knitternun

Monday, April 30, 2007

30/04/07 Mon in the week of the 4th Sunday in Easter

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE ONE OR MORE MEDITATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL WILL PRAY THE COLLECT, REFLECT ON THE DAY'S SCRIPTURES AND PRAY THE ANGLICAN CYCLE OF PRAYER. AFTER THAT, YOUR CHOICE. THANK YOU]

If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/


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

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; 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/

AM Psalm 41, 52; PM Psalm 44
Wisdom 1:16-2:11,21-24; Col. 1:1-14; Luke 6:1-11
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Colossians 1:1-14. [God] has rescued us from the power of darkness...

These days, when a Christian starts talking about the wiles of the devil or satanic spirits, we think "right-winger," "wacko," or both. We are educated people. It makes us uncomfortable to read scripture that talks of evil spirits lurking about, trying to trap us, and more uncomfortable yet to think some of our brethren actually insist they're real. We like believing in pretty "helper" angels, but not in Satan, the fallen angel, Lucifer, the deceiver, the Father of Lies.


We are so easy to trap when we wallow in our intellectualism. Here is what a modern-day devil might whisper: "This isn't really adultery; we're so perfect for each other that God must have put us together!" Or, "I'm just a social drinker." Or, "I didn't lose my temper--he deserved telling off!" Or, "It's O.K. to cheat on tests or taxes; everybody does it!" The impulse to sin is all ours, but Lucifer's own tell us the sin is dandy.


God, the holy one, dwells in light. Nothing from God needs to be hidden. That is what it means to "test the spirits." When we find ourselves contemplating an act we wouldn't relish explaining to other Christians, it's time to say "beat it!" Then, to ask God to fill us again with his spirit of truth.
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Nord Kivu (Congo)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

Be not afraid to tell Jesus that you love Him; even though it be without feeling, this is the way to oblige Him to help you, and carry you like a little child too feeble to walk.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

A brother sinned and the priest ordered him to go out of the church; abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, "I, too, am a sinner."
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Jochanan Sandalarius said, Whatsoever assemblage is in the name of duty will in the end be established; and that which is not in the name of duty will not in the end be established.
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The Merton Reflection for the Week of April 30, 2007
http://www.mertoninstitute.org/index.php

"Faith of course tells us that we live in a time of eschatological struggle, facing a fierce combat which marshals all the forces of evil and darkness against the still invisible truth, yet this combat is already decided by the victory of Christ over death and over sin. The Christian can renounce the protection of violence and risk being humble, therefore vulnerable, not because she trusts in the supposed efficacy of a gentle and persuasive tactic that will disarm hatred and tame cruelty, but because she believes that the hidden power of the Gospel is demanding to be manifested in and through her own poor person. Hence in perfect obedience to the Gospel, she effaces herself and her own interests and even risks her life in order to testify not simply to "the truth" in a sweeping idealistic and purely platonic sense, but to the truth that is incarnate in a concrete human situation, involving living persons whose rights are denied or whose lives are threatened."

Thomas Merton. Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968: 18-19

Thought to Remember

"A holy zeal for the cause of humanity in the abstract may sometimes be mere lovelessness and indifference for concrete and living human beings. When we appeal to the highest and most noble ideals, we are more easily tempted to hate and condemn those who, so we believe, are perversely standing in the way of their realization."

Faith and Violence: 19
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Losing and Gaining Our Lives

The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary situations. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but when we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, but when we have no need to be known, we might be remembered long after our deaths. When we want to be in the center, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be, we find ourselves often in the center.

Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human arts. This will gain us our lives.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Thirty - The Three Notes

The humility, love and joy which mark the lives of Tertiaries are all God given graces. They can never be obtained by human effort. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of Christ is to work miracles through people who are willing to be emptied of self and to surrender to him. We then become channels of grace through whom his mighty work is done.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

I GRADUALLY CAME TO SEE that I was being invited to love myself as God loved me, cognizant of the wholeness of who I am — both gifted and wounded, blessed and broken. I was being invited to forgive myself little by little for all I found unacceptable and wearisome in myself. After a time, I came to see that I was forgiving myself for simply being human.

- Wendy M. Wright
The Rising

From page 48 of The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost by Wendy M. Wright. Copyright © 1994 by Wendy M. Wright.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Against Deterrence"

We Catholics have had no training or encouragement in the prophetic charism. It is a lost gift except in the area of private morality. We are accustomed to forming teachers, pastors, administrators and even apostles and healers, but the highly listed charism of prophecy (Ephesians 4:11) is still scary, foreign, thought to be unnecessary by Churches that have bought into the system. Fortunately, we are again discovering the older and biblical notion of social and structural sin ("the sin of the world") that John the Baptist points out (John 1:29). Pope John Paul II speaks of it in his hard-hitting encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis. His critical analysis of both Western capitalism and totalitarian communism shows the type of courage and prophetic leadership that we need from our American bishops in confronting the myth of deterrence and nuclear superiority. People and nation-states do have a right to safety and security. A certain degree of it is necessary for psychological, economic and human growth. But that is quite different from the overarching and overbearing need that now seems to dominate all other human concerns. What allows us to think that food, housing, education, welfare, ecology, medicine, aesthetics, the animal and plant world, wisdom, family and holiness are all supposed to be put on hold until American people can feel absolutely secure and victorious? It is spiritually destructive for the individual, and it is equally destructive for the collective. Until Catholicism recovers its great medieval synthesis, until it again sees itself as preaching the gospel to the nations (Matthew 29:19), until it again acts as the corporate conscience and not just the comforter of private lives, we will surely continue to lose our moral credibility and moral leadership. American bishops, our teachers and overseers, we ask you to pray, to reread the sermons of Jesus, to follow the prophetic leadership of the bishop of Rome in regard to social justice. As many have said, the social encyclicals are still the best-kept secret in the Church! We ask you to firmly and courageously condemn the American myth of nuclear deterrence before we have lost both our planet and our spiritual soul.

from Radical Grace, "Why Deterrence is Death"
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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

God's power in weakness

The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places these things at our service and when they receive God's word they become the eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way our bodies which have been nourished by the eucharist will be buried in the earth and will decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of God the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God's power is shown most perfectly in weakness.

Irenaeus of Lyons,(140 - 200), bishop of Lyons, wrote a momumental work Against the Heresies. At the heart of his theology is a vision of the unity and the the recapitulation of all things in Christ.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/





THE SPONTANEITY OF LOVE


"Love suffereth long, and is kind . . ." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is not premeditated, it is spontaneous, i.e., it bursts up in extraordinary ways. There is nothing of mathematical certainty in Paul's category of love. We cannot say - "Now I am going to think no evil; I am going to believe all things." The characteristic of love is spontaneity. We do not set the statements of Jesus in front of us as a standard; but when His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard with out knowing it, and on looking back we are amazed at the disinterestedness of a particular emotion, which is the evidence that the spontaneity of real love was there. In everything to do with the life of God in us, its nature is only discerned when it is past.

The springs of love are in God, not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts naturally, it is only there when it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we do not love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of our love, it comes naturally. In looking back we cannot tell why we did certain things, we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The life of God manifests itself in this spontaneous way because the springs of love are in the Holy Ghost. (Romans 5:5.)
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

CATHERINE OF SIENA'S DAY

HISTORIC Christianity rose into a high and strange coup de theatre of morality -- things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice. The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal. Our ethical teachers write reasonably for prison reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Jail to embrace the strangled corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write wildly against the power of millionaires, but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey.

'Orthodoxy.'
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 72: On the Good Zeal Which They Ought to Have

Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness
which separates from God and leads to hell,
so there is a good zeal
which separates from vices and leads to God
and to life everlasting.
This zeal, therefore, the sisters should practice
with the most fervent love.
Thus they should anticipate one another in honor (Rom. 12:10);
most patiently endure one another's infirmities,
whether of body or of character;
vie in paying obedience one to another --
no one following what she considers useful for herself,
but rather what benefits another;
tender the charity of sisterhood chastely;
fear God in love;
love their Abbess with a sincere and humble charity;
prefer nothing whatever to Christ.
And may He bring us all together to life everlasting!

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

Here is the crux of the Rule of Benedict. Benedictine spirituality is not about religiosity. Benedictine spirituality is much more demanding than that. Benedictine spirituality is about caring for the people you live with and loving the people you don't and loving God more than yourself. Benedictine spirituality depends on listening for the voice of God everywhere in life, especially in one another and here. An ancient tale from another tradition tells that a disciple asked the Holy One:
"Where shall I look for Enlightenment?"
"Here," the Holy One said.
"When will it happen?"
"It is happening right now," the Holy said.
"Then why don't I experience it?"
"Because you do not look," the Holy said.
"What should I look for?"
"Nothing," the Holy One said. "Just look."
"At what?"
"Anything your eyes alight upon," the Holy One said.
"Must I look in a special kind of way?"
"No," the Holy One said. "The ordinary way will do."
"But don't I always look the ordinary way?"
"No," the Holy One said. "You don't."
"Why ever not?" the disciple demanded.
"Because to look you must be here," the Holy One said. "You're mostly somewhere else."

