Daily Meditation for March 1, 2007, week of the 1st Sunday in Lent
[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to pray it all]
If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/
Collect
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 50; Psalm [59, 60] or 19, 46 Deut. 9:23-10:5; Heb: 4:1-10; John 3:16-21
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Hebrews 4:1-10. So then, a sabbath rest remains for the people of God.
Keeping the sabbath free for worship and rest, family and food, is part of the rule of life my husband and I adopted a dozen years ago. Over time I came to treasure the slower rhythm of a sabbath afternoon, but now, too often, I lose all sense of sabbath rest as I dash from church to home to a contemplative prayer meeting. It's still all worship and family and food, but with an agenda.
Aware that I've once again let frantic busyness spiral out of control, I treasure this Lenten season that invites a deeper stillness day by day. "Be still," today's psalmist hears God say, "Be still, then, and know that I am God."
And what is it that God wants us to know--what is it that God wants us to sit still long enough to hear? Today's gospel lesson tells us: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
God wants us to know that we are deeply and eternally loved. That's worth sitting still to hear.
Everyone who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence.
--Isaac of Nineveh
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
David
Psalm 16:5-11 or 96:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12; Mark 4:26-29
Almighty God, who called your servant David to be a faithful and wise steward of your mysteries for the people of Wales: Mercifully grant that, following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Minnesota (Prov. VI, U.S.)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
40 Ideas for Lent: A Lenten calendar http://ship-of-fools.com/lent/index.html
8. OUT YOUR DOUBTS
THUR 1 MAR
Tell God about all the things you feel you ought to believe, but have lurking doubts over. I don't suppose it will be news to him, but it might be news to you.
Idea by: Steve Tomkins
Lent quote: "By doubting we come to enquire, and by enquiring we reach the truth." – Peter Abelard
++++++++++
A Celtic lenten Calendar
http://www.oursanctuary.net/celticlent.html
Christ in the seeing
Christ in the hearing
Christ in the speaking
Christ in the touch
Christ in the loving
Christ in the caring
Christ in the serving
Christ in the heart
Christ in the thinking
Christ in the working
Christ in the wondering
Christ in the mind
Christ in the hurting
Christ in the anguish
Christ in the weeping
Christ in the pain
Christ in the watching
Christ in the waiting
Christ in the silence
Christ in the peace
Christ in the praying
Christ in the praising
Christ in all living
Now and forever
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
In the evening of this life you will be examined in love. Learn then to love as God desires to be loved and abandon your own ways of acting.
St John of the Cross
Sayings of Light and Love, 60.
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
There was in the Cells an old man called Apollo. If someone came to find him about doing a piece of work, he would set out joyfully, saying, 'I am going to work with Christ today, for the salvation of my soul, for that is the reward he gives.'
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
unavailable today because my web based email client is down
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day One - The Object
Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor." (John 12:24-26)
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
WHEN WE OPEN our lives to Jesus and his friends, he changes us inwardly. He says, “Come with me, and I will reshape you, recreate you, reform you.” Jesus accepts us as we are but never leaves us as we are. … The love that woos us, the love that draws us, also changes us. But we don’t sit back and do nothing. Although grace is opposed to earning, grace is not opposed to effort. If we want to experience the change that Jesus can bring, we need to cooperate with him.
- Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant
The Way of Transforming Discipleship
From page 35 of The Way of Transforming Discipleship by Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant. Copyright © 2005 by Upper Room Books.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Romans 7"
Read Romans 7 sometime, live with the agony of Paul and see that he's just like every one of us. Why do I do what I don't want to do? I hate myself for doing it. And I don't understand myself, woe is me. Paul says, "Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?" There you can feel a man almost tortured with self-hatred, trying to get out of his body. Haven't all of us, at some point in our lives, disliked the person we'd become? Church people set out to be nice people. Yet, in our moments of honesty, we know much of our soul is not of God: We have negative, destructive, even violent and vengeful thoughts toward other people. Romans 7, thank God, is followed by Romans 8. St. Paul leaps to the most ecstatic chapter in the New Testament: "This I know, in Christ there is no condemnation" (8:1). What allowed Paul to jump out of the immense self-hatred of Romans 7 into immense hopefulness? Whatever it is - grace? enlightenment? conversion? powerlessness? surrender? - it's the most important thing to pray for: "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil... Thy kingdom come." God will answer that Our Father and deliver us from Romans 7 to Romans 8. Depend on 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.htm
The act of kindness
The Lord Jesus, true teacher of the precepts that lead to salvation, wished to urge upon the apostles in his own time and all believers today the Christian duty of almsgiving. He therefore related the parable of the steward to make us realize that nothing in this world really belongs to us. We have been entrusted with the administration of our Lord's property to use what we need with thanksgiving, and to distribute the rest among our fellow servants according to the needs of each one. We must not squander the wealth entrusted to us, nor use it on superfluities, for when the Lord comes we shall be required to account for our expenditure.
