Dear Jesus,

                    I give you my heart. It is with
                love for You ever more, the Father and
                the Holy Spirit I live.

                    For what good does it do us to
                try to win the world and lose our
                soul.

                    God is just and merciful.
                    God is love.

  

Gospel today

John 1: 1-18

In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came into being,
not one thing came into being
   except through him.
What has come into being in him was life,
life that was the light of men;
and light shines in darkness,
and darkness could not overpower it.

A man came, sent by God.
His name was John.
He came as a witness,
to bear witness to the light,
so that everyone might believe
   through him.
He was not the light,
he was to bear witness to the light.

The Word was the real light
that gives light to everyone;
he was coming into the world.
He was in the world
that had come into being through him,
and the world did not recognise him.
He came to his own
and his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believed in his name
who were born not from human stock
or human desire
or human will
but from God himself.
The Word became flesh,
he lived among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory that he has from the Father
   as only Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.

John witnesses to him. He proclaims:
‘This is the one of whom I said:
He who comes after me
has passed ahead of me
because he existed before me.’

Indeed, from his fullness
    we have, all of us, received—
one gift replacing another,
for the Law was given through Moses,
grace and truth have come
   through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God;
it is the only Son,
   who is close to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.

        

                    The most important lesson we can
                teach is that God is our goal and to seek
                truth in Him.

                    We have only so many years to arrive
                at the truth deeper and deeper in us here on earth.
                God gives us a sharing in His life
                in Baptism and the more we go to the
                Eucharist the more we are saturated
                with His life, His grace. The more we
                live in Him and He lives in us the
                Spirit of truth is in us.

                    Man was created by God and
                God intends man to walk hand-in-hand
                in love — doing all things for His honor
                and glory.

                    A person that has their lives focused
                on the world leaving Jesus out will
                have a life of endless searching —
                thirsting after what he was created for.
                Every day is a treasure to advance more
                in the spiritual life. To those whose
                focus and end is themselves and this
                world — they live a life like a blind-man
                in trial and error looking for truth and
                purpose.

                    The hungry heart inside created for
                God cries out and what they feed it is
                like candy and riches to a starving, malnutrition
                person.

                    The more one goes down the streets
                of darkness, the more blind they become
                their heart becomes more worldly
                and hardened without knowing
                God's infinite bountiful love.

                    I love the scriptures — as God uses
                the desert, the desert surrounded where
                he was and yet Jesus came the fountain
                of God's grace to bring us to the great
                gift of the priest, and the Church and
                the world.

        

 

Excerpt from Response in Christ by Fr. Edward J. Carter, S.J.

^FOUR The Sacraments
and the Mass

       1) Interior Oblation

The first duty of man is to surrender himself to God out of love. This fact flows from the truth that God is the Creator and man is His creature. Man, if he is ideally to fulfill his creaturely role must respond as perfectly as possible to the loving demands of His Creator. God asks that man give himself completely to Himself. This is only proper since everything that man has, whether of the natural or supernatural order, has been given to him by God. Man, in turn, perfects himself by developing these various gifts according to God's will or, in other words, by giving himself completely to God. Man's gift of self to God is centered in loving conformity to the divine will. Consequently, one can understand why the will with its decision-making capacity is the crucial faculty in man, a point emphasized by contemporary thought.

     Man directs himself to God by the virtue of religion. This is not to say that this particular virtue ranks above the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. These are the most excellent, since they unite man directly to God. We are merely stating that the virtue of religion directs all man's actions to the honor of God.⁶

     This virtue consists especially in acts of adoration, thanksgiving, petition and reparation. These interior acts can manifest themselves in many ways, but they are especially expressed through sacrifice. Here, then, we have the first constituent element of sacrifice: man's interior offering of himself to God. This giving takes place chiefly in man's will, under the guidance of the virtue of religion. This first element of sacrifice is of prime importance, for it deals with interior dispositions. This importance can be recognized concretely in the history of religion. For example, the Jewish people were convinced that the principal value of sacrifice was centered in the dispositions of the people.⁷

6.  St. Thomas Aquinas, S.T., II-II, q. 81, a. 4, ad 1.
7.  Cf. S. Lyonnet, "La Sotériologie Paulinienne" in Robert and Feuillet, Introduction à la Bible, Vol. II (Tournai, Belgium: Desclée, 1959), p. 874.

   

                    Now see a desert and a man crawling
                from lack of water and then see the
                Vatican as the center of the Catholic
                Church as a fountain — pouring grace
                through the celebration of the Mass and
                the sacraments on the people.

                When I was in the Vatican there was
                a fountain —

    

    

                Everything was so majestic
 

     

                    We come into this life as little children
                and we begin learning right away, searching
                for the truth. Our days are numbered.

                    I had a friend once and he would
                dawdle — say he would be somewhere
                and hours later show up and we would
                say — we waited and expected you

                He had a free will —
                He did other things knowing we waited,
                    but he was in control —

                When God puts us here and He takes us
                    in death we have so many
                    years to live to prepare us
                    for heaven —

                    He has control of when we come — we don't
                    control our natural death — even
                    though we have a free will —

                We have so many years, days, minutes —
                    I know my joy is in His will —
                    in serving Him —
                    in being fed spiritually on His
                        Body and Blood

                God is the teacher —
                We are the students —
                If we think we can skip class —
                    we are wrong —

                He continues to teach us —
                    bids us to follow His will —
                    Adam and Eve were rebellious
                        they wanted their will
                    Mary followed the will
                        of the Father
                    Jesus is God

                The students that really want to learn
                    sit at the feet of the teacher —
                    They are grateful for the wisdom
                        a teacher gives

                It is truth we seek.

                Mary never was jealous
                                        envious
                                        lustful
                                        greedy
                                        prideful
                                        slothful

                Mary lived to serve God.
                Mary lived as if at the feet of God.
                Mary stood beneath the cross.

      

      

                God teaches us and the blind is
                    raised as He imparts to us
                    tremendous wisdom and knowledge

                We are blinded from the garden.