Am I being transformed in You, Lord? How will I know?
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
—1 Corinthians 13:3 (THE MESSAGE)
St. Catherine of Siena heard Christ say to her: “I wish for no other thing than love. For in the love of Me is fulfilled and completed the love of one’s neighbor, and the law is observed. For only those who are bound to Me with this love can be of use in their state of life.”
Father, show me a new way to love one of my friends, today.
Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’”
—Joshua 14:6–9 (NIV)
“Catching and crackling with the fire of godly enthusiasm is a lifelong process. It starts with God throwing a divine spark on the tinder of the heart…. It might be an attraction or religious sentiment that grips the heart. It might be an event or situation that stirs your devotion. It could even be a word spoken by a friend, colleague, or relative which gets underneath the skin and stings your conscience.” —Fr. Albert Haase, OFM
What is keeping me from wholeheartedly following You?
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
—John 14:26 (ESV)
“One day one of my teachers at the Abbey school asked me what I did on my days off when I was alone. I replied that I would go behind my bed into an empty space that was there and that was easy for me to shut off with the curtain, and there, ‘I would think.’ ‘But what do you think about?’ she said. ‘I think about God, about life … about ETERNITY, I just think!’ The good nun laughed a lot at me. Later she liked to remind me of the time when I used to think, and asked me if I was still thinking. I understand now that I was praying at length without knowing it, and that already God was teaching me in secret.” —St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Please teach me in secret today, Lord.
[I]n all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
—Proverbs 3:6 (NIV)
“When we desire anyone’s affection we always seek it because of some interest, profit, or pleasure of our own. Those who are perfect, though, have trampled all these things beneath their feet. They have so despised this world’s pleasures, delights, and blessings that they could not love anything outside God or unless it has to do with God. What can they gain, then, from being loved themselves?” —St. Teresa of Avila
I want only You.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
—Galatians 2:20a (NIV)
“Antony said, ‘Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their prayer chambers or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of their inner peace. So, like a fish going toward the sea, we must hurry to reach our prayer chamber. If we delay outside, we will lose our interior watchfulness.’” —The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
I am a fish today, God, wanting to spend time in Your cool, dark waters.
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
—Luke 1:38 (NAB)
“If, as St. Augustine thought, prayer is our saying things together with Christ and His saying them with us, it follows that there can be no greater teacher of prayer, after Christ Himself, than His mother, Mary. ‘After Christ’ in hierarchical order, not in the temporal, because in the order of time it was obviously Mary who taught little Jesus ‘his prayers,’ as all believing mothers do with their children as soon as they can pronounce the words, even badly. We should imagine the Virgin saying a prayer with her son, and He then saying it with her. [I]n His supreme hour at Gethsemane Jesus … reproduce[d] Mary’s original ‘Fiat.’ … [I]n human terms and in the order of time, the Son of God learned other prayers too, and His style of prayer with its attitudes and gestures, from His mother.” —Timothy Verdon
Teach me, Mother of God, to pray.