Daily Thought from the Saints
"And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels."
— St. Angela Merici
Daily Scripture Verse
"He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
Colossians 1:13-14
Daily Meditation
"We have difficulty understanding this, just as a blind man has difficulty understanding color, but our difficulty doesn’t alter this fact: God’s omnipotence and omniscience respects our freedom. In the core of our being we remain free to accept or reject God’s action in our lives—and to accept or reject it more or less intensely. God wants us to accept him with all our ‘heart, soul, mind, and strength’—in other words, as intensely as possible. But he also knows that we are burdened with selfishness and beset by the devil, so it will take a great effort on our part to correspond to his grace. … Every time our conscience nudges us to refrain from sharing or tolerating that little bit of gossip, every time we feel a tug in our hearts to say a prayer or give a little more effort, every time we detect an opportunity to do a hidden act of kindness to someone in need, we are faced with an opportunity to please the Lord by putting our faith in his will."
— Fr. John Bartunek
Daily Catholic Wisdom
God is! How liberating! At an hour when the Church seems to be obsessed with herself, with her structures, with her future, her concern about adapting to the Western world, Benedict XVI tells us: at the foundation of everything, there are these wondrous, loving words: God is.
—Robert Cardinal Sarah
from his book, “He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI”
A Prayer
Rev. John Conley, C.S.C.
Lord God, how marvelous are your deeds! Holy and awesome is your name. You are Lord and master of all things, of even the Sabbath. May we always strive to keep holy the Lord’s Day and live every day as the gift it is from you. Amen.
The Abbot’s Daily Lectio Divina
Abbot Austin Murphy, O.S.B., St. Procopius Abbey, Lisle, IL
1 Samuel 16:6-7
Reading
[As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,] Samuel looked at Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.” But the LORD said to Samuel: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.”
Meditation
If the Lord looks within a person, at the heart, what does He see that makes the person worthy of being called? Isn't it some good quality or qualities? And aren't those good qualities gifts from God, whether by nature or grace? So, it might seem that God is here simply confirming what He already bestowed. That's true to an extent, but also some of the good qualities which God sees within us are there because we cooperated with God.
Prayer
Lord, I thank You for the natural endowments and the spiritual gifts that You have given me. May I cooperate with Your teaching and Your graces, so that these gifts may grow in me and so that I may better follow Your ways. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Contemplation…