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Christ speaks to Catherine: “You cannot imagine how foolish people are. They have no sense of discernment, having lost it by hoping in themselves and putting their trust in their own knowledge. O stupid people, do you not see that you are not the source of your own knowledge? It is my goodness, providing for your needs, that has given it to you.”
- St. Catherine of Siena -
(Beware the attachment to self-sufficiency. God is the true Source of all that we are, and have.) |
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Ez 37:1-14; Ps 107: 2--9
Mt
22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law, tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first
commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
USCCB Lectionary
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- The two great commandments -
Still trying to discredit Jesus, the
Pharisees attempt to bait him into heresy. Jesus again proves the wiser, simplifying the Old Testament to two laws of love, both of which are dependent on and inseparable from the other.
- “The brotherhood of man is impossible unless we recognize the fatherhood of God,” Taylor Caldwell wrote. Do you agree?
- “You are as close to God as you are to your neighbor” is another popular saying. Think of one way to show love to the five most important people in your life during the next week.
Paperback, Kindle
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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.
Oh, what a great thing it is not to have offended the Lord, so that the servants and slaves of hell may be kept under control! In
the end, whether willingly or no, we shall all serve Him -- they by compulsion and we with our whole heart. So that, if we please Him, they will be kept at bay and will do nothing that can harm us, however much they lead us into temptation and lay secret snares for us.
Keep this in mind, for it is very important advice, so do not neglect it until you find you have such a fixed determination not to offend
the Lord that you would rather lose a thousand lives and be persecuted by the whole world, than commit one mortal sin, and until you are most careful not to commit venial sins. I am referring now to sins committed knowingly: as far as those of the other kind are concerned, who can fail to commit them frequently? But it is one thing to commit a sin knowingly and after long deliberation, and quite another to do it so suddenly that the knowledge of its being a venial sin and its commission are one
and the same thing, and we hardly realize what we have done, although we do to some extent realize it. From any sin, however small, committed with full knowledge, may God deliver us, especially since we are sinning against so great a Sovereign and realizing that He is watching us! That seems to me to be a sin committed of malice aforethought; it is as though one were to say: "Lord, although this displeases Thee, I shall do it. I know that Thou seest it and I know that Thou wouldst not have me do
it; but, though I understand this, I would rather follow my own whim and desire than Thy will." If we commit a sin in this way, however slight, it seems to me that our offence is not small but very, very great.
- Chapter 41 (Keep in mind that she is writing to sisters in a cloistered contemplative order.)
Paperback, Kindle
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