Scripture

Mar012017

Repentance Psalm 50 (51)

Unto the end, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had sinned with Bethsabee.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.
And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity.
Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.
To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee:
That thou mayst be justified in thy words, And mayst overcome when thou art judged.
For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me.
For behold thou hast loved truth:
The uncertain and hidden things of thy wisdom thou hast made manifest to me.
Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed:
Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow.
To my hearing thou shalt give joy and gladness:
And the bones that have been humbled shall rejoice.
Turn away thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels.
Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.
I will teach the unjust thy ways: and the wicked shall be converted to thee.
Deliver me from blood, O God, thou God of my salvation:
And my tongue shall extol thy justice.
O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.
For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it:
With burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted.
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit:
A contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Deal favourably, O Lord, in thy good will with Sion;
that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up.
Then shalt thou accept the sacrifice of justice, oblations and whole burnt offerings:
Then shall they lay calves upon thy altar.

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Feb152017

Water

Today during daily Mass, the Genesis reading tied in perfectly with the posted Tarkovsky film shorts.  Coalesce, to grow together or into one body, synchronization, unification, the pulling together of tended ends.  Father Sam spoke flowingly of water in his homily.  Baptism, cleansing, thirst quenching—I thirst!—overflowing, a deluge, tears, rain, a river, an ocean, swimming in water, dreaming of water, submerged and intense, subtle and cooling—divinely ever present within iconography—beyond words, a flood.

At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark, and he sent out a raven, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. It flew back and forth until the waters dried off from the earth. Then he sent out a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. But the dove could find no place to alight and perch, and it returned to him in the ark, for there was water all over the earth. Putting out his hand, he caught the dove and drew it back to him inside the ark. He waited seven days more and again sent the dove out from the ark. In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had lessened on the earth. He waited still another seven days and then released the dove once more; and this time it did not come back. In the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water began to dry up on the earth. Noah then removed the covering of the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was drying up. Noah built an altar to the LORD, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the sweet odor, he said to himself: “Never again will I doom the earth because of man since the desires of man’s heart are evil from the start; nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done. As long as the earth lasts, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

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Jan282017

Logical thinking

All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good.  But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it.  Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented.  For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all.  For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be the good which is its “nature” cannot be destroyed.  There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it would doubtless be all the more worthy of praise.  When, however, a thing is corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the good.  Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil, there is a corresponding diminution of the good.  As long, then, as a thing is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it is being deprived; and in this process, if something of its being remains that cannot be further corrupted, this will then be an incorruptible entity (natura incorruptibilis) and to this great good it will have come through the process of corruption.  But even if the corruption is not arrested, it still does not cease having some good of which it cannot be further deprived.  If, however, the corruption comes to be total and entire, there is no good left either, because it is no longer an entity at all.  Wherefore corruption cannot consume the good without also consuming the thing itself.  Every actual entity is therefore good; a greater good if it cannot be corrupted, a lesser good if it can be.  Yet only the foolish and unknowing can deny that it is still good even when corrupted.  Whenever a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist.  –St Augustine, a letter to his son: ‘Handbook on Hope, Faith, and Love’.

But according to His promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.  Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by Him without spot or blemish, and at peace….grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.  Amen.  –2 Peter 3

Strive for the Immaculate,
No privation of good.

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Jan132017

Daily reading: Enter into His rest

Let us be on our guard
While the promise of entering into his rest remains,
That none of you seem to have failed.
For in fact we have received the Good News just as our ancestors did.
But the word that they heard did not profit them,
For they were not united in faith with those who listened.
For we who believed enter into that rest,
Just as he has said:

As I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter into my rest,”

And yet his works were accomplished
At the foundation of the world.
For he has spoken somewhere about the seventh day in this manner,
And God rested on the seventh day from all his works;
And again, in the previously mentioned place,
They shall not enter into my rest.

Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest,
So that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience

Hebrews chapter 4

Christ Child asleep on a cross. Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639, Italian)

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Jan052017

Psalm 88

Lord my God, I call for help by day,
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;
My life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength,

Like one alone among the dead;
Like the slain lying in their graves;
Like those you remember no more,
Cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
In places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me:
I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends
And made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
My eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
To you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work your wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave?
Or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark?
Or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help:
In the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
Your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,
They assail me all together.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
My one companion is darkness.

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Oct042016

The harshness of reality clearly stated

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!

Am I now currying favor with human beings or God? Or am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ.

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. –Epistle of Paul to the Galatians

saint-paul-the-apostle-5

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Oct022016

Patience

How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.

Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.

Habakkuk

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