DECEMBER 6, 2023

WEDNESDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF ADVENT

A Yes to the Love of God

OPENING PRAYER:

COME HOLY SPIRIT. I welcome you into my heart as Mary did. Come with power. Help me to offer my own yes to God the Father, saying with trust: “May it be done unto me according to your word.”

TODAY’S THOUGHT:

Our yes is a yes to God's love for us. Our yes to the Lord actually begins with his initiative. He pours out his love, mercy, and goodness on us. Receiving those gifts and tasting the goodness of the Lord, we respond with a yes like Mary.

These days of Advent are special because they invite us to connect with the Lord in prayer and experience his goodness and love.

Today, we focus on God’s love for us.

Scripture is filled with the truths about his love for us:

We don’t earn it. It is his gift to us.
He poured out his love even when we were dead in sin.
His love is the source of our dignity and worth. His love for us declares we are his treasure, prized by him beyond all our imagining.

This is the one to whom we are saying yes: the one who loves us beyond our wildest dreams.

TODAY’S PRAYER:

Reflect on these verses in your prayer time today. Allow the truth of God’s love for you to penetrate into your heart. As you pray through them you may find yourself not convinced that it is true, or that it is true for everyone else but you. But these are obstacles and lies that need to be healed. Let the Lord heal them in you so that you might be completely convinced of God’s love for you. And experiencing this love, may your heart be prepared to respond with a generous yes back to him who first loved you.

Romans 5:5-8
"The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

Ephesians 2:8-9
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast."

Romans 8:35,37-38"
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

FOR YOUR REFLECTION:

Let’s go back to Tanner’s Annunciation today. Looking at Mary’s face, notice her upturned cheeks and lips. Her face does not appear dour or overly troubled. Something greater seems to have caught her heart’s attention. Notice her eyes, turned up and away from herself. This is what we want to experience in our own prayer. We want to be pulled outside of ourselves as we deeply experience God’s love for us. Only when that happens will we give ourselves to him with a generous yes, as Mary did.

Let your prayer this Advent season be slow and unhurried enough that you let the Lord steep your heart in his love. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Spend time with him in Eucharistic Adoration, gazing on his beauty in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.

For your continued prayer today, return to the verses above. Allow the truths of God love to soak into your heart. And don't be afraid to respond to that love by praying through one of the “The Prayers of Surrender and Abandonment.”

The Gospel of Yes Daily Reflection for Dec. 6, 2023