knitternun

Friday, November 23, 2007

23/11/07 Fri, 25th week after Pentecost, Clement of Rome

[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]




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

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, you chose your servant Clement of Rome to recall the Church in Corinth to obedience and stability; Grant that your Church may be grounded and settled in your truth by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; reveal to it what is not yet known; fill up what is lacking; confirm what has already been revealed; and keep it blameless in your service; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/

AM Psalm 102; PM Psalm 107:1-32
1 Macc. 4:36-59; Rev. 22:6-13; Matt. 18:10-20
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From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm

Psalm 102. LORD, hear my prayer, and let my cry come before you; hide not your face from me in the day of my trouble. Incline your ear to me; when I call, make haste to answer me.

The impassioned plea of the psalmist evokes a common despair. Nearly all of us have experienced that feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Many of our prayers have been expressed with tears and sobbing and cries of outrage. Some things feel too horrible to bear. In our despair we may feel that God has abandoned us. The psalms reassure us we are not alone--people have always felt what we are feeling.


God does not hide from us, and he always hears our prayers. God is compassionate and weeps with us in our sorrow. His love and power are sufficient to help us bear all things. Ours is a God of resurrection who will bring help and hope and new life after the travail. May we keep our face turned toward God during our distress with the sure knowledge that God hears us and will respond.


Would you know your Lord's meaning in this? Know it well: Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love....Thus was I taught that Love is our Lord's meaning.
--Julian of Norwich (d. ca . 1416)
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Today we remember:
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary

Clement of Rome
Psalm 78:3-7 or 85:8-13
2 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 6:37-4
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Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Washington (United States)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
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Speaking to the Soul: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/

Breach of unity

Daily Reading for November 23 • Clement, Bishop of Rome, c. 100

Because of our recent series of unexpected misfortunes and set-backs, my dear friends, we feel there has been some delay in turning our attention to the causes of dispute in your community. We refer particularly to the odious and unholy breach of unity among you, which is quite incompatible with God’s chosen people, and which a few hot-headed and unruly individuals have inflamed to such a pitch that your venerable and illustrious name, so richly deserving of everyone’s affection, has been brought into serious disrepute.

There was a time when nobody could spend even a short while among you without noticing the excellence and constancy of your faith. Who ever failed to be impressed by your sober and selfless Christian piety, to tell of your generous spirit of hospitality, or to pay tribute to the wide range and soundness of your knowledge? It was your habit at all times to act without fear or favour, living by the laws of God and deferring with correctness to those who were set over you.

Humility, too, and a complete absence of self-assertion were common to you all; you preferred to offer submission rather than extort it, and giving was dearer to your hearts than receiving. Asking no more than what Christ had provided for your journey through life, you paid careful heed to His words, treasured them in your hearts, and kept His sufferings constantly before your eyes. The reward was a deep and shining peace, a quenchless ardour for well-doing, and a rich outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon you all.

From the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, in Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, translated by Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin Books, 1968).
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Spiritual Practice of the Day http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/

When Cambodians greet persons of special importance, they offer a long and warm embrace. Then they gently lift the honored one into the air. This gesture places the honored one's head above the head of the greeter. It says, "I have deep reverence for your being."
— Maha Ghosananda in Step by Step

To Practice This Thought: Find a gesture which expresses your reverence for others by putting them higher — or first.
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Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php

Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
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Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html

from http://www.balamandmonastery.org.lb/fathers/indexsayings2.htm

When anyone is disturbed or saddened under the pretext of a good
and soul-profiting matter, and is angered against his neighbour,
it is evident that this is not according to God: for everything
that is of God is peaceful and useful and leads a man to humility
and to judging himself.

St. Barsanuphius the Great
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Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/

Waiting for Christ to Come

If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the disciline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts gradually lose their spiritual sensitivity.

Without waiting for the second coming of Christ, we will stagnate quickly and become tempted to indulge in whatever gives us a moment of pleasure. When Paul asks us to wake from sleep, he says: "Let us live decently, as in the light of day; with no orgies or drunkenness, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled" (Romans 13:13-14). When we have the Lord to look forward to, we can already experience him in the waiting.

When we have the Lord to look forward to we can already experience him in the waiting.
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From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis: http://www.tssf.org/textonly/principles.shtml

Waiting for Christ to Come

If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the disciline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts gradually lose their spiritual sensitivity.

Without waiting for the second coming of Christ, we will stagnate quickly and become tempted to indulge in whatever gives us a moment of pleasure. When Paul asks us to wake from sleep, he says: "Let us live decently, as in the light of day; with no orgies or drunkenness, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled" (Romans 13:13-14). When we have the Lord to look forward to, we can already experience him in the waiting.

