knitternun

Friday, May 04, 2007

04/05/07 Fri in the week of the 4th Sun 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]

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

Collect
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 40, 54; PM Psalm 51
Wisdom 6:12-23; Col 3:1-11; Luke 7:1-17
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Wisdom 6:12-23. To fix one's thoughts on [wisdom] is perfect understanding, and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care.

To be wise requires a certain amount of detachment. As the parent of two almost grown daughters, I often find myself suggesting ways they might better organize their lives, courses they might pursue in college, jobs to help them meet their goals. Not infrequently, my "wise suggestions" are met with a noncommittal smile or polite silence.


But when I step back and trust that the resources given these daughters in their growing up years are enough for them to make their own choices, I am surprised at the counsel they seek from me. When I can remove myself from my own need for their success, they are better able to claim themselves. I no longer need to cling to them for affirmation and am freed from worry. To be wise, it becomes clear to me, is not to know all the answers, but to seek understanding and the spirit within. The result is freedom without.
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Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm

Monnica:
Psalm 115:12-18 or 116:10-17
1 Samuel 1:10-11,20; Luke 7:11-17 or John 16:20-42

O Lord, who through spiritual discipline strengthened your servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we pray, and use us in accordance with your will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.

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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of North East India (North India)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

Confidence, nothing but confidence leads to the love of God.
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, "How should I behave in my cell in the place where I am living?" He replied, "Behave as if you were a stranger, and wherever you are, do not expect your words to have an influence and you will be at peace."
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Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Pirqe Aboth)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/sjf/index.htm

R. Nehorai said, Betake thyself to a place of Thorah, and say not that it shall come after thee; for thine associates will confirm it unto thee; and lean not unto thine own understanding (Prov. iii. 5).
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Signposts on the Way to God

How do we know about God's love, God's generosity, God's kindness, God's forgiveness? Through our parents, our friends, our teachers, our pastors, our spouses, our children ... they all reveal God to us. But as we come to know them, we realise that each of them can reveal only a little bit of God. God's love is greater than theirs; God's goodness is greater than theirs; God's beauty is greater than theirs.

At first we may be disappointed in these people in our lives. For a while we thought that they would be able to give us all the love, goodness, and beauty we needed. But gradually we discover that they were all signposts on the way to God.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:

Day Four - The Object, cont'd

When Saint Francis encouraged the formation of the Third Order he recognized that many are called to serve God in the spirit of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience in everyday life (rather than in a literal acceptance of these principles as in the vows of the Brothers and Sisters of the First and Second Orders). The Rule of the Third Order is intended to enable the duties and conditions of daily living to be carried out in this spirit.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

[THE SAINTS] know that these small and changing lives, about which we are so often troubled, are part of a great mystery — the life that is related to God and known by God. They know, that is, that they, and all the other souls they love so much, have their abiding place in Eternity; there the meaning of everything they do and bear is understood. So all their action comes from this center; whether it is small or great, heroic or very homely, does not matter to them much. It is a tranquil expression of obedience and devotion.

- Evelyn Underhill
The Soul’s Delight

From page 58 of The Soul’s Delight: Selected Writings of Evelyn Underhill edited by Keith Beasley-Topliffe. Copyright © 1998 by The Upper Room.
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html

"Learning How to Pray"

Prayer isn't bending God's arms in order to get things, or talking God into things. God is already totally given. Prayer is us learning how to receive, learning how to wait, listen, possess something. It's not that we pray and God answers; our praying is already God answering. Your desire to pray is God in your heart. Your reaching out to enter into dialogue with the Lord is already the answer of God. It is grace that makes us desire grace. When you don't even have that desire to pray, to want to listen to God, then perhaps your openness to the Spirit has come to a halt. If you're not really wanting or choosing God anymore, what can you do? All you can do is ask for it again: "Lord, give me the desire to pray. Give me the desire to be in union with you." Pray for the desire to desire. Prayer is unmarketable. Prayer gives you no immediate payoff. You get no immediate feedback or sense of success. True prayer, in that sense, probably is the most courageous and countercultural thing an American will ever do.

from The Price of Peoplehood

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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

Christ is our guest

When people receive a dear friend in their homes, is it not obvious that everything is a pleasure for them, and that they run about in all directions, sparing no effort to please their guest, even if it means spending all they have? Well, Christ is our guest, so let us show him that we are really happy, and do nothing to displease him. Let us decorate the house he has come to as a sign of our joy. Let us put before him the kind of food he likes best to show our delight. What is this food? He tells us himself: My food is to do the will of him who sent me. Let us feed him when he is hungry, and give him a drink when he is thirsty. If you offer him a cup of cold water he will accept it because he loves you. However small a loved one's gifts may be, they have great value in the eyes of a friend.

