ordinary, friday

Friday, August 1

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer: Our Father, help us to see you today in all that we come into contact with, knowing that you use ordinary things to give us an extraordinary sense of your presence in our lives.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen. 

Scripture Reading for the Day: Isaiah 53:1-6

Reading for Reflection:    

 

     “Jesus has so diligently searched for the lowest place that it would be very difficult for anyone to tear it from him.”

     Nazareth was the lowest place:  the place of the poor, the unknown, of those who didn’t count, of the mass of workers, of people subjected to work’s grim demands just for a scrap of bread.

     But there is more.  Jesus is the “Holy One of God.”  But the Holy One of God realized his sanctity not in an extraordinary life, but one impregnated with ordinary things:  work, family and social life, obscure human activities, simple things shared by all people.

     The perfection of God is cast in a material which people almost despise, which they don’t consider worth searching for because of its simplicity, its lack of interest, because it is common to all of us. (Letters from the Desert by Carlo Carreto)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

            
Closing Prayer: I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of your wonders.  I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.  Amen. (Psalm 9:1-2)