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How can we reside with function? Let’s discover that concept this week in our on-line retreat. In three elements, we’ll take into account the calls for and the advantages of residing with function. Our information is Fr. Kevin O’Brien, SJ, writer of Seeing with the Coronary heart: A Information to Navigating Life’s Adventures. This retreat attracts from the concepts in that e book’s first chapter.
Opening Reflection
Dwelling with function calls for that we work by way of sure inventive tensions. We should concentrate each to the place we’re strolling and to the distant horizon: not so targeted on our finish that we miss out on what is correct round us, not so targeted on what’s round us that we lose sight of the top that retains us on observe. Like these early Jesuits, we’re additionally meant to be contemplatives in motion: not so reflective that we turn into preoccupied with ourselves, not so lively that we miss the that means that comes with taking time to replicate. Discovering the best steadiness from each day is difficult, a lot in order that we is likely to be tempted to easily select one over the opposite to make our life easier.
An excessive amount of is at stake for us to accept such a false selection and to let life go us by, residing with out function or course. The French author and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer of the basic The Little Prince, wrote: “A single occasion can awaken inside us a stranger completely unknown to us. To reside is to be slowly born.” The water during which we swim is imbued with such fact, magnificence, and goodness that we lose a lot by not noticing it and by avoiding these inventive tensions in all their superb complexity. They’re the trail to the Love that strikes the solar and different stars and impels us to like in return. For one who lives and loves with such function, one thing larger than Ithaka awaits. Because the monk, mystic, and activist Thomas Merton shared in his journal, “He who loves is enjoying on the doorstep of eternity.”
—Excerpted from Seeing with the Coronary heart by Kevin O’Brien, SJ
Poem: “Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy
Learn the story of Jesus visiting the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42). To whom do you extra relate: Martha, who fashions “busy love,” or Mary, who shows “listening love”? Which muscle tissues do it is advisable to train extra: the contemplative or the lively ones? How can this train aid you uncover your function?
Scripture for Reflection
Martha and Mary, Luke 10:38–42
Objective, Proverbs 20:5
For Additional Studying
Objective on this Second by Lisa KellyContemplation in Motion by Marina Berzins McCoy
Prayer
Use imaginative prayer to wish with the story of Jesus visiting Mary and Martha.
Shut with an Our Father.
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