MEDITATIO

Christ said to the Scholars of the Law: “Woe to you, you have taken away the key to knowledge!”. What is the key to knowledge if not the grace of the Holy Spirit given by faith, which by its illumination produces complete knowledge and opens our closed and covered spirits? (…) And I say in addition: the door is the Son. “I am the door,” he says. The key to the door is the Holy Spirit: “Receive the holy Spirit,” he says, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” The house is the Father: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” So pay close attention to the spiritual meaning of these words. (…) If the door does not open no one can enter the Father’s house, as Christ says: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Now, since the Holy Spirit first opens our minds and teaches us everything concerning the Father and the Son, it is also he who said: “When the Spirit of truth comes, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me, and lead you into all truth.” You see how through the Spirit, or rather in the Spirit, the Father and the Son allow themselves to be known inseparably. (…) Indeed, if we call the Holy Spirit the key, it is because it is first of all through him and in him that we have our minds cleansed and, made pure, we are enlightened with the light of knowledge, and baptized from on high, regenerated and made children of God, as Saint Paul says: “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings,” and again: “God sent his Spirit into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba! Father!’ “Thus, it is he who shows us the door, the door that is light, and the door teaches us that he who dwells in the house is also inaccessible light. (Biblical references: Lk 11,52; Jn 10,7.9; 20,22-23; 14,2; 10,3; 14,6; 15,26; 6,13; Rm 8,26; Gal 4,6)
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

“Jesus was praying alone” (Lk 9:18). Prayer has its source in silence and interior peace, for it is there that God’s glory manifests itself (cf. Lk 9:29). Because when, closing our eyes and ears, we find ourselves within in God’s presence; when, freed from the world’s busyness, we are present within ourselves: then will we clearly see the Kingdom of God in our souls. For the Kingdom of Heaven, or – if one prefers it – the Kingdom of God is within us. Jesus, our Lord, has said so (Lk 17:21). However, both believers and our Lord pray in a different way. Servants draw near in prayer to their Master with fear mixed with desire and, for them, prayer becomes a journey to God and towards union with him, feeding and strengthening them with his own substance. But how does Christ pray – he whose holy soul is united to the Word of God ? How could our Lord stand in an attitude of petition ? If he does so, is it not because, having put on our nature, he desires to teach us and show us the way that, through prayer, enables us to rise towards God ? Isn’t it that he wants to teach us how praying conceals the glory of God within it ?
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

The soul that it enfolded by Divine love can’t remain inactive; though it may, like Mary Magdalene, sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to those words of his, so full of fire, so full of comfort; not appearing to contribute anything, but really contributing so much! More than Martha, as she hurries distractedly to and fro, and wishes her sister would do the same. Not that our Lord has any fault to find with Martha’s exertions; his own Mother, Mother of God though she was, put up with humble work of that kind all her life; didn’t she get the meals ready for the Holy Family ? Martha is a devoted hostess, but she won’t keep calm, that’s the trouble. All the Saints have seen the importance of Mary’s attitude, and perhaps particularly the ones who have done most to fill the world with the light of Gospel teaching. Surely those great friends of God, people like St Paul and St Augustine and St John of the Cross and St Thomas and St Francis and St Dominic, all went to prayer to find the secret of their wisdom; a Divine wisdom which has left the greatest minds lost in admiration. “Give me a lever and a fulcrum,” said the man of science, “and I’ll shift the world.” Archimedes wasn’t talking to God, so his request wasn’t granted; and in any case he was only thinking of the material world. But the Saints really have enjoyed the privilege he asked for; the fulcrum God told them to use was himself, nothing less than himself, and the lever was prayer. Only it must be the kind of prayer that sets the heart all on fire with love; that’s how the Saints shift the world in our own day, and that’s how they’ll do it to the end of time.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team