Quote: "Fix your minds on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Inflamed with love for us, He came down from heaven to redeem us. For our sake He endured every torment of body and soul and shrank from no bodily pain. He Himself gave us an example of perfect patience and love. We, then, are to be patient in adversity." -St. Francis of Paola Today's Meditation "Let us not fancy that if we cry a great deal we have done all that is needed—rather we must work hard and practice the virtues: that is the essential—leaving tears to fall when God sends them, without trying to force ourselves to shed them. Then, if we do not take too much notice of them, they will leave the parched soil of our souls well watered, making it fertile in good fruit; for this is the water which falls from Heaven. ... I think it is best for us to place ourselves in the presence of God, contemplate His mercy and grandeur and our own vileness and leave Him to give us what He will, whether water or drought, for He knows best what is good for us; thus we enjoy peace and the devil will have less chance to deceive us." —St. Teresa of Avila, p. 147
An excerpt from Interior Castle Daily Verse "On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"" -John 7:37-8 |  EWTN Daily Saint | | Julian The Hospitaller St. Julian the Hospitaller (4th c.) came from a wealthy noble family in Europe. Little of his life is known with certainty. According to legend he married a noble widow, and was put under a curse at some point in his life. The curse was that he would one day kill his parents. To prevent this from happening, Julian and his wife moved far away from them. Julian's parents later found their whereabouts and made an unexpected visit while Julian was away. Julian's wife offered them her bed to sleep for the night. When Julian arrived home and found his bed occupied with a couple, he slew them both assuming it was his wife with another man. When Julian learned the truth, he was horrified by his actions and spent the rest of his life in penance. He and his wife went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and on their return established a hospital to continue their penance, dedicating their lives to caring for the poor and sick. One day a leper came to stay in the hospital; after Julian cared for his wounds, the leper revealed himself to be an angel and told Julian that God granted him absolution for his sins. The hospital was built near a river that was often crossed by pilgrims on their way to the Crusades. St. Julian the Hospitaller is the patron saint of hospitality, travelers, innkeepers, boatmen, pilgrims, and knights. His feast day is celebrated on February 12th. | Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 332 Reading 1 1 Kings 11:4-13 When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,
and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,
as the heart of his father David had been.
By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,
and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;
he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.
Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,
and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,
on the hill opposite Jerusalem.
He did the same for all his foreign wives
who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
The LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon,
because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel,
who had appeared to him twice
(for though the LORD had forbidden him
this very act of following strange gods,
Solomon had not obeyed him). So the LORD said to Solomon: "Since this is what you want,
and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes
which I enjoined on you,
I will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant.
I will not do this during your lifetime, however,
for the sake of your father David;
it is your son whom I will deprive.
Nor will I take away the whole kingdom.
I will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David
and of Jerusalem, which I have chosen." Responsorial Psalm Psalm 106:3-4, 35-36, 37 and 40 R. (4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;
visit us with your saving help.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
But they mingled with the nations
and learned their works.
They served their idols,
which became a snare for them.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
And the LORD grew angry with his people,
and abhorred his inheritance.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people. Alleluia James 1:21bc R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.
R. Alleluia, alleluia. Gospel Mark 7:24-30 Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She replied and said to him,
"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter."
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone. | Praise to You Oh Lord Jesus Christ! |  click to see website | |  wau.org | Daily Meditation: 1 Kings 11:4-13 His heart was not entirely with the Lord. (1 Kings 11:4) What happened to King Solomon? After all, his father was King David, a man after God's own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). Surely David taught his son about the love and goodness of God. And Solomon himself encountered the Lord several times (1 Kings 3:4-15; 6:11-13; 9:2-9). Why didn't these memories keep Solomon from worshipping false gods? Our first reading gives us one answer: Solomon's heart "was not entirely with the Lord" (1 Kings 11:4). Solomon had amassed great wealth and power. It seems that all his possessions and the influence of his many foreign wives had captured his heart. Swayed by his wives' desire to worship their own gods, Solomon "followed" these false idols (11:5). Perhaps he thought he could worship them in addition to the one true God. But that's exactly what David had warned him not to do (2:3-4). God wanted his entire heart, not just part of it. God wants our entire heart, too. We may not be building altars to idols as Solomon did, but we can give our hearts to other things—and those things can draw us away from God. Perhaps we get so busy that we don't make time for prayer. Or we let our ambitions or desires consume our thoughts. Maybe, like Solomon, we allow worldly philosophies or "false gods" to lead us astray. So how can we give our whole hearts to the Lord? By giving him first place in our lives. One way to do this is by turning to God a few times each day. We can dedicate the day to him when we first wake up. We can set aside time for prayer and ask him how we can best serve him. We can stop at midday to ask him to help us and guide us. Finally, when we retire at night, we can thank him for the day and ask forgiveness for any ways that we may have turned away from him. As you try to keep your heart "with the Lord" like this, you won't just avoid the idolatry that Solomon fell into (1 Kings 11:4). You'll discover the goodness of your God. You'll find peace in his presence. You'll find wisdom because you're more attuned to his voice. And you'll find joy as you delight in a kingdom that lasts forever! "Lord, I give you my whole heart today!" Psalm 106:3-4, 35-37, 40
Mark 7:24-30 | Reflections with Brother Adrian: |  Audio of 2 Cents | From today's Holy Gospel: "... He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She replied and said to him,
"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter." ....." Word of the Lord.
