Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
May 27, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052724.cfm

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who in great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you
who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith,
to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.
In this you rejoice, although now for a little while
you may have to suffer through various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith,
more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire,
may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:3-7

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In this beautiful instruction from Peter, we find:

• an exuberant rejoicing in God
• an invitation to inextinguishable hope
• a realistic appraisal of Christian life
• a testament to the precious gift of faith.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

What is most precious to you in your life? And is your faith more precious than that? Peter gives us reason to answer “Yes”. Let’s pray with that today.

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Prose: from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch. 12

Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods “where they get off” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.