When he was at table with them, he took the bread. He blessed the bread, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him!(Luke 24:13-35)

Thursday, September 15, 2011

In pursuit of Mercy

Prayer for the Day

Dear Lord Jesus, Your servant Saint Paul taught us, “We brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.” But there is one thing we take with us, Lord—Your Mercy.  Jesus, I trust in You.

Reflection
There are many things in this world to pursue—wealth, honor among men, fame, power—the list goes on and on. All of these things are things of the world, in the world, anchored to the world; and meaningless both now and hereafter if we are to please God.

What would God have us do? Saint Paul tells us to pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. (1Timothy 6:2c-12)

Pursue righteousness through the Mass, prayer, contemplation and reflection, and constantly performing an examination of conscience to determine where we've seen God in the day and how His will came to us and how it was made known to us.

Pursue devotion. The purest form of devotion is imitation. God doesn't want us to sit around with our jaw dropped in awe. No, rather, if we are devoted to Him, we will do as He did when He was among us. We will feed the hungry and be friends to the friendless. We will carry our neighbors’ burdens.

Pursue faith, through prayer; love through begging His mercy and learning from Him what the cost of true love is - dying to ourselves.

Pursue patience - certainly patience with others, but also patience for ourselves, weak vessels though we are. Weak and broken, we can’t do things perfectly; we must allow Him to help us.

Pursue gentleness - gentleness again for others, but also for ourselves, because we can’t love others if we don’t know how to love ourselves - and too often we spend so much time meditating on how wretched and imperfect we are, that we forget that we, each of us, is a child of God and loved passionately - loved indeed as an only child regardless of our weaknesses and our brokenness.

It is God's love that guides, nourishes, and supports us always - and no matter what we do, or how spectacularly we fail, we are loved - loved with all His strength and all His life.

You know, it’s funny how God works in my life.  I got an e-mail from my sister-in-law Wendy today asking, “Is this the prayer Mom says every day at 3 O’clock?” with a link to this video.  She said it is very moving.  I have to agree.  What is funny, though, is that God sends me these ideas for blogs through various people and circumstances, then to top it all off He backs the ideas up with Scripture readings for the next day, knowing that I write the blogs based on the following day’s passages.  I was going to say some pithy stuff about Jesus’ Divine Mercy (the “3 O’clock Prayer”) and how, despite all of the sin that He took upon Himself on that “Good” Friday, He still has infinite mercy for us all!  But He beat me to the punch again!  I guess it’s all in the timing.  Of course, since He created time, I’m at a disadvantage.  Thank God.

In case any of you readers want to visit my blog every day and pray the 3 O’clock prayer while viewing the video, I have provided a link on the sidebar to the right.  Just click on the picture of Jesus, THE Divine Mercy.    

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