| From Bishop Barron: "But the reading I want to emphasize is one conditioned by the philosophy of the "other." The Old Testament speaks insistently of "the stranger, the widow, and the orphan," those who have no one to care for them. They press upon us even when we would greatly prefer them just to go away. We the Church are the body of Christ, the physical presence of Christ in the world. And so people come to us demanding food, sustenance, friendship, love, shelter, liberation. So often we are tempted to do what Jesus does initially and what the disciples do: tell them to back off. But the whole of the Christian life consists in remembering the suffering and need of the annoying other. " end quote.
From Roberto Juarez: "The miracle is performed at a distance. There are no spectacular gestures. Just a word. The faith of this woman opens a new horizon: salvation is not a privilege of a few, but a gift offered to all....The encounter with this woman anticipates what will be the mission of the Church: to proclaim the Gospel to all peoples. Second, it tells us about the strength of persevering faith. This woman is not discouraged by silence or apparent refusal. Persevere. And their faith transforms the situation. How many times do we also get tired of asking, we get frustrated when we do not get an immediate answer. This text teaches us to trust beyond appearances. It also challenges us about our attitude towards today's "foreigners": those who do not think like us, those who do not belong to our group, those who are outside our schemes. Do we really believe that God's grace is also at work in them? Or do we set limits where God doesn't set them? There is also a profoundly human detail: the whole dialogue revolves around the love of a mother for her daughter. Faith is not a theory; it is born of concrete pain, of real need. Many times our most authentic prayers are born precisely there, in what hurts us most. Finally, this gospel invites us to review our own faith. Is it a comfortable faith, which withdraws at the first difficulty? Or is it a humble, persevering faith, capable of insisting with confidence? Let us ask the Lord for the faith of this woman: a faith that is not scandalized, that does not give up, that knows how to hope and trust. And may we learn to recognize that God's love is greater than our limits and wider than our borders."
End quote.
From Bro. Adrian: Wait, what is our Lord speaking about with food and the lady begging for healing, now asking for scraps? What food? What healing? Just what exactly is going here! Right?
Our Lord was giving food to "the children", and wasn't trying to feed the dogs first.
But she was hungry...she was desperate. She had to deal daily with her daughter's torments, tormented by demons. And this is bad. Really bad! But how bad do demons have to be for us to seek help?
I ask this because, some of us get comfortable with evil spirits. We like them and "let them be". Without the proper light in the house, the bad spirits will remain and never leave! And some of these will get bad to worse. I remember one time, the church office called me and said there was a homeless man sleeping in the chapel, he had scared some visitors just by being there hidden. So I went to investigate the matter. I went in, saw the man lying down in the last dark pew. I started speaking with him and getting to know him. He was not that old, but you could tell he'd been on the streets. He was from our next city over and didn't really have a place to stay, nor was he working. Eventually, I got him to work in our family business and got him into an apartment we own to help workers. He turned out to be...well, not that great a worker, and a terrible tennant, LOL. He had the place running amuck, bad incidents, seemed like drugs were in the picture, broken windows, people breaking in, and in the end I told him we needed to get him back to his home in the nearby city, he obliged, it was a little awkward but, the deal was cordial.
What's the point? The guy is an example of how we let demons in. Let me go back to our first conversation when we first met, I knew he was battling with drugs on the streets. He said to me "but the drugs help me get through the tough times you know?" And he made it sound like it was a necessary evil. As if to want me to accept and comply with this idea, this coping mechanism. But I told him drugs were not the answer, nor were they good, nor should it be the crutch to get through life, because they carry evils and are deadly in the end. They never want to leave, and it kills in every sense of the word.
Back to you and me. Drugs are a physical manifestation of what a spiritual manifestation can do inside of us all.
In our bible studies last night with adults, we spoke of the Sunday Gospel, and we saw how our Lord pointed out many examples like ""You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment"
And many students realized, there is a physical and a spiritual aspect at work, and they do not always have to be seprated.
You see, healing in the Holy Church Sacraments, are often an outward sign of an inward reality.
We are healed where it matters...in the soul. And the heart of the Soul is what God desires...to live, to live out, to manifest Himself, as what He is, food, life, sustenance....all things Holy Eucharist, Jesus Himself. |  Click for Audio | Random Bible Verse 1
Matthew 22:37–39 "And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." . . . Word of the Lord! | If one day you don't receive these, just visit Going4th.com
God Bless You! Peace | | |
