05/06/07 Tuesday in the week of the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
[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
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
AM Psalm 45; PM Psalm 47, 48
Deut. 12:1-12; 2 Cor. 6:3-13(14-7:1); Luke 17:11-19
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Psalm 45. I will make your name to be remembered from one generation to another; therefore nations will praise you for ever and ever.
When I taught adults in a junior college, one of the most popular subjects was oral tradition. Childhood memories were the basis for our study.
The early disciples who had known Jesus left no written accounts. They relied on oral tradition. Paul's letters, unsigned, give scholars pause. Oral tradition was alive when he wrote, but he also depended on his own astounding revelations. Through them he found certainty in the things he said about Christ.
The court poet writing this psalm speaks of royal lineage, music, and clothes. These words are prophetic allusions to him who is to come. "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth," Peter said, "rise up and walk." Such healings were embedded in the memories of Christ's followers and they were passed along to the next generation of Christians. This kind of oral tradition was as real as the day's weather. Nothing could change the power of memories like this.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
Boniface, Missionary to Germany:
Psalm 115:1-8 or 31:1-5
Acts 20:17-28; Luke 24:44-53
Almighty God, who called your faithful servant Boniface to be a witness and martyr in the lands of Germany and Friesland, and by his labor and suffering raised up a people for your own possession: Pour forth your Holy Spirit upon your Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many your holy Name may be glorified and your kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Okigwe North (Owerri, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
The soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He finds His delight.
St Teresa of Jesus
Interior Castle, I.1
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
A brother came to see a certain hermit and, as he was leaving, he said, "Forgive me abba for preventing you from keeping your rule." The hermit replied, "My rule is to welcome you with hospitality and to send you away in peace."
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
God's Breath Given to Us
Being the living Christ today means being filled with the same Spirit that filled Jesus. Jesus and his Father are breathing the same breath, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the intimate communion that makes Jesus and his Father one. Jesus says: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:10) and "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30). It is this unity that Jesus wants to give us. That is the gift of his Holy Spirit.
Living a spiritual life, therefore, means living in the same communion with the Father as Jesus did, and thus making God present in the world.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Five - The First Aim of the Order
To make our Lord known and loved everywhere.
The Order is founded on the conviction that Jesus Christ is the perfect revelation of God; that true life has been made available to us through his Incarnation and Ministry, by his Cross and Resurrection, and by the sending of his Holy Spirit. The Order believes that it is the commission of the church to make the gospel known to all, and therefore accepts the duty of bringing others to know Christ, and of praying and working for the coming of the of the Kingdom of God.
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
GOD OF GREAT ABUNDANCE,
forgive me
when I put my trust and love into objects.
Fill me with gratitude
for your extravagant grace and love.
Amen.
- Alive Now
From page 58 of Alive Now, March/April 2007. Copyright © 2007 by The Upper Room.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"The Thought God Is Lost In "
We are God’s prayer. We are, in fact, God’s thought. And God is hopelessly lost in thinking us. All we can do is stay naked and self-forgetful, ready for lovemaking. The primary temptation is to cover ourselves with roles, controls, successes and satisfying explanations. The mind will discover a million ways to cover itself from its fears and its emptiness. But praying is living in a lover’s world, with no need to affirm or deny, judge or justify. Praying is the unexpected uncovering of perfect goodness after we have done so many things wrong. There is no other place to begin listening or living. Prayer is the only foundation we can trust in ourselves. Be quite and self-forgetful, dear friends. Don’t miss out. You must know for yourself that Someone is thinking you (as opposed to another) each creative moment. The only good choice is to love and trust yourself in God.
from Radical Grace, “The Thought God Is Lost In”
++++++++++
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 priesthood of Christians
Listen to what the apostle urges us to do. I appeal to you, he says, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. By this exhortation of his, Paul has raised every one of us to priestly status.
How marvelous is the priesthood of Christians for they are both the victims offered on their own behalf, and the priests who make the offerings! They have no need to go beyond themselves to seek what they are to immolate to God: with themselves and in themselves they bring the sacrifice they are to offer God for themselves. The victims remain and the priests remain, always one and the same. Immolated, the victims still live: the priests who immolate cannot kill. Truly it is an amazing sacrifice in which a body is offered without being slain and blood is offered without being shed.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
GOD'S SAY-SO
"He hath said . . . so that we may boldly say . . ." Hebrews 13:5-6
My say-so is to be built on God's say-so. God says - "I will never leave thee," then I can with good courage say - "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear - " I will not be haunted by apprehension. This does not mean that I will not be tempted to fear, but I will remember God's say-so. I will be full of courage, like a child "bucking himself up" to reach the standard his father wants. Faith in many a one falters when the apprehensions come, they forget the meaning of God's say-so, forget to take a deep breath spiritually. The only way to get the dread taken out of us is to listen to God's say-so.
