Grace filled environment

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today link the grace of God to the charism that we develop to give glory to God.

Sharing gifts

The First Letter of Peter indicates the origin of our holiness.

* [1:14–16] The ignorance here referred to (1 Pt 1:14) was their former lack of knowledge of God, leading inevitably to godless conduct. Holiness (1 Pt 1:15–16), on the contrary, is the result of their call to the knowledge and love of God.

In the Gospel from Mark, Jesus refocuses the disciples on the relationships that open to them as His disciples.

Steve Scholer reflects If we are to call ourselves Christians, then we must act like ones.

As we do our daily Exam of Conscience, we can think deeply about our relationship with God and the steps we can take to improve it. Likewise, we can think deeply about our relationships with our family, co-workers and neighbors and again, how our positive interactions with them are serving God.

Don Schwager quotes Clement of Alexandria, 150-215 A.D., on the spiritual sense of leaving the family.

"Do not let this passage trouble you. Put it side by side with the still harder saying Jesus delivered in another place in the words, 'Whoever hates not father, and mother, and children, and his own life besides, cannot be my disciple' (Luke 14:26). Note that the God of peace, who exhorts us to love our enemies, does not arbitrarily require us literally to hate or abandon those dearest to us. But if we are to love our enemies, it must be in accordance with right reason that, by analogy we should also love our nearest relatives... But insofar as one's father, or son, or brother, becomes for you a hindrance to faith or an impediment to godly life, one should then not collude with that temptation. Attend to the spiritual, rather than the fleshly, meaning of the command." (excerpt from SALVATION OF THE RICH MAN 22.13)

The Word Among Us Meditation on 1 Peter 1:10-16 considers if he who called us is holy, we must be holy ourselves in every aspect of our conduct.

Holiness is not an impossible task, a distant vision that lies far beyond our reach. No, it’s a gift freely given to us by a gracious and merciful God. In fact, holiness is a Person, the Spirit of a committed Redeemer and Friend who has overcome all sin by his cross. By the gift of Baptism, that holiness, that Person, now dwells in you. Rather than an occasion for anxiety or fear, the call to holiness is a call to rejoice—and a call to embrace the One who can make you holy as he is holy.

Friar Jude Winkler discusses the Plan of God in the text from the First Letter of Peter. The Gospel of Wealth is Not the theme of Jesus message in Mark today. Francis of Assisi is an example of someone finding the riches in poverty.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, suggests that much of the proper work of the church and spirituality should be discerning and empowering people’s actual gifts.

Archimedes (c. 287—c. 212 BC), a Greek philosopher and mathematician, inspired the familiar aphorism, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.” [2] Our fixed point—the place upon which we stand as our True Self—is steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world, to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for going into what Jesus calls “our private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, in order for this not to become escapism, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. So the fulcrum, the balancing point for our lever, must be in the real world.

Finding our True Self is a theme of contemplation from Thomas Merton who invites us to action for others as we live our charism.

References

(n.d.). 1 Peter, chapter 1 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/1peter/1

(n.d.). Mark, chapter 10 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/mark/10:28

(n.d.). Creighton U Daily Reflections .... Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/

(n.d.). 8th Week in Ordinary Time - Mass Readings and Catholic Daily .... Retrieved May 29, 2018, from https://wau.org/meditations/

(n.d.). Daily Meditations Archives - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/