SAINT QUOTE OF THE DAY : Thursday - August 02, 2018

Thursday - August 02, 2018

Cheerfulness strengthens the heart 

and makes us persevere in a good life. 

Therefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.

-- Saint Philip Neri

 

August 2, 2018

 

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Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 404

Reading 1JER 18:1-6

This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Rise up, be off to the potter's house;
there I will give you my message.
I went down to the potter's house and there he was, 
working at the wheel.
Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand, 
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel,
as this potter has done? says the LORD.
Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

Responsorial PsalmPS 146:1B-2, 3-4, 5-6AB

R. (5a) Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Praise the LORD, O my soul;
I will praise the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God while I live.
R. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Put not your trust in princes,
in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.
When his spirit departs he returns to his earth;
on that day his plans perish.
R. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Blessed he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD, his God.
Who made heaven and earth,
the sea and all that is in them.
R. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob.
or:
R. Alleluia.

AlleluiaSEE ACTS 16:14B

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Open our heart, O Lord,
to listen to the words of your Son.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GospelMT 13:47-53

Jesus said to the disciples:
"The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects fish of every kind.
When it is full they haul it ashore
and sit down to put what is good into buckets.
What is bad they throw away.
Thus it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."

"Do you understand all these things?"
They answered, "Yes."
And he replied,
"Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven
is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom
both the new and the old."
When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.

 

 

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Are You Soft Clay in God's Hands?

What in your life has turned out badly? Think of something that started out well -- it looked very promising for a while -- but it ended in failure. God says in today's first reading that this is only clay. He can reshape it into something beautiful and useful. It's not disastrous.

Failure does not mean that there's no hope of success. The failure to be holy does not mean that we're hopelessly sinful. The end of a relationship or job or project or plan does not indicate that God is finished with it.

Our sins and failures and bad endings are tossed away like the junk that was collected in the dragnet of today's Gospel reading. The impurities in our clay have contributed to the warping of our spirits and the distortions or our perceptions, but if we ask God to purify us, the impurities are pulled out by his careful fingers, no faster than we can handle it, and he throws them aside.

And if our new pot still turns out misshapen, God refines us to a greater degree. If you've been feeling like you're under fire, it's probably the fires of purification. Believe it or not, you're becoming holier. As long as you want to become a beautiful vessel of God's love, the heat of your trials is not destroying you; it's purifying you.

We can help God form a wonderful, new pot by giving him no resistance. Our shape is perfected more easily if we let him spin us on his potter's wheel instead of being hard and firm in wanting to decide how and when our lives should change.

Furthermore, as we apply this to what Jesus said about the Godly scribe, we discover that the best pot is produced when we let him combine our old material with new clay and fresh water and his own coloring dyes and whatever else he wants to add into it.

God never lets anything go to waste. Many years ago, I thought I'd messed up God's plans for my life by taking a job that was not totally in keeping with his values. I quit after my conscience bothered me for several months, and I regretted that I had misspent so much time. However, God later gave me the opportunity to use the skills I had learned in doing that job, now using them for the work of his kingdom. In fact, as I let him shape my application of these skills, their usefulness for his plans has continued to increase over the years.

When we allow God to make us anew according to his desires, trusting in his expert shaping skills, giving him everything we've done in the past -- the good and the bad -- and when we invite him to add into our lives whatever he chooses, everything that had previously been a failure becomes a lovely earthen vessel that holds many treasures.

You'll know it's happened when what's inside your pot blesses others. God does not reshape us only for our own benefit. As he works with our clay, he's thinking of how he can build a pot that will benefit the whole Church as well as the world in which we live. We are that important! Being pliable clay in God's hands is that valuable!

Today's Prayer

Lord, give me the grace of taking the treasure of Your message of love to my neighbors and of rescuing souls for You throughout my life. 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!”