knitternun

Monday, March 26, 2007

26/03/07 week of 5th Sunday in Lent

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. THANK YOU]

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Blessed are those for whom Easter is...
not a hunt, but a find;
not a greeting, but a proclamation;
not outward fashions, but inward grace;
not a day, but an eternity.

Collect

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

Psalm 31; PM Psalm 35, Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-23; John 9:1-17
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Luke 1:26-38. You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call him Jesus.

This is the moment when we celebrate the intersection of time and eternity, the initial entrance of Almighty God into the dark mystery of human life in the holy and human child that Mary will bear.


A priest once told me, "It's a sin to fast on a feast day," so he always celebrates the Annunciation by inviting friends over for delicious food, joyful companionship, exquisite music--a feast for the senses! He does this to celebrate Mary's "yes" to God, and God's astonishing "yes" to us: God's blessing of our human bodies by choosing to become flesh.


As Brian Wren's lovely hymn asserts:
Good is the flesh that the Word has become,
good is the birthing, the milk in the breast,
good is the feeding, caressing and rest,
good is the body for knowing the world,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.


Right here in the midst of Lent is the invisible beginning of the whole Christian story. Rejoice!


Cling to his sweet Mother who carried a son whom the heavens could not contain, and yet she carried him in the little enclosure of her holy womb.
--Clare of Assisi
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Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm

The Annunciation
AM: Psalm 85, 87; Isaiah 52:7-12; Hebrews 2:5-10
PM: Psalm 110:1-5(6-7),132; Wisdom 9:1-12; John 1:9-14

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord; that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Mytikyina (Myanmar)
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

29. WHO'S NEXT DOOR?
MON 26 MAR

Find out who lives next door (or next door but one, two three, four...).

Idea by: Peter Graystone

Lent quote: "If you want to understand the Creator, seek to understand created things." – Columbanus
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A Celtic lenten Calendar
http://www.oursanctuary.net/celticlent.html


When the going gets tough
the tough get going.
It is easy to say 'No'
to take the easy way out
Easy to play safe
and live to fight another day.
Like Peter, who loved you
with such a passion, Lord
filled with such energy
so impetuous
ready to speak first
and ask questions later.
Except when asked
if he was with you, Lord
Except when his faith
was seriously challenged
when the road to the cross
became dangerous.
You knew Peter
knew the calibre of the man
and what would happen
before the cock crowed twice
But it didn't stop you choosing him
the rock upon which
your Church would be built.
There is comfort for us, Lord
in Peter's frailty
reassurance that your love
and confidence extends
to both strong and frail
as you look to our potential
and in your love forget
our momentary weakness
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

Though we are always in the presence of God, it seems to me that the manner is different for those who practice prayer, for they are aware that he is looking at them.
St Teresa of Jesus
Book of Her Life, ch. 8
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

Abba Poemen said of Abba John the Dwarf that he had prayed God to take his passions away from him so that he might become free from care. He went and told an old man this; 'I find myself in peace, without an enemy,' he said. The old man said to him, 'Go beseech God to stir up warfare so that you may regain the affliction and humility that you used to have, for it is by warefare that the soul makes progress.' So he besought God and when warfare came, he no longer prayed that it might be taken away, but said, 'Lord, give me strength for the fight.'
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

5. Hillel said, Separate not thyself from the congregation, and trust not in thyself until the day of thy death; and judge not thy friend until thou comest into his place; and say not of a word which may be heard that in the end it shall be heard; and say not, When I have leisure I will study; perchance thou mayest not have leisure.
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Becoming Friends of Our Children

Can fathers and mothers become friends of their children? Many children leave their parents to find freedom and independence and return to them only occasionally. When they return they often feel like children again and therefore do not want to stay long. Many parents worry about children's well-being after they have left home. When their children visit they want to be caring parents again.