John Chrysostom, (347 - 407), patriarch of Constantinople, spent a life of preaching and earned the title of "the golden-mouthed."
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/





VICARIOUS INTERCESSION


"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." Hebrews 10:19

Beware of imagining that intercession means bringing our personal sympathies into the presence of God and demanding that He does what we ask. Our approach to God is due entirely to the vicarious identification of our Lord with sin. We have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus."

Spiritual stubbornness is the most effectual hindrance to intercession, because it is based on sympathy with that in ourselves and in others that we do not think needs atoning for. We have the notion that there are certain right and virtuous things in us which do not need to be based on the Atonement, and just in the domain of "stodge" that is produced by this idea we cannot intercede. We do not identify ourselves with God's interests in others, we get petulant with God; we are always ready with our own ideas, and intercession becomes the glorification of our own natural sympathies. We have to realize that the identification of Jesus with sin means the radical alteration of all our sympathies. Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God's interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.

Am I stubborn or substituted? Petted or perfect in my relationship to God? Sulky or spiritual? Determined to have my own way or determined to be identified with Him?
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G. K. Chesterton Day by Day
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/gkcday/gkcday.html

HAPPY is he and more than wise
Who sees with wondering eyes and clean
This world through all the grey disguise
Of sleep and custom in between.
Yes; we may pass the heavenly screen,
But shall we know when we are there?
Who know not what these dead stones mean,
The lovely city of Lierre.

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

Prologue

And the Lord, seeking his laborer
in the multitude to whom He thus cries out,
says again,
"Who is the one who will have life,
and desires to see good days" (Ps. 33:13)?
And if, hearing Him, you answer,
"I am the one,"
God says to you,
"If you will have true and everlasting life,
keep your tongue from evil
and your lips that they speak no guile.
Turn away from evil and do good;
seek after peace and pursue it" (Ps. 33:14-15).
And when you have done these things,
My eyes shall be upon you
and My ears open to your prayers;
and before you call upon Me,
I will say to you,
'Behold, here I am'" (Ps. 33:16; Is. 65:24; 58:9).

What can be sweeter to us, dear ones,
than this voice of the Lord inviting us?
Behold, in His loving kindness
the Lord shows us the way of life.

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

In Benedict's mind, apparently, the spiritual life is not a collection of asceticisms, it is a way of being in the world that is open to God and open to others. We struggle, of course, with temptations to separate the two. It is so easy to tell ourselves that we overlooked the needs of others because we were attending to the needs of God. It is so easy to go to church instead of going to a friend whose depression depresses us. It is so easy to want silence rather than the demands of the children. It is so much easier to read a book about religion than it is to listen to a husband talk about his job or a wife talk about her loneliness. It is so much easier to practice the privatized religion of prayers and penances than it is to make fools out of ourselves for the Christian religion of globalism and peace. Deep, deep spiritual traditions everywhere, however, reject those rationalizations: "Is there life after death?", a disciple once asked a Holy One. And the Holy One answered, "The great spiritual question of life is not 'Is there life after death?' The great spiritual question is, 'Is there life before death?'" Benedict obviously believes that life lived fully is life lived on two planes: attention to God and attention to the good of the other.

The godly are those, this paragraph says, who never talk destructively about another person--in anger, in spite, in
vengefulness,--and who can be counted on to bring an open heart to a closed and clawing world.

The godly know when the world they live in has them on a slippery slope away from the good, the true, and the holy and they refuse to be part of the decline. What's more striking, they set out to counter it. It is not enough, Benedict implies, simply to distance ourselves from the bad. It is not enough, for instance, to refuse to slander others; we must rebuild their reputations. It is not enough to disapprove of toxic waste; we must do something to save the globe. It is not enough to care for the poor; we must do something to stop the poverty. We must be people who bring creation to life. "Once you have done this," the Rule reminds us, "my eyes will be upon you and my ears will listen for your prayers." Once you have done these things, you will be in the presence of God.

Finally, as far as Benedict is concerned, the spiritual life depends on our being peaceful peacemakers.

Agitation drives out consciousness of God. When we're driven by agitation, consumed by fretting, we become immersed in our own agenda and it is always exaggerated. We get caught up in things which, in the final analysis, simply don't count, in things that pass away, in things that are concerned with living comfortably rather than with living well. We go to pieces over crying children and broken machines and the length of stop lights at intersections. We lose touch with the center of things.

At the same time, a kind of passive tranquillity is not the aim of Benedictine life. The call of this spirituality is to be gentle ourselves and to bring nonviolence in our wake. It is an amazing position for a sixth century document to take in a violent world. There is no Armeggedon theology here, no call to a pitched battle between good and evil in a world that subscribed to dualism and divided life into things of the spirit and things of the flesh.