What are you dreading? You are not a coward about it, you are going to face it, but there is a feeling of dread. When there is nothing and no one to help you, say - "But the Lord is my Helper, this second, in my present outlook." Are you learning to say things after listening to God, or are you saying things and trying to make God's word fit in? Get hold of the Father's say-so, and then say with good courage - "I will not fear." It does not matter what evil or wrong may be in the way, He has said - "I will never leave thee."
Frailty is another thing that gets in between God's say-so and ours. When we realize how feeble we are in facing difficulties, the difficulties become like giants, we become like grasshoppers, and God becomes a nonentity. Remember God's say-so - "I will in no wise fail you." Have we learned to sing after hearing God's key-note? Are we always possessed with the courage to say - "The Lord is my helper," or are we succumbing?
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 7: On Humility
The seventh degree of humility
is that he consider himself lower and of less account
than anyone else,
and this not only in verbal protestation
but also with the most heartfelt inner conviction,
humbling himself and saying with the Prophet,
"But I am a worm and no man,
the scorn of men and the outcast of the people" (Ps. 21:7).
"After being exalted, I have been humbled
and covered with confusion" (Pa. 87:16).
And again,
"It is good for me that You have humbled me,
that I may learn Your commandments" (Ps. 118:71).
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
At one stage of life, the temptation is to think that no human being alive could ever really believe themselves to be "inferior to all and of less value." At a later stage in life you begin to understand that secretly everybody thinks exactly that and that's why we deny it with such angst to ourselves and such unfairness to others. We set out systematically to hide the truth of it by clutching at money and degrees and positions and power and exhaust ourselves in the attempt to look better than we fear we really are.
The only difference between that stage of life and this degree of humility is that in the seventh degree of humility Benedict wants us to realize that accepting our essential smallness and embracing it frees us from the need to lie, even to ourselves, about our frailties. More than that, it liberates us to respect, revere and deal gently with others who have been unfortunate enough to have their own smallnesses come obscenely to light.
Aware of our own meager virtues, conscious of our own massive failures despite all our great efforts, all our fine desires, we have in this degree of humility, this acceptance of ourselves, the chance to understand the failures of others. We have here the opportunity to become kind.
++++++++++
Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/
Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 Apostles Fast Hieromartyr Dorotheos,
Bishop of Tyre
2nd Vespers Hierarch: Wisdom 6:12-16; 7:30; 8:2-4, 7-9, 21; 9:1-4, 10-11, 13
Epistle: Romans 4:4-12
Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21
Attaining Wisdom: Wisdom 6:12-16; 7:30; 8:2-4, 7-9, 21; 9:1-4, 10-11, 13
LXX, especially vs. 8:21: "When I perceived that I could not otherwise
obtain her, except God gave her me; and that was a point of wisdom also
to know whose gift she was; I prayed unto the Lord, and besought Him,
and with my whole heart." It is fair to say with Metropolitan
Hierotheos Vlachos that "where Orthodoxy is lived in the right way and
in the Holy Spirit, it is a communion of God and men, of heavenly and
earthly, of the living and the dead. In this communion all the problems
which present themselves in our life are truly resolved." Most
certainly Solomon's Book of Wisdom foreshadowed the "communion of God
and men." Solomon extolled Wisdom "knowing that she would be a
counselor of good things, and a comfort in cares and grief." By
contrast, how different is the intellectual attainment that the
institutions of so-called higher education offer today. At best they do
a creditable job of accumulating vast reserves of human knowledge,
improving intellects, and sharpening perception. At minimum, they
merely provide access to positions and professions but little wise
counsel for resolving life's abiding problems.
