Daily Reading for July 1 • The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

To discuss the religion of the founding fathers means to discuss religion in the United States of their time. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were born and baptized in what Virginians of the time called “the Church,” “the Church of England,” “the Established Church,” or “the Church of Virginia.” The independence of the thirteen colonies from the mother country prompted the American members of the Church of England to discard the word “England.” In its place they adopted the term “Episcopal” (essentially meaning “we have bishops”) and named their denomination “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.” The name “Episcopal” traced back to the tumultuous Commonwealth period in English history, when clergy and laity who desired continued rule by bishops employed that term for themselves.

This church provided the religious background out of which Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—as well as such founding fathers as Patrick Henry, George Mason, and George Wythe—emerged. The earliest religious memories of these men would have revolved around the wood or brick church their families attended on Sundays. Most of their fathers would have served as vestrymen of their parishes. In due time, the founding fathers would have assumed the same position. The parish priest—or parson—would have been a familiar figure to them, and they would have received much of their early education at academies run by Anglican clergy. The words and cadences of the Book of Common Prayer ran in their blood.

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 2

Continuing to belong to the Episcopal Church even when at variance with some of its central doctrines did not seem to discomfort the Deistically inclined founders such as Jefferson, for they liked its liturgy and the historic cadences of its language. The Anglican faith of Virginia differed from the New England Puritanism out of which Adams and Franklin emerged. Both Adams and Franklin changed their religious views and embraced a form of Deism. So, too, did Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. But all of these men, except Franklin, continued to worship at least occasionally in the church of their ancestors—and their wives and daughters were usually devout supporters of it. The Virginia founding fathers married under the church’s auspices, consigned their children to its care, and were buried by its clergy. The impress of their religious background remained strong, even though their questioning of certain of their church’s fundamental doctrines led them to Deism.

During the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, Deism had adherents throughout continental Europe, the British Isles, and the American colonies. Because it was guided by individual reason, the movement was neither organized nor uniform. Thus some Deists renounced Christian belief more thoroughly than others. “The Deists,” an American clergyman wrote, “were never organized into a sect, had no creed or form of worship, recognized no leader, and were constantly shifting their ground. . . so that it is impossible to include them strictly under any definition.” The cleric went on to attempt “as near a definition as possible”: “Deism is what is left of Christianity after casting off everything that is peculiar to it. The Deist is one who denies the Divinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement of Christ, and the work of the Holy Ghost; who denies the God of Israel, and believes in the God of nature.”

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 3

Regardless of where they fell on the Deist spectrum, many Deists continued to respect the moral teachings of Jesus without believing in his divine status. But the tendency of Deism was to emphasize ethical endeavors—hence the concern of most Deists for social justice and their profound opposition to all forms of tyranny. In addition, they replaced the Judeo-Christian explanation of existence with a religion far more oriented to reason and nature than to the Hebrew Bible, Christian Testament, and Christian creeds. In the understanding of the typical Deist, a rational “Supreme Architect”—one of a variety of terms Deists used for the deity—created the earth and human life. This omnipotent and unchangeable creator then withdrew to let events take their course on earth without further interference.

Just as a ticking watch presupposes a watchmaker, so Deists thought that the rational, mechanistic harmony of nature revealed a deity. The Deistic view of nature was so high that men such as Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine could write of it as God’s revelation. “There is a word of God,” Paine declared, “there is a revelation. The word of God is the creation we behold.”

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 4 • Independence Day

In place of the Hebrew God, Deists postulated a distant deity to whom they referred with terms such as “the First Cause,” “the Creator of the Universe,” “the Divine Artist,” “the Divine Author of All Good,” “the Grand Architect,” “the God of Nature,” “Nature’s God,” “Divine Providence,” and (in a phrase used by Benjamin Franklin) “the Author and Owner of our System.” The Declaration of Independence displays precisely this kind of wording and sense of a distant deity. In its 1,323 words, the Declaration speaks of “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” “Supreme Judge,” and “divine Providence.”