Just as Benedict insisted in the Prologue to the rule, he requires at its end: We must learn to listen to what God is saying in our simple, sometimes insane and always uncertain daily lives. Bitter zeal is that kind of religious fanaticism that makes a god out of religious devotion itself. Bitter zeal walks over the poor on the way to the altar. Bitter zeal renders the useless invisible and makes devotion more sacred than community. Bitter zeal wraps us up in ourselves and makes us feel holy about it. Bitter zeal renders us blind to others, deaf to those around us, struck dumb in the face of the demands of dailiness. Good zeal, monastic zeal, commits us to the happiness of human community and immerses us in Christ and surrenders us to God, minute by minute, person by person, day after day after day. Good zeal provides the foundation for the spirituality of the long haul. It keeps us going when days are dull and holiness seems to be the stuff of more glamorous lives, of martyrdom and dramatic differences. But it is then, just then, when Benedict of Nursia reminds us from the dark of the sixth century that sanctity is the stuff of community in Christ and that any other zeal, no matter how dazzling it looks, is false. Completely false.
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Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/

Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church. Dynamis is a project of the Education Committee of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas.

Monday, April 30, 2007 Christ is Risen!
Apostle James, Brother of John the Theologian
Kellia: Deuteronomy 1:1-5 Apostle: Acts
10:1-6
Gospel: St. John 6:56-69

Explaining the Law: Deuteronomy 1:1-5 LXX, especially vs. 5: "Beyond
Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses began to declare this law." We turn
today from consideration of the Vigil readings for Pascha, passages that
we explored for nineteen days following Pascha, and we undertake a
course of readings through the fifth book of the Prophet Moses, that
"divinely instructed servant of God" (see Heb. 8:5; Rev. 15:3).

This book of the Bible, commonly called Deuteronomy, is not a second nor
a new Law given to the ancient People of God, although the word
translates from Greek as Second Law. Rather, it is an exposition of the
basic contents of the ancient covenant revelations found in the first
four books of Holy Scripture. This is the point made in the opening
quotation. Having served God in transmitting His Law to the People of
Israel, Moses undertakes in Deuteronomy to explain the Law, focusing on
its underlying spiritual principles. One might well characterize this
book as Moses' farewell address or deathbed instructions on the
already-given Law.

The brief opening selection (vss. 1-5) gives the context for Moses'
explanations and exhortations that follow. The five verses 1) identify
where he gave the teaching, 2) provide a brief overview explaining how
Israel came to its present encampment, and 3) disclose when it was that
the Prophet gave these final teachings. The verses are significant
contextual notes for the careful reader who reflects on God's word -
i.e., who seeks the Lord's will for his life.

Jewish Rabbis and Christian scholars alike agree that most of the place
names, with the exception of the imprecise "beyond Jordan in the land of
Moab....in the desert towards the west near the Red Sea" (vss. 1,5),
seem to allude to critical locales dating back to the wilderness journey
of Israel over the forty years following their flight from Egypt.
Hence, "the Red Sea" appears to mean "Reed Sea," and refer to the
earliest stage of the flight from Egypt even before the crossing at the
Red Sea (compare Ex. 12:37 and Is. 19:1-6). Kadesh-barnea lies 50 miles
below Beer-sheba, a town far south in the Holy Land on the edge of the
Negev wilderness. Kadesh seems to have served as the headquarters for
the Israelites during most of their forty years of their time in the
desert (Num. 13:26-14:36; 32:8-12). Paran is the name of the desert
around Mt. Sinai (Num. 10:12) where God gave the Law. Tophel and Laban
apparently were specific locations within that region. Hazeroth was the
place of encampment in the Paran desert where Miriam and Aaron stumbled
in rebellion against Moses (Num. 12). Gold Works appears to refer to
the incident of the golden calf (see Ex. 32).

Today's reading states: "It is a journey of eleven days from Horeb to
Mount Seir as far as Kadesh Barnea." (Deut. 1:2). Horeb is the
alternate name for Mt. Sinai, which is far south in the Sinai
Peninsula. By proceeding northward parallel to the Gulf of Aqaba, one
comes into the ancient territory of Edom or Seir, which, on an east-west
plane, adjoins Kadesh-barnea and would be the eventual, final route of
the People as they continued north into Moab.

The mention that it was "the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on
the first day of the month" when "Moses spoke," alerts one to the fact
that these words were given at the end of the wilderness era, shortly
before God commissioned Joshua to assume leadership (Deut. 31:14-23),
and shortly before the Prophet Moses reposed. Deuteronomy is Moses'
final word to the People.

As we read through this last commentary on the Law for ancient Israel,
let us esteem in reverence the great Prophet who helped shape the
descendants of Israel into the People for God.


O Holy Prophet Moses, who led Israel through the Sea, gave them the Law
of God, and didst appear on Mt. Tabor with the Lord Jesus, intercede
with Christ our God to save our souls

Sunday, April 29, 2007

29/04/07 4th Sunday in Easter

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE ONE OR MORE MEDITATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL WILL PRAY THE COLLECT, REFLECT ON THE DAY'S SCRIPTURES AND PRAY THE ANGLICAN CYCLE OF PRAYER. AFTER THAT, YOUR CHOICE. THANK YOU]

If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/


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
O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; 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/

O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

John 10:22-30. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

Jesus is teaching on the temple porch when a group charges up saying, "If you're the Messiah, for heaven's sake, man, say so!" We can just see the self-important people who challenge Jesus!


Jesus sees right through them. I've taught here and done miracles, he says. But you can't hear me; you aren't my sheep. Then, his tone turns from scorn to thanksgiving: Just as sheep recognize their shepherd's voice and come towards the sound, his own people, his sheep, know him and will be his for eternity.


I found myself thinking of my shepherd's voice while watching a huge colony of noisy penguins. Work had taken me to a remote coast in Argentina, site of a breeding ground. During most of the year, male and female penguins swim hundreds, even thousands, of miles in search of food. At the start of breeding season, each male returns to the previous year's nest and waits for his mate to join him. It is a little understood miracle of nature that, amid thousands of other penguins, each returning female can pick out the calls of her own mate as she emerges from the surf. As I stood on a little rise watching the black-and-white carpet of penguins, it hit me that there's a simple explanation. She's listening.
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Nnewi (Prov. II, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

All things praise You, Lord of all the World!
St Teresa of Jesus
Life, 25.17
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you". So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug and filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said, " what is this, father?" The old man said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another." When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Li'ezer ben Jacob said, He who performs one precept has gotten to himself one advocate; and he who commits one transgression has gotten to himself one accuser. Repentance and good works are as a shield against punishment.
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Making Our Lives Available to Others

One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: "I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to." This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Twenty Nine - The Third Note, cont'd

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, hardship, and persecutions for Christ's sake; for when we are weak, then we are strong.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

ETERNAL ONE, revealed in waves and in the waiting stillness, teach me to rest, content in your love. Let my life be a poem that tells of your care, always ready to rise up on trusting wings and risk the wind. Amen.

- Elizabeth J. Canham
Heart Whispers

From page 70 of Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom for Today by Elizabeth J. Canham. Copyright © 1999 by Elizabeth J. Canham.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Despair and Hope"

Rising and dying are closely related. Despair, I suspect, is another kind of dying and another kind of pain. It is not so much the loss of persons as the loss of ideals, visions and plans. For people who hitched their future or their hopes to certain stars, the loss of those stars is bitter and disabling. It usually happens slowly as we recognize unfulfilled dreams and as we gradually face our own impotence and the "sin of the world" (John 1:29). We are forced to let go of images: images that we built in our youth, images that solidified and energized our own self-image. The crash of images is experienced as a death of the spirit, as a loss of hope, as a darkness almost too much to bear. Many, if not most, become tired and cynical while maintaining the old words that have become clichés even to themselves. Spiritual growth is the willing surrender of images in favor of the True Images. It is a conversion that never stops, a surrender that never ceases. It is a surrender of self-serving and self-created images of self, of others, of God. Those who worship the images instead of living the reality simply stop growing spiritually. In this light, the First Commandment takes on a whole new power and poignancy: "You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth or beneath the earth. You shall not bow down before them." (Exodus 20:4-5) It seems that many people, religious people in particular, would sooner relate to images than to the reality where both despair and God lie hidden. Until we walk with this despair, we will not know that our hope was hope in ourselves, in our successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection and wholeness should be. Until we walk with this despair, we will never uncover the real hope on the other side of human achievement. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the real life beyond what only seems like death.

from Radical Grace, "The Other Side of Sadness: Naming Despair"
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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

The parchment has been torn up

Let our hearts and souls burst with love! Let them be quick to serve and stand in awe of the good, gentle Jesus! For the devil was holding on to us as his own property, as slaves and prisoners, and Jesus rescued us. He assumed responsibility for us, paid our debt, and then tore up the bond. When did he assume responsibility for us? When he assumed our humanity and became a servant. Ah, but that alone would not have been enough if he had not also paid the debt we had contracted. And when was that paid? When he gave up his life on the wood of the most holy cross to give us back the life of grace we had lost. O sweetest, boundless charity! You destroyed the bond by which the devil held us, and tore it up on the wood of the most holy cross! That bond was written on nothing less than lambskin, the skin of the spotless Lamb. He inscribed us on himself and then tore up the lambskin! So let our souls find strength in knowing that the parchment our bond was written on has been torn up, and our opponent and adversary can never again demand to have us back.

