Message of 3-7-16

Published: Mon, 03/07/16

A Daily Spiritual Seed
Monday: March 7, 2016
Message of the Day

If we exalt money, status, or sex above the Word of God, we are living in idolatry. Every time we inwardly submit to the strongholds of fear, bitterness, and pride, we are bowing to the rulers of darkness. Each of these idols must be smashed, splintered, and obliterated from the landscape of our hearts.
- Francis Frangipane

(Also good Lenten practice to see what kinds of idols have grabbed us lately. How might you be “bowing to the rulers of darkness?”)
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Readings of the Day
Is 65:17-21;    Ps. 30:2 and 4, 5-6, 11-12a and 13b;    Jn 4:43-54

R. (2a) I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.

I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.

Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.

"Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper."
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.

USCCB lectionary
Reflection on the Scripture
"You changed my mourning into dancing; You took off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my soul might sing praise to You without ceasing; O Lord my God, forever will I give You thanks." –Psalm 30:12-13

The Lord is promising "to create new heavens and a new earth" (Is 65:17). "No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days" (Is 65:20). No longer will we chemically and surgically abort well over nine million babies each year in this country. "He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years" (Is 65:20). We will not be offering euthanasia to our elderly people, but we will be respecting them and valuing their sacrificial suffering. If we let God have His way, our culture of death will be displaced by a civilization of love and life.

Our culture is sick and near death (see Jn 4:46-47). We have asked Jesus to come down and restore it to health (see Jn 4:47). Jesus is challenging us to put our "trust in the word" (Jn 4:50). At the very hour we take Jesus at His word (see Jn 4:53), our culture will begin to be healed.​

PRAYER: Father, give me great and ever increasing faith.

PROMISE: "There shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight." –Is 65:18

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Spiritual Reading
Theological Gems from Emile Merch's Theology of the Mystical Body
- selected by Jim and Tyra Arraj

Book III: Christ

Chapter 9: Christology and the Mystical Body

217. God is Being itself; the human nature is something that shares in being, and absolutely nothing else.

Everything that exists, in every particle of its being, exists only by having being from Him.​
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