Thus Deism inevitably undermined the personal religion of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the worldview of the typical Deist, humans had no need to read the Bible, to pray, to be baptized or circumcised, to receive Holy Communion, to attend church or synagogue, or to heed the words or ministrations of misguided priests, ministers, or rabbis. Many Deists criticized not only the Judeo-Christian tradition but also all organized religion for fostering divisive sectarianism, for encouraging persecution, and for stifling freedom of thought and speech throughout history. Their fundamental belief in reason and equality drove them to embrace liberal political ideals. In the eighteenth century, many Deists advocated universal education, freedom of the press, and separation of church and state. These principles are commonplace in the twenty-first century, but they were radical in the eighteenth.

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 5

Five weeks before his death, when he received an inquiry about his religious beliefs from a Congregationalist minister who was president of Yale College, Benjamin Franklin replied: “Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe: That he governs the World by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another life, respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion.”

Morality remained primary for Franklin even as he approached death. Jesus had established the best system of morals and religion in the history of the world, Franklin continued, though Christianity itself had undergone some corrupting changes since the time of Jesus. He concluded: “I have . . . some Doubts as to his Divinity, tho’ it is a Question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, & think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

Late in the evening of April 17, 1790, Franklin died with a picture of the Day of Judgment by his bedside. Almost twenty thousand citizens observed his solemn funeral procession in Philadelphia. At the front of the cortege marched “the clergymen of the city, all of them, of every faith.” He was buried in the cemetery of Christ Church.

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 6

“The Christian religion, as I understand it,” John Adams declared to Benjamin Rush in 1810, “is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the eternal, self-existent independent, benevolent, all-powerful and all-merciful Creator, Preserver and Father of the Universe. . . . Neither savage nor civilized man without a revelation could ever have discovered or invented it.”

Like other Deists, however, Adams substituted a simpler, less mysterious form of Christianity for the Christianity he had inherited. Reading and reflection caused him to discard such beliefs as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, total depravity, and predestination. God, he declared, “has given us Reason, to find out the Truth, and the real Design and true End of our Existence.” Thus he asserted that humans should study nature and use reason to learn about God and his creation.

Above all, Adams opposed religious oppression and narrow-mindedness. All of this displays the blend of Unitarian Christianity and rational thought that was the religion of John Adams. Like many of his contemporaries, he brought the religion in which he was raised into the court of his reason and common sense and judged it by what he found.

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 7

Thomas Jefferson came to believe that the combined effect of power-hungry monarchs and corrupt “priests” had despoiled the original, pristine teachings of Jesus. But beneath these corruptions—which he labeled with such words as “nonsense,” “dross,” “rags,” “distortions,” and “abracadabra”—Jefferson came to believe there lay a fulcrum of eternal truth. In 1803, he wrote to Benjamin Rush: “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which I believe Jesus wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.”

Jefferson disagreed with the Galilean on some matters: “It is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin, I require a counter-poise of good works to redeem it.” Having disagreed with Jesus, Jefferson then indicated what he admired about Jesus: “It is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcation, the beauty of his apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire. . . . Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence.”

In some famous correspondence with a Unitarian minister, Jefferson predicted that Unitarianism would soon sweep the nation: “I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust there is not a young man now living who will not die an Unitarian.”

From The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 9

The Rule of St Benedict, written in sixth-century Italy, became the most influential monastic guide in the Western Church. In the period from the sixth to the tenth centuries it gradually replaced other traditions. While the Rule of St Benedict is characterized by relative moderation, urbanity, and balance, it nevertheless presupposes a life of withdrawal from the outside world. The outward-looking ethos of the Augustinian tradition is largely absent although hospitality to strangers (who are to be received as Christ) is a major injunction. Listening and obedience (both to God and to the spiritual master, the abbot) are intertwined. In the many respects the Rule contrasts with the Rule of St Augustine in its hierarchical stance (although fraternal charity is mentioned later in the Rule). The God of the Rule is an awesome figure and the abbot, who stands “in the place of Christ,” is a ruler rather than “first among equals.” The Rule is also detailed and programmatic rather than a collection of spiritual wisdom.

