29.01/07 week of Epiphany 4
[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to pray it all]
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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 56, 57, [58]; 64, 65; Isa. 51:17-23; Gal. 4:1-11; Mark 7:24-37
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Mark 7:24-37. And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
When Mark tells healing stories like this, there are often two things going on at the same time. The story tells us what happened, in rich detail. But in telling us what happened then, Mark also tells us what's happening now, with us, in our own lives, and about the gospel we have been given to proclaim. I love the earthy way Mark tells this story. Jesus puts his fingers in the deaf man's ears, and spits and then touches the deaf man's tongue. What is compelling is how physically close Jesus gets to the person he heals. This is no distant deity pulling strings; this God shares our humanity, in all its earthy touchability. But there's more to the story than this, and Mark knows it. For this man to hear, for his tongue to be loosened, for him to speak plainly, is to demonstrate what it means to be freed to preach the gospel. The healed man embodies the good news of salvation--and nothing, not even Jesus' plea for secrecy, can stop him from spreading the word. Surely Mark hopes that we who read this story can take our cue from deaf ears healed and stumbling speech made plain, and speak plainly, too, about the power of this gospel in our own day.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
This day is a "feria", a free day. So far we remember no one in particular on January 29. Let us join together to offer this prayer: http://www.oremus.org/oremus.cgi?f
Merciful God,
you give us every good gift.
Hear our prayers which we now offer
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We pray for your Church.
May our divisions be healed,
that we may go into the world proclaiming your Good News.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for the physical and spiritual well-being
of our family and friends,
that they may rejoice in your mercy and love
and share in your joy in your heavenly Kingdom.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for those who work,
especially those who are stressed or overwhelmed,
that they may know you are their refuge and strength.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for those who are persecuted
for fighting for justice and liberty,
that they may remember that you are the source
of all things just and free.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd:
you have led us to the kingdom of your Father's love.
Forgive our careless indifference
to your loving care for all your creatures,
and remake us in the likeness of your new and risen life.
We ask this in your Name. Amen.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Malaita, Solomon Islands (Melanesia)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Take God for your friend and walk with him - and you will learn to love.
St John of the Cross
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians: http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
On how to become a disciple:
Some old men said, "If you see a young man climbing up to the heavens by his own will, catch him by the foot and throw him down to the earth; it is not good for him."
At first abba Ammoe said to abba Isaiah, "What do you think of me?" He said to him, "You are an angel, father." Later on he said to him, "and now, what do you think of me?" He replied, "You are like Satan. Even when you say a good word to me, it is like steel."
Abba Moses asked abba Sylvanus, "Can a man lay a new foundation every day?" The old man said, "If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moments."
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Healing Our Memories
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.
Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 29, 2007
We prescribe for one another remedies that will bring us peace of mind, and we are still devoured by anxiety. We evolve plans for disarmament and for the peace of nations, and our plans only change the manner and method of aggression. The rich have everything they want except happiness, and the poor are sacrificed to the unhappiness of the rich. Dictatorships use their secret police to crush millions under an intolerable burden of lies, injustice and tyranny, and those who still live in democracies have forgotten how to make good use of their liberty. For liberty is a thing of the spirit, and we are no longer able to live for anything but our bodies. How can we find peace, true peace, if we forget that we are not machines for making and spending money, but spiritual beings, sons and daughters of the most high God?
From: Thomas Merton. The Monastic Journey. Patrick Hart, editor. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978: 62.
Thought to Remember:
The world is, by its very essence, struggle, conflict, division, dissension. For there to be peace in the world, men must renounce their selfishness in order to make peace, and we cannot make peace with others unless we are at peace with ourselves.
The Monastic Journey: 63
+++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
(29) This joy is a divine gift, coming from union with God in Christ. It
is still there even in times of darkness and difficulty, giving cheerful
courage in the face of disappointment, and an inward serenity and
confidence through sickness and suffering. Those who possess it can
rejoice in weakness, insults, hardships, and persecutions for the sake
of Christ; for when they are weak, then they are strong.
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
"God Loves You"
Read the praise prayers of St. Francis from beginning to end. All St. Francis needs to do is praise God. That takes care of everything else. Because he's letting God be God. He praises God for this, he praises God for that. Every situation, even though immediately it might look unhappy of difficult or absurd or impossible, he praises God. That becomes the transparency through which God is able to act through us and in us, when we trust God that much, when we believe that God is always loving us. There is no time, no place, no situation in which God is not loving you. There is not way God is not loving you. We have to be the continual "yes" for the love to come through. And then our lives become no more coincidence, but continuous providence!
from The Great Themes of Scripture
++++++++++
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
May your "amen" accord with the truth
Faith seeks understanding; so you may now say to me: "We know from whom our Lord Jesus Christ took his flesh—it was from the Virgin Mary. As a baby, he was suckled, he was fed, he developed, he came to young man's estate. He was slain on the cross, he was taken down from it, he was buried, he rose again on the third day. On the day of his own choosing, he ascended to heaven, taking his body with him; and it is from heaven that he will come to judge the living and the dead. But now that he is there, seated at the right hand of the Father, how can bread be his body? And the cup, or rather what is in the cup, how can that be his blood?"
