From: your-daily-tripod+noreply@googlegroups.com
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:28:58 +0000
Subject: [Your Daily Tripod] Digest for
your-daily-tripod@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in 2 Topics
To: Digest Recipients <your-daily-tripod+digest@googlegroups.com>
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Today's Topic Summary
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Group: your-daily-tripod@googlegroups.com
Url: http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/topics
- Give Good Gifts (July 25) [1 Update]
http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/t/6503af8e623aadc5
- Reform Your Ways (July 24) [1 Update]
http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/t/527d12588ecc0d8d
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Topic: Give Good Gifts (July 25)
Url: http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/t/6503af8e623aadc5
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From: "dxfaro@cox.net" <dxfaro@cox.net>
Date: Jul 24 07:14PM -0700
Url: http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/msg/e2ae66d42a865871
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
Then the LORD said: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so
great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or
not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes
to me. I mean to find out." Genesis 18:20-21
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks,
receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the
door will be opened." Luke 11:9-10
Piety
Prayer is how we express our love affair with God. Adoration,
contrition, thankfulness and petition are four attitudes of love. Love
is a relationship wherein we are heard in our needs by each other.
Piety is the expression of our love for God which takes the form of
one of the above mentioned attitudes. I relate with another by the
attitude of my soul in their presence. Closeness takes one of the
forms above mentioned. When I am with another that I care about my
behavior reflects how they look at life. The same can be said of us in
our relationship with God. The disciples in our Gospel were aware of
the prayer of Christ. They witnessed events in his life which
reflected his relationship with the Father. He challenges them to love
one another even as he has loved them. He tells his disciples that
just as the Father has loved him, he has loved them. He went off at
night to pray the night through. They knew the extent of his prayer
life. They asked Christ to teach them how to pray.
Study
The Our Father is the greatest teaching on prayer that one can find.
It teaches that God is father to all of us. We go from the 'I' to the
'We'. We have to share God. He does not belong to just me. The 'our'
of the Our Father brings us out of ourselves. We are not alone in our
search for God. We say lots of names easily. When we are praying to
the Father we are challenged to hallow his name. It takes work to make
the name of God holy. It cannot be just a word that slips out my mouth
trippingly without the involvement of my heart. It challenges me to
reach God from deep within. His name is spoken with reverence. That
means that I need to be thinking of God with all my mind and heart
involved with all of my strength and with the best focus on God that I
can muster from my heart. It can be a boring prayer because it has
been said so many times. It is a prayer of involvement in the work of
the kingdom. I do not just ask God that it happen. I am reminding
myself each time I say the prayer that I must do my share to make the
world a better place. Working actively to accomplish the plan of the
Father for me requires of me that I pay attention to my
responsibilities of life which are revealed by constant study of the
plan of God for us. Heaven and earth need to meet in my study of what
I can do. We ask God to be involved by praying for our daily bread. We
ask forgiveness of those that we have hurt so that God might be free
to forgive us even as we are a forgiving people. We pray for an end to
our temptations which would keep us from doing what we can to make a
better world.
Action
The acts that we are challenged to make in our prayer are expressed by
Adoration, Contrition, Thankfulness and Supplication. The pneumonic to
remember them is "acts." The first reading from Genesis shares the
bargaining of Moses with Abraham. The prayer of petition asks God to
do something that breaks the chain of events that are the destruction
of the world of Abraham. We need to bargain with the Lord. Praying for
the end to the madness of our world should be accompanied by acts of
penance to go along with our prayer. There are some things in life
that need prayer, fasting and good works to capture the attention of
God for the good we want for the world. Acts of gratitude are made for
all the good things that the Lord has done for us. We show our thanks
by prayers of gratitude furthered by the good things we do for the
needy in our lives. How can we say we love the God we do not see if we
do not love the neighbor we do see? Our prayer needs to be dominated
by our acts of gratitude for all the Lord does for us. Action speaks
louder than words. I need to offer to God sacrifices for the
forgiveness of our injustices. It is hard to face the Lord when we
have failed to meet the needs of our world by the good we can do. We
need to give not from the extras of our lives, but from the essentials
of our comfort. Time and energy in work for the needy are the best
gifts we can give. If God gives us the best when we ask, how can we
give less than our best?