But a mother can also become the daughter of her daughter and a father the son of his son. A mother can become the daughter of her son and a father the son of his daughter. Father and mother become brother and sister of their own children, and they all can become friends. It doesn't happen often, but when it does happen it is as beautiful to watch as the dawn of a new day.
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The Merton Reflection for the Week of March 26, 2007
http://www.mertoninstitute.org/

“Contemplation is a gift of God, given in and through His Church, and through the prayer of the Church. St. Anthony was led into the desert not by a private voice but by the word of God, proclaimed in the Church of his Egyptian village in the chanting of the Gospel in Coptic—a classical example of liturgy opening the way to a life of contemplation! But the liturgy cannot fulfill this function if we misunderstand or underestimate the essentially spiritual value of Christian public prayer. If we cling to immature and limited notions of “privacy,” we will never be able to free ourselves from the bonds of individualism. We will never realize how the Church delivers us from ourselves by public worship, the very public character of which tends to hide us “in the secret of God’s face."
Seasons of Celebration [SC]. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: 26-27

Thought to Remember:
"Love is the guarantee that the life of the Spirit is growing in us - Love is the sign of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church and in the world."

SC: 220
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Twenty Six - The Second Note, cont'd

Therefore, we seek to love all those to whom we are bound by ties of family or friendship. Our love for them increases as their love for Christ grows deeper. We have a special love and affection for members of the Third Order, praying for each other individually and seeking to grow in that love. We are on our guard against anything which might injure this love, and we seek reconciliation with those from whom we are estranged. We seek the same love for those with whom we have little natural affinity, for this kind of love is not a welling up of emotion, but is a bond founded in our common union with Christ.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

LET ME describe what it means to be truly present. Being present involves letting go of our constant preoccupations, immersing ourselves in the here and now, and giving ourselves wholeheartedly to whatever is at hand. … It’s about becoming more aware, alert, awake to the fullness of the immediate moment. If we are with another person, it means engaging with him or her with all of our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength.

Such wholehearted attention requires patience, time, and disciplined effort. And it is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to those around us, especially our suffering neighbor.

- Trevor Hudson
A Mile in My Shoes

From pages 30-31 of A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion by Trevor Hudson. Copyright © 2005 by Trevor Hudson.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Fought-for Faith"

God gives us meaning, not answers. The suffering of life is the suffering of every marriage union, every love relationship, like the suffering of Job in his relationship with God. The Book of Job is a dialogue between institutional, respectable and impersonalized faith (Job's friends who come and give him reasonable intellectual answers) and the charismatic, gut-level, fought-for faith of Job. Job searches and struggles and receives his answer only in the tempest. And the answer always has the character of paradox: inconsistent, contradictory, but utterly true. So the answer will be the same for us. The answer will come, out of the tempest, an answer that cannot always be verbalized to your children and husband or wife. But it will be an answer that you know. It is a conviction that is deep and all-pervasive. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away: It is a gift from God. You cannot prove it to anybody, but you no longer need to. Believe me when I say it: The deepest levels of faith will still feel like confusion - but you are not longer confused by your confusion!

from The Great Themes of Scripture
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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

Our Lord took upon himself our infirmity

Determined to give his disciples an example they could imitate, our Lord himself became one with them by assuming a human soul like theirs. This enabled him to enter into their sentiments and thus to sow the seeds of comfort in their hearts. He acquainted himself with their fear in order that the knowledge of his resemblance to themselves might restrain them from boasting of their readiness to meet death while it was still far off. Fearless though he was, our Lord actually experienced fear and prayed to be delivered from suffering, even though he knew his prayer could not be granted. Surely then before temptation assailed them his disciples should have prayed all the more earnestly to be saved from failing the test!

We may also tell ourselves that we too were in our Lord's mind as he prayed. In time of temptation our minds become confused and our imagination runs riot. By persevering in prayer Jesus was showing us how much we ourselves need to pray if we are to escape the wiles and snares of the devil. It is only by sustained prayer that we gain control of our distracted thoughts.

