Tag: Uncategorized

Quotes:

“Committed. How much I like that word! We children of God freely put ourselves under an obligation to live a life of dedication to God, striving that He may have complete and absolute sovereignty over our lives”

“The Mosaic law does not speak about physically hurting your enemy but about hating your enemy. But if you merely hate him, you have hurt yourself more in the spirit than you have hurt him in the flesh. Perhaps you don’t harm him at all by hating him. But you surely tear yourself apart. If then you are benevolent to an enemy, you have rather spared yourself than him. And if you do him a kindness, you benefit yourself more than him.” read more

The sign of Jonah is a bitter pill for the leaders of the Jews to swallow.  The Ninevites were not Jews, they had not received the help and the revelation of God as His own people.  Jeremiah provides an abundance of suggestions about how the people of Israel should go about things in order to repent.  Fasting, weeping, humbling oneself, turning away from wrongdoing, etc, a whole litany of suggestions.  Israel seldom takes that advice.  When Jonah, a resentful, bitter and prideful prophet brings the message of impending doom to the Ninevites, they all immediately and profoundly convert and are spared. read more

The grace of God is like rain, like water poured out to slake the thirsty ground of our soul and cause life to spring up there and thrive.  In the first reading, we have this consoling image of the infallible power of God’s Word: you can try to protect yourself from the rain, you can stay indoors, but eventually the water finds a way to get you wet.  Just as the rain cycles back to the sky after watering the earth, so the grace of God raises our heart back to heaven as the Word accomplishes the mission for which it was sent. read more