08/01/07, Monday in the First Week of Epiphany
08/01/07, Monday in the First Week of Epiphany
[Please remember that this is a selection, Feel free to pick and choose]
Collect
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Today's Scriptures
Psalm 1, 2, 3; Psalm 4, 7
Isa. 40:12-23; Eph. 1:1-14; Mark 1:1-13
From Forward Day by Day:
Isaiah 40:12-23. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Rhetorical questions can be annoying, especially when people use them to lord it over us, hectoring us into silence and even sullen submission. Such questions need no answer, usually because they have been answered already. The Hebrew prophets are masters of the rhetorical question. But the prophets pose their questions with a difference. They do not impose silence and submission. Rather they press us toward resurrection and freedom. Their questions sound a summons. For the ancient Israelites it is a summons to leave their place of captivity in Babylon and re-establish themselves in the land that God had given to their ancestors. For you and me it is a summons to leave our own captivity behind-our captivity to sin and hopelessness, to despair and unbelief.
No matter what happens to you, no matter how bleak life looks, no matter what you have done or left undone, the God who measured the waters of the earth and marked off the heavens with a span, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whom Jesus called Abba, Father-that loving and creating God holds you, now and always, in the very hollow of his hand. Have you not heard?
Anglican Cycle of Prayer: the Diocese of Lokoja (Prov. I, Nigeria)
Today we remember:
Harriet Bedell, Deaconess and missionary http://satucket.com/lectionary/Bedell.htm
Psalm 96:1-7;
Romans 16:1-2; Matthew 5:1-12
Holy God, you chose your faithful servant Harriet Bedell to exercise the ministry of deaconess and to be a missionary among indigenous peoples: Fill us with compassion and respect for all people, and empower us for the work of ministry throughout the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today we also remember:
Nate Saint and Other Martyrs of the Ecuador Mission http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/74.html
Almighty God, who called your faithful servants Nate Saint, Ed Mccully, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian to be witnesses and martyrs to the Huaorani peoples in the rain forests of Ecuador, and by their labors and suffering raised up a people for your own possession: Pour forth your Holy Spirit upon your Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many, your holy Name may be glorified and your kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Precious in your sight, O Lord, is the death of your saints, Whose faithful witness, by your providence, has its great reward: We give you thanks for your martyrs Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian, who purchased with their blood a hearing for the Gospel among the forest-dwellers of Ecuador, especially the Huaorani people, and for their wives, who shared with them in their work and witness; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection from http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Respect One Another"
We could all learn something from the rule of reverence for married folks found in 1 Peter 3:7 (JB): “Husbands must always treat their wives with consideration in their life together, respecting a woman as one who, though she may be the weaker partner,” – he was a man of his times – “is equally an heir to the life of grace. This will stop anything from coming in the way of your prayers.”
It’s hard to respect one another and to communicate reverence. But we only believe in our worth through the eyes of people who treat us with respect. The word re-spect means to look at again. Married partners owe that to one another. Don’t let your relationship enter into a lot of negative humor, quick sarcasm and put-downs – the stupid way the world talks at cocktail parties.
God has called us to a life of reverence and respect. Through our reverence we become messengers of God for one another. We look at one another again through new eyes.
from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
God made Christ the way itself
God promised human beings divinity, mortals immortality, sinners justification, outcasts glory. But because his promise that we who are mortal, corruptible, weak and of low estate, mere dust and ashes, were to be equal to the angels seemed incredible, God not only made a written covenant with us to win our faith, but he also gave us a mediator of his pledge. This mediator was not a prince, an angel, or an archangel, but his only Son; through his own Son he meant both to show us and give us the way by which he would lead us to the promised goal. He was not satisfied with sending his Son to show us the way. He made him the way itself.
God’s only Son, then, was to come among us, take our human nature, and in this nature be born as a man. He was to die, to rise again, to ascend into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Father, and to fulfill his promises among the nations. After that he was also to fulfill his promise to come again, to demand what he had previously requested, to separate those deserving his anger from those deserving his mercy, to give the wicked what he had threatened and the just what he had promised.
All this had to be prophesied, foretold, and impressed on us as an event in the future so that we should not be terrified by its happening unexpectedly, but wait for it with faith.
Augustine of Hippo (Augustine (354 - 430), bishop of Hippo, became the most influential person of the Western Church and left many writings to posterity. more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo ; www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm ; http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/)
From Growing Each Day http://www.aish.com/spirituality/growing/
No one ever anticipated (Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai) with a greeting in the public place (Berachos 17a).
The Talmud states that when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai met someone in the street, he always initiated the greeting, and that never, in his entire lifetime, did he ever wait to be greeted first.
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai is one of the most outstanding personalities in Jewish history. After Jerusalem fell to the Romans, in 70 C.E., he served as both the political and religious leader of the Jewish nation for forty years. He is singlehandedly responsible for the survival of Israel during that difficult era.
When this great leader walked down the street, he undoubtedly engaged in important conversation with his colleagues and disciples on the vital issues of the day. We certainly could understand that he could not interrupt such weighty discussions to respond to people who greeted him, let alone to initiate greetings to others.
Still, the Talmud states that regardless of his preoccupation with the leadership of Israel, this great personality never waited to be greeted first, and not even the importance of his position could cause him to expect recognition from others.
