22/01/07 Week of Epiphany 3
[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to read it all]
Collect
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 41, 52; Psalm 44; Isa. 48:1-11; Gal. 1:1-17; Mark 5:21-43
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Isaiah 48:1-11. From this time forward I make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known.
Reading passages like this, you wonder how a text so old could seem so new. How many hundreds of thousands of worshipers have heard Isaiah's words read aloud in church or synagogue in the 2,500 years since they were first set down? You would think that people would get tired of them. But they don't. In every generation, God is doing a new thing. In every generation, God surprises us by revealing hidden things that we didn't know existed. And the Bible celebrates this newness in every age. It's as if scripture were like one of those ancient Palestinian olive trees, rooted near a living stream, dormant in the winter days of our understanding, but always ready to produce new fruit in due season, year after year, millennium after millennium. Remember the excitement when people saw the first images of the cosmos from the Hubble telescope? We suddenly saw new things until then hidden from our sight--signs of God's infinite creativity that we never expected to see. Scripture is like that for me--infinitely generative--not only in what it says (I will make you hear new things), but in how it says it, generation after generation, fresh news of hope always seeking fresh new ears.
++++++++++
Today we remember: Vincent, Deacon and Martyr,
Psalm 31:1-5or116:10-17, Revelation 7:13-17; Luke 12:4-12
Almighty God, whose deacon Vincent, upheld by you, was not terrified by threats nor overcome by torments: Strengthen us to endure all adversity with invincible and steadfast faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
http://satucket.com/lectionary/Vincent.htm
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Madi & West Nile (Uganda)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
We continue to observe the week long prayers for Christian Unity:
http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/faith/wop-index.html
Affirmation of faith
I believe in a Father
who so loves his children
to wait in silence for their return
in order to give them the best robe,
kill the fatted calf
and celebrate the feast of reconciliation.
I believe in a Spirit
whose power is not revealed in the thunder of the gale
nor in the dread of the earthquake
but in the still, small voice.
I believe in a Son
who broke the power of Silence
with the piercing cry
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Dying on the cross
he transformed the silence of death
into the death of every silence.
(Massimo Aprile, Italy. In: Rete di Liturgia, 1996, No. 2 © Rete di Liturgia.)
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 22, 2007
Hence it becomes more and more difficult to estimate the morality of an act leading to war because it is more and more difficult to know precisely what is going on. Not only is war increasingly a matter for pure specialists operating with fantastically complex machinery, but above all there is the question of absolute secrecy regarding everything that seriously affects defense policy. We may amuse ourselves by reading the reports in mass media and imagine that these “facts” provide sufficient basis for moral judgments for and against war. But in reality, we are simply elaborating moral fantasies in a vacuum. Whatever we may decide, we remain completely at the mercy of the governmental power, or rather the anonymous power of managers and generals who stand behind the façade of government. We have no way of directly influencing the decisions and policies taken by these people. In practice, we must fall back on a blinder and blinder faith which more and more resigns itself to trusting the “legitimately constituted authority” without having the vaguest notion what that authority is liable to do next. This condition of irresponsibility and passivity is extremely dangerous. It is hardly conducive to genuine morality.
From: Thomas Merton. Passion for Peace: The Social Essays. William H. Shannon, ed. New York: Crossroad, 1995: 113-114.
Thought to Remember:
We used to have an unrivaled reputation among the backward people of the world. We were considered the true defenders of liberty, justice and peace, the hope of the future. Our anger, our ignorance and our frustration have made us forfeit this tremendous advantage [written in 1962].
Passion for Peace: 110.
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Confidence, nothing but confidence leads to the love of God.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Community Supported by Solitude
Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our center and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
The First Note: Humility
(22) We always keep before us the example of Christ, who emptied
Himself, taking the form of a servant, and Who, on the last night of His
life, humbly washed His disciples feet. We likewise seek to serve one
another with humility.
Heavenly Father, you are always pleased to show yourself to those who
are childlike and humble in spirit: help us to follow the example of our
blessed father Francis, to look upon the wisdom of this world as
foolishness, and set our minds only on Christ Jesus and Him crucified;
to Whom with You and the Holy Spirit be all glory for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"The Spirituality of A.A."
The spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous will go down in history as the significant and authentic American contribution to the history of spirituality. It is genuinely a spirituality. What's so exciting about it for me as a Christian is to see the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions stating clearly what we've been saying so feebly in theological language. Religious jargon has become so overused and mystified that it doesn't have much punch anymore. Words like "love" and "conversion" connote so many things that their message is no longer clear. They often obscure instead of reveal, mystify instead of name. Twelve-Step language is clearing away the mystification that religion is so prone to. Mystification is the religious form of repression and denial. The Twelve Steps call it "stinking thinking." They have no time for it.
from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.html
Divinization
The same honor, the same latreutic worship that is paid to the divinity is paid to the humanity as well, inasmuch as it subsists in the divinity. And therefore God cannot confer a greater dignity upon a human being than to give it a share in the veneration due to himself. As Saint John Damascene explains how latreutic worship can be paid to a creature: "As a lighted piece of charcoal is not simply wood but wood united to fire, so the flesh of Christ is not mere flesh but flesh united to the Godhead." In that passage he speaks therefore of the flesh of Christ as divinized; because of this divinization there is a sharing in the honor and veneration due to God.
The eternal Word willed to stoop to such great poverty, in order that he might enrich us abundantly with heavenly gifts. Should one reflect on the manner in which he enriched us, one would find it wonderful indeed, since he enriched us by his poverty and endowed us out of his indigence.
Henry of Friemar, O.S.A., (~1340), an Augustinian friar, was influenced by Giles of Rome. He passed on to the Augustinian Order valuable historical data as well as his many homilies, but he likewise wrote treatises on the spiritual life, especially on discernment.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 5: On Obedience
The first degree of humility is obedience without delay.
This is the virtue of those
who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ;
who, because of the holy service they have professed,
and the fear of hell,
and the glory of life everlasting,
as soon as anything has been ordered by the Superior,
receive it as a divine command
and cannot suffer any delay in executing it.
Of these the Lord says,
"As soon as he heard, he obeyed Me" (Ps. 17:45).
And again to teachers He says,
"He who hears you, hears Me" (Luke 10:16).
Such as these, therefore,
immediately leaving their own affairs
and forsaking their own will,
dropping the work they were engaged on
and leaving it unfinished,
with the ready step of obedience
follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands.
And so as it were at the same moment
the master's command is given
and the disciple's work is completed,
the two things being speedily accomplished together
in the swiftness of the fear of God
by those who are moved
with the desire of attaining life everlasting.
That desire is their motive for choosing the narrow way,
of which the Lord says,
"Narrow is the way that leads to life" (Matt. 7:14),
so that,
not living according to their own choice
nor obeying their own desires and pleasures
but walking by another's judgment and command,
they dwell in monasteries and desire to have an Abbot over them.
Assuredly such as these are living up to that maxim of the Lord
in which He says,
"I have come not to do My own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38).
Selections above from Saint Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, translated from the Latin by Leonard J. Doyle OblSB, of Saint John's Abbey, (© Copyright 1948, 2001, by the Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, MN 56321). Adapted for use here with the division into sense lines of the first edition that was republished in 2001 to mark the 75th anniversary of Liturgical Press. Doyle's translation is available in both hardcover and paperback editions.
++++++++++
The Almost Daily Emo
THE GROUP
Of all the places I go, this is one of my favorites: once a month, a small group of brother and sister clergy. Eight Episcopal priests and a Baptist minister -- we season each other. One has served for more than forty years, another for almost as long. One of us is in for twenty-six years. The rest are somewhere in the teens or early twenties, except for two who have logged under ten.
We serve rich parishes and poor. We are in between parishes and longing for a new one, or we are happily settled and fulfilled. Or we are settled and frustrated. Or we are both at once. We are ready to leave a parish or preparing to go to one -- we are in many places on the journey.
We drink coffee. We talk and pray. We discover that we are a lot smarter than we gave ourselves credit for being, and also a lot more foolish, and that often we are both of these at the same time. We give each other excellent advice, advice we don't always act on ourselves. Sometimes we cry, right there in front of everybody, and we are not ashamed. And always we laugh.
How I love them! What true souls they are -- not perfect, but so
faithful, so desirous of the good! The church is in good hands with these folks, I think as I ride the train back home along the Hudson.
Whatever your calling, your work is an immense part of your life. It accounts for the majority of your waking hours. You grow almost as close to some of the people at work as you are to the members of your own family; there are even moments when you are closer. In a sense, nobody knows what it's like to do what you do except other people who also do it. You can tell the ones who love you, but they can't really know. A person has to be there.
