"I advise you to remain simply either in God or close to God,
without trying to do anything there, and without asking anything of Him, unless He urges it."
- St. Francois de Sales -
(Take some time today to simply "be" with God.)
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2 Kgs 24:8-17; Ps. 79:1b-2, 3-5, 8, 9; Mt 7:21-29
R. (9) For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.
O God, the nations have come into your
inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the corpses of your servants
as food to the birds of heaven,
the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the earth.
They have poured out their blood like water
round about Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury them.
We have become the reproach of our neighbors,
the scorn and
derision of those around us.
O LORD, how long? Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire?
Remember not against us the iniquities of the past;
may your compassion quickly come to us,
for we are brought very low.
Help us, O God our savior,
because of the glory of your name;
Deliver
us and pardon our sins
for your name's sake.
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
“Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew
you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’”
Jesus’ words are a wakeup call for every Christian. They are a stern reminder that if we’ve been fortunate enough to hear God’s word, then we’re charged with the responsibility to act on it. We cannot
simply sit off to the side and listen. We must take ownership of our mission and do something. We must examine how and why we prophesy. If our acts don’t bring glory to the Father, then our works are corrupt. We are no better than the false prophets and we remain strangers to God.
“Loving God, help us to do your will and lead us to the kingdom, we
pray.”
- from preacherexchange.org
Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Eighth Revelation, Chapter 21
“We be now with Him in His Pains and His Passion,
dying. We shall be with Him in Heaven. Through learning in this little pain that we suffer here, we shall have an high endless knowledge of God which we could never have without that”
IT is God’s will, as to mine understanding, that we have Three Manners of Beholding His blessed Passion. The first is: the hard Pain that He
suffered,—[beholding it] with contrition and compassion. And that shewed our Lord in this time, and gave me strength and grace to see it.
And I looked for the departing with all my might, and thought to have seen the body all dead; but I saw Him not so. And right in the same time that methought, by the seeming, the life might no longer last and the Shewing of the end behoved needs to be,—suddenly (I
beholding in the same Cross), He changed [the look of] His blessed Countenance. The changing of His blessed Countenance changed mine, and I was as glad and merry as it was possible. Then brought our Lord merrily to my mind: Where is now any point of the pain, or of thy grief? And I was full merry.
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