knitternun

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

07/03/07 week of 2nd Sunday in Lent

[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to pray it all]

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Collect

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

Psalm 72; Psalm 119:73-96; Jer. 3:6-18; Rom. 1:28-2:11; John 5:1-18
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Jeremiah 3:6-18. You rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree.

How often we, too, scatter our favors--perhaps not under green trees as Jeremiah says, but on email and entertainment, in chat rooms and phone calls. Too often, too easily, I drag home at the end of a crowded day and read email instead of Evening Prayer; the instant gratification of someone's acknowledgment of me wins out over the timeless, gracious light of God.


Not so long ago I used to sit with a glass of red wine and listen to a tape of chanted Vespers before sharing psalms and prayers with my husband. A friend used to read Evening Prayer at home so faithfully that once when her two-year-old daughter saw sunset over distant hills, she pointed and said, "O gracious light!"


How did we let go of all that? Instead of coming home and re-centering ourselves in God, we scatter ourselves like breadcrumbs, depleting what slender resources are left.


"Return," God beckoned the ancient Israelites, "and I will give you shepherds after my own heart." This very evening, may we allow ourselves to rest in the arms of our Good Shepherd.
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Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm

Perpetua and her Companions
Psalm 34:1-8 or 124; Hebrews 10:32-39; Matthew 24:9-14

O God the King of saints, who strengthened your servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

[Gloriamarie notes: I have always loved the "Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas", perhaps because they were women. If you have not read it previously, here is a link to an on-line text in modern language.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/perpetua.html ]
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Monmouth (Wales)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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40 Ideas for Lent: A Lenten calendar http://ship-of-fools.com/lent/index.html

13. GO WALKING
WED 7 MAR

Take a completely gratuitous walk. Don't go anywhere, just go out, have a walk around and come back.

Idea by: Steve Tomkins

Lent quote: "God in my speaking and in my thinking. God in my sleeping and in my waking. God to enfold and surround me. God in my life and soul and heart." – Celtic prayer
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A Celtic lenten Calendar

Prayer is the greatest power in the world.

It should not need saying, but it must be said: our Christian faith is a faith in the rising of Jesus Christ from the tomb in his glorified body; and so it is about leading lives that take the life of the body seriously. The words for ‘salvation’ and ‘health’ cannot be distinguished in most languages, and this should remind us that faith in Christ has to be bound up with care for suffering bodies as well as suffering souls.

Only Christ can make us whole in every aspect of our lives. But we can show the world something of the nature of that comprehensive hope in Christ as we put our energies to work for healing. First we have to begin to learn what it is for each one of us to receive healing: quietly and thankfully, we must let our wounds be exposed to the physician and allow his life to ‘sink into’ our lives. And then we must act as if we believed we had truly received authority to heal – in all sorts of different ways.

One of the least known features of the life of the Anglican Church over the last twenty years has been the dramatic revival of the ministry of healing as a routine part of the life of thousands of congregations. But it is the same hope for healing that is shown when we also look at how we can put our resources at the disposal of programmes to combat disease and poverty.

This is not an additional extra - the boring bit of a message in which all the excitement is generated by church politics. It should really shock us that a document like the Primates’ communique has been read as if it were only intended to be about our internal struggles. It means that we have not been heard to speak about the Resurrection. This Easter, let us, as Paul tells us in Colossians 3, try to live as if we had truly been raised with Christ - clothed ‘with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience’ and showing all these things in our priorities for action to heal suffering bodies.

© Rowan Williams 2005
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

Look Jesus in the Face ... there you will see how He loves us.
St Therese of the Child Jesus
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

Abba Zeno said, 'If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands towards God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action God will hear everything that he asks.'
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

The Great Gift of Parenthood

Children are their parents' guests. They come into the space that has been created for them, stay for a while - fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years - and leave again to create their own space. Although parents speak about "our son" and "our daughter," their children are not their property. In many ways children are strangers. Parents have to come to know them, discover their strengths and their weaknesses, and guide them to maturity, allowing them to make their own decisions.

