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To: All
Friday, Third Week of  Lent
Fridays of  Lent are days of abstinence from meat.
"You shall love the Lord your God." (Mark 12:30)


Reflection.

Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of Saint Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.
I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: "Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will now show you the way which surpasses all others." For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed, I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.
.. Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus

Lenten Action.

A diet of amoral and immoral programs can and will corrupt your values. Do you control the media you watch and listen to?

Prayer

O my God, I love you above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because you are all good and worthy of all my love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of you. I forgive all who have injured me and I ask pardon of all whom I have injured. 


31 posted on 03/24/2006 8:10:07 AM PST by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: All
Saturday, Third Week of  Lent
"O God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (Luke 18:13)


Reflection.

A friend has been drinking. Foolishly we get into the car with him, and he has an accident in which we are hurt. We eventually forgive our friend for his share of the responsibility in the accident. Another day comes when our friend is drinking again. He insists that we get in the car with him. Remembering our past injury, we refuse. But because we have not forgotten, our friend insists that we have not truly forgiven at all. In fact, we have forgiven. But, we have also learned from our painful past experience, and choose not to repeat it.

Suppose one has forgiven an injury and experienced reconciliation with the injurer--a process of two distinct stages. In such situations, it is not helpful to repeatedly bring our remembrance of the injury into the relationship. Discretion and a willingness to let the past be the past are called for, for the sake of the relationship--call this a type of "forgetting" if you will.

Lenten Action.

Reflect on your life with God.



Prayer

Have mercy on me, O God. (Psalm 51)


32 posted on 03/26/2006 8:21:31 AM PST by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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