Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for setting us
free. We realize that it is a freedom
that came at a high cost. Thank you for
being willing to go there. Thank you for
loving us enough to give your life in order to secure our freedom. Amen.
Scripture: Galatians 5:1
Journal: What does it look like to stand firm in the freedom
Christ has secured for you? How will you
do that today? What way(s) are you most
likely to submit once again to the yoke of slavery today? How will you resist that urge? Write Jesus a letter thanking him for your
freedom.
Reflection:
We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks
us in every situation, and seeks our good.
His inscrutable love seeks our awakening. True, since this awakening implies a kind of
death to our exterior self, we will dread His coming in proportion as we are
identified with this exterior self and attached to it. But when we understand the dialectic of life
and death we will learn to take the risks implied by faith, to make the choices
that deliver us from our routine self and open to us the door of a new being, a
new reality.
The mind that is the prisoner of
conventional ideas, and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot
accept the seeds of an unfamiliar truth and a supernatural desire. For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if
I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am
filled with another and an opposite desire?
God cannot plant His liberty in me because I am a prisoner and I do not
even desire to be free. I love my
captivity and I imprison myself in the desire for the things that I hate, and I
have hardened my heart against true love.
I must learn therefore to let go of the familiar and the usual and
consent to what is new and unknown to me.
I must learn to “leave myself” in order to find myself by yielding to
the love of God. (Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton)
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us how much
we are loved. Help us to actually
believe that it’s true and to live out of the freedom of that love. Amen.
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