Daily Reflections

Jeremias 14:7; Psalm 130:3

Though our sins bear witness against us,
O LORD, for your name’s sake.
– We have been disloyal many times
and have sinned against You.

If You, O LORD, should mark our iniquities,
LORD, who could bear it?
– We have been disloyal many times
and have sinned against You.

Thursday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Raymund Nonnatus, Confessor (Traditional)

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, (England and Ireland) 

Blessed is the faithful and prudent servant of the LORD who is awake and prepared for the arrival of the Master at any moment. For that expectation prevents us from settling for anything less than Jesus Christ. Such vigilance makes us increase and abound in love, strengthening our heart to be blameless in holiness at the coming of Our LORD Jesus.

SAINT RAYMUND NONNATUS, CONFESSOR

The mother of this heroic Spanish saint, did not live for him to know and love. He asked the Blessed Virgin Mary to take him: as her special son. She revealed to him that he should devote himself to the ransoming of captives. With Saints Peter Nolasco and Raymond of Peñafort, he founded the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for this purpose. He even gave himself up as a hostage to the Mohammedans for their sake. Pope Gregory IX created him a cardinal after his rescue, in 1240, but died shortly after.

ST. AIDAN OF LINDISFARNE, BISHOP 

Aidan of Lindisfarne, born in Ireland, may have studied under St. Senan before becoming a monk at Iona. At the request of King Oswald of Northumbria, Aidan went to Lindisfarne as Bishop and was known throughout the kingdom for his knowledge of the Bible, his learning, his eloquent preaching, his holiness, his distaste for pomp, his kindness to the poor, and the miracles attributed to him. He founded a monastery at Lindisfarne that became known as the English Iona and was a centre of learning and missionary activity for all of northern England, spreading the Gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and the socially disenfranchised (including children and slaves). He died in 651 at the royal castle at Bamburgh. He is known as the Apostle of Northumbria.

From an instruction by Saint Columban, Abbot
(Instr.13, De Christo fonte vitae, 2-3: Opera, Dublin 1957,118-120)

You, O God, are everything to us

Brethren, let us follow that vocation by which we are called from life to the Fountain of Life. He is the Fountain, not only of Living Water, but of Eternal Life. He is the Fountain of Light and spiritual illumination; for from Him come all these things: wisdom, Life and Eternal Light. The Author of Life is the Fountain of Life; the Creator of Light is the Fountain of Spiritual Illumination. Therefore, let us seek the Fountain of Light and Life and the Living Water by despising what we see, by leaving the world and dwelling in the highest heavens. Let us seek these things, and like rational and shrewd fish may we drink the Living Water which wells up to Eternal Life.

Merciful God, good LORD, I wish that You would unite me to that Fountain, that there I may drink of the living spring of the Water of Life with those others who thirst after You. There in that Heavenly region may I ever dwell, delighted with abundant sweetness, and say: “How sweet is the fountain of Living Water which never fails, the water welling up to Eternal Life.”

O God, You are Yourself that Fountain ever and again to be desired, ever and again to be consumed. LORD Christ, always give us this water to be for us the Source of the Living Water which wells up to Eternal Life. I ask You for Your great benefits. Who does not know it? You, King of glory, know how to give great gifts, and you have promised them; there is nothing greater than You, and You bestowed Yourself upon us; You gave Yourself for us.

Therefore, we ask that we may know what we love, since we ask nothing other than that You give us Yourself. For You are our all: our Life, our Light, our Salvation, our Food and our Drink, our God. Inspire our hearts, I ask You, Jesus, with that breath of Your Spirit; wound our souls with Your love, so that the soul of each and every one of us may say in Truth: Show me my soul’s desire, for I am wounded by Your love.

These are the wounds I wish for, LORD. Blessed is the soul so wounded by love. Such a soul seeks the Fountain of Eternal Life and drinks from it, although it continues to thirst and its thirst grows ever greater even as it drinks. Therefore, the more the soul loves, the more it desires to love, and the greater its suffering, the greater its healing. In this same way may our God and LORD Jesus Christ, the good and saving Physician, wound the depths of our souls with a healing wound—the same Jesus Christ who reigns in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.

DAILY MEDITATION 

Saint Raymond, at the close of his days, gave fervent thanks to the Almighty for all favours bestowed upon him, and thus ended his life full of heavenly comfort. To give thanks to God is a duty which we ought to perform every morning and evening; for, no day, no night passes in which we do not partake of the bounty of the LORD. You thank men who bestow kindness upon you; why then do you not thank God who has overwhelmed you with favours, and still grants them to you daily? Do not forget your duty, but attend to it every day.

Give thanks to Him also at the end of each month, in consideration of so many benefits which you have received from Him, and for which you did not even ask. Whom have you to thank that you did not die during the past four weeks; that you have not been condemned to Eternal flames, as so many that have been called away? Whence comes it that you were preserved from the dangers and misfortunes that  befell so many others; that time and opportunity are left you to work out your salvation, whilst thousands no longer possess them? Most assuredly, these are all benefits of the Almighty which you deserve much less than a great many others. Is it not just that you should give fervent thanks to God at the end of each month? But is your soul in such a condition that you can end this month or close your life as peacefully as Saint Raymond?

Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger (d. 1888) – Austrian priest, professor, and author; joined the Jesuits as missionary preacher to the United States.

Entirely Focused on the Presence of the LORD

Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears Me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share his meal, side by side with him. Blessed the ears of the soul alert enough, recollected enough, to hear this Voice of the Word of God; blessed also the eyes of this soul which in the light of a deep and living Faith can witness the coming of the Master into His intimate sanctuary.

But what then is this coming? It is an unceasing generation, an enduring hymn of praise. Christ comes with His treasures, but such is the mystery of the divine swiftness that He is continually coming, always for the first time as if He had never come. For His coming, independent of time, consists in an Eternal now, and an Eternal desire renews the joys of the coming. The delights that He brings are Infinite, since they are Himself. The capacity of the soul, enlarged by the coming of the Master, seems to go out of itself in order to pass through the walls into the immensity of Him who comes; and a phenomenon occurs: God, who is in our depths, receives God coming to us, and God contemplates God!…

It is simplicity that gives God honour and praise; it is simplicity that presents and offers the virtues to Him. I call simplicity of intention that which seeks only God and refers all things to Him. This is what places man in the Presence of God; it is simplicity that gives him light and courage; it is simplicity that empties and frees the soul from all fear today and on the Day of Judgement. It is simplicity that hourly increases our divine likeness. And then, it is simplicity again that will transport us into the depths where God dwells. The inheritance Eternity has prepared for us will be given us by simplicity. The simple soul, rising by virtue of its interior gaze, enters into itself and contemplates in its own abyss the sanctuary where it is touched by the touch of the Holy Trinity. Thus it has penetrated into its depths, to the very foundation that is the gate of Eternal Life.

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity († 1906) was a French Carmelite nun whose writings focused on the indwelling of the Trinity. She died from Addison’s disease at the age of twenty-six. [From I Have Found God: Complete Works, Volume I, General Introduction: Major Spiritual Writings, Sister Aletheia Kane, o.c.d., Tr.

John 4:13-15

He that shall drink of the water that I will give
him, shall not thirst for ever.
– The water I will give him, shall become in him
a fountain of water, springing up into Life Everlasting.

Sir, give me this water, that I may not  thirst.
– The water I shall give you will become in you
a spring welling up to eternal life.