Gifts to Jesus June 1

Piety

God, source of all love, we praise you and thank you for making us a gift to Jesus and making Jesus your gift to us.

Jesus, help us to be worthy of your love and confidence in us. Take us to be with you wherever you go and help us to proclaim your love to the world through our piety, study and action.

Holy Spirit, keep working in our lives and in our love so that we may know God, love God and serve God through our Christian action toward all people inspired by our kinship and friendship with Jesus Christ. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/060106.shtml
“Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.

I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” John 17:24-26

Here is Jesus’ final prayer before He leaves for the Garden and the Passion begins with the betrayal by Judas and the arrest of Jesus.

Despite the fact the Jesus knows he will be betrayed, denied, abandoned, tried, convicted, whipped, crucified, and will die, we find Jesus praying for us in total and complete love…and calling us the gift God gave to him!

In this final prayer, Jesus also reflects back on the work on earth, making God’s name known among the people, and looks ahead to the coming of the Holy Spirit, the advocate who will continue to reveal God’s presences in our lives.

He is not praying for us to change but showing thanks that we may be where Jesus is. He wants us to dwell with Him on His journey as he dwells in us on our journey. Just as Jesus received from people gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh in the manger when he was born, right before death, we see Jesus contemplating on the gifts he was given by God – each and every one of us.

Action

“All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Not some of us…not just Americans, but all people. Not just the free but the prisoners as well. During the month of June, six people are scheduled to be executed, including a case right here in Virginia where there are issues of severe mental illness.

We pray that the views of Christians on the death penalty will be changed.

Percy Walton is scheduled to be executed by the state of Virginia on June 8th. Walton has been diagnosed with severe chronic schizophrenia and is unable to comprehend his impending execution.

Throughout his appeals, Walton’s attorneys have argued that he was not competent to plead guilty to the murders, and that his pleas were not knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. While awaiting trial, Walton expressed his belief that he could not be seen if he had his eyes closed. He also told his relatives he was Jesus Christ and that he was a millionaire. He told others he looked forward to his execution because then he would be able to return to life immediately and resurrect his dead family members. In 1999, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a neurologist assessed Walton's mental health for his appeals and found that he suffers from severe chronic schizophrenia. Today Walton is a shell of a human being, severely mentally ill and cognitively impaired and completely unaware that he faces imminent execution.

ACT NOW by contacting Gov. Tim Kaine requesting that he stop the execution of Percy Walton! Life in prison is a perfectly acceptable alternative where such facts exist. Read more and send a message to Governor Kaine from this site:
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3864