Thursday, February 16 : Saint Vincent de Paul

“Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and everything you need will be added to you”… It is said, then, that we should seek the Kingdom of God. “That we should seek”: it’s a simple word but it seems to me to be saying a great deal. It means… unceasing work for God’s Kingdom, not remaining in an indolent, motionless state but paying attention to one’s interior state so as to govern it well, not playing around at the exterior level… Seek God within yourself since Saint Augustine confesses that, so long as he sought him outside himself, he failed to find him. Seek him in your soul as in a pleasant dwelling place because this is the basis on which those servants of his establish them who try to put all the virtues into practice . We have to have an interior life, we have to move towards this; lacking this we lack everything… Let us try to make ourselves interior… Let us seek God’s glory, seek the reign of Jesus Christ… “But, [you will tell me], there’s so much to do, so many household jobs, so much business in town, in the fields; work everywhere! Do we have to abandon it all, then, so as to think of nothing but God?” No; but these occupations have to be sanctified by seeking God in them and doing them to find him in them rather than to see them done. What our Lord wants is for us to seek his glory, his kingdom, his righteousness before all else and, for this, to make our foundation the interior life, faith, trust, love, religious exercises…, labors and sufferings, with God our sovereign Lord in view… Once we are firmly set in the search for God’s glory we can be assured that the rest will follow.

maronite readings – rosary,team