Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. (Psalm 119)
Matthew 9:18-26 Embedded within the short story of Jesus raising the synagogue leader’s daughter from death, is the short vignette of our Lord healing a woman from her seven year affliction with hemorrhaging. One healing the Lord performed was visible, the other invisible. Certainly these days we can identify with both situations - so many of us like the father in this passage are experiencing untimely deaths, or like the woman have inner hurts and maladies that are invisibly ‘bleeding’. We too need both visible and invisible, both physical and internal healing, in body and soul. More specifically we need the attention and the healing touch of the Great Physician. In his healing work, Jesus showed us how God longs to be invited into our present reality to heal and restore that which is bleeding, and broken, or even dead. How do we bring God’s great mercy and healing grace into whatever illness or wounds we are experiencing? Simply by asking! Just as the synagogue leader asked Jesus for the healing of his daughter, and the woman pulled on Jesus’ cloak for the healing of her hemorrhaging, you and I go and ask the Holy Spirit of Jesus for healing help through prayer. In my own brokenness and illness will I suffer in silence or go to Jesus with footsteps of prayer to ask for His help? When I notice the maladies and morbidities of those I love will I give up, or journey to Jesus to ask him to come and call us back to life? Christ Jesus, heal me, heal my loved ones, in body and soul as only you can do. Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his presence continually. (Psalm 105:4 ) Prayer is not a matter of getting what we want the most. Prayer is a matter of giving ourselves to God and learning His laws, so that He can do through us what He wants the most. Agnes Sandford See also : Where is God when It Hurts? A book by Philip Yancey https://www.amazon.ca/Where-When-Hurts-Philip-Yancey-ebook/dp/B000SEONA6 Soli ad gloriam Gospel Mystery of the Day on FaceBook & www.gospelmysteryoftheday.ca
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Romans 5:5-11 At times love is a shabby word, used to describe our relationship to anything from chocolates to cherubs, from photos to philosophies. But the love of Jesus, caritas, sometimes translated as unconditional love, is the stuff that makes the difference between life and Life, laughter and Joy, and light and LIGHT. In any given circumstance when I ask to have the love of Jesus at work in my own spirit it changes things. The love of Christ in the passive voice, is liveliness when I am exhausted, health when I fall ill, and joy when waves of sorrow threaten to engulf me. But how do I actively love like Jesus? What is my response to impoverished brothers and sisters, and those in need around me – how would Jesus love them? When someone sins against me in my household, place or work, or community – do I love like Jesus when he encountered similar antagonism? When things are given to me, or taken away – will I actively love like Jesus when all was taken from him in his passion and crucifixion? Will I actively love God, and all others like Jesus did, when he received his life back in the Resurrection? Christ Jesus, heart of my heart, help me love like you. With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments. (Psalm 119) Every work of love done with a full heart brings people closer to God. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta See Mother Teresa’s poem, “Do It Anyway” : https://www.prayerfoundation.org/mother_teresa_do_it_anyway.html Soli ad gloriam dei Gospel Mystery of the Day on FaceBook & www.gospelmysteryoftheday.ca Galatians 5:1-18 & Acts 12:1-11 It is interesting that Peter was saved “from all that the people were expecting,”; perhaps those people included Peter himself! Saint Peter well knew the pain and darkness of imprisonment at the hands of godlessness. Chained more than once between guards, this time Peter had four squads of soldiers guarding him and freedom seemed far from possible. Yet ‘suddenly an Angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in Peter’s appointed cell of darkness… and the chains fell off his wrists … as Peter got up quickly,” at the Angel’s command, to be led out of prision. Within a few minutes he found himself a free man, knocking at the door of friends. This is the freedom Jesus can and does provide to not only a select few, but to each one of us who is imprisoned in darkness of any kind, be it mental, emotional, spiritual or physical. The breath of any faithful prayer, “Jesus! Help me!” has the immediate and lasting effect of changing darkness to light, despair to hope and even hatred to trusting love. With the Holy Spirit’s help and presence in our lives, God constantly and consistently frees us from the Principalities and Powers of darkness and evil, to Live, to Love - and even to Laugh – again. Do I realize all the freedom I can have because of Jesus’ work of salvation – freedom from fears, from resentments, from sin, both mine and others’, and from toxic circumstances of all kinds? After realizing the true freedom Jesus brokered for us on the cross, will I be able to laugh again, along with Peter and his astonished friends, when I find myself unchained and walking freely in the Light of God’s mercy? Christ Jesus, teach me the freedom you have won for us. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:4) The Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed… The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. St. Paul’s letter to Timothy, 4:17& 18. Soli ad gloriam Gospel Mystery of the Day on FaceBook & www.gospelmysteryoftheday.ca |
AuthorBeverly Illauq lives in Kemptville, Ontario, where she greets each morning by seeking the Gospel Mystery of the Day - the Word of the Lord for direct and practical application to the specific challenges & joys of the day. Archives
March 2024
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