Scripture Readings

Food For Thought

*Pray and Reflect with full meditations in my book Take Time For Him: Remain In His Love

Meditation Reflection: Luke 17:11-19

Consider the saying, “I owe you a debt of gratitude”.  The virtue of justice means giving each person his or her due.  When someone offers us a gratuitous kindness, we do in fact “owe” them our gratitude. I don’t mean this in the sense of a gift with strings attached, but rather as an expression of virtue and right relationship.  When someone offers a mercy in love, it is relational – they offer something of themselves to you as a gift.  If you in turn offer your gratitude, then not only has there been an exchange of some good, but additionally an exchange of love and mutual encouragement.

Christ is the ultimate gratuitous giver. He gives His mercy in love, no strings attached.  Offering Him back our gratitude however, is good for us as it reciprocates love for love.  Christ promises our love will always be received and appreciated by Him.  Rather than walk away with a blessing as merely divine pity for your situation, return to the Lord the love and gratitude He truly deserves and rejoice in loving relationship  with Him Who is so abundantly good to us!

Practical Application:

Praise God!  Praise Him in SONG!  Here are a couple of recommendations:

• I Will Sing of the Goodness of God
• God Is So Good
• How Can I Keep From Singing

Take Time For Him: Remain in His Love available in ebook or paperback. Order a copy and don’t miss a single week!

 

© 2021 Angela M Jendro

Scripture Readings

Food For Thought

*Pray and Reflect with full guided meditations in my book Take Time For Him: Remain In His Love

Meditation Reflection: 

Mud clings.  I remember walking home from school as a sixth grader one spring and cutting through an open lot only to find myself stopped in my tracks, literally.  My feet sunk into the mud so deeply that I couldn’t get my foot out for quite awhile and when I finally did my shoe remained behind!  Later when the ground dried enough for me to recover the shoe I learned just how tedious and difficult restoring it would be.

In St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews today (12:1-4), he exhorts us to “rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us”.  Imagine Jeremiah being pulled out of the cistern.  Scripture describes it as having no water, “only mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud” (Jeremiah 38:6).  How long it must have taken him to get cleaned up! Sin clings to us – whether we fell in by accident, were drawn into it by others, or simply formed the bad habit over time.  We might knock off big chunks at first but the tedium of removing the clingy bits in the crevices, grooves, and fibers can discourage us to the point of despair. However, St. Paul encourages us to persevere because muddy shoes slow you down and tire you out in a race and we are running the race to heaven. 

Thankfully you don’t have to do it alone, but you do need to ask for help.  The waters of grace have the power to cleanse even the most difficult stain. If we turn to Christ and ask the Holy Spirit to remove the clinging sin then it can be done.  Psalm 40:1-2 praises the Lord for just such a miracle:

“I have waited, waited for the LORD,      and he stooped toward me. The LORD heard my cry. He drew me out of the pit of destruction,      out of the mud of the swamp; he set my feet upon a crag;      he made firm my steps.”

We resist clingy people, pets, and even clothing because they restrict our freedom and flourishing.  Let us resist clingy sin for the same reason. It will require patience, perseverance, and prayer, but as St. Paul reminds us “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) and they give us hope that it can be done!

Take Time For Him: Remain in His Love available in ebook or paperback. Order a copy and don’t miss a single week!

 

© 2021 Angela M Jendro

This Sunday’s Scripture Readings

Food For Thought

*Pray and Reflect with a complete guided meditation in my book Take Time For Him: Remain In His Love

Meditation Reflection: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19

St. Paul honors Abraham as a man of faith because Abraham acted on God’s word.  Abraham left his very comfortable home where he was already prosperous for a land that God would show him,  not one God had already shown to him.  Abraham received his son Isaac through two impossible circumstances in which he acted based on trust in God over trust in his own natural limitations: first, Isaac’s birth despite Abraham and Sarah’s old age and Sarah’s prior sterility, and secondly at the sacrifice of Isaac wherein Isaac’s life would be taken but would have to be restored by God.  Abraham acted on faith, he took huge risks. This wasn’t blind faith however, in some obscure and unknowable mythological or philosophical God.  Rather, Abraham responded in faith to a loving God Who revealed Himself to Abraham and Who reveals Himself to you and I even today. 

God acted in faith too and took a huge risk for us. God sent His only Son to become man, die for us, and rise again for our salvation.  Jesus Christ lived among us, taught profound Truth, and performed great miracles. This is the most historically verified fact of anyone in history. 

How will you and I respond to the revelation given to us?  Will we avoid the challenge and drown ourselves in distractions (like the unfaithful servant in Luke 12:32-48) or will we rise up like Abraham, our father in faith, and act.  

May we act, not on the reward we have in hand, but in faith in the God Who promises it and has given His own outstretched hand to us.

