Mark 8: 11-13
The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation." Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.
Dawg's Thought:
Today's prayer intention - for those who asked for your prayers, especially for those who are ill.
It would be great if we knew what God's will was for our lives. I am at a point where I am discerning a lot of things in my life. As such, I am "seeking a sign."
As such, recognizing my shortcomings, today's reflection comes from Fr. Robert Barron:
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For Christians, God is not simply "out there" like a mountain waiting to be climbed by the intrepid spiritual mountaineer; rather, God is himself a pursuer, hunting us down with relentless love. I might shift the image a bit and suggest that God is not only behind us in pursuit, but also ahead of us in allurement, like a mother urging her child to take his first steps. Alfred North Whitehead argued that God is the great displayer of possibilities for his universe, the one who arranges and rearranges persons, objects, and events in the hopes that his creation might come to richer and more creative expression. During the discourse he gave the night before he died, Jesus summed up his life and ministry in these words: "I have said these things that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete" (John 15:11). And therefore Christians walking the third path confidently and enthusiastically look. They know that God is luring them and so they hunt for signs. This process of watching and listening is an ancient ecclesial practice called "discernment."
One of the best guides in this practice is the twentieth-century Jesuit scholar Bernard Lonergan, for, as an academician, he specialized in questions of the method (hunting down the truth) and, as a Jesuit, he was trained in the discernment of spirits (hunting down the will and movement of God). At the heart of Lonergan's method is a process that he expressed in terms of four imperatives: (1) be attentive; (2) be intelligent; (3) be reasonable; and (4) be responsible. Let us examine these by turn. By "attention," Lonergan means something very simple and, in practice, very elusive: seeing what is there to be seen. Seeing, not selectively, myopically, or superficially, but really taking in the light, colors, shapes, and objects that surround one. For Lonergan, many scientists go off the rails, not because they lack speculative intelligence, but because they get their data wrong, they don't look. What does this mean for Christians on path there? It means that they take seriously what Aquinas said concerning God's immanence in all things, "by essence, presence, and power," and that they see, consequently, everything as saturated with the divine. Many of the spiritual masters have defined prayer, not as an escape from the ordinary, but as a kind of heightened attention to the depth dimension of the everyday and the commonplace. Where is the divine will displayed? For the one who has discipline of vision, everywhere and everything. For man, the spiritual life becomes dysfunctional precisely at this beginning stage - they don't look."
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Take care and God Bless.
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