Daily Marriage Tip for November 10, 2012:
Yearning for a baby? For some couples pregnancy comes easily but for those eagerly waiting, it can be emotionally draining. Natural Family Planning can help couples identify their most fertile days. Pray for pregnant couples and for those who wait.
The Choice Between God and Mammon | ||
|
||
Memorial of Saint Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the Church
|
||
![]() |
||
Luke 16: 9-15 Introductory Prayer: Father in heaven, I come to you today to praise and worship you. In my faith, I reach out to you, knowing that you love me and are leading me to heaven. I trust in your mercy and boundless love. Petition: Lord, help me to break the disordered attachments in my life. 1. Earning Trust: Parents know well what this means! Discovering that your teenage childs story about being at a friends house studying was just that a story makes for a very unpleasant realization. Trust has been broken. After the grounding takes effect, the speech is then delivered: Heres what you do if you want to earn back our trust
Certainly the family car wont be lent out again until progress in the small things has been seen. Thats the message Jesus has for us today. Our sins are like the trust-breakers of the teenage kid. They show we arent ready for Gods greatest gifts, so we have to start with the small things. Each grace we respond to opens the door to receiving another grace. If we are trustworthy in very small matters, we can be trusted with the greater. Following through on the everyday graces will someday lead to the grace of graces: the Beatific Vision. 2. God and/or Mammon: Part of earning trust with God is getting our priorities straight. Taking a God-AND-mammon approach to life is similar to trying to say the rosary while watching television. The Hail Marys may come out, but they do so with as much reflection as is put into breathing. We simply cant have our cake and eat it too. Foolishly entertaining any bad habits (our personal version of mammon) that erode our commitment shows God that we are not spiritually mature enough to be fully trusted. On the other hand, when we take a determined step to break these attachments, we make a big step forward. God must come first! 3. Human Eyes See Only Part of the Story: Naturally, this effort to live a God-centered life is going to generate mixed reactions. The Pharisees scorn Jesus for this: To them, he seems totally naïve about money. Like them, if we see things only from a merely human perspective, big chunks of reality elude us. Jesus is the one who has the complete picture. We can trust him completely to lead us in the right direction. We wont need to hedge our bets with human props for our sense of security. Conversation with Christ: Lord Jesus, thank you for helping me to realize that your grace is more important than anything I could ever have in this world. Break the hold of mammon in my life so that I might serve you with greater purity of intention. Resolution: I will make that sacrificial donation to charity that I have been putting off.
|