A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
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Message of the Day
. . . all bodily mortifications, and other exercises, are useless, but as they serve to arrive at union with God by love; that the one had well considered this, and found it the shortest way to go straight to Him by a continual exercise of love, and doing all things for His sake.
- Brother Lawrence [17th C.], Conversations
(Love as the way to know God. . . all through the day.)
Readings of the Day
- http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
IS 4:2-6; PS 122:1-9; MT 8:5-11
R. Let us go rejoicing to
the house of the Lord. I rejoiced because they said to me,
“We will go up to the house of the LORD."
And now we have set foot
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, built as a city
with compact unity.
To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD.
According to the decree for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
In it are set up judgment seats,
seats for the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
May those who love you prosper!
May peace be within your walls,
prosperity in your buildings.
Because of my relatives and friends
I will say, “Peace be within you!"
Because of the house of the LORD, our God,
I will pray for your good.
Reflection on the Scriptures
- http://www.preacherexchange.com/daily_bread.htm
Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.
The centurion puts his faith in the unconditional power of Jesus’ word or rhema (in Greek, “a spoken word” or “an utterance”). Advent prepares us for the significance of that word. It also calls us to reflect on how and when the Word became flesh -- the Word that is Logos, the total message, God’s message to humankind, Jesus himself. Advent is our annual retreat to ponder how, at the Incarnation, the eternal word entered into creation, and what the word means for us today. It’s an opportunity to see how God’s story and our human story merge, and a call to believe that all things are possible through Christ.
Heal us, Lord, we pray.
- by Patricia Russell
Spiritual Reading
The Sparkling Stone, by St. John Rusybroeck (1293-1381)
Yet the bride of our Lord gloried in having sat under the shadow of God, and that His fruit was sweet to her taste. Whenever we feel that God touches us from within, we taste of His fruit and His food: for His touch is His food. And His touch is both indrawing and outpouring, as I have said before. In His indrawing, we must be wholly His: thereby we learn to die and to behold. But in His outpouring He wills to be wholly ours: and then He teaches us to live in the riches of the virtues. In His indrawing-touch all our powers forsake us, and then we sit under His shadow, and His fruit is sweet to our taste, for the Fruit of God is the Son of God, Whom the Father brings forth in our spirit. This Fruit is so infinitely sweet to our taste that we can neither swallow It nor assimilate It, but It rather absorbs us into Itself and assimilates us with Itself. [83] And whenever this Fruit draws us inward and touches us, we abandon, forsake, and overcome all other things. And in this overcoming of all things, we taste of the hidden manna, which shall give us eternal life; for we receive the sparkling stone, of which I have spoken heretofore, in which our new names were written before the beginning of the world.
- Chapter 11. Of the great difference between the brightness of the Saints and the highest brightness to which we can attain in this life.
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