Friday 29 January 2021
Friday of week 3 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Friday of week 3 in Ordinary Time
A commentary on Psalm 101 by St John Fisher
The wonders of God
First of all God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, with many signs and wonders. Then he let them cross the Red Sea dry-shod; in the desert he fed them with food from heaven in the form of manna and quails; when they were thirsty he gave them an inexhaustible spring of water, bubbling from the rock. He gave them victory over enemies that attacked them; he made the Jordan flow backwards for them; he took the land he had promised them and divided it between them according to their tribes and clans. Although he had dealt with them so lovingly and generously, the ungrateful people abandoned the worship of God, as if they had utterly forgotten everything, and shackled themselves with the crime of idol-worship – not once but many times.
Then God took us, although we were pagans, and irresistibly drawn towards dumb idols, if anything. He cut us off from the wild olive tree of our gentile nature and grafted us on to the true olive tree of the Jewish people, pruning away its existing branches and making us sharers in its grace, its richness, and the nourishment that came from its roots. Finally God did not spare his own Son but gave him up to benefit us all, a victim and fragrant offering to God to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be his very own.
All these things are not mere arguments but genuine signs of God’s love and God’s generosity. We men, on the other hand, are supremely ungrateful: we have gone far beyond the boundaries of all previous ingratitude. We pay no attention to God’s love, we do not recognise the scale of his generosity, but we spurn the source and giver of all these good things and practically hold him in contempt. Not even the outstanding mercy he shows to sinners moves us to order our lives and actions according to his holy law.
Clearly these acts of God deserve to be written down in the next generation, so that they are remembered for ever. Thus all who in future bear the name of Christians will recognise God’s goodness to us and will never at any time cease from offering praise to him.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Blessed Archangela Girlani, Virgin
From the 'Exhortation on the Carmelite Rule' by Blessed John Soreth
Concerning the cell, both exterior and interior
We read in the Rule, ‘Each of you is to have a separate cell, situated according to the lie of the land you propose to occupy.’
The religious, who is a child of grace, is nourished, developed and sheltered in the womb of his cell; the cell leads him to the fullness of perfection and makes him worthy to speak with God. The cell is a holy land and a holy place, where God and his servant exchange their confidences as a friend with a friend. It is here, oftentimes, that the soul is caught up in union with God, as a bride is joined to her husband; it is here that heaven touches earth, and the divine is united with the human. Indeed, the cell of God’s servant is like a holy sanctuary of God, for both in the sanctuary and in the cell divine affairs are the chief preoccupation – and this is so even more frequently in the cell. The cell is the workshop of everything that is good; it is the assurance of perseverance. In his cell, a man can live in poverty and yet be rich; and whoever has goodwill has everything that he needs to live well.
To help you to live safely in your cell, three guardians are given to you: God, your conscience, and your spiritual director. You owe to God the devotion of a son, offering to him all that you are; you owe honour to your conscience, for you are ashamed to sin in its presence; and you owe to your spiritual director, in whom you should confide before anyone else, the obedience that comes from love.
I will add a fourth guardian for you: as long as you are a learner and while the practice of the presence of God does not come readily to you, I advise you to choose someone for whom you have a high regard, whose example will be a constant spur to you each time you think of him, just as effectively as if he were actually present with you. Let the thought of him and the regard you have for him help to correct whatever needs correcting in you. In this way your solitude will never be an occasion for backsliding. You will try to imagine that he sees your inmost thoughts, and you will be impelled to fresh efforts, just as if he were present urging you on.
To practice this solitude each one should have a separate cell, just as the Rule prescribes. Your cell is both interior and exterior. The exterior cell is the house in which you live with your body; the interior cell is within your conscience, where the God of your deepest self must be invited to dwell. The door of the enclosure is a symbol of the door of your inner cell, and just as a religious cannot go wandering about abroad, so the interior senses should be curbed and concentrated on God. Therefore, you should love and cultivate your inner cell, and the exterior one, too. Let the exterior cell be your hiding place, yet not the kind of place that enables you to sin without discovery; rather, may it so protect you that you can live more attentively.
You come to realise what you owe to your cell only when you consider what personal faults you have been preserved from there, and how you do not have to quarrel with others. You realise what you owe to your conscience whenever you experience in your cell a sense of grace and of interior consolation. Therefore, give to both aspects of your cell the honour that is their due, and for yourself lay claim to your reward.
In your cell you learn to be master of yourself, to set your life in order, to liberate yourself and to deny yourself, and yes, to judge yourself, too: for no-one loves you more than you do yourself and no-one will judge you more carefully. On this topic someone has said: ‘Be contented in your cell and slow to step foot outside; keep continual silence, weep for your faults, read or pray at the proper times, rise promptly, and from time to time examine your conscience.’
It is with all these benefits in mind that the Rule lays down, ‘Each is to have his separate cell, allotted by the prior himself with the consent of the other brothers, or at least of the wisest among them.’
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.