Copyright © 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
Collect
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 41, 52; Psalm 44; Isa. 48:1-11; Gal. 1:1-17; Mark 5:21-43
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Isaiah 48:1-11. From this time forward I make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known.
Reading passages like this, you wonder how a text so old could seem so new. How many hundreds of thousands of worshipers have heard Isaiah's words read aloud in church or synagogue in the 2,500 years since they were first set down? You would think that people would get tired of them. But they don't. In every generation, God is doing a new thing. In every generation, God surprises us by revealing hidden things that we didn't know existed. And the Bible celebrates this newness in every age. It's as if scripture were like one of those ancient Palestinian olive trees, rooted near a living stream, dormant in the winter days of our understanding, but always ready to produce new fruit in due season, year after year, millennium after millennium. Remember the excitement when people saw the first images of the cosmos from the Hubble telescope? We suddenly saw new things until then hidden from our sight--signs of God's infinite creativity that we never expected to see. Scripture is like that for me--infinitely generative--not only in what it says (I will make you hear new things), but in how it says it, generation after generation, fresh news of hope always seeking fresh new ears.
++++++++++
Today we remember: Vincent, Deacon and Martyr,
Psalm 31:1-5or116:10-17, Revelation 7:13-17; Luke 12:4-12
Almighty God, whose deacon Vincent, upheld by you, was not terrified by threats nor overcome by torments: Strengthen us to endure all adversity with invincible and steadfast faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
http://satucket.com/lectionary/Vincent.htm
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Madi & West Nile (Uganda)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
We continue to observe the week long prayers for Christian Unity:
http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/faith/wop-index.html
Affirmation of faith
I believe in a Father
who so loves his children
to wait in silence for their return
in order to give them the best robe,
kill the fatted calf
and celebrate the feast of reconciliation.
I believe in a Spirit
whose power is not revealed in the thunder of the gale
nor in the dread of the earthquake
but in the still, small voice.
I believe in a Son
who broke the power of Silence
with the piercing cry
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Dying on the cross
he transformed the silence of death
into the death of every silence.
(Massimo Aprile, Italy. In: Rete di Liturgia, 1996, No. 2 © Rete di Liturgia.)
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 22, 2007
Hence it becomes more and more difficult to estimate the morality of an act leading to war because it is more and more difficult to know precisely what is going on. Not only is war increasingly a matter for pure specialists operating with fantastically complex machinery, but above all there is the question of absolute secrecy regarding everything that seriously affects defense policy. We may amuse ourselves by reading the reports in mass media and imagine that these “facts” provide sufficient basis for moral judgments for and against war. But in reality, we are simply elaborating moral fantasies in a vacuum. Whatever we may decide, we remain completely at the mercy of the governmental power, or rather the anonymous power of managers and generals who stand behind the façade of government. We have no way of directly influencing the decisions and policies taken by these people. In practice, we must fall back on a blinder and blinder faith which more and more resigns itself to trusting the “legitimately constituted authority” without having the vaguest notion what that authority is liable to do next. This condition of irresponsibility and passivity is extremely dangerous. It is hardly conducive to genuine morality.
From: Thomas Merton. Passion for Peace: The Social Essays. William H. Shannon, ed. New York: Crossroad, 1995: 113-114.
Thought to Remember:
We used to have an unrivaled reputation among the backward people of the world. We were considered the true defenders of liberty, justice and peace, the hope of the future. Our anger, our ignorance and our frustration have made us forfeit this tremendous advantage [written in 1962].
Passion for Peace: 110.
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Confidence, nothing but confidence leads to the love of God.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Community Supported by Solitude
Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our center and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
The First Note: Humility
(22) We always keep before us the example of Christ, who emptied
Himself, taking the form of a servant, and Who, on the last night of His
life, humbly washed His disciples feet. We likewise seek to serve one
another with humility.
Heavenly Father, you are always pleased to show yourself to those who
are childlike and humble in spirit: help us to follow the example of our
blessed father Francis, to look upon the wisdom of this world as
foolishness, and set our minds only on Christ Jesus and Him crucified;
to Whom with You and the Holy Spirit be all glory for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"The Spirituality of A.A."
The spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous will go down in history as the significant and authentic American contribution to the history of spirituality. It is genuinely a spirituality. What's so exciting about it for me as a Christian is to see the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions stating clearly what we've been saying so feebly in theological language. Religious jargon has become so overused and mystified that it doesn't have much punch anymore. Words like "love" and "conversion" connote so many things that their message is no longer clear. They often obscure instead of reveal, mystify instead of name. Twelve-Step language is clearing away the mystification that religion is so prone to. Mystification is the religious form of repression and denial. The Twelve Steps call it "stinking thinking." They have no time for it.
from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.html
Divinization
The same honor, the same latreutic worship that is paid to the divinity is paid to the humanity as well, inasmuch as it subsists in the divinity. And therefore God cannot confer a greater dignity upon a human being than to give it a share in the veneration due to himself. As Saint John Damascene explains how latreutic worship can be paid to a creature: "As a lighted piece of charcoal is not simply wood but wood united to fire, so the flesh of Christ is not mere flesh but flesh united to the Godhead." In that passage he speaks therefore of the flesh of Christ as divinized; because of this divinization there is a sharing in the honor and veneration due to God.
The eternal Word willed to stoop to such great poverty, in order that he might enrich us abundantly with heavenly gifts. Should one reflect on the manner in which he enriched us, one would find it wonderful indeed, since he enriched us by his poverty and endowed us out of his indigence.
Henry of Friemar, O.S.A., (~1340), an Augustinian friar, was influenced by Giles of Rome. He passed on to the Augustinian Order valuable historical data as well as his many homilies, but he likewise wrote treatises on the spiritual life, especially on discernment.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 5: On Obedience
The first degree of humility is obedience without delay.
This is the virtue of those
who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ;
who, because of the holy service they have professed,
and the fear of hell,
and the glory of life everlasting,
as soon as anything has been ordered by the Superior,
receive it as a divine command
and cannot suffer any delay in executing it.
Of these the Lord says,
"As soon as he heard, he obeyed Me" (Ps. 17:45).
And again to teachers He says,
"He who hears you, hears Me" (Luke 10:16).
Such as these, therefore,
immediately leaving their own affairs
and forsaking their own will,
dropping the work they were engaged on
and leaving it unfinished,
with the ready step of obedience
follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands.
And so as it were at the same moment
the master's command is given
and the disciple's work is completed,
the two things being speedily accomplished together
in the swiftness of the fear of God
by those who are moved
with the desire of attaining life everlasting.
That desire is their motive for choosing the narrow way,
of which the Lord says,
"Narrow is the way that leads to life" (Matt. 7:14),
so that,
not living according to their own choice
nor obeying their own desires and pleasures
but walking by another's judgment and command,
they dwell in monasteries and desire to have an Abbot over them.
Assuredly such as these are living up to that maxim of the Lord
in which He says,
"I have come not to do My own will,
but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38).
Selections above from Saint Benedict's Rule for Monasteries, translated from the Latin by Leonard J. Doyle OblSB, of Saint John's Abbey, (© Copyright 1948, 2001, by the Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, MN 56321). Adapted for use here with the division into sense lines of the first edition that was republished in 2001 to mark the 75th anniversary of Liturgical Press. Doyle's translation is available in both hardcover and paperback editions.
++++++++++
The Almost Daily Emo
THE GROUP
Of all the places I go, this is one of my favorites: once a month, a small group of brother and sister clergy. Eight Episcopal priests and a Baptist minister -- we season each other. One has served for more than forty years, another for almost as long. One of us is in for twenty-six years. The rest are somewhere in the teens or early twenties, except for two who have logged under ten.
We serve rich parishes and poor. We are in between parishes and longing for a new one, or we are happily settled and fulfilled. Or we are settled and frustrated. Or we are both at once. We are ready to leave a parish or preparing to go to one -- we are in many places on the journey.
We drink coffee. We talk and pray. We discover that we are a lot smarter than we gave ourselves credit for being, and also a lot more foolish, and that often we are both of these at the same time. We give each other excellent advice, advice we don't always act on ourselves. Sometimes we cry, right there in front of everybody, and we are not ashamed. And always we laugh.
How I love them! What true souls they are -- not perfect, but so
faithful, so desirous of the good! The church is in good hands with these folks, I think as I ride the train back home along the Hudson.
Whatever your calling, your work is an immense part of your life. It accounts for the majority of your waking hours. You grow almost as close to some of the people at work as you are to the members of your own family; there are even moments when you are closer. In a sense, nobody knows what it's like to do what you do except other people who also do it. You can tell the ones who love you, but they can't really know. A person has to be there.
Copyright © 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 1:18 PM
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