These things, my friends, are called sacraments, because our eyes see in them one thing, our understanding another. Our eyes see the material form; our understanding, its spiritual effect. If, then, you want to know what the body of Christ is, you must listen to what the apostle tells the faithful: Now you are the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.
If that is so, it is the sacrament of yourselves that is placed on the Lord's altar, and it is the sacrament of yourselves that you receive. You reply "amen" to what you are, and thereby agree that such you are. You hear the words "the body of Christ," and you reply "amen." Be, then, a member of Christ's body, so that your "amen" may accord with the truth.
Augustine of Hippo, (354 - 430), bishop of Hippo, became the most influential person of the Western Church and left many writings to posterity.
++++++++++
On Prayer:
O Great and wondrous God, Who of Thy searchless mercy and rich providence
dost govern all things, and hast granted unto us the good things of this
world; Who hast preserved us even unto this day and hour, and verily
prepared for us the promised Kingdom: Of Thy goodness vouchsafe that we may
live the remainder of our lives undefiled before Thy face, and worthily
hymn Thee, the One True God.
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, On Prayer, p. 183.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 7: On Humility
We must be on our guard, therefore, against evil desires,
for death lies close by the gate of pleasure.
Hence the Scripture gives this command:
"Go not after your concupiscences" (Eccles. 18:30).
So therefore,
since the eyes of the Lord observe the good and the evil (Prov. 15:3)
and the Lord is always looking down from heaven
on the children of earth
"to see if there be anyone who understands and seeks God" (Ps. 13:2),
and since our deeds are daily,
day and night,
reported to the Lord by the Angels assigned to us,
we must constantly beware, brethren,
as the Prophet says in the Psalm,
lest at any time God see us falling into evil ways
and becoming unprofitable (Ps. 13:3);
and lest, having spared us for the present
because in His kindness He awaits our reformation,
He say to us in the future,
"These things you did, and I held My peace" (Ps. 49:21).
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.
++++++++++
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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 56, 57, [58]; 64, 65; Isa. 51:17-23; Gal. 4:1-11; Mark 7:24-37
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Mark 7:24-37. And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
When Mark tells healing stories like this, there are often two things going on at the same time. The story tells us what happened, in rich detail. But in telling us what happened then, Mark also tells us what's happening now, with us, in our own lives, and about the gospel we have been given to proclaim. I love the earthy way Mark tells this story. Jesus puts his fingers in the deaf man's ears, and spits and then touches the deaf man's tongue. What is compelling is how physically close Jesus gets to the person he heals. This is no distant deity pulling strings; this God shares our humanity, in all its earthy touchability. But there's more to the story than this, and Mark knows it. For this man to hear, for his tongue to be loosened, for him to speak plainly, is to demonstrate what it means to be freed to preach the gospel. The healed man embodies the good news of salvation--and nothing, not even Jesus' plea for secrecy, can stop him from spreading the word. Surely Mark hopes that we who read this story can take our cue from deaf ears healed and stumbling speech made plain, and speak plainly, too, about the power of this gospel in our own day.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
This day is a "feria", a free day. So far we remember no one in particular on January 29. Let us join together to offer this prayer: http://www.oremus.org/oremus.cgi?f
Merciful God,
you give us every good gift.
Hear our prayers which we now offer
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We pray for your Church.
May our divisions be healed,
that we may go into the world proclaiming your Good News.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for the physical and spiritual well-being
of our family and friends,
that they may rejoice in your mercy and love
and share in your joy in your heavenly Kingdom.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for those who work,
especially those who are stressed or overwhelmed,
that they may know you are their refuge and strength.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
We pray for those who are persecuted
for fighting for justice and liberty,
that they may remember that you are the source
of all things just and free.
Lord, in your mercy:
hear our prayer.
Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd:
you have led us to the kingdom of your Father's love.
Forgive our careless indifference
to your loving care for all your creatures,
and remake us in the likeness of your new and risen life.
We ask this in your Name. Amen.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Malaita, Solomon Islands (Melanesia)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Take God for your friend and walk with him - and you will learn to love.
St John of the Cross
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians: http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
On how to become a disciple:
Some old men said, "If you see a young man climbing up to the heavens by his own will, catch him by the foot and throw him down to the earth; it is not good for him."