Ephrem of Edessa, (306 - 373), deacon of Edessa, was a great poet who used his talent to write about the Christian mysteries in poetic form.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/





VISION BY PERSONAL PURITY


"Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." Matthew 5:8

Purity is not innocence, it is much more. Purity is the outcome of sustained spiritual sympathy with God. We have to grow in purity. The life with God may be right and the inner purity remain unsullied, and yet every now and again the bloom on the outside may be sullied. God does not shield us from this possibility, because in this way we realize the necessity of maintaining the vision by personal purity. If the spiritual bloom of our life with God is getting impaired in the tiniest degree, we must leave off everything and get it put right. Remember that vision depends on character - the pure in heart see God.

God makes us pure by His sovereign grace, but we have something to look after, this bodily life by which we come in contact with other people and with other points of view, it is these that are apt to sully. Not only must the inner sanctuary be kept right with God, but the outer courts as well are to be brought into perfect accord with the purity God gives us by His grace. The spiritual understanding is blurred immediately the outer court is sullied. If we are going to retain personal contact with the Lord Jesus Christ, it will mean there are some things we must scorn to do or to think, some legitimate things we must scorn to touch.

A practical way of keeping personal purity unsullied in relation to other people is to say to yourself - That man, that woman, perfect in Christ Jesus! That friend, that relative, perfect in Christ Jesus!
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

Chapter 46: On Those Who Fail in Any Other Matters

When anyone is engaged in any sort of work,
whether in the kitchen, in the cellar, in a shop,
in the bakery, in the garden, while working at some craft,
or in any other place,
and she commits some fault,
or breaks something, or loses something,
or transgresses in any other way whatsoever,
if she does not come immediately
before the Abbess and the community
of her own accord
to make satisfaction and confess her fault,
then when it becomes known through another,
let her be subjected to a more severe correction.

But if the sin-sickness of the soul is a hidden one,
let her reveal it only to the Abbess or to a spiritual mother,
who knows how to cure her own and others' wounds
without exposing them and making them public.

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

Accountability is the Benedictine value on which all community life is based. Benedict clearly never supposes perfection in a Benedictine community. People have bad days and recalcitrant spirits and limited education and difficult periods in life, all of which are acknowledged and even provided for in a Rule that concerns itself with single-minded seeking of God. What Benedict does require, however, is a sense of responsibility. There is nothing in community life, he implies here, that is so unimportant that it can be ignored or overlooked. Nothing in life is so meaningless that we have the right to do it unthinkingly. What each of us does affects all the others and it is to everyone that we owe accounting and apology and reparation.

The notion that everything we do affects others and stands to be judged by them constitutes a concept of human community that is long lost. In this world, corporations gut the center out of forests and say not one word of sorrow to the children of the world who will inherit the dry and eroded mountainsides on which the trees once grew. Bankers take profits that close businesses and say nothing to the people made homeless by the deal. Politicians make policies that rape the Third World and say not a thing to whole nations held hostage to greed. Individuals overheat, overconsume and overbuy until the resources of the globe are wasted away to nothing and we think nothing of it.

Clearly, Chapter 46 is not about punishment. Chapter 46 is about social consciousness.

Everybody needs somebody to whom they can reveal themselves without fear of punishment or pain. Everybody, at sometime in life, wrestles with an angel that threatens to overpower them. Contemporary society, with its bent for anonymity and pathological individualism and transience, has institutionalized the process in psychological consulting services and spiritual direction centers. Benedict would have approved. He wanted people to work skillfully with the souls of others. He would probably also have found some of it unnecessary. What we need, he says, are people in our lives who care enough about us to lead us through life's various stages gently. If we chose spiritual people for our friends and our leaders, if we respected our elders for their wisdom, if we wanted growth rather than comfort, if we ripped away the masks that hide us and were willing to have our bleeding selves cauterized by the light of spiritual leadership and the heat of holy friendship, we would, this Chapter indicates, come to the humility that brings real peace.

Another facet of this chapter looms equally important. The challenge of community lies in whether we ourselves care enough about anyone else to be willing to be their light, to treat their wounds well, to protect their reputations when they try to talk to us.

The Tao Te Ching reads: "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." Benedictine spirituality asks for both.