So let us run to embrace virtue with true holy desire, remembering the gentle Lamb, who in such blazing love shed his life's blood.

Catherine of Siena,(1347 - 1380) served the people of Siena with her good works and the Church at large with her peacemaking.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/

THE GRACIOUSNESS OF UNCERTAINTY


"It doth not yet appear what we shall be." 1 John 3:2

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some end, but that is not the nature of spiritual life. The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty, consequently we do not make our nests anywhere. Common sense says - "Well, supposing I were in that condition . . ." We cannot suppose ourselves in any condition we have never been in. Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time. When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him. Jesus said, "Except ye become as little children." Spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the ban of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.

"Believe also in Me," said Jesus, not - "Believe certain things about Me." Leave the whole thing to Him, it is gloriously uncertain how He will come in, but He will come. Remain loyal to Him.
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

THE creed of our cruel cities is not so sane and just as the creed of the old countryside; but the people are just as clever in giving names to their sins in the city as in giving names to their joys in the wilderness. One could not better sum up Christianity than by calling a small white insignificant flower 'The Star of Bethlehem.' But then again one could not better sum up the philosophy deduced from Darwinism than in the one verbal picture of 'having your monkey up.'

'Daily News.'
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/


Chapter 71: That the Brethren Be Obedient to One Another

Not only is the boon of obedience
to be shown by all to the Abbot,
but the brethren are also to obey one another,
knowing that by this road of obedience they are going to God.
Giving priority, therefore, to the commands of the Abbot
and of the Superior appointed by him
(to which we allow no private orders to be preferred),
for the rest
let all the juniors obey their seniors
with all charity and solicitude.
But if anyone is found contentious,
let him be corrected.

And if any brother,
for however small a cause,
is corrected in any way by the Abbot or by any of his Superiors,
or if he faintly perceives
that the mind of any Superior is angered or moved against him,
however little,
let him at once, without delay,
prostrate himself on the ground at his feet
and lie there making satisfaction
until that emotion is quieted with a blessing.
But if anyone should disdain to do this,
let him undergo corporal punishment
or, if he is stubborn, let him be expelled from the monastery.


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

Into a democratic country and a highly individualistic culture, into a society where personalism approaches the pathological and independence is raised to high art, the rule brings a chapter on listening and wisdom. The rule says that we are not our own teachers, not our own guides, not our own standard setters, not a law unto ourselves. In addition to the "officials" in our lives--the employers, the supervisors, the lawgivers and the police--we have to learn to learn from those around us who have gone the path before us and know the way. It is a chapter dedicated to making us see the elderly anew and our colleagues with awe and our companions with new respect. In a society that depends on reputation to such a degree that people build themselves up by tearing other people down, the chapter on mutual obedience turns the world awry. Monastic spirituality says that we are to honor one another. We are to listen to one another. We are to reach across boundaries and differences in this fragmented world and see in our differences distinctions of great merit that can mend a competitive, uncaring and foolish world.
The Tao teaches:
If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.

What monastic spirituality wants among us is respect and love, not excuses, not justification, not protests of innocence or cries of misunderstandings. The rule wants respect for the elder and love for the learner. The rule wants a human response to the mystery of misunderstanding--not stand-offs, not pouting, not rejection, not eternal alienation. The rule wants relationships that have been ruptured to be repaired, not by long, legal defenses but by clear and quick gestures of human sorrow and forgiveness. The question in the rule is not who is right and who is wrong. The question in the rule is who is offended and who is sorry, who is to apologize and who is to forgive. Quickly. Immediately. Now.

The rabbi of Sassov, the Hasidic masters tell us, once gave away the last money he had in his pocket to a man of ill repute who quickly squandered it all. The rabbi's disciples threw it up to him. He answered them: "Shall I be more finicky than God, who gave it to me?" What monastic spirituality teaches in this paragraph of the Rule is that we must all relate to one another knowing our own sinfulness and depending on the love we learn from one another.
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Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/

Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church. Dynamis is a project of the Education Committee of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas.


Sunday of the Paralytic: The Apostle Nathaniel Christ is Risen!
Tone 3 April 29, 2007
15th Vigil Pascha-III: Song of the Three 22-67
Apostle: Acts 9:32-42 Gospel: St. John 5:1-15

The Song of The Three - 22-67 LXX, especially vs. 34: "O all ye works of
the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise and exalt Him above all for ever."
St. Nicholas Cabasilas teaches that the Saints in heaven, as they
glorify the Lord, "can never praise God enough; they do not consider
their own thanksgiving sufficient." Also, he points out, "they desire
that men and angels should unite with them in praising God, so that
their debt of gratitude to Him may be a little more worthily paid, owing
to the increase in the number of those who praise Him."

St. Nicholas also mentioned that "the holy sons of Azariah, who by the
grace of God overcame the flames of the fiery furnace, bear witness to
this" same truth. All of which prompted him to say, "It was fitting
that they should give thanks to God for their miraculous and unexpected
delivery; but they did not consider their own praise and acclamation
sufficient - they called to their aid the angels and every race of man,
the heavens, the sun, the stars, the earth, the mountains, inanimate
beings - in short, the whole creation."

Embracing the truth that we are blessed to be among those called to give
thanks to God, let us, being a part of the Church, take the praises of
the Three Holy Children upon our lips for the words of their hymn "teach
us to cry out in reverence: O only Trinity, Equipotent and
beginningless, blessed art Thou." Indeed, the Apostle Paul likewise
admonishes us: "in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus for you" (1 Thess. 5:18). So also, St. John Chrysostom
cautions us not to be spectators in the Divine Liturgy, nor in any
aspect of this present life. In truth, all voices of the Church:
angels, archangels, priests, archpriests, deacons, men, women, and
children are meant to unite in the praise of God.

The actual Song of the Three Holy Children divides into three natural
parts: first there is an offering of praise, exalting Him Who alone is
worthy of all glory, honor and worship (Song of the Three 28-33). This
recalls, as does the Divine Liturgy, that throughout all time God has
not ceased "to do all things until He should bring us back to heaven and
endow us with His kingdom which is to come." These verses of the hymn
join our praises to those of the heavenly tabernacle where God is seated
upon the Cherubim, on the"throne of [His] Kingdom" (vss. 31, 32).

The next, longer section of the prayer invokes all creation to join in
the praise of God (vss. 34-60). Is this possible for all creatures -
for the stars of heaven, the rain and dew, wind, fire and heat? Let us
learn from these verses that the whole created order is actively, not
passively, engaged in God's praise. Created things are not, as the
contemporary, materialists imply, mere matter to be manipulated for our
wants, but fellow creatures who, even in the times when we forget, are
ever extolling God's wonder. As St. Hippolytus of Rome says, "the three
youths in the furnace....showed [created things] to be all the servants
of God" with us. Let us, then, orient ourselves to approach all matter
with the reverence due fellow worshipers of God.

In the concluding verses, the three Holy Children call to the Church: "O
Israel, bless ye the Lord: praise and exalt Him above all for ever" (vs.
60). Praise is not for Priests alone (vs. 61), but for all of us who
are "servants of the Lord" (vs. 62), the living as well as the "spirits
and souls of the righteous" (vs. 63). Let us truly "give thanks unto
the Lord, because He is gracious: for His mercy endureth for ever" (vs.
66). Indeed, Beloved of the Lord, "It is meet and right to worship
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: the Trinity, one in Essence, and
undivided," and let us also ever lift our hearts and voices to the Lord,
"for His mercy endureth for ever" (vs. 67).

