Here are some of my favorites from the past few months. These are SO applicable in today's society, and sometimes have appeared on the very day when I needed their spiritual assistance.
Palsm 84:10 : The Best (We are made for happiness, so why aren't you happy?
1 Thessalonians 4:3: Why Chastity?
John 6:9: Offer What You Have (Your spiritual gifts are worth more than you realize)
Judges 21:25: Seek him now! (Convuluded justification does not = morally correct)
Proverbs 14:28: A radical thought (Ideology, not population, is the problem)
Proverbs 4:23 : Heart in the Balance!
Psalm 84:10: The Best!
For a day in thy courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
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We are made for happiness. It's the point of our existence. Nobody ever does anything but try to make themselves happy. So why isn't everybody happy? Because we do not seek happiness where it is found: in God. We seek happiness in almost everything. Food, sex, money, power, the usual suspects. And these things provide a measure of happiness, to be sure. Indeed, some forms of happiness are nobler than others but even the lowest are good as far as they go. A really good piece of chocolate is good, but not as noble a good as the happiness derived from friendship, or the love of a spouse. But even these nobler forms of happiness are not, in the end, enough. After that good marriage, the great job, the involvement in the charitable work, the adopted children, even the life of self-sacrifice such as Mother Teresa's, the soul still cries out for happiness which is ultimately found only in God. Compared to that happiness, all our happiness is like straw, good as it is. Mother Teresa, who was wise, knew this and sought all her happiness in God, where she found it. We, who are often fools, seek ultimate happiness here on earth. But when what is good becomes the rival of what is best, it becomes an idol--the tent of the wicked. That is why our life is a long process of dying to ourselves and living to God. God desires that we have what is best, not that we settle for what is second best. Today, ask God for what is best and receive it with joy. It's the only way to happiness.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 : Why Chastity?
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity.
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Our culture thinks that the Church speaks against unchastity because it thinks sex is dirty. But Pope John Paul II shows that this is wildly off the mark. The real reason the Church commends chastity is not that unchastity is dirty but that unchastity is dishonest. For the sexual act is the highest incarnation of self-giving in human experience. By it, we say with our bodies, "I give you all of myself." To say that, apart from the sacrament of marriage is, bluntly, to lie. Unchastity is the lie of self-giving incarnated in the act of taking: taking the dignity and love of the other while exploiting them for the sake of a physical sensation. As C.S. Lewis said, to say that an unchaste man "wants a woman" is false. He does not want a woman. He wants an experience for which the woman happens to be the necessary apparatus. And it matters not a whit if both parties are "consenting" to that mutual exploitation. Mutual lies do not make a truth. They merely complicate the betrayal. In contrast to this culture of mutual betrayal and exploitation is the Church's sacrament of marriage, in which husband and wife participate in the awesome self-donation of Christ and his Bride to one another in mutual love. Today, pray that the culture of life would overcome the culture of betrayal and exploitation that so characterizes the modern world's understanding of sex.
John 6:9 : Offer what you have
"There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?"
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These are the words of the apostle Andrew, minutes before Jesus took that seemingly measly gift and used it to feed 5,000 people. Today, we still look at our gifts and ask, "What are they among so many?" Humanly speaking, our gifts are still measly. But with God, our gifts can be multiplied to feed a whole world. The Eucharist feeds a billion people every day. It began as a single loaf at the Last Supper. What do you have to offer today? Even if it seems like a little, offer it. You may well be amazed to look back one day and see how your offering has been multiplied beyond your wildest dreams.
Judges 21:25 : Seek him now
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
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Some passages of Scripture read like ancient texts. Others, like today's verse, could practically have been ripped from the headlines of the New York Times. We live in culture that has no king (or thinks so anyway). In our current atomized and ultra-subjective culture, certain catch phrases abound. "If you feel…" "It's true for me…" "Listen to your heart…" "It's my right…" "Who are you to tell me…" "Freedom of choice…" etc. We are a people who are attempting the unprecedented historical project of saying that what we choose is automatically justified merely because we chose it. It is a project as doomed to failure as the attempt of ancient Israel to indulge moral anarchy while trying to avoid social, political and spiritual anarchy. Today's verse caps a series of stories from Judges relating progressively more gruesome crimes committed precisely by people who did what was right in their own eyes (as indeed all monsters do). But we, who have produced a culture conducive to Columbine, partial birth abortion, and other grotesque evils, have little room for judgment. Rather, we have plenty of room for repentance and a return to our neglected king: the God of Israel. It's not too late. Seek the Lord while he may be found!
Proverbs 14:28
In a multitude of people is the glory of a king, but without people a prince is ruined.
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In the past century or so, something happened. The above verse stopped being common wisdom and instead, a small oligarchy of a few rich people (primarily in the US and Europe) began to say to places like Africa, Asia, and Latin America, "There's just enough of us, but way too many of you poor brown-skinned people." In the process, they pointed to highly scientific proof from people like Thomas Malthus, who began predicting in the late 18th century that huge famines were just around the corner and that overpopulation was going to destroy the world. Malthus' world-destroying famines never appeared First the 19th, then the 20th, and now the 21st century dawn and still there has been no catastrophic population bomb exploding, even though world population is billions more than it was in Malthus' day. Yet, despite this, the ideologues whose principal creed is "People are the problem" continue to have unquestioned authority and everybody is certain that a family which celebrates and welcomes children is a threat and a problem. What nobody seems to notice is that it is the US and Europe (whose people have bought the ideology and who suffer declining birth rates) that consumes all the resources in narcissistic Baby Boomer self-absorption, not in feeding "too many" children. One almost gets the impression the Population Bomb is bogus and the old biblical wisdom which celebrates people as the glory of King Jesus rather than regards them as a threat to the comforts of the rich is a truer wisdom than the agitprop of the Cairo and Beijing conferences. Today, thank God for people and consider the possibility that ideology, not people, is the problem.
Proverbs 4:23 : A heart in the balance
Keep your heart with all vigilance;
for from it flow the springs of life.
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Years after our culture has absorbed the elementary lessons of hygiene in the physical and environmental realms, we remain perfect babes in the wood when it comes to mental and spiritual common sense. Every fool knows that you don't drink from wells built next to toxic waste dumps. Not even a moron would say "My belching smokestack is my personal smokestack and has no effect on anybody else." Nobody says, "I'm strong. So it's okay for me jog behind insecticide spewing trucks or eat this mad cow infected meat." But fools say things like this everyday when it comes to moral and spiritual pollution. They say you can fill your mind with slime from the tube and it won't effect them because they're "strong in their hearts." They say media can belch airwave pollution 24/7/365 and it won't affect the culture (though 30 second ad cost a million dollars and manufacturers gladly pay this to have "no effect"). They say that we can feed our souls on the toxic waste of sleaze TV, violent and misogynistic music, ugly art, and loveless, soul-dead stories and it will not affect "my personal truth of the moment." Scripture says differently. "Keep your heart". Feed it on what is true, good, noble, beautiful and you will become that way. Feed it on junk and the effects on your heart will be as predictable as the effects of a diet of radioactive waste and potato chips on an Olympic athlete: no matter how healthy he was to start with, he'll die.