Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action,
even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.
- A life practice from Br. David Steindl-Rast
(These “mini-sabbaths,” as I like to call them, really are effective. Give it a try.) |
Sir 48:1-14; Ps. 97:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7; Mt 6:7-15
R. (12a) Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many isles be glad.
Clouds and
darkness are round about him,
justice and judgment are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him
and consumes his foes round about.
His lightnings illumine the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens
proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
All who worship graven things are put to shame,
who glory in the things of nought;
all gods are prostrate before him.
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
God knows what we need. The problem is that all too often, we don’t know. We fall prey to the pervasive enticements of a prosperous, over-consuming culture until we fairly drown in our supposed “needs.” We have to rent storage space
for the overflow! More than ever, we need Jesus, who leads us to pray as we ought, with humility and complete trust in the One who provides for all we really need: daily bread, forgiveness of sin, strength in temptation, deliverance from evil. May prayer become the spiritual discipline that brings about not only personal conversion, but the transformation of our culture and our world.
“For God’s kingdom come, we pray.”
- from preacherexchange.org
Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Eighth Revelation, Chapter 20
“For every man’s sin that shall be saved He
suffered, and every man’s sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed for Kinship and Love”
And for every man’s sin that shall be saved He suffered: and every man’s sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed for Kindness and love. (For in
as much as our Lady sorrowed for His pains, in so much He suffered sorrow for her sorrow;—and more, in as greatly as the sweet manhood of Him was worthier in Kind.) For as long as He was passible He suffered for us and sorrowed for us; and now He is uprisen and no more passible, yet He suffereth with us.
And I,
beholding all this by His grace, saw that the Love of Him was so strong which He hath to our soul that willingly He chose it with great desire, and mildly He suffered it with well-pleasing.
For the soul that beholdeth it thus, when it is touched by grace, it shall verily see that the pains of Christ’s Passion pass all
pains: [all pains] that is to say, which shall be turned into everlasting, o’erpassing joys by the virtue of Christ’s Passion.
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