Solomon saw that Wisdom is "conversant with God" (vs. 8:3), "privy to
the mysteries of the knowledge of God" (vs. 8:4), and unavailable except
"God give her" (vs. 8:21). His insight reveals that the "going about"
of Wisdom "seeking such as are worthy of her" (vs. 6:16), is very much a
heralding to embrace Orthodox Christianity - that one "be a member and
partaker of the death and resurrection of Christ our God." For, in
receiving Christ as Holy Wisdom, one does learn "temperance and
prudence, justice and fortitude: which are such things, as men can have
nothing more profitable in their life" (vs. 8:7). Listen well to the
Metropolitan: "Where the human word was powerless, there came the
divine-human Word...Christ...the Word of God."
Do you see the contrast between what secular, higher education offers
today and what even the parish church, our monasteries, and the Orthodox
Way offer? We are not wrong to desire that our loved ones gain a
quality higher education; but, if they are not equipped in the heat with
the convictions that true Christian Faith gives, they will only enter
upon a most limited life when they graduate. Brethren, Joseph Stalin in
his youth was a student in an Orthodox Seminary, only to become a savage
oppressor of the Church and of all who sought to be faithful to her. He
never perceived the true "Wisdom that sitteth by" the throne of God (vs.
9:4).
Look at what Christ the true Wisdom of God offers. When we strive to
repent, pray, and practice ascesis, heavenly Wisdom gives us true
knowledge that "never fadeth away" (vs. 6:12). Wisdom Himself enables
those who struggle to attain "the perfection of wisdom" (vs. 6:15) and
to "quickly be without care" (vs. 6:15).
As we watch society degrade around us, there comes among us Christ our
God offering a learning at His feet that is unassailable by the vice so
common around us (vs. 7:30). What Christ teaches will equip us to "love
righteousness" and labor in virtues (vs. 8:7), find counsel in "good
things, and...comfort in cares and grief" (vs. 8:9).
While the world is drunk with self, indulgence, and achievements that do
not last, Christ the Wisdom of God assures each one's soul that He
"shall lead me soberly in my doings, and preserve me in [His] power
(vss. 9:10,11, revealing to me "what is pleasing unto [Him]" (vs. 9:10)
and providing counsel even to "think what the will of the Lord is" (vs.
9:13).
"O God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy....Give me wisdom, that sitteth
by Thy throne; and reject me not from among Thy children" (vs. 9:4).
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
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
AM Psalm 45; PM Psalm 47, 48
Deut. 12:1-12; 2 Cor. 6:3-13(14-7:1); Luke 17:11-19
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Psalm 45. I will make your name to be remembered from one generation to another; therefore nations will praise you for ever and ever.
When I taught adults in a junior college, one of the most popular subjects was oral tradition. Childhood memories were the basis for our study.
The early disciples who had known Jesus left no written accounts. They relied on oral tradition. Paul's letters, unsigned, give scholars pause. Oral tradition was alive when he wrote, but he also depended on his own astounding revelations. Through them he found certainty in the things he said about Christ.
The court poet writing this psalm speaks of royal lineage, music, and clothes. These words are prophetic allusions to him who is to come. "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth," Peter said, "rise up and walk." Such healings were embedded in the memories of Christ's followers and they were passed along to the next generation of Christians. This kind of oral tradition was as real as the day's weather. Nothing could change the power of memories like this.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
Boniface, Missionary to Germany:
Psalm 115:1-8 or 31:1-5
Acts 20:17-28; Luke 24:44-53
Almighty God, who called your faithful servant Boniface to be a witness and martyr in the lands of Germany and Friesland, and by his labor and suffering raised up a people for your own possession: Pour forth your Holy Spirit upon your Church in every land, that by the service and sacrifice of many your holy Name may be glorified and your kingdom enlarged; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Okigwe North (Owerri, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
The soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He finds His delight.
St Teresa of Jesus
Interior Castle, I.1
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
A brother came to see a certain hermit and, as he was leaving, he said, "Forgive me abba for preventing you from keeping your rule." The hermit replied, "My rule is to welcome you with hospitality and to send you away in peace."
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
God's Breath Given to Us
Being the living Christ today means being filled with the same Spirit that filled Jesus. Jesus and his Father are breathing the same breath, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the intimate communion that makes Jesus and his Father one. Jesus says: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:10) and "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30). It is this unity that Jesus wants to give us. That is the gift of his Holy Spirit.
Living a spiritual life, therefore, means living in the same communion with the Father as Jesus did, and thus making God present in the world.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Five - The First Aim of the Order
To make our Lord known and loved everywhere.