We hymn Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify Thee, we give
thanks unto Thee for Thy great glory, O Lord King , heavenly God.

Friday, April 27, 2007

27/04/07 Fri in the week of the 3rd Sunday of Easter

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE ONE OR MORE MEDITATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL WILL PRAY THE COLLECT, REFLECT ON THE DAY'S SCRIPTURES AND PRAY THE ANGLICAN CYCLE OF PRAYER. AFTER THAT, YOUR CHOICE. THANK YOU]

If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/


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

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

AM Psalm 105:1-22; PM Psalm 105:23-45
Dan. 6:1-15; 2 John 1-13; Luke 5:12-26
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Luke 5: 12-26. But finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.

Have you noticed it's the persistent people who get rewarded in New Testament stories? Like Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, who kept calling out to Jesus even though bystanders told him to hush. The woman who believed that if she could just touch the hem of his garment she would be healed. Now we find these fellows, who bring a paralytic to the house where Jesus is, but find they can't get in. So one of them, absolutely determined that his brother not miss this chance at being healed, suggests going on the roof, sawing a hole, and lowering the man down. And they just do it.


It is at this point in Bible stories I so often get sidetracked with details. Who fixed the host's roof? Did it rain that night?


Then in my mind the scene becomes my neighborhood. If Jesus were teaching in a house down the street, and you could ask him to heal something in your life, what would it be? Why not ask--now? And wait to hear what he says?


Lord Jesus, in your mercy, think on me...
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Niger Delta West (Prov. II, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

A novice was grieving about her numerous distractions during prayer: "I too, have many," replied St. Therese of the Child Jesus, "but I accept all for love of the good God, even the most extravagant thoughts that come into my head."
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

A brother asked abba Poemen, "If I see my brother sin, is it right to say nothing about it?" The old man replied, "whenever we cover our brother's sin, God will cover ours; whenever we tell people about our brother's guilt, God will do the same about ours."
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Meir said, Have little business, and be busied in Thorah; and be lowly in spirit unto every man; and if thou idlest from the Thorah, thou wilt have idlers many against thee; and if thou labourest in the Thorah, He hath much reward to give unto thee.
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Writing to Save the Day

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be "redeemed" by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Twenty Seven - The Second Note, cont'd

The Third Order is Christian community whose members, although varied in race, education, and character, are bound into a living whole through the love we share in Christ. This unity of all who believe in him will become, as our Lord intended, a witness to the world of his divine mission. In our relationship with those outside the Order, we show the same Christ-like love, and gladly give of ouselves, remembering that love is measured by sacrifice.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

GOD, WE ARE a strange bunch. Immersed in our communication technology, we thirst for quiet; and in our silence we hunger for noise. Forgive us for the incessant droning of our TVs, that racket of a mechanical presence to which we rarely listen — for in our loneliness, we may simply be craving your nearness. Amen.

- W. Paul Jones
An Eclectic Almanac for the Faithful

From page 246 of An Eclectic Almanac for the Faithful by W. Paul Jones. Copyright © 2006 by W. Paul Jones.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"The Catholic Worldview: Tradition"

It is said the Roman Church looks at history in terms of centuries. For example, we should be ready to deal with the problem of infant Baptism by about 2020, one cardinal was to have said. By that time people will have matured and understand that the ideal is adult Baptism. But right now they're not ready for that. That's thinking in the big picture. The Catholic Church, for good and for ill, thinks that way. We've been around for a long time. It does keep us form momentary cultural fads, but it makes it hard for us to live in the moment. I hope you've met a sister who taught you at college, or a good priest or wise Catholic layperson who had that profound sense of time, history, tradition and the future. That's Tradition with the big T. That's great Catholicism. The unfortunate thing is that so many people who think they are traditionalists have only a sense of tradition with a little t. Most conservatives and restorationists are more committed to their childhood myths than to the Great Tradition. The Great Tradition forces all of us to move beyond our private comfort zone, both liberals and conservatives.
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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

Then and now

Moses, the lawgiver, was sent by God from a high mountain to save his people and to symbolize the law. The Lord, the lawgiver, was also sent, God by God, mountain from the highest mountain of heaven, to save our people and to be the law. Moses delivered his people from Pharaoh and the Egyptians, but Christ has delivered us from the devil and evil spirits. Moses made peace between the two contending brethren, but Christ has made peace between his two peoples and united heaven and earth.

Israel kept the symbolic Passover by night: we celebrate the true Passover by the light of day. They kept it in the evening of the day: we keep it in the evening of the world. Then the doorposts and lintels were sprinkled with blood: now it is the hearts of the faithful that are sealed with the blood of Christ. Then the sacrifice was offered by night and the crossing of the Red Sea took place at night, but now we are saved by the Red Sea of baptism that glows with fire of the Spirit. In baptism the Spirit of God truly descends and appears on the waters in which the head of the serpent, the prince of serpents and demons, is crushed. Moses gave Israel its baptism by night and a cloud overshadowed the people, but it is the power of the Most High that overshadows the people of Christ.

Moses had recourse to a rock of this creation, but we turn to the rock of faith. Then, the tablets of the law were broken in pieces as a sign that the law would be abrogated: now, the laws of God stand for ever. Then, the making of a molten calf brought retribution on the people: now, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God is the salvation of the people. Then, water poured from the rock when it was struck by a rod: now, from the pierced and life-giving side of the rock which is Christ, both blood and water flow. The Jews of old were given quails from heaven: our gift from on high is the Dove, the Holy Spirit. They fed on perishable manna and died: the bread that we eat brings us everlasting life.

Epiphanius of Salamis,(5th - 6th century), the Latin, wrote commentary on the synoptic gospels.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
WHAT DO YOU WANT?


"Seekest thou great things for thyself?" Jeremiah 45:5

Are you seeking great things for yourself? Not seeking to be a great one, but seeking great things from God for yourself. God wants you in a closer relationship to Himself than receiving His gifts, He wants you to get to know Him. A great thing is accidental, it comes and goes. God never gives us anything accidental. There is nothing easier than getting into a right relationship with God except when it is not God Whom you want but only what He gives.

If you have only come the length of asking God for things, you have never come to the first strand of abandonment, you have become a Christian from a standpoint of your own. "I did ask God for the Holy Spirit, but He did not give me the rest and the peace I expected." Instantly God puts His finger on the reason - you are not seeking the Lord at all, you are seeking something for yourself. Jesus says - "Ask, and it shall be given you." Ask God for what you want, and you cannot ask if you are not asking for a right thing. When you draw near to God, you cease from asking for things. "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." Then why ask? That you may get to know Him.

Are you seeking great things for yourself? "O Lord, baptize me with the Holy Ghost." If God does not, it is because you are not abandoned enough to Him, there is something you will not do. Are you prepared to ask yourself what it is you want from God and why you want it? God always ignores the present perfection for the ultimate perfection. He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy just now; He is working out His ultimate perfection all the time - "that they may be one even as We are."
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

THE modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the Church too simple exactly where life is too complex; he found the Church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

'Orthodoxy.'
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

Chapter 69: That the Monks Presume Not to Defend One Another

Care must be taken that no monk presume on any ground
to defend another monk in the monastery,
or as it were to take him under his protection,
even though they be united by some tie of blood-relationship.
Let not the monks dare to do this in any way whatsoever,
because it may give rise to most serious scandals.
But if anyone breaks this rule,
let him be severely punished.

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


"Stay away from your enemies but guard yourself against friends," Ben Sirach wrote in Ecclesiasticus. The rule knows that false friendship is bad for the person and bad for the community as well. In a life dedicated to spiritual growth and direction, there is no room for multiple masters. Friends who protect us from our need to grow are not friends at all. People who allow a personal agenda, our need to be right or their need to shield, block the achievement of a broader vision in us and betray us. Supporters who risk dividing a group into factions over personal tensions rather than to allow individuals to work their way positively through the hard points of life, barter the spirit and peace of the whole community. We are taught in the Rule not to take sides in issues of personal interpretation and spiritual challenge. We are to hold one another up during hard times, Chapter 27 indicates, but we are not to turn personal difficulty into public warfare. The groups that would be better off if individuals had refused to turn differences of opinion into moral irreconciliables are legion. The Desert Monastics say that one of the disciples asked Abba Sisoes one day, "If I am sitting in the desert and a barbarian comes to kill me and if I am stronger than he, shall I kill him?" The old man said to him, 'No, leave him to God. In fact whatever the trial is which comes to a person, let them say,"This has happened to me because of my sins," and if something good comes say, "This has happened to me because of the providence of God."

