Daily Meditation - Friday 11April 2008 Easter Season - THE DAILY JOURNEY OF FOLLOWING CHRIST

[BarbaraTherese]

Readings
usccb.org/nab/041108.shtml

Meditation
wau.org/meditations/meditations.asp?month=4&day=11&year=2008&x=18&y=5

Acts 9:1-20

Paul’s conversion on the Damascus road has all the elements of a dramatic film. A villainous lead character is suddenly stopped in his tracks by a light from the sky. A voice comes from heaven, and this villain undergoes an amazing transformation and embarks on a whole new adventure.

What about your own conversion story? More than likely, it wasn’t so dramatic. Perhaps a friend spoke to you, or maybe you started reading the Scriptures, and over time, God got through to you.*** Most of us probably wouldn’t pay to go see our story at the movies! ***

• But how we came to the Lord is not really important. What matters is that we have come to him.
• He loves each one of us passionately.
• He wants all of us to be saved and come to know the truth about him (1 Timothy 2:4).
• To him, every conversion story is valid and powerful. It’s part of his awesome design for creation—a plan that he worked out before we were even born (Jeremiah 1:5).

Just as he had a perfect plan for Paul’s life, he has one for each of us as well.

Remember, too, that God’s plan doesn’t begin and end with a dramatic conversion. What if Paul hadn’t continued seeking the Lord after his experience on the Damascus road? Most likely he would have returned to his old ways! After all, it took him ten years before he was ready to go on his first missionary journey,*** and even then he was still striving for holiness.***

• He knew he had to walk with Jesus day after day if he was going to become the person God wanted him to be.
• And so do we.
• As the refrain to a popular worship song reminds us, “Step by step you lead me.”
• Whatever our initial conversion was like, it’s still going on.
• Today, try to be closer to Jesus than you were yesterday.
• If you’ve fallen down, rededicate your life to him right now. You don’t have to look back.
• As Paul did, you just have to keep pursuing your goal: “the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). There’s nothing to fear—he will be with you all the way!

“Jesus, I give you my life again today.
Fill me with your grace, so that I can follow you faithfully.
Help me, Lord, to get up when I stumble.”

 

[BarbaraTherese]

There is an ever present REALITY in life that our human senses cannot access, only Faith can access this Reality.

Closer to me than I am to myself, closer to all I can feel, see, smell and hear around me, is the Reality of God and His Holy Spirit in my life leading me to Unity with Jesus, with The Blessed Trinity. Only Faith can see and experience this. One of the great gifts to us of the life of St. Therese of Lisieux is that my life may be very ordinary, even mundane…much as hers was in an unknown then Carmelite Convent in France…yet if I open the eyes of my Faith and my trust, my life with all its ordinariness even mundaneness has all that it necessary, lacking nothing, to make a saint of me. St. Therese insighted this about her very ordinary Carmelite life and living (at least to all the nuns who lived with her it was very ordinary in every way)…St. Therese lived the very ordinary in an extra ordinary way and became a great saint, mystic and Doctor of The Church. The stuff of my own life and yours has exactly the same potential, because if I open the eyes of my Faith and my trust…my life is as it is because God Wills it so…and I can embrace it as God’s Will for my life leading me to Unity. My very ordinary life can become the greatest adventure I could ever hope for.

Blessings this Easter…Barb

 

[BarbaraTherese]

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
He said, “Who are you, sir?”
The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

The above words from todays First Reading struck me…In persecuting The Church, it is a persecuting of Christ and this underscores the great doctrine of The Church as The Mystical Body of Christ on earth.
The other thing that struck me from todays First Reading is that the two great figures of the early Church, Peter and Paul, are people who have sinned. It is not their sin that features so much, as rather the sincerity of their repentance which is revealed in the life they went on to lead…and Paul for one does share with us that that conversion experience of his on the road to Damascas was to lead on to a life of struggle against his lower or sinful self and that some of these struggles he lost “why is it I find myself doing those things I have made up my mind not to do?”…
I find this greatly encouraging in my own daily struggles. I am moved again to great gratitude for the Sacrament of Penance in which Christ leaves with us the reality of His Merciful Self. He stays with us in The Sacrament of Penance as our God longing to draw us to Himself in Compassion and Mercy, realizing that we are indeed sinners…His loved sinners. It is not so much my sinful self that has the power to condemn me, rather my failure to “fight the good fight”…my failure to enter into the struggle and/or my discouragement and despair in the face of daily struggle, which is really a denial of The Merciful Christ in Confession.

Blessings…Barb

 

[bwhite06517]

Obeying God!!!

Has God ever directly spoken to you?

There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is there praying, and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, that he may regain his sight.”
But Ananias replied, “Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man, what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to imprison all who call upon your name.”

Can you imagine Ananias saying “No, not me God!!! This guy’s a killer - no way - send somebody else God!!!”.

So, Ananias goes to pray for Saul. How does he even knock on the door? Saul traveled with a group from Jerusalem - were there others with him at the house of Judas that were as anti-Christian as this Saul was? Did Ananias’ knees knock as loud as his hand on the door? Was he ready go be a martyr for Jesus’ sake? Was he ready to be imprisoned?

Ananias obeyed God. We don’t hear of him again in scriptures (there was another Ananias (with wife Sapphira in Acts 5) - but that’s a different story). He did as he was directed by God.

How do we hear God’s calling on us? How do we obey? Do we ‘feed the hungry’, ‘cloth the naked’, ‘give a drink of water to the thirsty’? Do we show God’s love to others? Do we obey God in all that we think, say and do?