The Popish Plot
"Pope's Prayer Intentions for December 2020"
We pray that our personal relationship with Jesus Christ be nourished by the Word of God & a life of prayer.'Tis the First Friday o' the month: Wikipedia-link First Friday & Wikipedia-link Sacred Heart.
Saints of the Day
Mass Readings—Friday of the First Week in Advent
The Book of Isaiah, chapter twenty-nine, verses seventeen thru twenty-four;
Psalm Twenty-seven (R/. one[a]), verses one, four, & thirteen & fourteen;
The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter nine, verses twenty-seven thru thirty-one.
Friends, today’s Gospel passage celebrates the faith of two blind men. To have faith is—to use the current jargon—to live outside the box, risking, venturing, believing the impossible. When we remain in the narrow confines of our perceptions, our thoughts, or our hopes, we live in a very cramped way. We become closed off to the possibility that sometimes the power of faith is manifested in spectacular and immediately obvious ways. When someone consciously and confidently opens himself to God, acting as a kind of conduit, the divine energy can flow.dynamis, of real power.
Faith allows someone to live in detachment from all of the ups and downs of life. In the language of St. Ignatius of Loyola: "As far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life." Someone that lives in that kind of detachment is free, and because they are free, they are powerful. They are beyond the threats that arise in the context of this world. This is the source of
Reflect: How free are you from attachments to people and things of this world? Is there anyone or anything you believe you couldn’t "live" without?Video reflection by Deacon Denis F. Perez (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops): Daily Reflection.
Video reflection by Doctor John Bergsma (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology): Daily Reflection.
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