At first abba Ammoe said to abba Isaiah, "What do you think of me?" He said to him, "You are an angel, father." Later on he said to him, "and now, what do you think of me?" He replied, "You are like Satan. Even when you say a good word to me, it is like steel."
Abba Moses asked abba Sylvanus, "Can a man lay a new foundation every day?" The old man said, "If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moments."
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Healing Our Memories
Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over.
Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let these events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 29, 2007
We prescribe for one another remedies that will bring us peace of mind, and we are still devoured by anxiety. We evolve plans for disarmament and for the peace of nations, and our plans only change the manner and method of aggression. The rich have everything they want except happiness, and the poor are sacrificed to the unhappiness of the rich. Dictatorships use their secret police to crush millions under an intolerable burden of lies, injustice and tyranny, and those who still live in democracies have forgotten how to make good use of their liberty. For liberty is a thing of the spirit, and we are no longer able to live for anything but our bodies. How can we find peace, true peace, if we forget that we are not machines for making and spending money, but spiritual beings, sons and daughters of the most high God?
From: Thomas Merton. The Monastic Journey. Patrick Hart, editor. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978: 62.
Thought to Remember:
The world is, by its very essence, struggle, conflict, division, dissension. For there to be peace in the world, men must renounce their selfishness in order to make peace, and we cannot make peace with others unless we are at peace with ourselves.
The Monastic Journey: 63
+++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
(29) This joy is a divine gift, coming from union with God in Christ. It
is still there even in times of darkness and difficulty, giving cheerful
courage in the face of disappointment, and an inward serenity and
confidence through sickness and suffering. Those who possess it can
rejoice in weakness, insults, hardships, and persecutions for the sake
of Christ; for when they are weak, then they are strong.
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
"God Loves You"
Read the praise prayers of St. Francis from beginning to end. All St. Francis needs to do is praise God. That takes care of everything else. Because he's letting God be God. He praises God for this, he praises God for that. Every situation, even though immediately it might look unhappy of difficult or absurd or impossible, he praises God. That becomes the transparency through which God is able to act through us and in us, when we trust God that much, when we believe that God is always loving us. There is no time, no place, no situation in which God is not loving you. There is not way God is not loving you. We have to be the continual "yes" for the love to come through. And then our lives become no more coincidence, but continuous providence!
from The Great Themes of Scripture
++++++++++
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
May your "amen" accord with the truth
Faith seeks understanding; so you may now say to me: "We know from whom our Lord Jesus Christ took his flesh—it was from the Virgin Mary. As a baby, he was suckled, he was fed, he developed, he came to young man's estate. He was slain on the cross, he was taken down from it, he was buried, he rose again on the third day. On the day of his own choosing, he ascended to heaven, taking his body with him; and it is from heaven that he will come to judge the living and the dead. But now that he is there, seated at the right hand of the Father, how can bread be his body? And the cup, or rather what is in the cup, how can that be his blood?"
These things, my friends, are called sacraments, because our eyes see in them one thing, our understanding another. Our eyes see the material form; our understanding, its spiritual effect. If, then, you want to know what the body of Christ is, you must listen to what the apostle tells the faithful: Now you are the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.
If that is so, it is the sacrament of yourselves that is placed on the Lord's altar, and it is the sacrament of yourselves that you receive. You reply "amen" to what you are, and thereby agree that such you are. You hear the words "the body of Christ," and you reply "amen." Be, then, a member of Christ's body, so that your "amen" may accord with the truth.
Augustine of Hippo, (354 - 430), bishop of Hippo, became the most influential person of the Western Church and left many writings to posterity.
++++++++++
On Prayer:
O Great and wondrous God, Who of Thy searchless mercy and rich providence
dost govern all things, and hast granted unto us the good things of this
world; Who hast preserved us even unto this day and hour, and verily
prepared for us the promised Kingdom: Of Thy goodness vouchsafe that we may
live the remainder of our lives undefiled before Thy face, and worthily
hymn Thee, the One True God.
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov, On Prayer, p. 183.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 7: On Humility
We must be on our guard, therefore, against evil desires,
for death lies close by the gate of pleasure.
Hence the Scripture gives this command:
"Go not after your concupiscences" (Eccles. 18:30).
So therefore,
since the eyes of the Lord observe the good and the evil (Prov. 15:3)
and the Lord is always looking down from heaven
on the children of earth
"to see if there be anyone who understands and seeks God" (Ps. 13:2),
and since our deeds are daily,
day and night,
reported to the Lord by the Angels assigned to us,
we must constantly beware, brethren,
as the Prophet says in the Psalm,
lest at any time God see us falling into evil ways
and becoming unprofitable (Ps. 13:3);
and lest, having spared us for the present
because in His kindness He awaits our reformation,
He say to us in the future,
"These things you did, and I held My peace" (Ps. 49:21).
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.
++++++++++
posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 2:25 PM
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