OPreach
Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Finding God – Finding Beauty in the Ordinary
Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.
– Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB
Some Wisdom from Teresa of Avila
(Statue from the Detroit Airport . . . with some post-processing)
When we were in our chapel at morning prayer, I noted how the reading in our breviary (Thursday, Week III) complemented the Gospel reading for the day in which we are admonished to give, forgive, and to not judge.
Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other people’s alone; for those who live carefully ordered lives are apt to be shocked at everything and we might well learn very important lessons from the persons who shock us. Our outward comportment and behaviour may be better than theirs, but this, though good, is not the most important thing: there is no reason why we should expect everyone else to travel by our own road, and we should not attempt to point them to the spiritual path when perhaps we do not know what it is. . . It is better to attempt to . . . live in silence and in hope, and [God] will take care of [God’s] own.
-St. Teresa of Avila (from People’s Companion to the Breviary)
You Can’t Beat God Giving!
Thursday’s Gospel reading is from Luke 6
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.
I am reminded of words from a Gospel song:
You cant’ beat God giving, no matter how you try!
The more you give the more God gives to you.
So keep on giving, because it’s really true;
You cant’ beat God giving, no matter how you try!
The Power of our Thoughts
If you realized
how powerful
your thoughts are,
you would never think
a negative thought.
– Peace Pilgrim
Let Us Open our Eyes
One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
– Rachel Carson
The Wisdom of Pooh
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
– A.A. Milne (via Eeyore)
One of our sisters considers pampas grass to be a nuisance, and rather large weeds. I’ve always found it pretty to look at. It’s that way sometimes, weeds . . . flowers. Kinda depends on your perspective on how you see them. Probably if I had to deal with uprooting them in garden where they were unwanted, I would see them as weeds too.
Are there any weeds in my life that I would be helped by seeing them as flowers?
Silence Gives us a New Perspective
I share a piece of wisdom from Mother Teresa today.
The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence.
The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence.
Silence gives us a new perspective.
– Blessed Mother Teresa.
With Delight I Rejoice in God
Saturday’s Responsorial Psalm is from the Psalm 13
With delight I rejoice in the Lord.
Though I trusted in your mercy,
let my heart rejoice in your salvation.
With delight I rejoice in the Lord.
Let me sing of the LORD, “God has been good to me.”
With delight I rejoice in the Lord.
God Will Give Us the Desires of our Hearts
Psalm 37 is tomorrow’s Responsorial Psalm. Whenever I have the privilege to speak with young women about discerning their call, verse 4 of this Psalm comes to mind . . . and to my lips:
Delight yourself in the Lord, and God will give you the desires of your heart.
In other words, we can trust the desires of our own hearts when we our hearts and minds are centered in God.
The Beauty of the Seas
In Wednesday’s Responsorial Psalm from Psalm 24 we read:
The Lord’s are the earth and its fullness;
the world and those who dwell in it.
For God founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.
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