“Everything that we read in the sacred Books shines and glitters even in the outer shell;
but the marrow is sweeter. Those who desire to eat the kernel must first break open the shell.”
- St. Jerome -
(Let the outer shell of your mind and heart be opened as well to encountering God through the Scriptures
today.) |
Acts 5:27-33; Ps. 34:2 and 9, 17-18, 19-20; Jn 3:31-36
R. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.
I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall be ever in my mouth.
Taste and see how good the LORD is;
blessed the man who takes refuge in
him.
The LORD confronts the evildoers,
to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.
When the just cry out, the LORD hears them,
and from all their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;
and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
Many are the troubles of the just
man,
but out of them all the LORD delivers him.
Reflection on the Scriptures |
It takes trust on our part to recognize that we need God. A lot of people don’t trust
God because they don’t think they need God. But no matter who we are, we are without our own self-sufficiency and in need of God’s benevolence…..not just to meet our material needs, but our spiritual needs. We are spiritually poorly clothed, homeless, and hungry in the eyes of God when we desperately seek refuge in the Lord for our troubles…and we all have plenty of troubles. But the Lord hears us out of that poverty. We are distressed by the evil that surrounds us when
we cry out to the Lord to save us. And the Lord hears us and rescues us from weakness. And the greatest poverty we experience is when we are lost, alone and brokenhearted in this world. Our spirits are so easily crushed to emptiness. But the Lord comes to us and delivers us from this poverty of spirit. The Psalm response today assures us that we can trust that the Lord hears the cry of the poor….we poor things….lost, alone, empty, guilty, frightened, brokenhearted,
and in so many ways, in dire distress. But in all of these instances of our poverty, God is trustworthy.
- by Barbara Dilly
Revelations of Divine Love - by Julian of Norwich
Seventh Revelation, Chapter 15 “It is not God’s will that we
follow the feeling of pains in sorrow and mourning for them”
And anon after this our blessed Lord gave me again the comfort and the rest in soul, in satisfying and sureness so blissful and so mighty that no dread, no sorrow, no pain bodily that might be suffered should have distressed me. And then the pain shewed again to my feeling, and then the joy and
the pleasing, and now that one, and now that other, divers times—I suppose about twenty times. And in the time of joy I might have said with Saint Paul: Nothing shall dispart me from the charity of Christ; and in the pain I might have said with Peter: Lord, save me: I perish!
This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, [for] that it is speedful to some
souls to feel on this wise: sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself; although sin is not always the cause: for in this time I sinned not wherefore I should be left to myself—for it was so sudden. Also I deserved not to have this blessed feeling. But freely our Lord giveth when He will; and suffereth us [to be] in
woe sometime. And both is one love.
For it is God’s will that we hold us in comfort with all our might: for bliss is lasting without end, and pain is passing and shall be brought to nought for them that shall be saved. And therefore it is not God’s will that we follow the feelings of pain in sorrow and mourning for them, but that we suddenly pass over, and hold us in
endless enjoyment.
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