Luke 9: 1-6 Take Nothing with You
Take nothing with you. This is an invitation by our Lord to begin detaching ourselves from the things that hold us down, and begin attaching ourselves to the things that build us up. You have no need of money, food, stick or sack – commodity or security. The Lord says, I am your only need.
I know. I know what I am saying. I know that it is much easier to say it than to live it. I know that it sounds utterly ridiculous, naïve - you name it, radical and extremist. “Foxes have dens and birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:58).
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?...So do not worry. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Mt 6:25-33)
Each day has enough trouble of its own. Amen! Each day is a battle that must be fought and can be won! Evil cannot enter the world unless I allow it to. I may be tempted all day long, but I do not have to succumb to the temptation. The devil is always seeking entry into God’s world – his creation, but he must pass through me. I will not allow myself to be used by him. I will not allow myself to bow down to him. I will heed the advice of Christ to "seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be handed onto you." I am to cloth myself in Christ, nourish myself with Christ, and carry my cross with Christ.
Isn’t it amazing how the only thing that people will ever remember us for is how we loved? That is, how we imitated God who is love? Everything works its way back to Him. He is truly the beginning and the end. He is my beginning and my end – goal, objective, purpose.
The Twelve had to learn the hard way. They had to literally abandon all for the One who is all. Is it any different for us? I don’t think so. I think the Lord wants us to love Him and our neighbor unconditionally. To do so still requires a radical approach, like St. Francis who stripped himself in public and was followed and loved by a multitude. Detachment from worldly goods can only be achieved if there is attachment on what is above! True love can only be given if true Love is received. Who I am is directly related to Who He is to me. The Twelve began to walk, to preach, to cure, to live life because they kneeled, listened and experienced a life that was lived to the full in Christ Jesus.
What will make me happy? Love more. Forgive more. Give More. This is the secret to life. This is the life of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Take nothing more and give nothing less.
Thank you Father!! your meditations are great, it is helping me to get closer to God and to free myself from envy, resentment, forgive more and love more.
ReplyDeleteGod is Great!! I pray for you Father.
Great meditation Father! Just what I needed to hear today!
ReplyDelete"True love can only be given if true love is received". I worked on this one all day. When I hear the phrase "true love", I think of this stupid movie and how they described it. They described it as "the souls recognition of its counter part in another". As a partial romantic but mainly an analytical, this makes perfect sense to me. But it is so much more! It is the love that is gifted from God...pure, beautiful & Holy. How we should all strive for God to give us this gift...for Him to trust us with this gift and the honor to be able to share it freely with others...because it is the love He has for each one of us.
“The devil is always seeking entry into God’s world – his creation, but he must pass through me. I will not allow myself to be used by him.”
ReplyDeleteAs I was meditating on this meditation, this phrase kept resonating and I kept coming back to it trying to figure out what God is trying to tell me.
I never thought of being a conduit for the devil into the world or being used by him in the way he has.
He is patient, conniving and insidious. He loves it when we are bad, and hates it when we turn toward the light. And he doesn’t give up when we do. NO!! He redoubles his efforts and waits. He watches us return to church, get involved in ministries, work on improving our spiritual life and when we think we are doing okay and we start to pat ourselves on the back for turning our life around; he slowly invades our little world unbeknownst to us.
Your pastor really starts to irritate you. His homilies are boring, without value and he isn’t ‘holy’ enough for you. So you start to wonder away, which leads you away from the ministries you were involved in and away form your friends and support group. He creates division in your relationships. When you sincerely sympathize with a friend, you take on their ‘cause’ and your friend’s enemies become yours. He sets up situations in the ministries you haven’t left and brings in division so you take your focus off the ministry’s goal & put your energy into those issues.
And in an effort to heal the inner wounds that you’ve carried your entire life, he hands you a microscope and you find faults and sins everywhere you look inside yourself to the point that you are completely self absorbed and scrupulous. It starts to drive you crazy and takes away the peace you enjoyed not so long ago.
When those around you start to notice, you blow it off with spiritual pride because they aren’t where you are spiritually. They don’t understand. Your confession list gets longer because you find sins in everything you do and say. You start to categorize them so you can put likes ones together when you confess.
Then you open your eyes and wonder when you crossed the line. You know how you got from left to center. But when did you go from center to the far right, which is just as unhealthy as the left, where you started.
Surely I’m not completely alone. Well except for that categorizing sins part. That is just something to do while standing in line for confession.