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Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
Read Excerpts from the Church Fathers during Lent
http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html

St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 81-94
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Monday, March 26, 2007 Great Fast The Synaxis of the
Archangel Gabriel
6th Hour: Isaiah 48:17-49:4 1st Vespers: Genesis 27:1-42
2nd Vespers: Proverbs 19:16-25

The Lenten Journey: Isaiah 48:17-49:4 LXX, especially vs. 21: "And if
they shall thirst, He shall lead them through the desert; He shall bring
forth water to them out of the rock...." We are entering the last days
of the Great Fast. It has been long. Those who have labored diligently
can measure the demands of the struggle against their physical and
spiritual gains and give thanks to God. If we have not kept the Fast
perfectly, if we have flagged at some point, or if we have not attained
the heights to which He called us in the beginning, never mind now. Let
us press on. The end is near. We can choose to finish the struggle well
in the time that remains. To this end, the Lord gives us the present
reading to strengthen our zeal and to renew our determination.

The same God Who led the Fathers of the Old Covenant now shows us how to
profit, and He sets the course for us. If earlier in the Fast we missed
the peace, the righteousness, and the fruitful benefits of the struggle,
then the gracious Lord now reminds us there are wondrous blessings in
hearkening to His commandments (vss. 48:17-19). Employing images from
the great desert pilgrimages of the ancient People of God, from the days
when they came out of bondage in Egypt, God assures us that He will not
leave us in slavery to our sins. Rather, He exhorts us to flee from the
Babylon of our passions, to hasten away from our self-indulgence and to
embrace our redemption and live according to its precepts (vss. 48:20-22).

Additionally, God Almighty exhorts us who are His People of the New
Covenant, to heed Christ our Redeemer. The chosen Servant of God, the
One Who came forth from the Virgin's womb and embodies in Himself all of
Israel, reminds us that, though His Passion seemed to be a labor in
vain, nonetheless the recompense of God is with Him, the Risen One (vss.
49:1-4).

Note: God prompts us to recall that our labors, as His pilgrims, are a
planned course: "I Am thy God, I have shewn thee how thou shouldest find
the way wherein thou shouldest walk" (vs. 17). As we keep at the Fast,
struggling for repentance, and as we enter God's holy house "in faith,
reverence and in fear" of God alone, the more shall our "peace [be] like
a river, and [our] righteousness like a wave of the sea" (vs.18). God
desires that our fasting make us fruitful in righteous thoughts and
deeds: "thy seed also would have been as the sand" (vs. 19). These are
fruits that God promises to those who enter the fray and labor to be
faithful.

Think of the peace that flows from your heart in observing the
opportunities of the additional services and the mid-week Communion with
the Lord Himself in the Pre-sanctified gifts. Think of the cleansing
which fasting and prayer bring to the heart. Think of the tiny bits of
progress captured in moments of grace during this season. Take heart in
the words of St. John Chrysostom that we shall hear finally at Pascha,
but are foreshadowed in these verses: "Let no one mourn that he hath
fallen again and again; for forgiveness hath risen from the grave."

God directs us: "Go forth of Babylon, thou that fleest from the
Chaldeans" (vs. 20). Beloved, we labor knowing that Christ is risen.
"The Lord hath delivered His servant Jacob." He is present with us,
leading us through the desert (vss. 20-21). Let us put off the old man
and put on the New Man. Only the ungodly who turn away will experience
no joy (vs. 22).

Christ our God, Himself, speaks to us in the verses of chapter 49:
"Hearken to Me....saith the Lord: from My mother's womb He has called My
Name" (vs. 1); and God made Christ's " mouth as a sharp sword" (vs. 2).
As suffering Man, the Lord Jesus, fulfilled ancient Israel's task;
therefore, God said to Him, "Thou art My servant, O Israel" (vs. 3).
Christ is risen!

O Life-giver, my soul goeth early to the temple of Thy Holiness, because
Thou art compassionate. Purify me by the compassion of Thy mercies.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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