Daily Gospel Reflection for August 10, 2019

Today's Gospel: John 12:24-26 - Feast of St. Lawrence When I first started to take my spiritual life seriously, when I first started to try to put Jesus as number one in my life, it did not take long for me to learn that up was down and down was up. Nothing was what I had thought at all. I had to "let go" of all my preconceived ideas that I had held onto for a lifetime. Ideas of what it means to be a perfect person, a perfect Christian. I had to let go of whatever kept me from putting Jesus first. I had to die to self. We do not have to have our act together all of the time. We do not have to earn Jesus' love. Instead we need to turn back to Jesus, over and over. And let go of whatever turned us away from him in the first place. "Consider all the past as nothing, and say like David: now I begin to love my God." -- St. Francis de Sales Every moment of our lives, every step of our journey, we choose to love or not. We choose to follow God or not. When we don’t choose God, when we sin, we need to repent and begin again. Every day we let go of the past. We let go and decide to renew our love, our promise, our desire to love God. Every day, every moment, is a new beginning. Let go and say, “Now I begin to love my God.”