The Catholic Calendar for Thursday, April 22, 2004
Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

Scripture from Wednesday’s Liturgy of the Word:
Acts 5:27-33
Psalm 34:2,9,17-20
John 3:31-36

A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture:

“He does not ration His gift of the Spirit...”
“Taste and see how good the Lord is...”

Silly me. I spend all kinds of time trying to do things on my own power, and I get nowhere fast. I try to obey the dictates of my world-view, which are self-centered and limited, and end up frustrated. I try to keep things on an “earthly plane” and The Lord is taking off on His spiritual plane.

Y’ever feel like you just barely missed the boat and you’re not sure why? The above are some reasons why I sometimes miss the boat. He pours out His Spirit lavishly, to give us all the graces we need to face each day, and I put up umbrellas, or worse yet, I “go in out of the rain.”

Fortunately, He hears the cry of the poor, and every so often His grace gets through to me and I realize just how poor I am without Him. He is incredibly, patiently, and infinitely good. The more I realize this, the more I realize my own brokenness. The good news is that when we realize our brokenness, and our lack of power, then we allow Him to be our strength, our healing, our hope, our life. With Him as our source, we find that we can obey His desires, because they have become our desires. Pleasing Him becomes more important than pleasing mere men, as Peter notes in the first reading. And so we find ourselves “blessing the Lord at all times, His praise ever in our mouths.”

- Rose Atiyeh @>-->--

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posted by joachim at 5:23 AM