The Order is founded on the conviction that Jesus Christ is the perfect revelation of God; that true life has been made available to us through his Incarnation and Ministry, by his Cross and Resurrection, and by the sending of his Holy Spirit. The Order believes that it is the commission of the church to make the gospel known to all, and therefore accepts the duty of bringing others to know Christ, and of praying and working for the coming of the of the Kingdom of God.
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
GOD OF GREAT ABUNDANCE,
forgive me
when I put my trust and love into objects.
Fill me with gratitude
for your extravagant grace and love.
Amen.
- Alive Now
From page 58 of Alive Now, March/April 2007. Copyright © 2007 by The Upper Room.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"The Thought God Is Lost In "
We are God’s prayer. We are, in fact, God’s thought. And God is hopelessly lost in thinking us. All we can do is stay naked and self-forgetful, ready for lovemaking. The primary temptation is to cover ourselves with roles, controls, successes and satisfying explanations. The mind will discover a million ways to cover itself from its fears and its emptiness. But praying is living in a lover’s world, with no need to affirm or deny, judge or justify. Praying is the unexpected uncovering of perfect goodness after we have done so many things wrong. There is no other place to begin listening or living. Prayer is the only foundation we can trust in ourselves. Be quite and self-forgetful, dear friends. Don’t miss out. You must know for yourself that Someone is thinking you (as opposed to another) each creative moment. The only good choice is to love and trust yourself in God.
from Radical Grace, “The Thought God Is Lost In”
++++++++++
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 priesthood of Christians
Listen to what the apostle urges us to do. I appeal to you, he says, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. By this exhortation of his, Paul has raised every one of us to priestly status.
How marvelous is the priesthood of Christians for they are both the victims offered on their own behalf, and the priests who make the offerings! They have no need to go beyond themselves to seek what they are to immolate to God: with themselves and in themselves they bring the sacrifice they are to offer God for themselves. The victims remain and the priests remain, always one and the same. Immolated, the victims still live: the priests who immolate cannot kill. Truly it is an amazing sacrifice in which a body is offered without being slain and blood is offered without being shed.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
GOD'S SAY-SO
"He hath said . . . so that we may boldly say . . ." Hebrews 13:5-6
My say-so is to be built on God's say-so. God says - "I will never leave thee," then I can with good courage say - "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear - " I will not be haunted by apprehension. This does not mean that I will not be tempted to fear, but I will remember God's say-so. I will be full of courage, like a child "bucking himself up" to reach the standard his father wants. Faith in many a one falters when the apprehensions come, they forget the meaning of God's say-so, forget to take a deep breath spiritually. The only way to get the dread taken out of us is to listen to God's say-so.
What are you dreading? You are not a coward about it, you are going to face it, but there is a feeling of dread. When there is nothing and no one to help you, say - "But the Lord is my Helper, this second, in my present outlook." Are you learning to say things after listening to God, or are you saying things and trying to make God's word fit in? Get hold of the Father's say-so, and then say with good courage - "I will not fear." It does not matter what evil or wrong may be in the way, He has said - "I will never leave thee."
Frailty is another thing that gets in between God's say-so and ours. When we realize how feeble we are in facing difficulties, the difficulties become like giants, we become like grasshoppers, and God becomes a nonentity. Remember God's say-so - "I will in no wise fail you." Have we learned to sing after hearing God's key-note? Are we always possessed with the courage to say - "The Lord is my helper," or are we succumbing?
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 7: On Humility
The seventh degree of humility
is that he consider himself lower and of less account
than anyone else,
and this not only in verbal protestation
but also with the most heartfelt inner conviction,
humbling himself and saying with the Prophet,
"But I am a worm and no man,
the scorn of men and the outcast of the people" (Ps. 21:7).
"After being exalted, I have been humbled
and covered with confusion" (Pa. 87:16).
And again,
"It is good for me that You have humbled me,
that I may learn Your commandments" (Ps. 118:71).
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
At one stage of life, the temptation is to think that no human being alive could ever really believe themselves to be "inferior to all and of less value." At a later stage in life you begin to understand that secretly everybody thinks exactly that and that's why we deny it with such angst to ourselves and such unfairness to others. We set out systematically to hide the truth of it by clutching at money and degrees and positions and power and exhaust ourselves in the attempt to look better than we fear we really are.
