Message of 7-29-16

Published: Fri, 07/29/16

How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of Light against its being; otherwise we all remain too frightened.

- Haﬁz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God

(God as Light warming your being . . . pause awhile to feel the Warmth.)

Readings of the Day

Jer 26:1-9; Ps 69:5, 8-10, 14

Mt 13:54-58 (17th week in Ordinary Time

Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him.

But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”

And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

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Scripture Reflection

His own town rejects Jesus

It is ironic that the people with whom we are the closest are also the people who often limit us most. This is what happened to Jesus in Nazareth. His brethren relatives are not open to his ministry because their ideas of him are too narrow.

- Do you feel that the people with whom you live love and accept you the way you are? Do the people with whom you work love and accept you?

- “We like people in proportion to the good we do them and not in proportion to the good they do us, Laurence Sterne wrote. Do you agree?

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Spiritual Reading

The Way of Perfection, by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Speaks of the fear of God and of how we must keep ourselves from venial sins.

How I have enlarged on this subject! Yet I have not said as much about it as I should like; for it is a delightful thing to talk about this love of God. What, then, must it be to possess it? May the Lord, for His own sake, give it me! May I not depart from this life till there is nothing in it that I desire, till I have forgotten what it is to love anything but Thee and till I deny the name of love to any other kind of affection — for all love is false but love of Thee, and, unless the foundations of a building are true, the building itself will not endure. I do not know why it surprises us to hear people say: “So-and-so has made me a poor return for something.” “Someone else does not like me.” I laugh to myself when I hear that. What other sort of return do you expect him to make you? And why do you expect anyone to like you? These things will show you what the world is; your love itself becomes your punishment, and the reason why you are so upset about it is that your will strongly resents your involving it in such childish pastimes.

- Chapter 41

(Keep in mind that she is writing to sisters in a cloistered contemplative order.)

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