Finally, at the end of the parable, the Lord adds: Use wordly wealth to make friends with the poor, so that when it fails you, when you have spent all you possessed on the needs of the poor and have nothing left, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings.
In other words, these same poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ, the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received the acts of kindness done to them.
Gaudentius of Brescia, (~410), a friend of Saint Ambrose and Saint John Chrysostom, was noted for his sermons on the eucharist.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
THE UNDEVIATING QUESTION
"Lovest thou Me?" John 21:17
Peter declares nothing now (cf. Matthew 26:33-35). Natural individuality professes and declares; the love of the personality is only discovered by the hurt of the question of Jesus Christ. Peter loved Jesus in the way in which any natural man loves a good man. That is temperamental love; it may go deep into the individuality, but it does not touch the centre of the person. True love never professes anything. Jesus said - "Whosoever shall confess Me before men," i.e., confess his love not merely by his words, but by everything he does.
Unless we get hurt right out of every deception about ourselves, the word of God is not having its way with us. The word of God hurts as no sin can ever hurt, because sin blunts feeling. The question of the Lord intensifies feeling, until to be hurt by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt conceivable. It hurts not only in the natural way but in the profound personal way. The word of the Lord pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, there is no deception left. There is no possibility of being sentimental with the Lord's question; you cannot say nice things when the Lord speaks directly to you, the hurt is too terrific. It is such a hurt that it stings every other concern out of account. There never can be any mistake about the hurt of the Lord's word when it comes to His child; but the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 24: What the Measure of Excommunication Should Be
The measure of excommunication or of chastisement
should correspond to the degree of fault,
which degree is estimated by the judgment of the Abbess.
If a sister is found guilty of lighter faults,
let her be excluded from the common table.
Now the program for one deprived of the company of the table
shall be as follows:
In the oratory she shall intone neither Psalm nor antiphon
nor shall she recite a lesson
until she has made satisfaction;
in the refectory she shall take her food alone
after the community meal,
so that if they eat at the sixth hour, for instance,
that sister shall eat at the ninth,
while if they eat at the ninth hour
she shall eat in the evening,
until by a suitable satisfaction she obtains pardon.
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
One of the sages said: "I never met anyone in whom I failed to recognize something superior to myself: if the person was older, I said this one has done more good than I; if younger, I said this person has sinned less; if richer, I said this one has been more charitable; if poorer, I said this one has suffered more; if wiser, I honored their wisdom; and if not wiser, I judged their faults more lightly." Community is the place where we come to honor the world.
In one of the gentlest monastic Rules ever written, Benedict devotes eight straight chapters to punishment and its techniques, none of them either very acceptable or very applicable today. His concept of punishment, if not his form of punishment, however, may well bear considerable reflection in our own time.
In the first place, Benedict does not punish severely for everything. He does not punish for incompetence or lack of spiritual intensity or ignorance or weaknesses of the flesh. No, Benedict punishes harshly only for the grumbling that undermines authority in a community and the rebellion that paralyzes it. Benedict punishes severely only for the destruction of the sense of community itself.
It is community that enables us both to live the Christian life and to learn from it. Human growth is gradual, Benedict knows--the grumblers and defiant are to be warned about their behavior twice privately--but grow we must. Otherwise those who do not honor the community, those in fact who sin against the development of community in the worst possible way, by consistent complaining, constant resistance or outright rebellion, must be corrected for it.
In the second place, Benedict does not set out simply to reason with us about the disordered parts of our lives. Benedict intends to stop an action before it takes root in us. Physical punishment was common in a culture of the unlettered. Many monastic Rules, in fact,--the Penitential of St. Columbanus, the Rule of St. Fructuosus, the Rule of the Master,-- specify as many as a hundred lashes for offenses against the rules. At the same time, Benedict prefers another method more related to the nature of the sins. If we refuse to learn from the community and to cooperate with it, he implies, we have no right to its support and should be suspended from participation in it. Once we have separated ourselves from the community by withdrawing our hearts then the community must withdraw from us in order to soften them.
There may be another point to made, as well. Mild as it may have been according to the standards of the day, Benedict did mandate punishments and he did require atonement. The rule would certainly expect the same attitudes from us even now. Things broken must be mended; things running away with us must be curbed; things awry in us must be set straight. What we may have to face in a culture in which self-control is too often seen as self- destructive is that none of that happens by accident. It requires discipline--conscious, honest, continuing discipline, not in the ways that discipline may have been prescribed in the sixth century, surely, but in some way that is honest and real.
