FRIENDS and SERVANTS of the WORD
23 NOVEMBER 2024
33nd Saturday Ordinary Time
St. Clement, Pope & Martyr
WORD of the DAY
Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man. (Luke 21: 34-36)
How shall I live this Word?
Today’s Gospel invites us to be attentive to our relationship with God. It is an invitation to put ourselves in prayer, that is, to cultivate our friendship with God to prepare us for the personal encounter with Him. This relationship springs from the care of our inner life, which is revealed through small/big gestures: in kindness towards others, in the joy of living, in the maturation of our feelings, in protecting life and the environment, in caring for the poor and vulnerable, and above all, in loving and serving so that the Kingdom of God may come here and now.
Your help, O Lord our God, make us always happy in your service, because only in dedication to You, source of all good, can we have full and lasting happiness.
The voice of Pope Francis Audience 28 September 2022
Prayer is an indispensable aid to spiritual discernment, especially when it involves the affections, allowing us to address God with simplicity and familiarity, as we speak to a friend. It is to know how to go beyond thoughts, to enter into intimacy with the Lord, with an affectionate spontaneity. The secret of the life of the saints is familiarity and confidence with God, which grows in them and makes it easier and easier to recognize what is pleasing to Him. True prayer is familiarity and confidence with God. It is not reciting prayers like a parrot, blah blah blah, no. The real prayer is this spontaneity and affection with the Lord. This familiarity overcomes the fear or doubt that His will is not for our good, a temptation that sometimes crosses our thoughts and makes the heart uneasy and uncertain or bitter, as well.
E-mail: srmterzo@gmail.com Website: www.sanbiagio.org info@sanbiagio.org Blog: livingscripture.wordpress.com -Comment: Sr. Cleonice Lourenco, FMA