The great Hillel prophesied about Rabbi Yochanan that he would be "a father of wisdom and a father to many generations." Rabbi Yochanan was a leader who followed in the footsteps of Moses, whose humility also paralleled his greatness."
Today I shall ...
... try to consider every person as being worthy of recognition, and avoid the false pride of expecting to be acknowledged first.
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen)
Enough Light for the Next Step
Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, "How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?" There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let's rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 8, 2007
http://www.mertonfoundation.org/merton.php3?page=quote.ext
The old and the new.
"For the "old man"-everything is old-he has seen everything or thinks he has. He has lost hope in anything new. What pleases him is the "old" he clings to, fearing to lose it, but certainly not happy with it. And so he keeps himself "old" and cannot change; he is not open to any newness. His life is stagnant and futile. …
For the "new man"-everything is new. Even the old is transfigured in the Holy Spirit and is always new. There is nothing to cling to, there is nothing to be hoped for in what is already past-it is nothing. The new man is he who can find reality where it cannot be seen by the eyes of the flesh-where it is not yet-where it comes into being the moment he sees it. And would not be (at least for him) if he did not see it. The new man lives in a world that is always being created, and renewed. He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. He lives in life.
The old man lives without life. He lives in Death, and clings to what has died precisely because he clings to it. And yet he is crazy for change, as if struggling with the bonds of death. His struggle is miserable, and cannot be a substitute for life.
Thought of these things after [holy] communion today, when I suddenly realized that I had, and for how long, deeply lost hope of "anything new." How foolish when in fact the newness is there all the time." [March 18, 1959]
selection is from Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Journals, Volume 3. Lawrence S. Cunningham, ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 268-269.
Thought to Remember:
What else is there for us but to be tranquil and at peace in the all-enchanting wonder of God's mercy to us? It falls upon this paper quieter than the morning sun, and then, I know that all things, without His love, are useless, and in His love, having nothing, I can possess all things.
Confession of a Wise Man
"... and they went back by another way."
"Wise men" -- I think that's what you call us now,
and we were wise, according to our lights:
for we spent many long and studious nights
in watching stars, and plotting where and how
and when their influence would be most strong.
Time was I'd chart the future for a prince,
based on his natal day. and then convince
him it was right when it proved wrong.
A charlatan? Perhaps. But once, I cast
a horoscope that caused my heart to stir;
and bearing gold and frankincense and myrrh
my friends and I went traveling, til at last
we saw a sight that made us feel ashamed
at all we'd done before, and warmed our hearts.
And we discarded all our former arts.
Two bright stars by a stable door were framed;
all other constellations seen beside that one
were dimmed: it was The Mother and Her Infant Son.
-- Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, 1984
Epiphany
by barry brake
A couple of years back I had an epiphany. A minister of mine, Jim Graham, pointed out that probably not a lot of people noticed the star that marked Jesus's birth. It hadn't occurred to me. Our iconography is dominated by images of a huge, unavoidable astronomical event. In Ben-Hur, after all, we see crowds cowering before a huge meteor; as children we drew a giant star larger than the sun would have been. But in reality, of course, supernovas appear all the time, and they're the same size as other stars, and no one notices besides astronomers.
And, two thousand years ago, Magi. Scholars from the school of Hermes Trismegistus. Persian guys who didn't have the Bible, didn't worship Jehovah, weren't among the chosen people, but who looked to the sky for meaning, and found it. And, like all good scholars, they put their knowledge into action: they got gifts fit for a king, and went where their books told them to go. (Ah, to see those books and find the pagan passage that sent them to Judea!). At Pentecost, the word of God went out into the world. At Epiphany, the world shows up at God's door.
EPIPHANY
PROTO INDO-EUROPEAN *bhan-yo- to shine
GREEK phainein to bring to light, to cause to appear, to show;
epiphainein to manifest, epiphaineia appearance
LATIN epiphania
MIDDLE FRENCH epiphanie
MIDDLE ENGLISH epiphanie
Epiphany n (first in print in 14th c): a festival observed on January 6, commemorating the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles; an appearance or manifestation esp. of a divine being; a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking
We can't get away from thinking of this time of year as a beginning. But the Church calls it a time of arrival. The year is already over a month old, having begun with Advent. So, after the twelve days of Christmastide, we have Epiphany, a celebration of the arrival of the Magi. And of a sudden realization: that this child isn't just for the Us, but also for the Them.
For some churches, Epiphany is one day, and then we're in Pre-Lent, a countdown to Lent in which the Sundays are named for the number of days till Easter (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, etc.). But others consider the days leading up to Ash Wednesday as the Epiphany Season. An entire season dedicated to appearances, evidences, signs, presences, realizations: the guiding of a newly appeared star; the showing-up of these strange foreigners who materialized at the house of Joseph (can we imagine that the whole town didn't stir?); the realization of Christ to everyone who ever lived, not just his own countrymen; the shocking awareness that he is in fact the savior of the world, the world.
In these days, that truth is sometimes an uncomfortable one. They say, How nice that you've found inner peace through Christ, that he is a savior for you, but don't go bashing me over the head with it. It's often seen as the ultimate arrogance that I might come out and say that everyone needs Christ, even those who don't think they do, and even those who have never heard of him. That sort of triumphalism belongs to an earlier, uglier era, most people think.