When we have the Lord to look forward to we can already experience him in the waiting.
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Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/

The Hands of God
November 23rd, 2007
Friday’s Reflection

ALL OF US are like [the prodigal] son, needing more desperately than anything else the strong and gentle embrace of the hands of God. We must be those hands for each other — not someday, but today. … Let us be gentle with each other. Let us touch each other. Let us touch even those who seem in some superficial way to be different. For we are all of us sons and daughters of God. I once heard Peter Storey, preaching in Johannesburg during the reign of apartheid, suggest that we should be prepared when we sing that old child’s hymn: “Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.” Storey imagined that Jesus’ reply would be: “Okay, here I come, but I’m bringing all these other people with me.”

- James C. Howell
Yours Are the Hands of Christ

From p. 59 of Yours Are the Hands of Christ: The Practice of Faith by James C. Howell. Copyright © 1998 by the author. Published by Upper Room Books. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission. http://www.upperroom.org/bookstore/
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Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html


Who Was Jesus?

In Mark, we read that Jesus' own family does not understand him: "He came home. Again [the] crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this, they set out to seize him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind.'" (Mark 3:20–21, NAB)

Those words have never really been read in our churches. We probably are embarrassed by them. He must not have appeared as that very neat, proper, "normal" person we associate with religious people. Maybe that's telling us that our very concept of religiosity is on the wrong track. We've been influenced much more by Anglo- Saxon puritanism or stoicism than by what Jesus tries to communicate.

Religion is not doing nice, right ordinary things that humans expect. God's goodness strikes much deeper than that and demands much more. Who of us, for example, would be proud to accept John the Baptist into our house—that very wild-looking man, no doubt difficult to understand, whose harsh words would make us all squirm? Jesus, too, spoke to his contemporaries and he was not understood. He was enough outside the mainstream of expectation to be called "crazy."

Jesus was not that person we've often seen in pictures with the perfect masculine Caucasian face and the neatly combed hair. He was a man who at all costs sought to be true to God and to speak that truth to the world. The world did not want to hear it. He would be crucified again today, and maybe even by the Church.

from The Great Themes of Scripture
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From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.htm

Desiring the first place

Whoever you may be who still desire the first place here—go and sit in the last place. Do not be lifted up by pride, inflated by knowledge, elated by nobility, but the greater you are the more you must humble yourself in every way, and you will find grace with God. In his own time he will say to you: Friend, go up higher, and then you will be honored by all who sit at table with you. Moses sat in the last place whenever he had the choice. When the Lord, wishing to send him to the Israelites, invited him to take a higher place, his answer was: I beg you, Lord, send someone else. I am not a good speaker. It was the same as saying: "I am not worthy of so great an office." Saul, too, was of small account in his own eyes when the Lord made him king. And Jeremiah, similarly, was afraid of rising to the first place: Ah, Lord God, he said, look, I cannot speak—I am only a child.

In the Church, then, the first seat, or the highest place, is to be sought not by ambition but by humility; not by money but by holiness.

Bruno of Segni
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Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/

DISTRACTION OF ANTIPATHY


"Have mercy upon us, 0 Lord, have mercy upon us: for we are exceedingly piled with contempt." Psalm 123:3

The thing of which we have to beware is not so much damage to our belief in God as damage to our Christian temper. "Therefore take heed to thy spirit, that ye deal not treacherously." The temper of mind is tremendous in its effects, it is the enemy that penetrates right into the soul and distracts the mind from God. There are certain tempers of mind in which we never dare indulge; if we do, we find they have distracted us from faith in God, and until we get back to the quiet mood before God, our faith in Him is nil, and our confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is the thing that rules.

Beware of "the cares of this world," because they are the things that produce a wrong temper of soul. It is extraordinary what an enormous power there is in simple things to distract our attention from God. Refuse to be swamped with the cares of this life.

Another thing that distracts us is the lust of vindication. St. Augustine prayed - "O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself." That temper of mind destroys the soul's faith in God. "I must explain myself; I must get people to understand." Our Lord never explained anything; He left mistakes to correct themselves.

When we discern that people are not going on spiritually and allow the discernment to turn to criticism, we block our way to God. God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.
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Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/

March 24, July 24, November 23
Chapter 44: How the Excommunicated Are to Make Satisfaction

One who for serious faults is excommunicated
from oratory and table
shall make satisfaction as follows.
At the hour when the celebration of the Work of God is concluded
in the oratory,
let her lie prostrate before the door of the oratory,
saying nothing, but only lying prone with her face to the ground
at the feet of all as they come out of the oratory.
And let her continue to do this
until the Abbess judges that satisfaction has been made.
Then, when she has come at the Abbess's bidding,
let her cast herself first at the Abbess's feet
and then at the feet of all,
that they may pray for her.

And next, if the Abbess so orders,
let her be received into the choir,
to the place which the Abbess appoints,
but with the provision that she shall not presume
to intone Psalm or lesson or anything else in the oratory
without a further order from the Abbess.

Moreover, at every Hour,
when the Work of God is ended,
let her cast herself on the ground in the place where she stands.
And let her continue to satisfy in this way
until the Abbess again orders her finally to cease
from this satisfaction.

