April 21
Daily Thought from the Saints
"Here is a rule for everyday life: Do not do anything which you cannot offer to God."
— St. Jean Marie Vianney
Daily Scripture Verse
"And Samuel said, 'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.'"
1 Samuel 15:22
Daily Meditation
"There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action. It is really and truly there present, but invisibly present, so that we are always surprised and do not recognise His operation until it has ceased. If we could lift the veil, and if we were attentive and watchful God would continually reveal Himself to us, and we should see His divine action in everything that happened to us, and rejoice in it. At each successive occurrence we should exclaim: 'It is the Lord', and we should accept every fresh circumstance as a gift of God. We should look upon creatures as feeble tools in the hands of an able workman, and should discover easily that nothing was wanting to us, and that the constant providence of God disposed Him to bestow upon us at every moment whatever we required."
—Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Daily Catholic Wisdom
Unless we seek to suppress all the superficial aspects of our lives, we will never be united to God. By detaching ourselves from everything superfluous, we enter little by little into a form of silence.
—Robert Cardinal Sarah
from his book “The Power of Silence”
Daily Journey with the Pope
“Let us think about someone who, in our own lives, injured, offended or disappointed us; someone who made us angry, who did not understand us or who set a bad example. How often we spend time looking back on those who have wronged us! How often we think back and lick the wounds that other people, life itself and history have inflicted on us. Today, Jesus teaches us not to remain there, but to react, to break the vicious circle of evil and sorrow. To react to the nails in our lives with love, to the buffets of hatred with the embrace of forgiveness. As disciples of Jesus, do we follow the Master or do we follow our own desire to strike back? This is a question we have to ask ourselves. Do we follow the Master or not?”
Pope Francis
A Prayer from Notre Dame University
Rev. Thomas Jones, C.S.C.
Lord, you fill the starving with good things, but send the rich away empty. May we hunger for you more than for life itself, and may we always share the blessings we have received with those who hunger still. Amen.
The Abbot’s Daily Lectio Divina
Abbot Austin Murphy, O.S.B., St. Procopius Abbey, Lisle, IL
Psalm 27:4
Reading
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
Meditation
Is dwelling in the house of the Lord the one thing I seek? Not always, but instead I sometimes put other pursuits before the endeavor to be in God’s presence. The folly of my sinfulness leads me away from this one thing that I should seek above all else. I need to grow in the wisdom whereby I seek God first and arrange everything else in accord with that. This is done by pondering the beauty of the Lord and by the discipline of acting uprightly.
Prayer
Lord, order my desires and reform my heart, so that I may seek union with you above all else. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Contemplation…