Its popularity is partly explained by a well-organized structure and the priority given to good order. However, its spiritual success also relates to a healthy balance of work, prayer, and rest and the creative tension between the values of the individual spiritual journey and of common life under the authority of an abbot. The central task of the monk is common prayer or the opus Dei supplemented by personal meditation, spiritual reading (lectio), and manual work. Apart from its emphasis on obedience and on humility as the primary image of spiritual progress, the Rule also teaches the complementary spiritual values of stability (faithfulness expressed by staying in the monastery until death) and the virtually untranslatable concept of conversation morum (literally “conversion of manners”). This stands for an overall commitment to a monastic lifestyle including deep conversion and spiritual development throughout life.

From A Brief History of Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

After some time had passed, the religious authorities plotted to
kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the
gates day and night so that they might kill him; but his disciples
took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall,
lowering him in a basket. Acts 8:23-25

Basket of reeds
hanging ready
woven strong
to cradle a man
escaping to life
sister to a basket
in Egypt
floating an infant
to safety

From Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible

Daily Reading for July 10

The Rule of St. Benedict has a special way of viewing the patterns and dynamics of Christian life. The whole orientation of the Rule is to the principle that God is everywhere, all the time, and thus every element of our ordinary day is potentially holy. Very few of us believe that and/or act on it. Benedict urges us both so to believe and so to act. It is an enormous challenge, involving life-long response, and yet it is very simple and can be begun at this moment. Because the Rule is so “homely”, so oriented to the opportunities of daily life as grist for the mill of Christian consecration, it has a great deal to say which is directly helpful to a Christian lay person, struggling to live the Christian life even in our contemporary, secular world.

From Preferring Christ: A Devotional Commentary and Workbook on the Rule of St. Benedict by Norvene Vest (Source Books, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 11 • Benedict of Nursia

This, then, is the good zeal,
which monks must foster with fervent love:
They should each try to be the first to show respect to the other,
supporting with the greatest patience
one another’s weaknesses of body or behaviour,
and earnestly competing in obedience to one another.
No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself,
but instead, what he judges better for someone else.
To their fellow monks they show the pure love of brothers;
to God, loving fear;
to their abbot, unfeigned and humble love.
Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ,
and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.

From The Rule of St. Benedict, quoted in Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Liturgical Press, 1984).

Daily Reading for July 12

Balance, proportion, harmony are so central, they so underpin everything else in the Rule, that without them the whole Benedictine approach to the individual and to the community loses its keystone. This is something which speaks to us very immediately in the later twentieth century. The search for personal fulfillment has become something of a fetish in our society today, and yet we complicate our search by at the same time admiring expertise, specialization, professionalization. Total success in one particular area commands great respect. We ask our children early in life to make choices between subjects they intend to master. We acknowledge the superiority of a lifetime devoted to one highly esoteric form of research. It could be valuable to ask ourselves what we are losing, and to set ourselves the task of discovering if we could not, without being impossibly romantic or escapist about it, attempt to become more fully, more totally human, by recognizing that all the elements in our make-up are God-given and are equally worthy of respect. It is the interrelationship of body, mind, and spirit that now eludes us. Yet St Benedict insisted that since body, mind and spirit together make up the whole person the daily pattern of life in the monastery should involve time for prayer, time for study and time for manual work. All three should command respect and all three should equally become a way to God.

From Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Liturgical Press, 1984).

Daily Reading for July 13

The Rule can be appreciated for various aspects, but one that particularly appeals to me is its wise latitude in the way it encourages us monks to walk in the footsteps of the Gospel. The Rule tacitly acknowledges a certain pluralism, making general points instead of specific ones about many observances, allowing for creativity and improvement, where this is possible. The Rule is not limited to its original place and time; like the Gospels, from which it draws its inspiration, it has wisdom as alive and full of meaningful implications today as it was at the time the Rule was composed.