But the season of Epiphany is a time for us to realize that although some of the lost are asleep in a nighttime of lostness, others are outside craning their necks for a sign, ready to follow whatever appears, make whatever journey is necessary for them to find redemption.
I've mentioned before that everyone has the ancient urge to find meaning in things: we get the January 6th date, in fact, from an Egyptian festival celebrating the overflowing of the banks of the Nile. How fitting, then, that we use that date to celebrate a Christ who is too big for the categories, who cannot be contained within the chosen people but must go and choose the unchosen as well, must make himself manifest before every tribe and nation.
And for those who seek, what are the tools of that manifestation? A star, a page from a pagan book, the council of a hostile king. A word, a gesture, a guidance from you and me, who have been called, improbably, outlandishly, the Light of the World.
If the battle-cry of Pentecost must be Christ's charge to go into the world and make disciples and baptize, then the battle-cry of Epiphany must be his charge to let our light shine before all, so that wherever they may be, whatever religion or philosophy their starting-point, their end will be to lay their gold before the king.
My wish for you this Epiphany season, this reverberation of rich celebration before the leanness of Lent, is that you will realize Christ in your life -- that you will have the Aha of awareness and insight that will make him real to you -- and that his presence, his manifestation in you, will overflow your banks. And will gush out effortlessly to the crooked and dark generation that surrounds us.
Today's reading in the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/index.html#English
Chapter 1: On the Kinds of Monks
It is well known that there are four kinds of monks.
The first kind are the Cenobites:
those who live in monasteries
and serve under a rule and an Abbot.
The second kind are the Anchorites or Hermits:
those who,
no longer in the first fervor of their reformation,
but after long probation in a monastery,
having learned by the help of many brethren
how to fight against the devil,
go out well armed from the ranks of the community
to the solitary combat of the desert.
They are able now,
with no help save from God,
to fight single-handed against the vices of the flesh
and their own evil thoughts.
The third kind of monks, a detestable kind, are the Sarabaites.
These, not having been tested,
as gold in the furnace (Wis. 3:6),
by any rule or by the lessons of experience,
are as soft as lead.
In their works they still keep faith with the world,
so that their tonsure marks them as liars before God.
They live in twos or threes, or even singly,
without a shepherd,
in their own sheepfolds and not in the Lord's.
Their law is the desire for self-gratification:
whatever enters their mind or appeals to them,
that they call holy;
what they dislike, they regard as unlawful.
The fourth kind of monks are those called Gyrovagues.
These spend their whole lives tramping from province to province,
staying as guests in different monasteries
for three or four days at a time.
Always on the move, with no stability,
they indulge their own wills
and succumb to the allurements of gluttony,
and are in every way worse than the Sarabaites.
Of the miserable conduct of all such
it is better to be silent than to speak.
Passing these over, therefore,
let us proceed, with God's help,
to lay down a rule for the strongest kind of monks, the Cenobites.
Commentay by Sr. Joan Chittister, http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
CHAPTER 1. THE KINDS OF MONASTICS
Jan. 8 - May 9 - Sept. 8
There are clearly four kinds of monastics. First, there are the cenobites, that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot or prioress.
In this chapter, Benedict describes each of the four main classes of religious life that were common at the time of his writing. The effects of the descriptions and definitions are apparent. He is for all intents and purposes telling us the characteristics that he values most in spiritual development and emphasizing the qualities which in his opinion are most important to spiritual growth.
In one brief sentence, then, Benedict describes the life of the cenobite. Cenobites are the seekers of the spiritual life who live in a monastery--live with others--and are not a law unto themselves. Holiness, he argues, is not something that happens in a vacuum. It has something to do with the way we live our community lives and our family lives and our public lives as well as the way we say our prayers. The life needs of other people affect the life of the truly spiritual person and they hear the voice of God in that.
Cenobites, too, live "under a Rule." Meaningless spiritual exercises may not be a Benedictine trait but arbitrariness or whim are not part of Benedict's prescription for holiness either. Monastic spirituality depends on direction. It is a rule of life. Self-control, purpose and discipline give aim to what might otherwise deteriorate into a kind of pseudo-religious life meant more for public show than for personal growth. It is so comforting to multiply the practices of the church in our life and so inconvenient to have to meet the responsibilities of the communities in which we live.
But the spiritual life is not a taste for spiritual consolations. The spiritual life is a commitment to faith where we would prefer certainty. It depends on readiness. It demands constancy. It flourishes in awareness. The ancients say that once upon a time a disciple asked the elder,
"Holy One, is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?"
And the Holy One answered, "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."
"Then of what use," the surprised disciple asked, "are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"
"To make sure," the elder said, "that you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."
The Rule prescribes directions that will keep us, like the mythical disciple, awake until what we live, lives in us.
Then, Benedict says, the cenobite lives under an abbot or prioress, someone who will mediate past and future for us, call us to see where we have come from and where we are going, confront us with the call to the demands of living fully in the now when we might be most likely to abandon our own best ideals for the sake of the easy and the selfish. It is a basic Christian call. Everyone in life lives under someone and something. Adulthood is not a matter of becoming completely independent of the people who lay claim to our lives. Adulthood is a matter of being completely open to the insights that come to us from our superiors and our spouses, our children and our friends, so that we can become more than we can even begin to imagine for ourselves.