++++++++++
Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
Read Excerpts from the Church Fathers during Lent
http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html
St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Romans
++++++++++
If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/
Collect
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 50; Psalm [59, 60] or 19, 46 Deut. 9:23-10:5; Heb: 4:1-10; John 3:16-21
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Hebrews 4:1-10. So then, a sabbath rest remains for the people of God.
Keeping the sabbath free for worship and rest, family and food, is part of the rule of life my husband and I adopted a dozen years ago. Over time I came to treasure the slower rhythm of a sabbath afternoon, but now, too often, I lose all sense of sabbath rest as I dash from church to home to a contemplative prayer meeting. It's still all worship and family and food, but with an agenda.
Aware that I've once again let frantic busyness spiral out of control, I treasure this Lenten season that invites a deeper stillness day by day. "Be still," today's psalmist hears God say, "Be still, then, and know that I am God."
And what is it that God wants us to know--what is it that God wants us to sit still long enough to hear? Today's gospel lesson tells us: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
God wants us to know that we are deeply and eternally loved. That's worth sitting still to hear.
Everyone who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence.
--Isaac of Nineveh
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
David
Psalm 16:5-11 or 96:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12; Mark 4:26-29
Almighty God, who called your servant David to be a faithful and wise steward of your mysteries for the people of Wales: Mercifully grant that, following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Minnesota (Prov. VI, U.S.)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
40 Ideas for Lent: A Lenten calendar http://ship-of-fools.com/lent/index.html
8. OUT YOUR DOUBTS
THUR 1 MAR
Tell God about all the things you feel you ought to believe, but have lurking doubts over. I don't suppose it will be news to him, but it might be news to you.
Idea by: Steve Tomkins
Lent quote: "By doubting we come to enquire, and by enquiring we reach the truth." – Peter Abelard
++++++++++
A Celtic lenten Calendar
http://www.oursanctuary.net/celticlent.html
Christ in the seeing
Christ in the hearing
Christ in the speaking
Christ in the touch
Christ in the loving
Christ in the caring
Christ in the serving
Christ in the heart
Christ in the thinking
Christ in the working
Christ in the wondering
Christ in the mind
Christ in the hurting
Christ in the anguish
Christ in the weeping
Christ in the pain
Christ in the watching
Christ in the waiting
Christ in the silence
Christ in the peace
Christ in the praying
Christ in the praising
Christ in all living
Now and forever
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
In the evening of this life you will be examined in love. Learn then to love as God desires to be loved and abandon your own ways of acting.
St John of the Cross
Sayings of Light and Love, 60.
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
There was in the Cells an old man called Apollo. If someone came to find him about doing a piece of work, he would set out joyfully, saying, 'I am going to work with Christ today, for the salvation of my soul, for that is the reward he gives.'
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
unavailable today because my web based email client is down
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day One - The Object
Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor." (John 12:24-26)
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
WHEN WE OPEN our lives to Jesus and his friends, he changes us inwardly. He says, “Come with me, and I will reshape you, recreate you, reform you.” Jesus accepts us as we are but never leaves us as we are. … The love that woos us, the love that draws us, also changes us. But we don’t sit back and do nothing. Although grace is opposed to earning, grace is not opposed to effort. If we want to experience the change that Jesus can bring, we need to cooperate with him.
- Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant
The Way of Transforming Discipleship
From page 35 of The Way of Transforming Discipleship by Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant. Copyright © 2005 by Upper Room Books.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Romans 7"
Read Romans 7 sometime, live with the agony of Paul and see that he's just like every one of us. Why do I do what I don't want to do? I hate myself for doing it. And I don't understand myself, woe is me. Paul says, "Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?" There you can feel a man almost tortured with self-hatred, trying to get out of his body. Haven't all of us, at some point in our lives, disliked the person we'd become? Church people set out to be nice people. Yet, in our moments of honesty, we know much of our soul is not of God: We have negative, destructive, even violent and vengeful thoughts toward other people. Romans 7, thank God, is followed by Romans 8. St. Paul leaps to the most ecstatic chapter in the New Testament: "This I know, in Christ there is no condemnation" (8:1). What allowed Paul to jump out of the immense self-hatred of Romans 7 into immense hopefulness? Whatever it is - grace? enlightenment? conversion? powerlessness? surrender? - it's the most important thing to pray for: "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil... Thy kingdom come." God will answer that Our Father and deliver us from Romans 7 to Romans 8. Depend on 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.htm
The act of kindness
The Lord Jesus, true teacher of the precepts that lead to salvation, wished to urge upon the apostles in his own time and all believers today the Christian duty of almsgiving. He therefore related the parable of the steward to make us realize that nothing in this world really belongs to us. We have been entrusted with the administration of our Lord's property to use what we need with thanksgiving, and to distribute the rest among our fellow servants according to the needs of each one. We must not squander the wealth entrusted to us, nor use it on superfluities, for when the Lord comes we shall be required to account for our expenditure.
