Cristian Gutierrez, LC
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Christ, our King.
Thy Kingdom come!
Preparatory prayer (to put me in the presence of God)
Lord, I thank you for all the gifts and benefits that you grant me. Thank you for my life, my health, my body, my family, my friends. Thank you for having given me faith, hope and charity so that, through them, I may find you in every moment of my life. Help me to be faithful to you always. May I never leave you alone. Inflame my heart with zeal for the extension of your Kingdom and the salvation of souls.
Gospel of the day (to guide your meditation)
From the Holy Gospel according to Luke 11:42-46
At that time, Jesus said: “Woe to you Pharisees, for you pay tithes even on mint and rue and all vegetables, but you forget justice and the love of God. Woe to you Pharisees, for you love to occupy places of honor in the synagogues and to be bowed down to in the marketplaces! Woe to you, for you are like those unseen tombs over which people pass without noticing. Then a doctor of the law spoke up and said to him, ”Teacher, by speaking like this you insult us also.“ Then Jesus answered him, ”Woe to you also, doctors of the law, because you overwhelm people with unbearable burdens, but you do not touch them with the tip of your finger!“.
Word of the Lord.
Meditate on what God tells you in the Gospel
Tough words that you address today to the Pharisees. Harsh, but full of love and motivated by the desire that they allow themselves to be touched by God. For only in this way will all the works they do have meaning. Only works done out of love have meaning in my life.
But today I would like to focus on the sentence in which you say that sometimes I forget about the love of God. It may be that in my life as a Christian I am concerned only with fulfilling duties, performing acts of charity, praying, fasting, going to Mass and going to confession, but I forget that at the basis of all this is your love for me.
I find the distinction you make in this sentence interesting. You don't say that I forget the love of God, but the love of God. How difficult it is sometimes to let ourselves be loved by you! It seems so much easier to work at loving you and to live longing to grow in this love. To exercise all my actions to grow in my love for you, but forgetting that you love me much more than I can imagine. Today You call my attention to Your love that precedes me, You, my God, love me! Give me the grace to never forget that You loved me first!
And finally, I would like to ask you for the grace to act always with your face to you. The sin of the Pharisees is not that they did things wrong or that they did not do them. the problem is how they do them. They do them only to make themselves look good, to create a good image, to gain the respect of others. Help me to always act out of love for you and to seek to please you in all that I do.
«One of the most difficult things for all of us Christians to understand is the gratuitousness of salvation in Jesus Christ. We are used to hearing that Jesus is the Son of God, that he came for love, to save us and that he died for us. But we have heard it so many times that we are used to it. When we enter into God's mystery of this boundless love we are amazed and perhaps we prefer not to understand it. Doing what Jesus tells us is good and should be done but this is my response to salvation which is free, it comes from the free love of God».
(Cf Homily of H.H. Francis, October 15, 2015, at Santa Marta).
Dialogue with Christ
This is the most important part of your prayer, prepare yourself to talk with much love with the One who loves you.
Purpose
Propose a personal one. The one that involves the most love in response to the Beloved... or, if you believe that this is what God is asking of you, live what is suggested below.
Today during the day I will repeat several times this ejaculatory prayer: Thank you, Lord, for your love for me!
Farewell
We thank you, Lord, for all your benefits, you who live and reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Christ, our King!
Thy Kingdom come!
Most prudent Virgin, Mary, Mother of the Church.
Pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
