Daily Thoughts: I have always
liked the story that we find in today’s Gospel (Mark 12: 28-34). I especially
like the end when Jesus looks at the scribe and says, “You are not far from the
Kingdom of God.” It is perhaps the only moment in the Gospels when Jesus and
the scribes are on the same page. There is a mutual understanding, a mutual
respect at this moment in the struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders
of his time. It is a nice thing to see. Would that this kind of understand and
respect would happen between leaders of all kinds during our time.
The respect and understanding centers
around the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor and we
might say there is a third, love of self, because Jesus says we are to love our
neighbor as ourselves. As Jesus teaches and the scribe comes to understand,
these are the two or three great commandments and everything else flows from
them, which might explain why we find ourselves in the struggles that we are in
today.
If we just look around at our world, our
culture, our society, our church the problems that we find relate to the way we
live out or perhaps better said, don’t live out these commandments. Our
struggles can be directly related to how we don’t value God and perhaps more
importantly how we don’t value others or ourselves. We might even say that our
struggles as a culture, society, church and a world can be traced to the lack
of love that we have for ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves how can we love
others, how can we love God?
Love is not just wanting the best for
ourselves, others and God. Love is a respect, a reverence for life, for who we
are as individuals, as a culture, as a society, as a church, as a world. Love
is finding the good in ourselves, others and God. Love is seeing God in others
and in ourselves. Love is seeing, acknowledging, and accepting the differences
in ourselves and others but most importantly still being able to find God.
Our challenge today and every day is to
put into practice these three great commandments. Our challenge is to wake up
each day in love with God, our neighbor and ourselves!
Have a great day everyone!
Daily Prayer: Loving God,
strengthen us with the power to love through your Spirit in our inner most
being. Fill our hearts with your presence and please do not leave us to face
the struggles of life alone. Help us to grasp how wide and long and high and
deep your love is for us. And, above all, grace us with the understanding that
your love surpasses all knowledge and give us the courage to always share it
with others. Amen!
A Runner’s Thoughts: As we prepare
to run today and every day let us imagine that in addition to stretching our
muscles we are also stretching our spirit and giving it the flexibility it
needs to engage God. Each stretch is a prayer, a conversation with God.
Daily Blessing: Thursday
greetings and blessings to everyone! I hope your day has started off well and
that your week is going smoothly. If not be assured that you are in my prayers
with the hope that things will get better!
I celebrated National Running Day
yesterday with a 6.2 mile run it was also my tenth day of running. I am
participating in the Summer Runner’s World Streak Run which means I have to run
at least 1 mile every day between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, 41 days.
So yesterday was the 10th day in a row. The short I have run has
been 4.2 mile and the longest has been 6.5 miles. So 10 days and down and only
31 more to go! It was a gorgeous day for a run yesterday and there seemed to be
more people out running than usual. If you are a runner I hope you had a chance
to celebrate yesterday with a run.
Well friends, have a great day. May
whatever this day brings to your life be life giving. May whoever you meet
bring a positive spirit to your day. May God’s love be with you and all those
you love today and always! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul
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