But those who for slight faults are excommunicated
only from table
shall make satisfaction in the oratory,
and continue in it till an order from the Abbess,
until she blesses them and says, "It is enough."

Insight for the Ages: A Commentary by Sr Joan Chittister
http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html


"A community is too heavy for any one to carry alone," the rabbis say. Benedict argues that the community enterprise is such an important one that those who violate their responsibilities to it must serve as warning to others of the consequences of failing to carry the human community. The point, of course, is not that the group has the power to exclude us. The point is that we must come to realize that we too often exclude ourselves from the relationships we promised to honor and to build by becoming the center of our own lives and ignoring our responsibilities to theirs.

The correction seems harsh and humiliating by modern standards but the Rule is working with the willing if not with the ready who seek to grow rather than to accommodate. The ancients tell the story of the distressed person who came to the Holy One for help. "Do you really want a cure?" the Holy One asked. "If I did not, would I bother to come to you?" the disciple answered. "Oh, yes," the Master said. "Most people do." And the disciple said, incredulously, "But what for then?" And the Holy One answered, "Well, not for a cure. That's painful. They come for relief."
This chapter forces us to ask, in an age without penances and in a culture totally given to individualism, what relationships we may be betraying by selfishness and what it would take to cure ourselves of the self-centeredness that requires the rest of the world to exist for our own convenience.
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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.

Friday, November 23, 2007 Nativity Fast Alexander
Nevsky, Prince of Novgorod
Kellia: 2 Kings LXX (2 Samuel MT) 10:1-14 Epistle: 1 Timothy 4:4-8,
16 Gospel: St. Luke 19:12-28

As God Wills: 2 Kings 10:1-14 LXX, especially vs.12: "Be thou
courageous, and let us be strong for our people, and for the sake of the
cities of God, and the Lord shall do that which is good in His eyes."
Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos declares, "It is the teaching of
the Orthodox Church that God directs the world personally without
created intermediaries, by His uncreated energies." Therefore, we may
say confidently that Joab evinced a real measure of spiritual maturity
when he stood at a moment of high uncertainty and confessed that "the
Lord shall do that which is good in His eyes" (vs. 12). Joab's word to
his fellow officers represents a refutation of belief in fate and random
probability as the powers that determine outcomes in life. Rather, it
was a faithful declaration of confidence that God in His sovereignty
rules the affairs of men and the outcome of our struggles. Beloved,
learn to accept that "our every endeavor is powerless without the grace
and help of God," as St. Tikhon of Zadonsk states.

Consider how King David's attempt to "shew mercy to Hanun the son of
Nahash" (vs. 2) was perverted by the counsel of "the princes of the
children of Ammon...to Hanun their lord" (vs. 3). David was not a man
of suspicion and anger like Saul, his predecessor on the throne of
Israel. When David sent condolences to Hanun at the repose of his
father (vs. 3), it was a friendly gesture rooted in gratitude for
Nahash's mercy to him in his time of need. But see! David's actions
were totally misinterpreted by men of suspicion who gained the ear of
the inexperienced, new King of Ammon. They only could see spying and
preparations for conquest (vs. 3).

How blessed Hanun would have been had he known what was natural to David
as a servant of the true God - as St. Tikhon states so plainly, "The
grace of God is the life of our souls. Our soul cannot be alive without
the grace of God." Thus, Hanun made the deadly, brash, and graceless
error of mocking and shaming David's servants (vs. 4). And worse, when
he saw that he had created an offense, he compounded his errors by
mobilizing for war (vs. 6). Note that it was not David and Israel who
prepared for war, but the children of Ammon (vs. 6). How can we explain
all this? Listen again to St. Tikhon: "a man must be...victorious over
his own self; but how can this be without the power of God present which
is able to do all things? So great is the corruption of our nature."
Take care, Beloved, to seek God and live as He wills.

All this is not to say that, as a servant of the living God, you should
mindlessly trust the sovereign God to solve your problems without any
effort on your part, so that you need give no consideration to your
planning and your actions in the midst of this life's battles. That the
events of this life often appear contrary to God's will must not be an
issue for you. King David and his military officers did what was
necessary in the face of armed preparations for war against them. They
mobilized and planned. At least, do the same as you follow St. Tikhon's
godly counsel: "At every hour and minute then...O Christian, when you
wish to live piously and be a true Christian and so be saved, pray to
God incessantly and beg help of Him with fervor."

Being "in the unity of the faith and the communion of the Holy Spirit"
(see vs. 12), the armed forces of Israel, "Joab and his people with him
advanced to battle against Syria" (vs. 13). See how they commended
themselves, each other and their life unto God! You should not gather
from this chapter of the history of God and His People that your enemies
and problems will flee before you as when "the children of Ammon saw
that the Syrians were fled, and they fled from before Abishai" (vs.
14). Rather, rejoice that all will resolve in the end as God wills.

O Lord, grant me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with
peace of soul and firm conviction that Thy will governs all.

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