Life is not perfect; some of life just is. A great deal of mental, psychological and spiritual health comes from learning to endure the average heat of the average day and to wear both its banes and its blessings with a tempered heart. No warfare. No armies mobilized on the plain. No identification of enemies. Just life.
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Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/

Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church. Dynamis is a project of the Education Committee of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas.

Friday, April 27, 2007 Christ is Risen!
Hieromartyr Simeon, the Kinsman of the Lord
15th Vigil of Pascha - I: Daniel 3:1-23 Apostle: Acts 8:40-9:19
Gospel: St. John 6:48-54

Foreshadows: Daniel 3:1-23 LXX, especially vs. 23: "Then these three
men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the midst of the
burning furnace, and walked in the midst of the flame, singing praise to
God and blessing the Lord." Among the hymns of the Church are a large
set of Canons, which regularly are offered at Orthros after the
intercessions that follow the reading of Psalm 50 LXX.

Musical Canons are divided into nine odes, eight of which are taken from
the Old Testament. The Seventh and Eighth odes are the two songs that
the three righteous youths sang in the burning fiery furnace (Song of
the Three vss. 3-22 and 29-68 - RSV versification. These are found in
Chapter 3 of Daniel in the Septuagint, LXX). Further, because of the
great length of the odes when sung with all their katabasia
(accompanying songs of descent), usually one hears a Canon in
abbreviated form only - restricted to the irmoi (leading or first verses).

The present reading from Daniel actually omits the Seventh Ode as found
in the Septuagint, recording only the events prior to the casting of the
three youths into the furnace. The odes, in the various irmoi, contain,
in rich typology, a great deal of the Church's teaching - especially as
these relate to the Gospel message. Hence, the initial irmoi of the
Seventh and Eighth odes from the various Canons foreshadow our knowledge
of the Holy Trinity, the Lord's Nativity, His Baptism in the Jordan, the
calling upon us as Christians to repent and purify our lives, the fervor
of true worship, the Lord's Passion and Burial, and His glorious
Resurrection.

The Canons, both for the Elevation of the Holy Cross and the Feast of
the Ascension, eloquently draw our hearts and minds to the Holy Trinity:
"O ye youths, equal in number to the Trinity, bless the Father, the God
Creator; praise the Word which did condescend and turn the fire to a
dewy breeze; and exalt more and more the all-holy Spirit, Who giveth
life to all for evermore," for the three serve as types of the
"tri-radiant sign of divine headship...."

At the Nativity we learn that "the youths who were cast of old into the
fire and remained unburned, were a sign of the womb of the Maiden who
gave birth supernaturally...."

The Theophany Canon reveals that "the furnace of Babylon [held] a
strange secret when it overflowed with dew....Jordan was about to
receive in its courses the immaterial Fire, and was to contain the
Creator baptized in the flesh...."

In preparing for the Great Fast, the Canon of Sunday of the Pharisee and
the Publican points us toward deeper repentance just as Nebuchadnezzar
was constrained by the miracle of the Three Youths "to shout, crying,
Blessed art Thou, God" (see Dan. 3:28 RSV).

Later, by God's grace, on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the First in Great
Lent, the vision of the flames "in the land of Persia" should ignite a
"fervor of true worship" in us to join with the Abrahamite youths to
sing, "Blessed art Thou in the temple of Thy holiness, O Lord."

Each year, as we enter into the events of the Lord's Passion, may the
Eighth irmoi of Great and Holy Friday give us a valor like that of
Joseph of Ramah who "beholding the God of all dead and naked...sought
Him and arrayed Him, shouting, O ye youths, bless Him. Praise Him ye
Priests; and ye nations, exalt Him more and more unto the end of ages."

Our Lord Jesus Who saved "the children from the furnace, when He became
Man, suffered like unto a mortal, and, with His sufferings, invested the
mortal with the beauty of incorruption, Who is the God of our fathers.
To [the risen Lord] alone be blessing and glory."

Glory to Thee, Who hast shown us the Light. We worship Thee O Lord,
heavenly King, God the Father Almighty; O Lord the Only-begotten Son,
Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

27/04/07 Thur in the week of the 3rd Sunday of Easter

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE ONE OR MORE MEDITATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL WILL PRAY THE COLLECT, REFLECT ON THE DAY'S SCRIPTURES AND PRAY THE ANGLICAN CYCLE OF PRAYER. AFTER THAT, YOUR CHOICE. THANK YOU]

If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/


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

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

AM Psalm 37:1-18; PM Psalm 37:19-42
Dan. 5:13-30; 1 John 5:13-20(21); Luke 5:1-11
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Luke 5:1-11. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the catch of fish which they had taken.

It isn't the raising of the dead or a spectacular healing that snares Simon Peter, James, and John. Conviction comes through a simple task, one they do each day. Jesus gets into one of their boats, and tells them where to drop the nets they had been washing, having given up on a catch that day. Their nets are so full--so incredibly full--that Peter knows at once he is in the presence of one who is beyond himself. Holy. Not like us. He reacts the way the Bible records people always do when encountering the holy. Peter is overcome by the taint of his own sin. "Leave, Lord!" he begs Jesus, kneeling. Jesus says to him what he says to all of us: "Don't be afraid. Take my hand!"


I used to worry that if I really committed my life to God I'd be required to leave behind all that I know. What happened was far more ordinary. Jesus met me where I was. He healed the broken places within me; he didn't turn me into somebody else. My work didn't change, just the one for whom I do the work.
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Niger Delta North (Prov. II, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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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 Pastor said, "Judge not him who is guilty of fornication, if you are chaste, or you will break the law like him. For He who said "do not commit fornication" said also "Do not judge".
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Jochanan said, Whosoever fulfils the Thorah in poverty, will at length fulfil it in wealth; and whosoever neglects the Thorah in wealth, will at length neglect it in poverty.
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Question from Above

What are spiritual questions? They are questions from above. Most questions people ask of Jesus are questions from below, such as the question about which of a woman's seven husbands she will be married to in the resurrection. Jesus does not answer this question because it comes from a legalistic mind-set. It is a question from below.

Often Jesus responds by changing this question. In the case of the woman with seven husbands he says, "At the resurrection men and women do not marry Ö have you never read what God himself said to you: 'I am God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?' He is God not of the dead but of the living" (Matthew 22:23-30).

We have to keep looking for the spiritual question if we want spiritual answers.
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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/

EVEN THOUGH CHRIST reveals to us that we are God’s beloved, many of us struggle to believe this good news. We may know it in our heads but not in our hearts. We may have heard other voices throughout our lives telling us we are no good, that we’ll never amount to much. Those words sometimes silence any other voices of affirmation. Some of us have been abused. Some of us have been through unspeakable moments of failure, rejection, and suffering. Some of us have been so deeply scarred that we wonder whether anyone really cares about us.

- Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant
The Way of Transforming Discipleship

From pages 22-23 of The Way of Transforming Discipleship by Trevor Hudson and Stephen D. Bryant. Copyright © 2005 by The Upper Room.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"The Catholic Worldview: Community"

Jesus used the image of the Kingdom; Paul, the image of the body of Christ; John, the vine and the branches. But it's all the same sense of mystical union: That, first, we are one; secondly, we became separate. I don't suppose that most of us can think that way. I want to think that way, and I try to let the Lord convert me, but I'm still an American individualist. I wish I were not. Such an exaggerated sense of the private self breeds competition: Your good becomes a threat to my good. Do you know what the Greeks called a private person? They called someone who had no sense of the common good an idiot. The original meaning of idiot is one who simply thinks of himself and has no sense of the city-state. Paul said the Spirit is given "for the sake of the common good" (1 Corinthians 12:7). We cannot make any claim to being Catholics or even people of the Spirit if we do not have that profound commitment to the common good first.

from Why Be Catholic?

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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

The upward movement

Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with men and women brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ's resurrection the thief ascends to paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living; there is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see the underworld restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Savior's passion raises men and women from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights.

Christ is risen. His rising brings life to the dead, forgiveness to sinners, and glory to the saints. And so David the prophet summons all creation to join in celebrating the Easter festival: Rejoice and be glad, he cries, on this day which the Lord has made.

Maximus of Turin,(~408 or 423), bishop of Turin, left us sermons to indicate that he must have been a zealous and effective pastor.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/





THE SUPREME CLIMB


"Take now thy son . . and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." Genesis 22:2

Character determines how a man interprets God's will (cf. Psalm 18:25-26). Abraham interpreted God's command to mean that he had to kill his son, and he could only leave this tradition behind by the pain of a tremendous ordeal. God could purify his faith in no other way. If we obey what God says according to our sincere belief, God will break us from those traditions that misrepresent Him. There are many such beliefs to be got rid of, e.g., that God removes a child because the mother loves him too much - a devil's lie! and a travesty of the true nature of God. If the devil can hinder us from taking the supreme climb and getting rid of wrong traditions about God, he will do so; but if we keep true to God, God will take us through an ordeal which will bring us out into a better knowledge of Himself.

