Message of 1-7-14

A Daily Spiritual Seed
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Message of the Day

Never believe anything bad about anybody unless you positively know it to be true; never tell even that unless you feel that it is absolutely necessary - and that God is listening while you tell it.
- William Penn

(That would be the end of gossip if everyone practiced these principles. Resolve to use your tongue lovingly this day.)

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Readings of the Day
 - http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month

1 JN 4:7-10;    PS 72:1-4, 7-8;    MK 6:34-44

R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.

O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.

The mountains shall yield peace for the people,
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor.

Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

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Reflection on the Scriptures
- http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html

It’s sobering to reflect that the exalted, inspiring rhetoric of this first letter of John was composed in a situation of dissension and conflict. The Johannine community had splintered into factions fighting one another. The author stresses what ought to have been obvious (to us as much as to them). Dissension is not of God. Do we encounter similar divisions today? Are we paying attention? This is not to suggest that differences are unimportant or that all views are equally valid. But it is to stress that what is primary is God’s self-giving love and the life of God that Christ has given us. Once we lose sight of that, then splintering and factions take over.

The author of 1 John, in a few verses preceding today’s reading, stresses that we are to manifest that love – that self-giving – not “in word or speech but in deed and in truth”. (1 Jn 3:18). We’re past Christmas and into “Ordinary” time. Deed and truth should be the “ordinary” feature of our “ordinary” lives.

- by Robert P. Heaney

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Spiritual Reading

Selected Quotes from St. John of the Cross on the Journey of the Soul to God by Contemplation - from The Spiritual Canticle
- http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1604592826/?tag=christianspiritu

Stanza 3. #2. Unless they go in search for God, they will not find Him, no matter how much they cry for Him.

Stanza 4. #1. How to be in this journey: don't pursue delights, and overcome temptations and difficulties; which equal the practice of self-knowledge.

- compiled by James and Tyra Arraj

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