For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/051708.shtml
Mary, Queen of Vocations, pray for us!
St. James the Apostle, pray for us!
What an extraordinary meditation St. James provides for us regarding sinning with our tongues. Can it really be true that if we are able to control the evil that passes from our lips, we have control over the whole body. If this is not an incentive to do a better examination of conscience regarding our speech, and to confess sins of the lips as often as possible so as to destroy the momentum that cursing and gossip have in our lives, then I don't know what is. I had forgotten until this week what a powerful letter the letter to St. James is! I wonder if there has ever been a better examination of conscience ever written? In the story of the Transfiguration we hear in today's Gospel, the disciples are instructed not to try to 'capture' the glory of heaven here on earth. The glory of heaven is revealed by the splendor of creation, and Peter, James and John receive the additional gift of seeing the glory of the Trinity reflected by Jesus' transfigured body, but the disciples are discouraged from building three tents to prolong the Transfiguration experience. The object of the Transfiguration is not to make room for God here on the earth, where His glory could never fully reside anyway, since God is bigger than the world. Instead, the object of the Transfiguration is to renew the focus of the apostles on the kingdom of Heaven, to which Christ one day will ascend. The object of the Transfiguration is to get the apostles to 'listen to Him' - to the one who will lead them to a place where their desire for the supernatural can be satisfied completely. That is why the disciples are even forbidden to speak about the Transfiguration until after the Resurrection, for the Transfiguration is not an end in itself, but was provided as a precursor to faith in the more important mysteries of the Resurrection and the Ascension. +m
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