The cenobite, like most of the people of the world, works out the way to God by walking with others. In monastic spirituality, there is no escape from life, only a chance to confront it, day after day in all its sanctifying tedium and blessed boredom and glorious agitation in the communities of which we are a part at any given moment of our lives.
Second, there are the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against evil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their members to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God's help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.
If any paragraph in the Rule dispels the popular notion of spirituality, surely this is it. Modern society has the idea that if you want to live a truly spiritual life, you have to leave life as we know it and go away by yourself and "contemplate," and that if you do, you will get holy. It is a fascinating although misleading thought. The Rule of Benedict says that if you want to be holy, stay where you are in the human community and learn from it. Learn patience. Learn wisdom. Learn unselfishness. Learn love. Then, if you want to go away from it all, then and only then will you be ready to do it alone.
There is, of course, an anchorite lurking in each of us who wants to get away from it all, who finds the tasks of dailiness devastating, who look for God in clouds and candlelight. Perhaps the most powerful point of this paragraph is that it was written by someone who had himself set out to live the spiritual life as a hermit and then discovered, apparently, that living life alone is nowhere near as searing of our souls as living it with others. It is one thing to plan my own day well with all its balance and its quiet and its contemplative exercises. It is entirely another rank of holiness to let my children and my superiors and my elderly parents and the needs of the poor do it for me.
Third, there are sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monastics, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as "gold is tried in a furnace (Prv 27:21)," have a character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their signs of religion. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not God's. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.
There's passion in the Rule of Benedict, lots of it, and sarabaites come in for good share. Benedict calls this sort of "spirituality" detestable.
Anchorites separate themselves from a community in order to concentrate their energies and strengthen their virtues apart from the distractions of everyday life. They are seasoned seekers who want to center their lives in God alone, naively perhaps but sincerely nevertheless.
Sarabaites separated themselves also. Before the codification of religious law, people could assume a habit without formal training or approval. Sarabaites presented themselves as religious but separated themselves from a disciplined life and spiritual guidance and serious purpose in order to concentrate their energies on themselves. They called themselves religious but they were the worst of all things religious. They were unauthentic. They pretended to be what they were not.
They lived lives of moderate commitment, chaste and even simple to a point, but they listened to no one's wisdom but their own. Perhaps the real importance of the paragraph for today is to remind ourselves that it's not all that uncommon for people of all eras to use religion to make themselves comfortable. It is a sense of personal goodness that they want, not a sense of gospel challenge. They are tired of being challenged. They want some proof that they've arrived at a spiritual height that gives consolation in this life and the promise of security in the next. There comes a time in life for everyone where the effort of it all begins to seem too much, when the temptation to settle down and nestle in becomes reasonable.
After years of trying to achieve a degree of spiritual depth with little result, after a lifetime of uphill efforts with little to show for it, the lure is to let it be, to stop where we are, to coast. We begin to make peace with tepidity. We begin to do what it takes to get by but little that it takes to get on with the spiritual life. We do the exercises but we cease to "listen with the heart." We do the externals--the churchgoing and churchgiving--and we call ourselves religious, but we have long since failed to care. A sense of self-sacrifice dies in us and we obey only the desires and the demands within us.
Fourth and finally, there are the monastics called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than sarabaites.
It is better to keep silent than to speak of all these and their disgraceful way of life. Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of God, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites.
The gyrovagues, whom Benedict rejected out of hand, actually had a noble beginning. Founded to follow the Christ "who had nowhere to lay his head," the earliest gyrovagi threw themselves on the providence of God, having nothing, owning nothing, amassing nothing. Originally, therefore, a sign of faith and simplicity to the Christian community, gyrovagi soon became a sign of indolence and dissipation.
Gyrovagues went from community to community, living off the charity of working monks, begging from the people, dependent on the almsgiving of others. But they never stayed anyplace long enough to do any work themselves or to be called to accountability by the community. As admirable as their call to total poverty may have been in the beginning, it began to be their own particular brand of self-centeredness. They took from every group they visited but they gave little or nothing back to the communities or families that supported them. Gyrovagues abound in religious groups: they talk high virtue and demand it from everybody but themselves. They know how to shop for a parish but they do little to build one. They live off a community but they are never available when the work of maintaining it is necessary. They are committed to morality in the curriculum of grade schools but completely unmoved by the lack of morality in government ethics. Gyrovagues were an extreme and undisciplined kind of monastic and Benedict decried them, not so much because of their ideals surely as because of their lack of direction and good work.
Benedict's reference to the gyrovagues teaches a good lesson yet today. Extremes in anything, he implies, even in religion, are dangerous. When we go to excess in one dimension of life, the unbalance in something else destroys us. Work, for instance, is good but not at the expense of family. Love is good but not at the expense of work.
Too much of a good thing can creep into life very easily and become our rationalization for avoiding everything else. Achievement becomes more important than family. Prayer becomes more important than work. Religious exercises become more important than personal responsibilities. There is a little gyrovague in us all.
The Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Book of the Way, an ancient manual on the art of living that is the most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, says on the same subject:
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
[Please remember that this is a selection, Feel free to pick and choose]
Collect
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Today's Scriptures
Psalm 1, 2, 3; Psalm 4, 7
Isa. 40:12-23; Eph. 1:1-14; Mark 1:1-13
From Forward Day by Day:
Isaiah 40:12-23. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Rhetorical questions can be annoying, especially when people use them to lord it over us, hectoring us into silence and even sullen submission. Such questions need no answer, usually because they have been answered already. The Hebrew prophets are masters of the rhetorical question. But the prophets pose their questions with a difference. They do not impose silence and submission. Rather they press us toward resurrection and freedom. Their questions sound a summons. For the ancient Israelites it is a summons to leave their place of captivity in Babylon and re-establish themselves in the land that God had given to their ancestors. For you and me it is a summons to leave our own captivity behind-our captivity to sin and hopelessness, to despair and unbelief.
No matter what happens to you, no matter how bleak life looks, no matter what you have done or left undone, the God who measured the waters of the earth and marked off the heavens with a span, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whom Jesus called Abba, Father-that loving and creating God holds you, now and always, in the very hollow of his hand. Have you not heard?
Anglican Cycle of Prayer: the Diocese of Lokoja (Prov. I, Nigeria)
Today we remember:
Harriet Bedell, Deaconess and missionary http://satucket.com/lectionary/Bedell.htm
Psalm 96:1-7;
Romans 16:1-2; Matthew 5:1-12
Holy God, you chose your faithful servant Harriet Bedell to exercise the ministry of deaconess and to be a missionary among indigenous peoples: Fill us with compassion and respect for all people, and empower us for the work of ministry throughout the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today we also remember:
Nate Saint and Other Martyrs of the Ecuador Mission http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/74.html
Almighty God, who called your faithful servants Nate Saint, Ed Mccully, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian to be witnesses and martyrs to the Huaorani peoples in the rain forests of Ecuador, and by their labors and suffering raised up a people for your own possession: Pour forth your Holy Spirit upon your Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many, your holy Name may be glorified and your kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Precious in your sight, O Lord, is the death of your saints, Whose faithful witness, by your providence, has its great reward: We give you thanks for your martyrs Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian, who purchased with their blood a hearing for the Gospel among the forest-dwellers of Ecuador, especially the Huaorani people, and for their wives, who shared with them in their work and witness; and we pray that with them we also may obtain the crown of righteousness which is laid up for all who love the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection from http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Respect One Another"
We could all learn something from the rule of reverence for married folks found in 1 Peter 3:7 (JB): “Husbands must always treat their wives with consideration in their life together, respecting a woman as one who, though she may be the weaker partner,” – he was a man of his times – “is equally an heir to the life of grace. This will stop anything from coming in the way of your prayers.”
It’s hard to respect one another and to communicate reverence. But we only believe in our worth through the eyes of people who treat us with respect. The word re-spect means to look at again. Married partners owe that to one another. Don’t let your relationship enter into a lot of negative humor, quick sarcasm and put-downs – the stupid way the world talks at cocktail parties.
God has called us to a life of reverence and respect. Through our reverence we become messengers of God for one another. We look at one another again through new eyes.
from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
God made Christ the way itself
God promised human beings divinity, mortals immortality, sinners justification, outcasts glory. But because his promise that we who are mortal, corruptible, weak and of low estate, mere dust and ashes, were to be equal to the angels seemed incredible, God not only made a written covenant with us to win our faith, but he also gave us a mediator of his pledge. This mediator was not a prince, an angel, or an archangel, but his only Son; through his own Son he meant both to show us and give us the way by which he would lead us to the promised goal. He was not satisfied with sending his Son to show us the way. He made him the way itself.
God’s only Son, then, was to come among us, take our human nature, and in this nature be born as a man. He was to die, to rise again, to ascend into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Father, and to fulfill his promises among the nations. After that he was also to fulfill his promise to come again, to demand what he had previously requested, to separate those deserving his anger from those deserving his mercy, to give the wicked what he had threatened and the just what he had promised.
All this had to be prophesied, foretold, and impressed on us as an event in the future so that we should not be terrified by its happening unexpectedly, but wait for it with faith.
Augustine of Hippo (Augustine (354 - 430), bishop of Hippo, became the most influential person of the Western Church and left many writings to posterity. more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo ; www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm ; http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/)
From Growing Each Day http://www.aish.com/spirituality/growing/
No one ever anticipated (Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai) with a greeting in the public place (Berachos 17a).
The Talmud states that when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai met someone in the street, he always initiated the greeting, and that never, in his entire lifetime, did he ever wait to be greeted first.
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai is one of the most outstanding personalities in Jewish history. After Jerusalem fell to the Romans, in 70 C.E., he served as both the political and religious leader of the Jewish nation for forty years. He is singlehandedly responsible for the survival of Israel during that difficult era.
When this great leader walked down the street, he undoubtedly engaged in important conversation with his colleagues and disciples on the vital issues of the day. We certainly could understand that he could not interrupt such weighty discussions to respond to people who greeted him, let alone to initiate greetings to others.
Still, the Talmud states that regardless of his preoccupation with the leadership of Israel, this great personality never waited to be greeted first, and not even the importance of his position could cause him to expect recognition from others.