The great point of Abraham's faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. He was there to obey God, no matter to what belief he went contrary. Abraham was not a devotee of his convictions, or he would have slain Isaac and said that the voice of the angel was the voice of the devil. That is the attitude of a fanatic. If you will remain true to God, God will lead you straight through every barrier into the inner chamber of the knowledge of Himself; but there is always this point of giving up convictions and traditional beliefs. Don't ask God to test you. Never declare as Peter did - "I will do anything, I will go to death with Thee." Abraham did not make any such declaration, he remained true to God, and God purified his faith.
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

THE modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the Church too simple exactly where life is too complex; he found the Church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

'Orthodoxy.'
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/


Chapter 68: If a Sister Is Commanded to Do Impossible Things

If it happens
that difficult or impossible tasks are laid on a sister,
let her nevertheless receive the order of the one in authority
with all meekness and obedience.
But if she sees that the weight of the burden
altogether exceeds the limit of her strength,
let her submit the reasons for her inability
to the one who is over her
in a quiet way and at an opportune time,
without pride, resistance, or contradiction.
And if after these representations
the Superior still persists in her decision and command,
let the subject know that this is for her good,
and let her obey out of love,
trusting in the help of God.

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

The desert monastic, Samartus, had written in a culture that called material things evil and only spiritual things good: "If we do not flee from everything, we make sin inevitable." This fear of things outside the monastery was clearly still alive in the time of Benedict and well beyond. Monastics who traveled outside, then,--and they did, as we do, for reasons of business and personal need-- were reminded in this paragraph to call themselves consciously into the presence of God and the purpose of their lives before leaving their monasteries. Two things in particular make the paragraph valuable today. In the first place, however they saw the risks of the world in which they lived, they continued to confront them. They did not become less human in their search for the spiritual life. In the second place, however they counted their own commitment, they did not underestimate the lure of lesser things in life, even on them. They begged the prayers of the community while they were away, a practice which is continued to this day, and they kept as close as possible to the prayer schedule of the monastery while they were gone. Then, when the trip was over, they returned to their monasteries alert to the effects of the baubles and bangles of loose living. And they redoubled their efforts at monastic life. They started over again, prostrating themselves on the floor of the oratory as they had at the time of their profession praying to be reconcentrated on the real meaning of life.

The value of the chapter is clear even today: No one lives in a tax-free world. Life costs. The values and kitsch and superficiality of it takes its toll on all of us. No one walks through life unscathed. It calls to us for our hearts and our minds and our very souls. It calls to us to take life consciously, to put each trip, each turn of the motor, each trek to work in God's hands. Then, whatever happens there, we must remember to start over and start over and start over until, someday, we control life more than it controls us.

A Zen story tells of two monks walking down a muddy, rain-logged road on the way back to their monastery after a morning of begging who saw a beautiful young girl standing beside a large deep puddle unable to get across without ruining her clothes. The first monk, seeing the situation, offered to carry the girl to the other side, though monks had nothing whatsoever to do with women. The second monk was astonished by the act but said nothing about it for hours. Finally, at the end of the day, he said to his companion, "I want to talk to you about that girl." And the first monk said, "Dear brother, are you still carrying that girl. I put her down hours ago."

The things we ruminate on, the things we insist on carrying in our minds and heart, the things we refuse to put down, the Rule warns us, are really the things that poison us and erode our souls. We dull our senses with television and wonder why we cannot see the beauty that is around us. We hold on to things outside of us instead of concentrating on what is within that keeps us noisy and agitated. We run from experience to experience like children in a candy store and wonder how serenity has eluded us. It is walking through life with a relaxed grasp and a focused eye that gets us to where we're going. Dwelling on unessentials and, worse, filling the minds of others with them distracts from the great theme of our lives. We must learn to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
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Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/

Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church. Dynamis is a project of the Education Committee of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas.

Thursday, April 26, 2007 Christ is Risen!
Hieromartyr Basil, Bishop of Amasea
14th Vigil of Pascha: Jeremiah 31:31-34 Apostle: Acts 8:26-39
Gospel: St. John 6:40-44

The New Covenant: Jeremiah 31:31-34 LXX, especially vs. 31: "Behold, the
days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel, and with the house of Judah." Seven centuries before
Christ, the Prophet Jeremiah prophesied that God would "make a new
covenant," and, the night in which the Lord Jesus "was betrayed, - or
rather, gave Himself up for the life of the world," He proclaimed "to
His holy disciples and Apostles" the arrival of those very days and the
launching of the New Covenant, saying: "Drink ye all of this: this is My
Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the
remission of sins."

It is noteworthy that the Apostle Paul, who tasted the Holy Cup (I Cor.
11:25), embraced Christ's saving death upon the Cross (Rom. 5:8), and
knew the risen Lord (I Cor. 15:8), chose to quote this entire prophecy
of Jeremiah into the body of his Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 8:8-12).
In doing so, he declared that Christ mediates the New more excellent
Covenant, one enacted on better promises than the former covenant (Heb.
8:6). Take note that Jeremiah's prophecy reveals 1) what the fault was
under the old covenant, 2) the Divine remedy for that fault, and 3) the
means by which God achieves that remedy in those who embrace the New
Covenant.

What was the problem, the limit of the former Covenant? Of itself, the
Law and the worship that Moses received on Mount Sinai, even though God
was its Author, still could not "perfect the conscience of the
worshiper" (Heb. 9:9). The former Covenant, as moral and social law and
as directives for the performance of worship, did not deal inwardly with
the souls and hearts of God's People. They could carry out the form of
the Covenant and yet be very far from God and their fellow members among
God's People. Laws and rules do not provide for inner formation but
only tell what to do, how to behave, and actions to take. Being
impersonal, statutes and instructions are subject to interpretation,
evasion, and outright infraction. As the Lord observed to Jeremiah, His
People "abode not in [His] covenant" (Jer. 31:32), even as they lived
with the Covenant. Instead, it was a matter of pride for them and a
badge to disdain others.

Notice what God promises through the Prophet Jeremiah: "this is My
covenant which I will make with the house of Israel; after those days,
saith the Lord, I will surely put My laws into their mind, and write
them on their hearts." Interiorizing the purpose of God's law is basic
to the New Covenant, which is exactly what we find in the teaching of
the Lord Jesus. He directs His disciples toward change of heart and
mind, repentance, and inward renewal, but not to the annulment of what
God had commanded for His people through the Law and the Prophets (Mt.
5:17). To be in covenant with God, one needs to turn within, to address
one's inward life, there to purify the state of one's heart and soul.
The whole of the Lord Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" is concerned with
this precise need (Mt. 5-7) - as was the whole of His ministry.

There is, of course, a major problem with the greater covenant that God
promised and the Lord Jesus taught so vigorously: fallen men and women
simply are bound to fail in being perfect as God their heavenly Father
is perfect (Mt. 5:48). Ah, but notice - in the New Covenant God
declared that He would "be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins
I will remember no more" (Jer. 31:34). Mercy of course is what we who
live under the New Covenant know and perceive as the other basic facet
of the ministry of our Lord. Forgiveness of sins is what He forcefully
and regularly offers. Listen to His Eucharistic words: "this is My
Blood of the New Covenant [or Testament], which is shed for you and for
many, for the remission of sins."

Forgive me all my sins, O God, that with a pure heart, I may partake of
Thy deifying mysteries, wherewith every man who eateth and drinketh
thereof with a pure heart is enlivened.


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

25/04/07 Wed, week of 3rd Sunday of Easter

[PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A "MENU" FROM WHICH TO PICK AND CHOOSE ONE OR MORE MEDITATIONS. PLEASE DO NOT THINK YOU HAVE TO PRAY ALL OF IT. PLEASE THINK OF IT AS A BUFFET OF THE DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF CHRISTIANITY. IT IS HOPED THAT ALL WILL PRAY THE COLLECT, REFLECT ON THE DAY'S SCRIPTURES AND PRAY THE ANGLICAN CYCLE OF PRAYER. AFTER THAT, YOUR CHOICE. THANK YOU]

If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/


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

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

AM Psalm 38; PM Psalm 119:25-48
Dan. 5:1-12; 1 John 5:1-12; Luke 4:38-44
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16. The gifts he gave...for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

Some years ago when serving on a vestry, we were feeling a bit adrift. Someone said we should go around the table and tell why we had chosen this particular church. I rolled my eyes. There were 20 people present, and the meeting had already gone on for an hour.


