sent, monday

Monday, May 18

Opening Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

     Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.  Flood our souls with your Spirit and life.  Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.  Shine through us and so be in us that every soul we come I contact with may feel your presence in our soul.  Let them look up and see no longer us but only You.  Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be light to others.  The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.  None of it will be ours.  It will be you shining on others through us.  Let us thus praise you in the way you love best by shining on those around us.  Amen.  (The Daily Prayer of Mother Teresa)

Scripture: John 20:19-23

Journal: What does it mean to be sent by God?  What does the phrase “as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” do within you?  What does it mean for you today?

Reflection:

 

     God wants not only to be God for us, but also to be God with us.  That happens in Jesus, the Emmanuel who walks with us, talks with us, and dies with us.  In sending Jesus to us, God wants to convince us of the unshakable fidelity of the divine love.  Still there is more.  When Jesus leaves he says to us, "I will not leave you alone, but will send you the Holy Spirit."  The Spirit of Jesus is God within us.  Here the fullness of God's faithfulness is revealed.  Through Jesus, God gives us the divine Spirit so that we can live a God-like life.  The Spirit is the breath of God.  It is the intimacy between Jesus and his Father.  It is the divine communion.  It is God's love active within us.

     This divine faithfulness is the core of our witness.  By our words, but most of all by our lives, we are to reveal God's faithfulness to the world.  (Here and Now by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

Prayers

Closing Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

     Help me to realize the many voices of hunger, the many sounds of thirst, the many cries of loneliness, the many callings of sickness and nakedness and imprisonment.  Help me to hear in all of them something of You calling to me to become more than I am.  More understanding.  More compassionate.  More involved.  More like You. (Reflections on the Word by Ken Gire)