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Daily Reflections

Daily Scripture, July 6, 2025

Scripture:

Isaiah 66:10-14
Galatians 6:14-18
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Reflection:

My fellow Kentuckian, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, wrote: “I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.”

When the culture around us endorses or is indifferent to owning nuclear weapons, polluting of our fragile planet, leaving our brothers and sisters homeless, hungry, or diseased, we disciples must offer a high degree of resistance. When people in our culture cheer when immigrants and refugees are arrested without due process, stripped, shaven, and thrown into a foreign country’s jail, resistance is demanded, as our pope and American bishops have courageously done.

The seventy-two disciples Jesus instructs in today’s Gospel are sent into harsh territory, into mostly Greek-formed cultures where Christians were required to offer a high degree of resistance. The Gospel focus on forgiveness, love, and absolute trust in God no doubt got a lot of push-back.

In imitation of these disciples, we must ask what are our own acts of resistance in our fast-paced, complex, media-saturated world?

Our culture is not foreign to us, most of us were born into it and have been shaped by it. But the message of Christ is foreign to our culture. The advertising world promotes being young, attractive, popular, powerful, and wealthy. These things, we are told, assure happiness, pleasure, satisfaction. To sustain our consumer-satisfying culture we start wars for oil, build war machines to “guarantee” security, and exploit and pollute Mother Earth in irreputable ways.

None of this offers care of the soul. Jesus’ message, which the seventy-two are asked to preach and live, emphasizes humility, powerlessness, detachment, and deep love for one another, especially the weak, lowly, discarded, and poor.

To be close to Christ means living simple, sincere lives with total trust in God to help us resist what does not respect our souls. This can mean pain, suffering, rejection, and, at times, feeling like we are accomplishing little in the eyes of the world.

But it is the only path to caring for our souls, to finding the deep, inner joy and peace that everyone longs for in the darkest moments of the night.

Jim Wayne is a board member of the Passionist Solidarity Network (PSN), and author of The Unfinished Man. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Daily Scripture, October 13, 2013

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:14-17 2 Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19 Reflection: In Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19), Jesus heals a group of ten lepers, but only one of them returns to » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 12, 2013

Scripture: Joel 4:12-21 Luke 11:27-28 Reflection: The first time I read this Gospel story, I wondered what I would feel if I heard my son dismiss me so casually.  "No, » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 11, 2013

Scripture: Joel 1:13-15, 2:1-2 Luke 11:15-26 Reflection: "It’s Not Too Late." The Prophet Joel is something of an enigma.  Little is known about him, except that he is from Judah, » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 9, 2013

    Scripture: Jonah 4:1-11 Luke 11:1-4     Reflection: Are There Boundaries to a Father’s Love? The Prophet Jonah writes after the exile in a period when the people » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 5, 2013

Scripture: Baruch 4:5-12, 27-29 Luke 10:17-24 Reflection: In the old film entitled "Ghost" the late, Patrick Swayze plays the dead husband’s ghost, who has come back to protect his wife » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 7, 2013

Our Lady of the Rosary Scripture: Jonah 1:1-2:2, 11 Luke 10:25-37 Reflection: As a kid growing up in a family of seven kids, it seems we were always saying the » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 4, 2013

  Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Scripture: Galatians 6:14-18 Matthew 11:25-30     Reflection: The month of October celebrates the lives of many founders of religious communities; today we » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 2, 2013

  Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels Scripture: Nehemiah 2:1-8 Matthew 18:1-5, 10     Reflection: Today’s liturgical commemoration is "The Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels."  It was deliberately » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, October 1, 2013

  Saint Therese of the Child Jesus Scripture: Zechariah 8:20-23 Luke 9:51-56     Reflection: Today is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, and our entrance antiphon bursts upon us » Continue Reading.

Daily Scripture, September 30, 2013

Scripture: Zechariah 8:1-8 Luke 9:46-50 Reflection: I have always been a bit envious of those who have a distinct cultural or ethnic background.  My ancestors are a hodgepodge of different » Continue Reading.

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