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Topic: Reform Your Ways (July 24)
Url: http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/t/527d12588ecc0d8d
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From: "dxfaro@cox.net" <dxfaro@cox.net>
Date: Jul 24 03:13AM -0700
Url: http://groups.google.com/group/your-daily-tripod/msg/58b003103c7ea497
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and
your deeds, so that I may remain with you in this place. Put not your
trust in the deceitful words: "This is the temple of the LORD! The
temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!" Only if you thoroughly
reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his
neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and
the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or
follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this
place, in the land which I gave your fathers long ago and forever.
Jeremiah 7:3-7
"…if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say
to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles
for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."" Matthew 13:29-30
Piety
What We're Praying for This Week (From www.crs.org)
As Catholics, we recognize that prayer is of the utmost importance, an
invaluable contribution to helping the poor overseas. We invite you to
join us in bringing to Our Lord the following intentions and thanks.
Haiti: Let us pray that Our Father guides every minute of our five-
year effort to help Haitians rebuild, recover, and regain independence
and productivity.
Poverty: Let us pray that Our Father continues to move the hearts of
His followers to confront and alleviate global poverty.
Peace: Let us pray that Our Lord gives us his peace, the peace we wish
to bring to others in our lives and in the rest of the world.
Basic needs: Let us thank God for the gifts He gives us in such
abundance that we are in danger of taking them for granted: food,
water, shelter, schools and freedom to worship
Study
There is something greater here. All week, we have been hearing,
readings and studying variations on that theme. All of life is
choices. Sometimes we choose between good and evil. Sometimes, though,
the harder choices are between good and good.
It is probably pretty easy for the workers in the field to tell the
difference between the wheat and the weeds. They can easily separate
it into two piles and burn the weeds. It is probably easy for us to
separate the good from the evil. Shall I go into Safeway and walk out
without paying for a loaf of bread? Shall I steal my neighbor's
lawnmower when mine breaks? Morals teach us what not to do. However,
the moral lessons can get blurred if we are not careful at discerning…
a good Salesian word…the good from the good.
Jeremiah is trying to get the people to recognize that "apparent"
goods being done in the temple are not consistent with the teachings
of the Lord. Reform your ways. Thoroughly reform your ways and your
deeds. He outlines a fairly good three-step prescription for living a
life in friendship with the teachings of Jesus: deal justly with his
neighbor; do not oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the
widow; do not shed innocent blood or follow strange gods to your own
harm.
Action
What do Jeremiah's words matter to us? How do we separate out the
wheat in our lives from the weeds that sometimes seem to overtake our
garden party?
After all, we have Catholic Charities, CRS, the Campaign for Human
Development, and many more institutions set up by the Church along
with more than a million tax-exempt charities to help us help the
poor, widows and orphans here and around the world.
But are we really doing all that we can do? Or are we wasting money at
Best Buy, Micro Center, B&H Photo Video, and Target on unnecessary
electronic gear while people remain homeless and hungry? How many
televisions, IPods, IMacs, IPods and digital cameras does the world
need?
This week Apple led the way in positive earnings news that helped the
stock markets gain. Raise your hand (to yourself, of course) if you
checked the balance in your investment account this week as the Dow
went back above the 10,300 mark? Our portfolios may look better today
than they did in 2008. But the world still looks bleak to amputees in
Somalia, drought-stricken farmers in Latin America, fishermen on the
Gulf Coast and children pressed into labor or military service when
they should be playing soccer or going to school.
CRS continues to push a campaign to enlist more Catholic in real
action to confront global poverty. Will you become one of the million
voices that CRS is working to enlist to speak out and take action
against global poverty? If so, then you can sign up right here:
http://actioncenter.crs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ccgp_signup
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