs to grant that all-thing that is done, it is well-done: for our Lord God doeth all. For in this time the working of creatures was not shewed, but [the working] of our Lord God in the creature: for He is in the Mid-point of all thing, and all He doeth. And I was certain He doeth no sin.
And here I saw verily that sin is no deed: for in all this was not sin shewed. And I would no longer marvel in this, but beheld our Lord, what He would shew.
And thus, as much as it might be for the time, the rightfulness of God’s working was shewed to the
soul.
Rightfulness hath two fair properties: it is right and it is full. And so are all the works of our Lord God: thereto needeth neither the working of mercy nor grace: for they be all rightful: wherein faileth nought.
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