For a full guided Gospel Meditation on this Sunday’s readings, check out Take Time For Him: Remain in His Love available in ebook or paperback. Order a copy and don’t miss a single week!

 

© 2021 Angela M Jendro

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time:   Scripture Readings

Food For Thought

*excerpt from Take Time For Him: Remain In His Love

Meditation Reflection: Luke 9:51-62

Being a Christian means following Christ, wherever and whenever He goes.  Full discipleship requires 100% commitment, not the made-to-order or pick and choose buffet we are accustomed to in our culture.  Consider Jesus’ own example.  He had to journey to Jerusalem and to sacrificial suffering.  Notice the attitude He chose – resolution and determination. 

Followers of Christ need the same resolution and determination.  St. Teresa of Avila, the great Spanish mystic, emphasized repeatedly the necessity of determination to advance in the spiritual life.  In her instructional work The Way of Perfection, she warned against our tendency to draw back and complain when things become difficult:

“Be determined, Sisters, that you came to die for Christ, not to live comfortably for Christ.”[i]

Saint Paul also exhorted the Corinthians to live their faith with bold resolution.  He warned against conditional discipleship and encouraged the Christian community to be generous and steadfast:

“The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Corinthians 9:6-7

As Jesus journeyed doing the Father’s will, those He encountered each had an opportunity to join Him, but their conditional stipulations determined whether they would accept it or turn it down.  The Samaritans received messengers from Christ but rejected the Lord before He even arrived when they learned accepting Christ meant surrendering their bitterness toward Jerusalem.  The next person took the initiative to seek Jesus out and requested to be in His company. However Jesus, who knows the hearts of each one of us, also knew the man’s interior conditions for discipleship. Thus, Jesus cautioned him that He would provide spiritual security and comfort but not necessarily the feeling of physical security and comfort. 

The next two men Jesus invited to follow Him procrastinated and avoided discipleship by requesting to finish up their other work first.  Their requests seem valid and even noble.  In fact, burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy and honoring your father and mother is the 4^th commandment. Is Jesus asking us to neglect our duties?  Does Christian discipleship excuse neglecting our families?  Does God contradict Himself?  No.  Do we sometimes rationalize our cowardice or weakness by twisting God’s commands against Him?  Yes.  It reminds me of kids who try to avoid chores by claiming they need to work on their homework all of a sudden.

Many of us (including myself!), often excuse our lack of time for prayer by pitting it against the active life of charity.  It sounds something like this: “I don’t have time to sit and pray because I need to do [fill in the blank] which God would want me to do.”  A practical example would be, “I could sit and pray/ ‘doing nothing’, or work an extra hour to provide for my family, or do a load of laundry and dishes, or run an errand.  God wants me to care for my family, that is my prayer.”  Sometimes that might be the case.  But, in truth, there’s usually time for both.  This mentality has sometimes been referred to as the heresy of activism. 

Spending quality time with Christ in prayer first is the foundation of discipleship. How can we follow Him if we rarely take time to listen? In addition, without prayer, even our loving activities can tend to be more self-loving rather than other-loving. Jesus knew the hearts of the two men who wanted to return to their families before following Him.  Rather than contradicting His command that we love one another, especially our families, He may have been calling them out on their rationalizations. 

Let’s face it, we have an inner desire for God, and we may even have authentic zeal for discipleship, but we also struggle with attachments that hold us back.  The good news is that if we open ourselves up to Christ in prayer, He will reveal those attachments to us and provide the grace to overcome them.  It requires resolution and determination, but with God all things are possible!  

[i] Kavanaugh, Kieran, and Otilio Rodriguez, translators. The Way of Perfection: A Study Edition. ICS, 2000.

Consider:

+ Like the Samaritans, how many of us hold on to bitterness, anger, or un-forgiveness? Prayerfully ask Christ to reveal if any of these are holding you back from following Him.  Pray for the grace to surrender it to the Lord.

+ Like the man who proclaimed he would follow Christ wherever He goes, consider why you are a Christian. Is your love for the Lord intermixed with some self-love as well?  Do you complain when you encounter trials?  Are you impatient or upset when you experience discomfort?

+ What rationalizations do you use to delay responding to Christ or to responding more generously?

Practical Application:

+ Each day this week thank God for one deterrent He has helped you overcome or from which He has freed you. Invite Him to reveal and free you from a current hindrance you may or may not realize you have.

+ Pray for an increase in resolution and determination. Choose one concrete thing you can do this week to apply it.  (e.g. pray 15 minutes each morning or evening, say something kind to your spouse when you want to say something critical, hug your child when you want to throw your hands up in exasperation, choose a daily Mass to attend and do what it takes to get there, go to Confession…)

This reflection is an excerpt from Take Time For Him: Remain in His Love available in ebook or paperback. Order a copy and don’t miss a single week!

 

© 2021 Angela M Jendro