The great Hillel prophesied about Rabbi Yochanan that he would be "a father of wisdom and a father to many generations." Rabbi Yochanan was a leader who followed in the footsteps of Moses, whose humility also paralleled his greatness."
Today I shall ...
... try to consider every person as being worthy of recognition, and avoid the false pride of expecting to be acknowledged first.
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen)
Enough Light for the Next Step
Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, "How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?" There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go. Let's rejoice in the little light we carry and not ask for the great beam that would take all shadows away.
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 8, 2007
http://www.mertonfoundation.org/merton.php3?page=quote.ext
The old and the new.
"For the "old man"-everything is old-he has seen everything or thinks he has. He has lost hope in anything new. What pleases him is the "old" he clings to, fearing to lose it, but certainly not happy with it. And so he keeps himself "old" and cannot change; he is not open to any newness. His life is stagnant and futile. …
For the "new man"-everything is new. Even the old is transfigured in the Holy Spirit and is always new. There is nothing to cling to, there is nothing to be hoped for in what is already past-it is nothing. The new man is he who can find reality where it cannot be seen by the eyes of the flesh-where it is not yet-where it comes into being the moment he sees it. And would not be (at least for him) if he did not see it. The new man lives in a world that is always being created, and renewed. He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. He lives in life.
The old man lives without life. He lives in Death, and clings to what has died precisely because he clings to it. And yet he is crazy for change, as if struggling with the bonds of death. His struggle is miserable, and cannot be a substitute for life.
Thought of these things after [holy] communion today, when I suddenly realized that I had, and for how long, deeply lost hope of "anything new." How foolish when in fact the newness is there all the time." [March 18, 1959]
selection is from Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Journals, Volume 3. Lawrence S. Cunningham, ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 268-269.
Thought to Remember:
What else is there for us but to be tranquil and at peace in the all-enchanting wonder of God's mercy to us? It falls upon this paper quieter than the morning sun, and then, I know that all things, without His love, are useless, and in His love, having nothing, I can possess all things.
Confession of a Wise Man
"... and they went back by another way."
"Wise men" -- I think that's what you call us now,
and we were wise, according to our lights:
for we spent many long and studious nights
in watching stars, and plotting where and how
and when their influence would be most strong.
Time was I'd chart the future for a prince,
based on his natal day. and then convince
him it was right when it proved wrong.
A charlatan? Perhaps. But once, I cast
a horoscope that caused my heart to stir;
and bearing gold and frankincense and myrrh
my friends and I went traveling, til at last
we saw a sight that made us feel ashamed
at all we'd done before, and warmed our hearts.
And we discarded all our former arts.
Two bright stars by a stable door were framed;
all other constellations seen beside that one
were dimmed: it was The Mother and Her Infant Son.
-- Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, 1984
Epiphany
by barry brake
A couple of years back I had an epiphany. A minister of mine, Jim Graham, pointed out that probably not a lot of people noticed the star that marked Jesus's birth. It hadn't occurred to me. Our iconography is dominated by images of a huge, unavoidable astronomical event. In Ben-Hur, after all, we see crowds cowering before a huge meteor; as children we drew a giant star larger than the sun would have been. But in reality, of course, supernovas appear all the time, and they're the same size as other stars, and no one notices besides astronomers.
And, two thousand years ago, Magi. Scholars from the school of Hermes Trismegistus. Persian guys who didn't have the Bible, didn't worship Jehovah, weren't among the chosen people, but who looked to the sky for meaning, and found it. And, like all good scholars, they put their knowledge into action: they got gifts fit for a king, and went where their books told them to go. (Ah, to see those books and find the pagan passage that sent them to Judea!). At Pentecost, the word of God went out into the world. At Epiphany, the world shows up at God's door.
EPIPHANY
PROTO INDO-EUROPEAN *bhan-yo- to shine
GREEK phainein to bring to light, to cause to appear, to show;
epiphainein to manifest, epiphaineia appearance
LATIN epiphania
MIDDLE FRENCH epiphanie
MIDDLE ENGLISH epiphanie
Epiphany n (first in print in 14th c): a festival observed on January 6, commemorating the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles; an appearance or manifestation esp. of a divine being; a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking
We can't get away from thinking of this time of year as a beginning. But the Church calls it a time of arrival. The year is already over a month old, having begun with Advent. So, after the twelve days of Christmastide, we have Epiphany, a celebration of the arrival of the Magi. And of a sudden realization: that this child isn't just for the Us, but also for the Them.
For some churches, Epiphany is one day, and then we're in Pre-Lent, a countdown to Lent in which the Sundays are named for the number of days till Easter (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, etc.). But others consider the days leading up to Ash Wednesday as the Epiphany Season. An entire season dedicated to appearances, evidences, signs, presences, realizations: the guiding of a newly appeared star; the showing-up of these strange foreigners who materialized at the house of Joseph (can we imagine that the whole town didn't stir?); the realization of Christ to everyone who ever lived, not just his own countrymen; the shocking awareness that he is in fact the savior of the world, the world.
In these days, that truth is sometimes an uncomfortable one. They say, How nice that you've found inner peace through Christ, that he is a savior for you, but don't go bashing me over the head with it. It's often seen as the ultimate arrogance that I might come out and say that everyone needs Christ, even those who don't think they do, and even those who have never heard of him. That sort of triumphalism belongs to an earlier, uglier era, most people think.