One man talked about his terror when his young wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and all the ways church members had cared for his family, spiritually and physically: casseroles left on their doorstep, notes that said "I'm praying," the people who took care of their kids so he could go with her to chemotherapy. A decade had passed, yet he still got teary telling how he learned firsthand about ministry. So it went. Every story touched my heart. I was rocked by the depth of faith in that room.


Then a friend spoke. She had "married" into the church; I thought she would talk about that. Instead, she said simply, "I am here because, so often, God speaks to me in the voices of my friends."


You can't be a Christian for long without realizing that God intervenes regularly in our lives, and that he often uses the people around us to do it--and us, to help them.
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Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm

St. Mark
AM: Psalm 145; Ecclus. 2:1-11; Acts 12:25-13:3
PM: Psalm 67, 96; Isaiah 62:6-12; 2 Tim. 4:1-11

Almighty God, who by the hand of Mark the evangelist have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Nicaragua (Central America)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and faith.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Story of a Soul.
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

Why the Desert Christians are important to us today:

In the fourth century, an intensive experiment in Christian living began to flourish in Egypt, Syria and Palestine. It was something new in Christian experience, uniting the ancient forms of monastic life with the Gospel. In Egypt the movement was soon so popular that both the civil authorities and the monks themselves became anxious: the officials of the Empire because so many were following a way of life that excluded both military service and the payment of taxes, and the monks because the number of interested tourists threatened their solitude.

The first Christian monks tried every kind of experiment with the way they lived and prayed, but there were three main forms of monastic life: in Lower Egypt there were hermits who lived alone; in Upper Egypt there were monks and nuns living in communities; and in Nitria and Scetis there were those who lived solitary lives but in groups of three or four, often as disciples of a master. For the most part they were simple men, peasants from the villages by the Nile, though a few, like Arsenius and Evagrius, were well educated. Visitors who were impressed and moved by the life of the monks imitated their way of life as far as they could, and also provided a literature that explained and analyzed this way of life for those outside it. However, the primary written accounts of the monks of Egypt are not these, but records of their words and actions by their close disciples.

Often, the first thing that struck those who heard about the Desert Fathers was the negative aspect of their lives. They were people who did without: not much sleep, no baths, poor food, little company, ragged clothes, hard work, no leisure, absolutely no sex, and even, in some places, no church either - a dramatic contrast of immediate interest to those who lived out the Gospel differently.

But to read their own writings is to form a rather different opinion. The literature produced among the monks themselves is not very sophisticated; it comes from the desert, from the place where the amenities of civilization were at their lowest point anyway, where there was nothing to mark a contrast in lifestyles; and the emphasis is less on what was lacking and more on what was present. The outsider saw the negations; disciples who encountered the monks through their own words and actions found indeed great austerity and poverty, but it was neither unbelievable nor complicated. These were simple, practical men, not given either to mysticism or to theology, living by the Word of God, the love of the brethren and of all creation, waiting for the coming of the Kingdom with eager expectation, using each moment as a step in their pilgrimage of the heart towards Christ.

It was because of this positive desire for the Kingdom of heaven which came to dominate their whole lives that they went without things: they kept silence, for instance, not because of a proud and austere preference for aloneness but because they were learning to listen to something more interesting than the talk of men, that is, the Word of God. These men were rebels, the ones who broke the rules of the world which say that property and goods are essential for life, that the one who accepts the direction of another is not free, that no one can be fully human without sex and domesticity. Their name itself, anchorite, means rule-breaker, the one who does not fulfill his public duties. In the solitude of the desert they found themselves able to live in a way that was hard but simple, as children of God.

The literature they have left behind is full of a good, perceptive wisdom, from a clear, unassuming angle. They did not write much; most of them remained illiterate; but they asked each other for a "word", that is, to say something in which they would recognize the Word of God, which gives life to the soul. It is not a literature of words that analyze and sort out personal worries or solve theological problems; nor is it a mystical literature concerned to present prayers and praise to God in a direct line of vision; rather, it is oblique, unformed, occasional, like sunlight glancing off a rare oasis in the sands.

These life-giving "words" were collected and eventually written down by disciples of the first monks, and grouped together in various ways, sometimes under the names of the monks with whom they were connected sometimes under headings which were themes of special interest, such as "solitude and stability", "obedience", or "warfare that lust arouses in us". Mixed in with these sayings were short stories about the actions of the monks, since what they did was often as revealing as what they said. These collections of "apophthegmata" were not meant as a dead archaism, full of nostalgia for a lost past, but as a direct transmission of practical wisdom and experience for the use of the reader. Thus it is as part of tradition that this small selection has been made from some of the famous collections of desert material, most of which have been translated and published in full elsewhere. They are placed in pairs, so that a "word" faces a story and illustrates its central, though not its only meaning. Each saying-and-story pair has been given a heading; these are arranged in two series, the first part relating to the commandment to love one's neighbour, the second to the commandment to love God.

This material first appeared among uneducated laymen; it is not "churchy" or specifically religious. It has its roots in that life in Christ which is common to all the baptized, some of whom lived this out as monks, others who did not. There is common a universal appeal in these sayings, in spite of much which is at first strange. I have not tried to eliminate all the strangeness of the material, but to present a very small part of it as it is, in the belief that the words and deeds of these men can still make the fountain of life spring up in the arid deserts of lives in the twentieth century as they did in the fourth. "Fear not this goodness", said abba Antony, "as a thing impossible, nor the pursuit of it as something alien, set a great way off; it hangs on our own choice. For the sake of Greek learning, men go overseas. But the City of God has its foundations in every seat of human habitation. The kingdom of God is within. The goodness that is in us asks only the human mind."

--Benedicta Ward - Oxford

Note:
The editor has retained the words "abba" and "amma" which are used in these texts for addressing and describing certain men and women of the desert; "abba" is a term of respect, and to translate it by "abbot" would be misleading.
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Ishma'el said, He that refrains himself from judgment, frees himself from enmity, and rapine, and false swearing; and he that is arrogant in decision is foolish, wicked, and puffed up in spirit.

He used to say, Judge not alone, for none may judge alone save One; and say not, Accept ye my opinion, for they are free-to-choose, and not thou.
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

The Answer to Our Questions

We spend a lot of time and energy raising questions. Is it worth it? It is always good to ask ourselves why we raise a question. Do we want to get useful information? Do we want to show that someone else is wrong? Do we want to conquer knowledge? Do we want to grow in wisdom? Do we want to find a way to sanctity?

When we ponder these questions before asking our questions, we may discover that we need less time and energy for our questions. Perhaps we already have the information. Perhaps we don't need to show that someone is wrong. For many questions we may learn that we already have the answers, at least if we listen carefully to our own hearts.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Twenty Five - The Second Note -

Love

Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment: love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35) Love is the distinguishing feature of all true disciples of Christ who wish to dedicate themselves to him as his servants.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

ULTIMATELY, lamentation leads to a greater, healing closeness in the divine-human bond. The cause of sorrow may not recede. The trial that evoked the cry may not end. The cry itself may yield no pathway of escape from harsh reality, nor should it be expected to. Lamentations come always from the lips of those who face the harshness, not from those trying to turn away. Still, as the cry pours forth, it opens wide the spirit of the one who issues it. And in this opening the greater closeness grows.

- Stephen Doughty
To Walk in Integrity

From pages 89-90 of To Walk in Integrity by Stephen Doughty. Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Doughty.

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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"The Catholic Worldview: Process"

On the walls of our Catholic churches we have fourteen stations. That's good process theology. It's movement, stages and phases: First this has to happen, then you have to go through that; you have to remain on the path in all its stages and relationships. The path itself will be you teacher. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wasn't the first to discover the stages of grief and dying. The way of the cross did, and it was inside of every Catholic church. The Franciscans start it, in fact. We said there is going to be an experience of condemnation in your life, an experience of judgment, an experience of betrayal. There's going to be a time where you'll finally have to do his will, not your own. When you try to do it, you're going to fall at least three times. Probably a lot more than that. But God is going to give you people like Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, Mary and the weeping daughters of Jerusalem. God is going to give you friends who will support you. That's process theology. It's not the static theology some of us unfortunately grew up with, the game of: mortal sin, I'm out; go to confession, I'm in. Push-button theology is very different from healthy, rich Catholicism.

from Why Be Catholic?

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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

Mark, the evangelist

In case you might think that the apostles were capable of preaching the gospel everywhere by their own powers, the evangelist mentions the essential element when he adds, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it. The Lord confirmed the preaching of the apostles by the signs that accompanied it, when he showed through them such signs and wonders that no one beholding the marvels could doubt that their teaching came from God. Indeed, he performed such signs through them that even some of those who persecuted and opposed them were touched with remorse and believed. So where one was raised from physical death, many were raised from spiritual death, and where one was healed in body, many were healed in soul.

