Thursday 22 October 2020

Today is Thursday the 22 October in the 29th week of Ordinary Time.  

The St Thomas Music Group sing Mysterium Amoris by Margaret Rizza, from a text by John Main: The meaning of life is the mystery of Love. Just as the roots of trees hold firm in the soil, so it is the roots of love that hold the ground of our being together.  

Today’s reading is from the letter to the Ephesians.  

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.  

What does it mean to be “rooted and grounded in love”, do you think? Do you feel “rooted and grounded in love” today?  

Sometimes Paul seems to run out of words when he tries to talk about the mystery of God: what do you think he understands by “the breadth and length and height and depth,…and the love  of Christ that surpasses knowledge”? Can you imagine this yourself?  

Do you have any experience in your own life of that “power at work within us”? If you do, what was that like?  

Now listen once more to the passage being read again; as you listen, ask “what is the full richness of his doctrine of God?”  

To sum up this time of prayer, try and express what is in your heart today, and offer it to God in your own words.  

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.