The greatest gift parents can give their children is their love for each other. Through that love they create an anxiety-free place for their children to grow, encouraging them to develop confidence in themselves and find the freedom to choose their own ways in life.

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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Seven - the Second Aim

To spread the spirit of love and harmony.

The Order sets out, in the name of Christ, to break down barriers between
people and to seek equality for all. We accept as our second aim the
spreading of a spirit of love and harmony among all people. We are pledged
to fight against the ignorance, pride and prejudice that breed injustice or
partiality of any kind.

God, you have made your church rich through the poverty of blessed Francis:
help us, like him, not to trust in earthly things, but to seek your heavenly
gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

WHY IS IT so hard for us to believe that God’s love really is unconditional and that we should imitate God’s love not only for others, but also for ourselves? Perhaps we have regarded self-centered behavior too harshly. We are unwilling or unable to give ourselves the same gentle grace that God offers us and that we believe should be offered to others. Leap from doubt to belief and remember that God loves you, delights in you, and yearns for your response.

- Norman Shawchuck and Reuben P. Job
A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God

From pages 389-390 of A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God by Norman Shawchuck and Reuben P. Job. Copyright © 2003 by Norman Shawchuck and Reuben P. Job.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Back to Basics"

(Written while touring Africa) These African mornings are almost perfect: clear blue sky with enough billowy clouds for contrast, fresh clean breeze carrying with it the sounds of different birds I have never heard before, temperature about the same as my body surface so I feel neither cold nor hot, and the glorious sun reigning primitive and early over these black-skinned nobles who are both civilized and Stone Age. Not only did humankind likely begin here in East Africa, but somehow it is still beginning here - maybe it will always be beginning here. God needed to keep one part of this world "back to basics," it seems. And here it is: spirituality, family, sex, food, celebration without occasion, life and death unashamedly. These black-skinned folds, on whom most races project their deepest shadow, live their own shadow rather gracefully - much better, I should think, than the camouflaged and denied (but nevertheless operative) shadows of much of the "civilized" East and West. There is something honest here. Maybe their various degrees of nakedness even symbolize it.

from St. Anthony Messenger, "African Journal"
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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.htm

Praying with the words that Jesus taught us

With the same generosity that made the Lord give us everything else, the Giver of our life instructed us in how to pray, so that by using the words taught us by the Son we might more readily gain a hearing from the Father.

He had already foretold that the hour was coming when true worshipers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth and he has fulfilled this promise, for we who by his sanctifying action and by his teaching have received the Spirit and the truth are capable now of giving him true and spiritual worship.

What prayer could be more spiritual than the one given us by Christ, who sent us the Holy Spirit? What prayer would more surely have the ring of truth to the Father's ear than the one uttered by the Son who is the truth? To pray otherwise than as he taught us would be not merely ignorant but blameworthy, as we are warned by his own saying: You reject the command of God to set up your own tradition.

Let us pray, then, as our divine teacher has taught us. The prayer that uses his own words, sending up to him the petitions of Christ himself, has a pleasing and familiar sound to God. Let the Father recognize in our prayer the words of his Son.

Cyprian of Carthage, (~285), bishop of Carthage in Northern Africa, had a keen sense of the unity of the Church.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/

UNDAUNTED RADIANCE


"Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." Romans 8:37

Paul is speaking of the things that might seem likely to separate or wedge in between the saint and the love of God; but the remarkable thing is that nothing can wedge in between the love of God and the saint. These things can and do come in between the devotional exercises of the soul and God and separate individual life from God; but none of them is able to wedge in between the love of God and the soul of the saint. The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us.

The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super-joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things - tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super-joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it - "I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation," says Paul.

Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

Chapter 30: How Boys Are to Be Corrected

Every age and degree of understanding
should have its proper measure of discipline.
With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore,
or those who cannot understand the seriousness
of the penalty of excommunication,
whenever such as these are delinquent
let them be subjected to severe fasts
or brought to terms by harsh beatings,
that they may be cured.


Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html

In the early centuries of monasticism, it was not uncommon for people to dedicate their children to religious life at a very early age or, much in the style of later boarding schools, to send them to an abbey for education where they lived very like the monastics themselves. The monastery, then, was a family made up of multiple generations. Benedict made provisions for every member of the community. Life in the Benedictine tradition was not a barracks or a prison or an exercise in deindividuation. On the contrary.

In the age of Benedict, however, the corporal punishment of children was a given. It was a given, in fact, in the homes and schools of our own time until, in the late twentieth century, social psychology detected the relationship between violence in society and violence against children. Only in our time has it finally become been questionable for a teacher to whip a student or for a parent to spank a child. The question is then, should this chapter now be discounted in the Rule? Children don't enter monastic communities anymore and children are not raised in them. The answer surely is no. The real lesson of the chapter is not that young people should be beaten. The continuing value of the chapter is that it reminds us quite graphically that no one approach is equally effective with everyone. No two people are exactly the same. In bringing people to spiritual adulthood we must use every tool we have: love, listening, counsel, confrontation, prayer that God may intervene where our own efforts are useless and, finally, if all else fails, amputation from the group.

The real point of this and all seven preceding chapters of the penal code of the Rule is that Benedictine punishment is always meant to heal, never to destroy; to cure, not to crush.
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Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
Read Excerpts from the Church Fathers during Lent
http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html

St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 12-23
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From: The Centre for Christian Spirituality (Cape town, South Africa)
www.christianspirit.co.za

MEDITATION - THE WIND, ONE BRILLIANT DAY, CALLED

During a recent visit to Indonesia, a local SA architect who was
commissioned to help in restoring infrastructure after the Tsunami tragedy,
made a remarkable discovery. He discovered that numerous fishermen who at
the time lived on the coast and on the nearby islands, managed to escape
despite the fact they could neither read nor write. Enquiring about their
remarkable escape he, to his amazement, found that their survival was no
coincidence or any stroke of luck.

Since their childhood most of them were well prepared for such an event.
Through the stories of their forbears they learnt to know the sea extremely
well - its changing moods, its wonderful gifts but also its treacherous
ways. In that way they knew how to prepare themselves for its so-called
"anger". For instance, they learnt to always build their homes above the
last watermark - "because the next flood will always rise higher". Also to
expect the extraordinary flood - the so-called Tsunami - "because at least
once in your own or your children's lifetime it will come". When at such a
time the gods (in the words of the forebears) for a brief moment took in
their breath (and that was the moment when the sea pulled back) it was a
sure sign to run and not to approach the sea as many fatefully did. Because
when the gods eventually breathed out again the big waters would come with
all its rage. In which case everyone who "knew" was supposed to be safe and
dry.

Thus learning from the previous generations and heeding their advice, these
simple fishermen were not only able to read the signs and movements of
nature and so save themselves, but also to prepare the next generation for
the same possible fate.

Hearing this remarkable story I sensed anew the value of traditional
folklore and wisdom, of that vital kind of literacy and education that is
formed not in the first place by theoretical and technical knowledge
(however important this may be) but by an intimate relationship with and
understanding of history and especially our natural environment. Given the
inconvenient truth that we as humans have become deaf to the voices and
plight of nature, that we have already spoiled it almost beyond repair, we
need to develop a sound historical sense - also to regain this vital
"ecological intelligence" (Ian McCallum) urgently. In fact this should be
an integral part of our spiritual journey as human beings.

What this more intimate knowledge of and attentiveness to nature mean is
beautifully expressed in Antonio Machado's touching poem "The wind, one
brilliant day, called.". Read it quietly, more than once. It may just help
you listen anew to the voice of the wind, to the plight of nature and
perhaps also to God.

The wind one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odour of jasmine.

"In return for the odour of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odours of your roses"

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

And the wind left. And I wept. And my soul said to me:
"What have you done to the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Carel Anthonissen

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