Catholic Daily Mass Reading & Meditation for Wednesday, 3 September 2014

Catholic Daily Mass Reading & Meditation for Wednesday, 3 September 2014
Meditations 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? When one of you says, “I’m on Paul’s side,” and another says, “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally infantile?
5-9 Who do you think Paul is, anyway? Or Apollos, for that matter? Servants, both of us—servants who waited on you as you gradually learned to entrust your lives to our mutual Master. We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working.
9-15 Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely.
Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
God … causes the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:7)
What does growth look like? Well, it depends on whether you’re talking about mutual funds, urban sprawl, weeds in the garden, or grandchildren. And then there’s the question of growth in our spiritual lives, which can be even more difficult to gauge!
Yes, the seed of faith that was planted in you at baptism is watered throughout your life: by your family and friends, by various priests and religious, and by the stories of the holy men and women who have gone before you. But what does that seed’s growth look like?
For one thing, it can look like a snake shedding its skin as you leave behind old habits, thought patterns, or relationships. It can leave you feeling exposed. You may be sad about what you’re letting go of or afraid of what comes next. But the newness of what emerges is fresh and exhilarating. It offers you hope and a future replete with God’s life!
Growth can also look like the transformation that a caterpillar undergoes in the quiet darkness of a cocoon as it becomes a butterfly. The Holy Spirit works deep in your heart, changing you into something beautiful before the Lord. It requires patience and acceptance, perhaps, of a life temporarily less full of activities and recognition. And yet such times are essential.
Growth can also be like the almost imperceptible increase in the girth and height of a tree, as you stay faithful to the words, commands, and life God has revealed to you.
Whatever your current mode of growth looks like, you can be sure that it also includes the growth and development of roots, which sink deeper and anchor you more securely to the Lord. Strong, healthy roots allow you to absorb God’s life more fully.
So ask the Lord to help you grow. Every time you receive Communion, ask Christ, who lives in you, to nourish you. Ask him to give you direction for your day or new insight into his love. As you kneel in adoration, let Jesus open your eyes, just as he did for the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Let him give you deeper and deeper roots in his love and his word.
“Father, thank you for the faith planted in me. Please bring me to full maturity in you!” Amen!
Psalm 33:10-12 God takes the wind out of Babel pretense,
    he shoots down the world’s power-schemes.
God’s plan for the world stands up,
    all his designs are made to last.
Blessed is the country with God for God;
    blessed are the people he’s put in his will.
13-15 From high in the skies God looks around,
    he sees all Adam’s brood.
From where he sits
    he overlooks all us earth-dwellers.
He has shaped each person in turn;
    now he watches everything we do.
20-22 We’re depending on God;
    he’s everything we need.
What’s more, our hearts brim with joy
    since we’ve taken for our own his holy name.
Love us, God, with all you’ve got—
    that’s what we’re depending on.
Luke 4: He Healed Them All
38-39 He left the meeting place and went to Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was running a high fever and they asked him to do something for her. He stood over her, told the fever to leave—and it left. Before they knew it, she was up getting dinner for them.
40-41 When the sun went down, everyone who had anyone sick with some ailment or other brought them to him. One by one he placed his hands on them and healed them. Demons left in droves, screaming, “Son of God! You’re the Son of God!” But he shut them up, refusing to let them speak because they knew too much, knew him to be the Messiah.
42-44 He left the next day for open country. But the crowds went looking and, when they found him, clung to him so he couldn’t go on. He told them, “Don’t you realize that there are yet other villages where I have to tell the Message of God’s kingdom, that this is the work God sent me to do?” Meanwhile he continued preaching in the meeting places of Galilee.
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