Reflection for July 23, 2023

Thank you, Sr. Carrie, for helping us remember to allow God to speak to us and then live that love and compassion. Sending love, light and healing to you and your Sisters.

Thank you, Carolyn, for the beautiful reflection that invites us to HEAR and to be kind and merciful. It warms my heart to read these words. Blessings always!

Thank you for reminding us allow God's mystery to unfold in our time of prayer and contemplation. Good questions for reflection in our day to day living.

"[How] are we hearing the invitation of a God ...?"

This is a most important and essential question to ponder. Thank you Sr. Carolyn for bringing it up.

I wonder what our Times would look like if both our VISION and our HEARING of the full gospel message was such that, in coming to know the MERCY and COMPASSIONATE KINDNESS of God, ourselves, we, too, would then create a CULTURE of LOVING KINDNESS according to the ways of God?

Church leaders have long called us to "create a culture of life," beginning with Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, "The Gospel of Life." Yet, 'life' without loving kindness for all, and without truth, or without a compassionate sense of justice that both corrects AND heals, [salves / saves] is not life at all, but is misery.

This is what the psalmist tells us, too, when it is declared: "Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will praise you." [ Ps. 63:3]

And what we hear in our first reading from Wisdom this weekend:

"Those who are just must be kind;

and you gave your children good reason and ground for hope

that you would permit repentance for their sins." [Wisdom 12:19]

God is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and full of plenteous redemption [Psalm 145:8], offering numerous moments of conversion to turn toward the Ways of God's Heart, becoming kind and just to all.

Yet without this kind of repentance, we will not realize this to be so, causing 'life' to become overly- burdensome and miserable for those we do not yet recognize as our 'own beloved's,' as God's own Beloved.

Let us all pray to live and love with and through God's Own Heart.

Thank you Sister for your excellent comments regarding this week's readings. I love the Three (3) R's.: Read, Reflect, and Respond. Beautiful approach to any Prayer or thought process. Peace be with you.