The apostles themselves confirmed their message with God's assistance by first practicing what they preached. Teachers confirm what they say by first doing themselves what they teach others to do, following the example of that good teacher of whom it is written: Jesus began to act and to teach.

Haymo of Halberstadt, (778 - 853) became abbot of Hersfeld and later bishop of Halberstadt. He wrote treatises on various subjects and commentaries on the books of the bible.
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/

INSTANT IN SEASON


Be instant in season, out of season." 2 Timothy 4:2

Many of us suffer from the morbid tendency to be instant "out of season." The season does not refer to time, but to us - 'Be instant in season, out of season," whether we feel like it or not. If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would do nothing for ever and ever. There are unemployables in the spiritual domain, spiritually decrepit people, who refuse to do anything unless they are supernaturally inspired. The proof that we are rightly related to God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.

One of the great snares of the Christian worker is to make a fetish of his rare moments. When the Spirit of God gives you a time of inspiration and insight, you say - "Now I will always be like this for God." No, you will not, God will take care you are not. Those times are the gift of God entirely. You cannot give them to yourself when you choose. If you say you will only be at your best, you become an intolerable drag on God; you will never do anything unless God keeps you consciously inspired. If you make a god of your best moments, you will find that God will fade out of your life and never come back until you do the duty that lies nearest, and have learned not to make a fetish of your rare moments.
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

ST MARK'S DAY

THE only thing still old-fashioned enough to reject miracles is the New Theology.

'Orthodoxy'
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

Chapter 67: On Brethren Who Are Sent on a Journey

Let the brethren who are sent on a journey
commend themselves
to the prayers of all the brethren and of the Abbot;
and always at the last prayer of the Work of God
let a commemoration be made of all absent brethren.

When brethren return from a journey,
at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God
on the day they return,
let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory
and beg the prayers of all
on account of any faults
that may have surprised them on the road,
through the seeing or hearing of something evil,
or through idle talk.
And let no one presume to tell another
whatever he may have seen or heard outside of the monastery,
because this causes very great harm.
But if anyone presumes to do so,
let him undergo the punishment of the Rule.
And let him be punished likewise who would presume
to leave the enclosure of the monastery
and go anywhere or do anything, however small,
without an order from the Abbot.

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


The desert monastic, Samartus, had written in a culture that called material things evil and only spiritual things good: "If we do not flee from everything, we make sin inevitable." This fear of things outside the monastery was clearly still alive in the time of Benedict and well beyond. Monastics who traveled outside, then,--and they did, as we do, for reasons of business and personal need-- were reminded in this paragraph to call themselves consciously into the presence of God and the purpose of their lives before leaving their monasteries. Two things in particular make the paragraph valuable today. In the first place, however they saw the risks of the world in which they lived, they continued to confront them. They did not become less human in their search for the spiritual life. In the second place, however they counted their own commitment, they did not underestimate the lure of lesser things in life, even on them. They begged the prayers of the community while they were away, a practice which is continued to this day, and they kept as close as possible to the prayer schedule of the monastery while they were gone. Then, when the trip was over, they returned to their monasteries alert to the effects of the baubles and bangles of loose living. And they redoubled their efforts at monastic life. They started over again, prostrating themselves on the floor of the oratory as they had at the time of their profession praying to be reconcentrated on the real meaning of life.

The value of the chapter is clear even today: No one lives in a tax-free world. Life costs. The values and kitsch and superficiality of it takes its toll on all of us. No one walks through life unscathed. It calls to us for our hearts and our minds and our very souls. It calls to us to take life consciously, to put each trip, each turn of the motor, each trek to work in God's hands. Then, whatever happens there, we must remember to start over and start over and start over until, someday, we control life more than it controls us.

A Zen story tells of two monks walking down a muddy, rain-logged road on the way back to their monastery after a morning of begging who saw a beautiful young girl standing beside a large deep puddle unable to get across without ruining her clothes. The first monk, seeing the situation, offered to carry the girl to the other side, though monks had nothing whatsoever to do with women. The second monk was astonished by the act but said nothing about it for hours. Finally, at the end of the day, he said to his companion, "I want to talk to you about that girl." And the first monk said, "Dear brother, are you still carrying that girl. I put her down hours ago."

The things we ruminate on, the things we insist on carrying in our minds and heart, the things we refuse to put down, the Rule warns us, are really the things that poison us and erode our souls. We dull our senses with television and wonder why we cannot see the beauty that is around us. We hold on to things outside of us instead of concentrating on what is within that keeps us noisy and agitated. We run from experience to experience like children in a candy store and wonder how serenity has eluded us. It is walking through life with a relaxed grasp and a focused eye that gets us to where we're going. Dwelling on unessentials and, worse, filling the minds of others with them distracts from the great theme of our lives. We must learn to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007 Christ is Risen!
The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark
13th Paschal Vigil: Isaiah 63:11-64:5 Apostle: Acts
8:18-25
Gospel: St. John 6:35-39

A Resurrection Icon: Isaiah 63:11-64:5 LXX, especially vs. 11: "Where is
He that brought them up from the sea the Shepherd of the sheep? Where
is He that put His Holy Spirit in them?" This passage from Isaiah
rehearses a group of burning questions that deeply troubled the great
Prophet of God. At the same time, it presents to every pious Christian
a joyous and prophetic icon of the Resurrection. The Prophet Isaiah
asks God how He, Who had "led Moses with His right hand, and the arm of
His glory" (vs. 12), could have allowed His chosen People to fall so
low: "where is Thy zeal and Thy strength? where is the abundance of Thy
mercy, and of Thy compassions, that Thou hast withheld Thyself from
us?...Why hast Thou caused us to err, O Lord, from Thy way? and hast
hardened our hearts, that we should not fear Thee?" (vss. 15,17).

While these opening verses find Isaiah questioning how God could have
abandoned His own People (vss. 63:11-17), still, the Prophet does not
refrain from begging the Lord to "return for Thy servants' sake, for the
sake of the tribes of Thine inheritance, that we may inherit a small
part of Thy holy mountain" (vss. 63:17-18). Then, with irony, as if to
remind the Lord, the Prophet mentions that God is fully able to act as
He did of old. Thus, if He should choose to "open the heavens" and come
among His people, then "trembling will take hold upon the mountains"
(64:1). In the end, Isaiah admits, yes, "we have sinned; therefore we
have erred" (vs. 64:5), but he adds, we believe that "Thou wilt perform
to them that wait for mercy," for "from of old we have not heard,
neither have our eyes seen a God beside Thee" (vs. 64:4).

The Holy Fathers observed that the questions which burned in the heart
of Isaiah the Prophet were fully answered by the coming of Christ.
Listen, for example, to Theodoret of Cyrus: "The prophetic text...is
making mention of the event that was the crossing of the Sea: foreseeing
that they [ancient Israel, would] be deprived of the divine
solicitude...according to the prediction," that God would "forsake [His]
vineyard" (Is. 5:6).

However, says Theodoret, the questions raised should lead the Faithful
in Christ to realize that "just as the people, pursued by Pharaoh and
the Egyptians, passed through the sea under the leadership of Moses, in
the same way, when the devil and the demons were waging war, Christ our
Master broke the gates of death, passed over them Himself, and is now
leading human nature to freedom. Hence," Theodoret continues, "the
divine Apostle applies these words to Christ: 'He Who brought up from
the earth the Great Shepherd of the sheep'" (Heb. 13:20), and he urges
those united to Christ to perceive that Moses himself was the servant
and the type, and that now has come the Lord Jesus, "the true 'shepherd
Who gave His life for the sheep'" (Jn.10:11).

Take note that the questions of Isaiah are answered for the Faithful if
we will perceive that they form a verbal icon of the Resurrection:
"Where is He that brought them up from the sea [of the grave]?"(vs.
11). Christ Jesus, the Shepherd, is risen from the dead. "Where is He
that put His Holy Spirit in them?" (vs. 11). We answer, "Christ is
among us; He is and He shall be," baptizing His own with water and the
Holy Spirit. "He forced the water [of death] to separate from before
Him" (vs. 12). "He [leads His own] through the deep...and they [faint]
not" (vs. 13).

In the Pentecostal fire, "the Spirit came down from the Lord" [to guide
us] (vs. 14). Thus, the Lord is leading His people and making for
Himself "a glorious Name" (vs. 14). God Incarnate reveals His "zeal
and strength" (vs. 15). He shows us "the abundance of [His] mercy and
of [His] compassion, not withholding Himself from us!" (vs. 15).

Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; and let them who hate
Him flee from before His face. Today a sacred Pascha is revealed to us:
Pascha which is Christ the Redeemer.



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