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We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all.
- Dorothy Day
(What kinds of "weeds" are distorting the flow of God's love in your life? What steps can you take to remove them?)
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2 Tm 3:10-17; Ps. 119:157, 160, 161, 165, 166, 168; Mk 11:11-26
R. O Lord, great peace have they who love
your law.
Though my persecutors and my foes are many,
I turn not away from your decrees.
Permanence is your word's chief trait;
each of your just ordinances is everlasting.
Princes persecute me without cause
but
my heart stands in awe of your word.
Those who love your law have great peace,
and for them there is no stumbling block.
I wait for your salvation, O LORD,
and your commands I fulfill.
I keep your precepts and your
decrees,
for all my ways are before you.
USCCB Lectionary
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Mark 11:11-26 (The withered fig tree)
Old Testament prophets
sometimes compared the people of Israel to trees, branches, and vines. TodayÕs stories of the withered fig tree and the cleansing of the Temple show Jesus confronting the barrenness of the Jews of his day, a barrenness stemming from their failure to receive his teaching and their failure to understand the meaning of true worship.
* How do you feel about JesusÕ actions
in this passage? Is it possible for anger to serve love?
* What occurred in the temple of your soul during the past day?
Paperback, Kindle
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The Way of Perfection, by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Describes how, by striving always to walk in the love and fear of God, we shall travel safely amid all these temptations.
Show us, then, O our good Master, some way in which we may live through this most dangerous warfare without frequent surprise. The best way that we can do this, daughters, is to use the love and fear given us by His Majesty. For love will make us quicken our steps, while fear will make us look where we are setting our feet so that we shall not fall on a road where there are so many obstacles. Along that road all living creatures must
pass, and if we have these two things we shall certainly not be deceived.
You will ask me how you can tell if you really have these two very, very great virtues. You are right to ask, for we can never be quite definite and certain about it; if we were sure that we possessed love, we should be sure that we were in a state of
grace. But you know, sisters, there are some indications which are in no way secret but so evident that even a blind man, as people say, could see them. You may not wish to heed them, but they cry so loud for notice that they make quite an uproar, for there are not many who possess them to the point of perfection and thus they are the more readily noticed. Love and fear of God! These are two strong castles whence we can wage war on the world and on the
devils.
- Chapter 40 (Keep in
mind that she is writing to sisters in a cloistered contemplative order.)
Paperback, Kindle
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