SAINT QUOTE OF THE DAY : Monday - July 30, 2018

Monday - July 30, 2018

Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and an be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face.

-- Saint Francis of Assisi

 

 

July 30, 2018

 

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Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 401

Reading 1JER 13:1-11

The LORD said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth;
wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water.
I bought the loincloth, as the LORD commanded, and put it on.
A second time the word of the LORD came to me thus:
Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing,
and go now to the Parath;
there hide it in a cleft of the rock.
Obedient to the LORD's command, I went to the Parath
and buried the loincloth.
After a long interval, the LORD said to me: 
Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth
which I told you to hide there.
Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth
from the place where I had hid it.
But it was rotted, good for nothing!
Then the message came to me from the LORD: 
Thus says the LORD:
So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot,
the great pride of Jerusalem.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words,
who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts,
and follow strange gods to serve and adore them,
shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins,
so had I made the whole house of Israel
and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD;
to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty.
But they did not listen.

Responsorial PsalmDEUTERONOMY 32:18-19, 20, 21

R. (see 18a) You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
You forgot the God who gave you birth.
When the LORD saw this, he was filled with loathing
and anger toward his sons and daughters.
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
"I will hide my face from them," he said,
"and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are,
sons with no loyalty in them!"
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
"Since they have provoked me with their 'no-god'
and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a 'no-people';
with a foolish nation I will anger them."
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

AlleluiaJAS 1:18

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth
that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GospelMT 13:31-35

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the 'birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.'"

He spoke to them another parable.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened."

All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables, 
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:

I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation 
of the world.

 

 

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Is Your Sainthood Growing?

In today's first reading, God warns us that pride rots our relationship with him. Even if we go to church, even if we pray, even if we think we're spiritually okay, if we serve any master other than God or if we refuse to listen to our Savior on any matter, our spiritual pride and our doing-it-my-way attitude deteriorates our unity with him.

Although we really do love Jesus, something in our sainthood, which was given to us by God in our baptisms, gets buried in the dank darkness where it begins to rot. The longer we stay in this condition, the more dangerous it becomes to our spirits and to the Church (the earthly Body of Christ). The holier we are, the holier the Church is, and this impacts the world around us.

This is true, too, if we misuse or fail to use the gifts and talents that God has called us to share for the building up of the Church and the improvement of the world: Our mediocrity deteriorates our unity with Christ's dreams and desires for making the world a better, holier place.

If the Lord shows us an area of sin and we refuse to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation or we neglect to do the hard work of purifying our lives, the darkness we prefer rots our unity with the Christ's Spirit of Holiness. Is that what we really want?

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus invites us to grow anew where we've been rotting -- to grow as fast and big as a mustard plant. One way to do this is to read the lives of Saints. Like us, they had areas of rot in their lives. Like us, they wanted to become closely intimate with the Lord. Like us, they wanted to please the Lord, because they loved him and appreciated what he had done for them. And like us, they needed to grow in holiness.

What are you doing today that might rot your relationship with God? Do the television shows and the reading material you choose or the friendships you have work against intimate union with Christ?

What's working like yeast in the dough of your Christian faith?

Many years ago, a back injury confined me to bed for three days. I used that time to read a book, from cover to cover, on the lives of Saints, and I emerged from this "bedroom retreat" a changed person. Prior to this incident, I had been asking Jesus to teach me how to love everyone as he loves everyone. By reading the stories of Saints, all of whom loved others passionately the mustard seed of this desire was watered and fertilized. It grew like a mustard tree in only three days. We cannot immerse ourselves in the lives of Saint after Saint after Saint without gaining new growth in holiness.

Put aside whatever distracts you from your relationship with Christ. Whether we admit it or not, everything we take into our minds does affect us. We either starve our mustard trees or nourish them.

Today's Prayer

I praise You, Lord, for the wonders You work in my life and for those I have not seen yet, but which You have reserved for me. Amen.

God Bless You.....

Rosary Family

The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”