But the season of Epiphany is a time for us to realize that although some of the lost are asleep in a nighttime of lostness, others are outside craning their necks for a sign, ready to follow whatever appears, make whatever journey is necessary for them to find redemption.
I've mentioned before that everyone has the ancient urge to find meaning in things: we get the January 6th date, in fact, from an Egyptian festival celebrating the overflowing of the banks of the Nile. How fitting, then, that we use that date to celebrate a Christ who is too big for the categories, who cannot be contained within the chosen people but must go and choose the unchosen as well, must make himself manifest before every tribe and nation.
And for those who seek, what are the tools of that manifestation? A star, a page from a pagan book, the council of a hostile king. A word, a gesture, a guidance from you and me, who have been called, improbably, outlandishly, the Light of the World.
If the battle-cry of Pentecost must be Christ's charge to go into the world and make disciples and baptize, then the battle-cry of Epiphany must be his charge to let our light shine before all, so that wherever they may be, whatever religion or philosophy their starting-point, their end will be to lay their gold before the king.
My wish for you this Epiphany season, this reverberation of rich celebration before the leanness of Lent, is that you will realize Christ in your life -- that you will have the Aha of awareness and insight that will make him real to you -- and that his presence, his manifestation in you, will overflow your banks. And will gush out effortlessly to the crooked and dark generation that surrounds us.
Today's reading in the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/index.html#English
Chapter 1: On the Kinds of Monks
It is well known that there are four kinds of monks.
The first kind are the Cenobites:
those who live in monasteries
and serve under a rule and an Abbot.
The second kind are the Anchorites or Hermits:
those who,
no longer in the first fervor of their reformation,
but after long probation in a monastery,
having learned by the help of many brethren
how to fight against the devil,
go out well armed from the ranks of the community
to the solitary combat of the desert.
They are able now,
with no help save from God,
to fight single-handed against the vices of the flesh
and their own evil thoughts.
The third kind of monks, a detestable kind, are the Sarabaites.
These, not having been tested,
as gold in the furnace (Wis. 3:6),
by any rule or by the lessons of experience,
are as soft as lead.
In their works they still keep faith with the world,
so that their tonsure marks them as liars before God.
They live in twos or threes, or even singly,
without a shepherd,
in their own sheepfolds and not in the Lord's.
Their law is the desire for self-gratification:
whatever enters their mind or appeals to them,
that they call holy;
what they dislike, they regard as unlawful.
The fourth kind of monks are those called Gyrovagues.
These spend their whole lives tramping from province to province,
staying as guests in different monasteries
for three or four days at a time.
Always on the move, with no stability,
they indulge their own wills
and succumb to the allurements of gluttony,
and are in every way worse than the Sarabaites.
Of the miserable conduct of all such
it is better to be silent than to speak.
Passing these over, therefore,
let us proceed, with God's help,
to lay down a rule for the strongest kind of monks, the Cenobites.
Commentay by Sr. Joan Chittister, http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
CHAPTER 1. THE KINDS OF MONASTICS
Jan. 8 - May 9 - Sept. 8
There are clearly four kinds of monastics. First, there are the cenobites, that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot or prioress.
In this chapter, Benedict describes each of the four main classes of religious life that were common at the time of his writing. The effects of the descriptions and definitions are apparent. He is for all intents and purposes telling us the characteristics that he values most in spiritual development and emphasizing the qualities which in his opinion are most important to spiritual growth.
In one brief sentence, then, Benedict describes the life of the cenobite. Cenobites are the seekers of the spiritual life who live in a monastery--live with others--and are not a law unto themselves. Holiness, he argues, is not something that happens in a vacuum. It has something to do with the way we live our community lives and our family lives and our public lives as well as the way we say our prayers. The life needs of other people affect the life of the truly spiritual person and they hear the voice of God in that.
Cenobites, too, live "under a Rule." Meaningless spiritual exercises may not be a Benedictine trait but arbitrariness or whim are not part of Benedict's prescription for holiness either. Monastic spirituality depends on direction. It is a rule of life. Self-control, purpose and discipline give aim to what might otherwise deteriorate into a kind of pseudo-religious life meant more for public show than for personal growth. It is so comforting to multiply the practices of the church in our life and so inconvenient to have to meet the responsibilities of the communities in which we live.
But the spiritual life is not a taste for spiritual consolations. The spiritual life is a commitment to faith where we would prefer certainty. It depends on readiness. It demands constancy. It flourishes in awareness. The ancients say that once upon a time a disciple asked the elder,
"Holy One, is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?"
And the Holy One answered, "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."
"Then of what use," the surprised disciple asked, "are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"
"To make sure," the elder said, "that you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."
The Rule prescribes directions that will keep us, like the mythical disciple, awake until what we live, lives in us.
Then, Benedict says, the cenobite lives under an abbot or prioress, someone who will mediate past and future for us, call us to see where we have come from and where we are going, confront us with the call to the demands of living fully in the now when we might be most likely to abandon our own best ideals for the sake of the easy and the selfish. It is a basic Christian call. Everyone in life lives under someone and something. Adulthood is not a matter of becoming completely independent of the people who lay claim to our lives. Adulthood is a matter of being completely open to the insights that come to us from our superiors and our spouses, our children and our friends, so that we can become more than we can even begin to imagine for ourselves.