The only difference between that stage of life and this degree of humility is that in the seventh degree of humility Benedict wants us to realize that accepting our essential smallness and embracing it frees us from the need to lie, even to ourselves, about our frailties. More than that, it liberates us to respect, revere and deal gently with others who have been unfortunate enough to have their own smallnesses come obscenely to light.
Aware of our own meager virtues, conscious of our own massive failures despite all our great efforts, all our fine desires, we have in this degree of humility, this acceptance of ourselves, the chance to understand the failures of others. We have here the opportunity to become kind.
++++++++++
Dynamis http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxdynamis/
Dynamis is a daily Bible meditation based upon the lectionary of the Holy Orthodox Church.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007 Apostles Fast Hieromartyr Dorotheos,
Bishop of Tyre
2nd Vespers Hierarch: Wisdom 6:12-16; 7:30; 8:2-4, 7-9, 21; 9:1-4, 10-11, 13
Epistle: Romans 4:4-12
Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21
Attaining Wisdom: Wisdom 6:12-16; 7:30; 8:2-4, 7-9, 21; 9:1-4, 10-11, 13
LXX, especially vs. 8:21: "When I perceived that I could not otherwise
obtain her, except God gave her me; and that was a point of wisdom also
to know whose gift she was; I prayed unto the Lord, and besought Him,
and with my whole heart." It is fair to say with Metropolitan
Hierotheos Vlachos that "where Orthodoxy is lived in the right way and
in the Holy Spirit, it is a communion of God and men, of heavenly and
earthly, of the living and the dead. In this communion all the problems
which present themselves in our life are truly resolved." Most
certainly Solomon's Book of Wisdom foreshadowed the "communion of God
and men." Solomon extolled Wisdom "knowing that she would be a
counselor of good things, and a comfort in cares and grief." By
contrast, how different is the intellectual attainment that the
institutions of so-called higher education offer today. At best they do
a creditable job of accumulating vast reserves of human knowledge,
improving intellects, and sharpening perception. At minimum, they
merely provide access to positions and professions but little wise
counsel for resolving life's abiding problems.
Solomon saw that Wisdom is "conversant with God" (vs. 8:3), "privy to
the mysteries of the knowledge of God" (vs. 8:4), and unavailable except
"God give her" (vs. 8:21). His insight reveals that the "going about"
of Wisdom "seeking such as are worthy of her" (vs. 6:16), is very much a
heralding to embrace Orthodox Christianity - that one "be a member and
partaker of the death and resurrection of Christ our God." For, in
receiving Christ as Holy Wisdom, one does learn "temperance and
prudence, justice and fortitude: which are such things, as men can have
nothing more profitable in their life" (vs. 8:7). Listen well to the
Metropolitan: "Where the human word was powerless, there came the
divine-human Word...Christ...the Word of God."
Do you see the contrast between what secular, higher education offers
today and what even the parish church, our monasteries, and the Orthodox
Way offer? We are not wrong to desire that our loved ones gain a
quality higher education; but, if they are not equipped in the heat with
the convictions that true Christian Faith gives, they will only enter
upon a most limited life when they graduate. Brethren, Joseph Stalin in
his youth was a student in an Orthodox Seminary, only to become a savage
oppressor of the Church and of all who sought to be faithful to her. He
never perceived the true "Wisdom that sitteth by" the throne of God (vs.
9:4).
Look at what Christ the true Wisdom of God offers. When we strive to
repent, pray, and practice ascesis, heavenly Wisdom gives us true
knowledge that "never fadeth away" (vs. 6:12). Wisdom Himself enables
those who struggle to attain "the perfection of wisdom" (vs. 6:15) and
to "quickly be without care" (vs. 6:15).
As we watch society degrade around us, there comes among us Christ our
God offering a learning at His feet that is unassailable by the vice so
common around us (vs. 7:30). What Christ teaches will equip us to "love
righteousness" and labor in virtues (vs. 8:7), find counsel in "good
things, and...comfort in cares and grief" (vs. 8:9).
While the world is drunk with self, indulgence, and achievements that do
not last, Christ the Wisdom of God assures each one's soul that He
"shall lead me soberly in my doings, and preserve me in [His] power
(vss. 9:10,11, revealing to me "what is pleasing unto [Him]" (vs. 9:10)
and providing counsel even to "think what the will of the Lord is" (vs.
9:13).
"O God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy....Give me wisdom, that sitteth
by Thy throne; and reject me not from among Thy children" (vs. 9:4).
Labels: meditation
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