Finally, at the end of the parable, the Lord adds: Use wordly wealth to make friends with the poor, so that when it fails you, when you have spent all you possessed on the needs of the poor and have nothing left, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings.
In other words, these same poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ, the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received the acts of kindness done to them.
Gaudentius of Brescia, (~410), a friend of Saint Ambrose and Saint John Chrysostom, was noted for his sermons on the eucharist.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
THE UNDEVIATING QUESTION
"Lovest thou Me?" John 21:17
Peter declares nothing now (cf. Matthew 26:33-35). Natural individuality professes and declares; the love of the personality is only discovered by the hurt of the question of Jesus Christ. Peter loved Jesus in the way in which any natural man loves a good man. That is temperamental love; it may go deep into the individuality, but it does not touch the centre of the person. True love never professes anything. Jesus said - "Whosoever shall confess Me before men," i.e., confess his love not merely by his words, but by everything he does.
Unless we get hurt right out of every deception about ourselves, the word of God is not having its way with us. The word of God hurts as no sin can ever hurt, because sin blunts feeling. The question of the Lord intensifies feeling, until to be hurt by Jesus is the most exquisite hurt conceivable. It hurts not only in the natural way but in the profound personal way. The word of the Lord pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, there is no deception left. There is no possibility of being sentimental with the Lord's question; you cannot say nice things when the Lord speaks directly to you, the hurt is too terrific. It is such a hurt that it stings every other concern out of account. There never can be any mistake about the hurt of the Lord's word when it comes to His child; but the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 24: What the Measure of Excommunication Should Be
The measure of excommunication or of chastisement
should correspond to the degree of fault,
which degree is estimated by the judgment of the Abbess.
If a sister is found guilty of lighter faults,
let her be excluded from the common table.
Now the program for one deprived of the company of the table
shall be as follows:
In the oratory she shall intone neither Psalm nor antiphon
nor shall she recite a lesson
until she has made satisfaction;
in the refectory she shall take her food alone
after the community meal,
so that if they eat at the sixth hour, for instance,
that sister shall eat at the ninth,
while if they eat at the ninth hour
she shall eat in the evening,
until by a suitable satisfaction she obtains pardon.
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
One of the sages said: "I never met anyone in whom I failed to recognize something superior to myself: if the person was older, I said this one has done more good than I; if younger, I said this person has sinned less; if richer, I said this one has been more charitable; if poorer, I said this one has suffered more; if wiser, I honored their wisdom; and if not wiser, I judged their faults more lightly." Community is the place where we come to honor the world.
In one of the gentlest monastic Rules ever written, Benedict devotes eight straight chapters to punishment and its techniques, none of them either very acceptable or very applicable today. His concept of punishment, if not his form of punishment, however, may well bear considerable reflection in our own time.
In the first place, Benedict does not punish severely for everything. He does not punish for incompetence or lack of spiritual intensity or ignorance or weaknesses of the flesh. No, Benedict punishes harshly only for the grumbling that undermines authority in a community and the rebellion that paralyzes it. Benedict punishes severely only for the destruction of the sense of community itself.
It is community that enables us both to live the Christian life and to learn from it. Human growth is gradual, Benedict knows--the grumblers and defiant are to be warned about their behavior twice privately--but grow we must. Otherwise those who do not honor the community, those in fact who sin against the development of community in the worst possible way, by consistent complaining, constant resistance or outright rebellion, must be corrected for it.
In the second place, Benedict does not set out simply to reason with us about the disordered parts of our lives. Benedict intends to stop an action before it takes root in us. Physical punishment was common in a culture of the unlettered. Many monastic Rules, in fact,--the Penitential of St. Columbanus, the Rule of St. Fructuosus, the Rule of the Master,-- specify as many as a hundred lashes for offenses against the rules. At the same time, Benedict prefers another method more related to the nature of the sins. If we refuse to learn from the community and to cooperate with it, he implies, we have no right to its support and should be suspended from participation in it. Once we have separated ourselves from the community by withdrawing our hearts then the community must withdraw from us in order to soften them.
There may be another point to made, as well. Mild as it may have been according to the standards of the day, Benedict did mandate punishments and he did require atonement. The rule would certainly expect the same attitudes from us even now. Things broken must be mended; things running away with us must be curbed; things awry in us must be set straight. What we may have to face in a culture in which self-control is too often seen as self- destructive is that none of that happens by accident. It requires discipline--conscious, honest, continuing discipline, not in the ways that discipline may have been prescribed in the sixth century, surely, but in some way that is honest and real.
++++++++++
Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
Read Excerpts from the Church Fathers during Lent
http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html
St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Romans
++++++++++
posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 9:03 AM
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