The cenobite, like most of the people of the world, works out the way to God by walking with others. In monastic spirituality, there is no escape from life, only a chance to confront it, day after day in all its sanctifying tedium and blessed boredom and glorious agitation in the communities of which we are a part at any given moment of our lives.
Second, there are the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against evil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their members to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God's help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.
If any paragraph in the Rule dispels the popular notion of spirituality, surely this is it. Modern society has the idea that if you want to live a truly spiritual life, you have to leave life as we know it and go away by yourself and "contemplate," and that if you do, you will get holy. It is a fascinating although misleading thought. The Rule of Benedict says that if you want to be holy, stay where you are in the human community and learn from it. Learn patience. Learn wisdom. Learn unselfishness. Learn love. Then, if you want to go away from it all, then and only then will you be ready to do it alone.
There is, of course, an anchorite lurking in each of us who wants to get away from it all, who finds the tasks of dailiness devastating, who look for God in clouds and candlelight. Perhaps the most powerful point of this paragraph is that it was written by someone who had himself set out to live the spiritual life as a hermit and then discovered, apparently, that living life alone is nowhere near as searing of our souls as living it with others. It is one thing to plan my own day well with all its balance and its quiet and its contemplative exercises. It is entirely another rank of holiness to let my children and my superiors and my elderly parents and the needs of the poor do it for me.
Third, there are sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monastics, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as "gold is tried in a furnace (Prv 27:21)," have a character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their signs of religion. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not God's. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.
There's passion in the Rule of Benedict, lots of it, and sarabaites come in for good share. Benedict calls this sort of "spirituality" detestable.
Anchorites separate themselves from a community in order to concentrate their energies and strengthen their virtues apart from the distractions of everyday life. They are seasoned seekers who want to center their lives in God alone, naively perhaps but sincerely nevertheless.
Sarabaites separated themselves also. Before the codification of religious law, people could assume a habit without formal training or approval. Sarabaites presented themselves as religious but separated themselves from a disciplined life and spiritual guidance and serious purpose in order to concentrate their energies on themselves. They called themselves religious but they were the worst of all things religious. They were unauthentic. They pretended to be what they were not.
They lived lives of moderate commitment, chaste and even simple to a point, but they listened to no one's wisdom but their own. Perhaps the real importance of the paragraph for today is to remind ourselves that it's not all that uncommon for people of all eras to use religion to make themselves comfortable. It is a sense of personal goodness that they want, not a sense of gospel challenge. They are tired of being challenged. They want some proof that they've arrived at a spiritual height that gives consolation in this life and the promise of security in the next. There comes a time in life for everyone where the effort of it all begins to seem too much, when the temptation to settle down and nestle in becomes reasonable.
After years of trying to achieve a degree of spiritual depth with little result, after a lifetime of uphill efforts with little to show for it, the lure is to let it be, to stop where we are, to coast. We begin to make peace with tepidity. We begin to do what it takes to get by but little that it takes to get on with the spiritual life. We do the exercises but we cease to "listen with the heart." We do the externals--the churchgoing and churchgiving--and we call ourselves religious, but we have long since failed to care. A sense of self-sacrifice dies in us and we obey only the desires and the demands within us.
Fourth and finally, there are the monastics called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than sarabaites.
It is better to keep silent than to speak of all these and their disgraceful way of life. Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of God, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites.
The gyrovagues, whom Benedict rejected out of hand, actually had a noble beginning. Founded to follow the Christ "who had nowhere to lay his head," the earliest gyrovagi threw themselves on the providence of God, having nothing, owning nothing, amassing nothing. Originally, therefore, a sign of faith and simplicity to the Christian community, gyrovagi soon became a sign of indolence and dissipation.
Gyrovagues went from community to community, living off the charity of working monks, begging from the people, dependent on the almsgiving of others. But they never stayed anyplace long enough to do any work themselves or to be called to accountability by the community. As admirable as their call to total poverty may have been in the beginning, it began to be their own particular brand of self-centeredness. They took from every group they visited but they gave little or nothing back to the communities or families that supported them. Gyrovagues abound in religious groups: they talk high virtue and demand it from everybody but themselves. They know how to shop for a parish but they do little to build one. They live off a community but they are never available when the work of maintaining it is necessary. They are committed to morality in the curriculum of grade schools but completely unmoved by the lack of morality in government ethics. Gyrovagues were an extreme and undisciplined kind of monastic and Benedict decried them, not so much because of their ideals surely as because of their lack of direction and good work.
Benedict's reference to the gyrovagues teaches a good lesson yet today. Extremes in anything, he implies, even in religion, are dangerous. When we go to excess in one dimension of life, the unbalance in something else destroys us. Work, for instance, is good but not at the expense of family. Love is good but not at the expense of work.
Too much of a good thing can creep into life very easily and become our rationalization for avoiding everything else. Achievement becomes more important than family. Prayer becomes more important than work. Religious exercises become more important than personal responsibilities. There is a little gyrovague in us all.
The Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Book of the Way, an ancient manual on the art of living that is the most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, says on the same subject:
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 2:04 PM
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