In this Rule of life, violence is simply discounted. Violence doesn't work. Not political violence, not social violence, not physical violence, not even the violence that we do to ourselves in the name of religion. Wars haven't worked. Classism hasn't worked. Fanaticism hasn't worked. Benedictinism, on the other hand, simply does not have as its goal either to beat the body down or to vanquish the world. Benedictinism simply sets out to gentle a universe riddled with violence by being a peaceful voice for peace in a world that thinks that everything--international relations, child rearing and economic development, even in the spiritual life--is accomplished by force.

Benedictinism is a call to live in the world not only without weapons raised against the other but by doing good. The passage implies clearly that those who make God's creation their enemy simply do not "deserve to see the Holy One."

It is a strong passage clothed in words long dulled by repetition.
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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.

Thurs., May 4, 2007 Christ is Risen!
Martyr Florian, Enlightener of Austria & Poland
Kellia: Deuteronomy 1:5-18 Apostle: Acts
10:44-11:10
Gospel: St. John 8:21-30

Possessing the Land: Deuteronomy 1:5-18 LXX, especially vs. 8: "Behold,
God has delivered the land before you; go in and inherit the land, which
I sware to your fathers, Abraam, and Isaac, and Jacob, to give it to
them and to their seed after them." The Faithful in Christ ought to
read the admonitions of the Prophet Moses through the lens of the higher
vision revealed in the Lord Jesus and by His Holy Apostles. Hence, when
our Lord was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come,
His answer directed them away from a material kingdom with measurable
boundaries on earth, even from a nation that might encompass the entire
planet. He lifts the eyes of faith away from tangible goods and
dominions. As our Lord states: "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Lk.
17:21). He points to a realm - the Way to which is Himself -- lying
within our souls, called to purity, and which He helps us wrest from the
enemy.

Possession of the land as promised to the Holy Forefathers,
misconstrued by ancient Israel, has repeatedly defeated them for
thinking solely in tangible categories. Ancient Israel, by thinking
foremost of physical territory only, "the word which they heard did not
[and does not] profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who
heard it" (Heb. 4:2). Likewise, it does not give the rest promised by
God to those who did (and who now) fight to possess the Holy Land.
Nevertheless, as the Apostle firmly points out, "it remains that some
must enter" (Heb. 4:6), and the Lord Jesus Christ amply points the way
to God's Kingdom of true rest for all men.

As the present passage indicates, the process of possessing the
Kingdom of God begins by meeting the living God. For Moses and the
ancient people of God this occurred at Horeb (Mt. Sinai). It was there
that God, Whose rule extends from His Heavenly Kingdom over all
creation, revealed His Commandments to His People. There they entered
into covenant with Him Who ever reveals Himself, His all-Holy will and
His unalterable Law. Let us who have united ourselves to Christ in His
Holy Church, the true Israel of God, also accept His rule in heart,
soul, and body so that we may find His Kingdom coming "on earth as it is
in heaven" (Mt. 6:10).

The Faithful are to follow the Prophetic admonition: "Turn ye and
depart and enter into the mountain of the Amorites" (Deut. 1:7). That
is, go into an essentially pagan, unconverted world that accepts
iniquity and self-will as good and normal (Gen. 15:16). Moses' counsel
- received from God - was to possess all the land, and its boundaries He
described in detail: from the Negev desert in the south all the way to
the Euphrates river in the north, and from the sea east into the area
that now constitutes the populous region of the present-day Kingdom of
Jordan.

For Christians, pursuing Christ's Kingdom within, struggle for purity,
must cover every aspect of our life - something the Holy Fathers of the
ascetic life describe in detail. All must be possessed, cleansed, and
brought under the rule of God with no aspect of one's self left aside.

Let us take up this struggle for possession of the Kingdom of Heaven,
praying God to make us "a thousand-fold more than [we] are, and bless
[us] as He has spoken to [us]" (Deut. 1:11). To hope for success in the
labor of possessing the land for the Lord, we need to learn from the
Prophet Moses to submit ourselves to "wise and understanding and prudent
men" (vs. 13) in the Church all over the world. May our leaders who
guide us in possessing the Kingdom "judge rightly between a man and his
brother, and the stranger that is with him" (vs. 16). Pray that they
"shalt not have respect to persons in judgment,[but] shalt judge small
and great equally; [and] not shrink from before the person of a man, for
the judgment is God's" (vs. 17).

Be mindful, O Lord, of Thy Holy Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic
Church; confirm and strengthen it, increase it and keep it in peace,
and preserve it unconquerable forever.

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