The Rule prescribes an equal distribution of time among prayer, sacred reading and intellectual work, manual work, and rest, thus bringing into balance all the activities of the monastic day. Saint Benedict was a genius in establishing through the Rule a way of life where the seasons of the earth, with their sequences of darkness and light, and the seasons of the Christian liturgy come into harmonious consonance, thus giving a dynamic balance and a healing rhythm to the monk’s daily life.

From A Monastic Year by Brother Victor-Antoine, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).

Jane R has a fine post on Benedict and Scholastica at Act of Hope today.

Daily Reading for July 14

There can be no more role-playing for those who attempt to follow the rule of St Benedict, no more hiding behind a mask. We stand daily before God with empty hands, just like the publican. “Suspice me, accept me O Lord as you have promised and I shall live; do not disappoint me in my hope.” These are the words the novice says on entering the community. They are words that I come back to, time and again, as a prayer for myself. They mean more now that I have learnt that the Latin words comes from the verb sub-capere, to take underneath and so with the idea of supporting, raising, and that in Roman usage it was the word for a father taking up a new-born infant from the ground and thus recognizing it as his own. The implication here then becomes one of acceptance and thus of survival.

So when I say suspice me it conveys the full depth and warmth of that word. Accept me, receive me, support me, raise me up—wonderful singing words that say everything that I want to say as a prayer for myself. They are words that I understand at one level today, as I say them now, and as I present myself today before God. But they are also like some Eastern koan in which the full mystery of what I am saying will only gradually unfold and grow as my own fortune opens up before me.

For the self that I present full face to God is not anything static. If I ask God to accept me as I am now, in the present, I am also able to receive whatever he has in store for me in the future. If I really hand myself over, making an act of personal surrender, asking God to accept me just as I am now, open, vulnerable, powerless, then I shall also be able to receive whatever he has in store for me in the future.

From Living With Contradiction: Reflections on the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Harper and Row, 1989).

Daily Reading for July 15 • The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

It is a quotidian mystery that dailiness can lead to despair and yet also be at the core of our salvation. We express this every time we utter the Lord’s Prayer. As Simone Weil so eloquently stated it in her essay, “Concerning the Our Father,” the “bread of this world” is all that nourishes and energizes us, not only food but the love of friends and family, “money, ambition, consideration...power...everything that puts into us the capacity for action.” She reminds us that we need to keep praying for this food, acknowledging our needs as daily, because in the act of asking, the prayer awakens in us the trust that God will provide. But, like the manna that God provided to Israel in the desert, this “bread” cannot be stored. Each day brings with it not only the necessity of eating but the renewal of our love of and in God. This may sound like a simple thing, but it is not easy to maintain faith, hope or love in the everyday. I wonder if this is because human pride, and particularly a preoccupation with intellectual, artistic or spiritual matters, can provide a convenient way to ignore our ordinary, daily, bodily needs.

From The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work” by Kathleen Norris (Paulist Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for July 16

As a human being, Jesus Christ was as subject to the daily as any of us. And I see both the miracle of the manna and incarnation of Jesus Christ as scandals. They suggest that God is intimately concerned with our very bodies and their needs, and I doubt that this is really what we want to hear. Our bodies fail us, they grow old, flabby and feeble, and eventually they lead us to the cross. How tempting it is to disdain what God has created, and to retreat into a comfortable Gnosticism. The Christian perspective views the human body as our God-given means to salvation, for beyond the cross God has effected resurrection.

We want life to have meaning, we want fulfillment, healing and even ecstasy, but the human paradox is that we find these things by starting where we are, not where we wish we were. We must look for blessings to come from unlikely, everyday places—out of Galilee, as it were—and not in spectacular events, such as the coming of a comet. The best poetic images, while they resonate with possibilities for transformation, are resolutely concrete, specific, incarnational. Concepts such as wonder, or even holiness, are not talked about so much as presented for the reader’s contemplation.

From The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work” by Kathleen Norris (Paulist Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for July 17 • William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1836

This [1985] Convention has special significance, for this is the month in which we celebrate the bicentenary of the first General Convention. That small gathering in Philadelphia in September 1785 met when the very survival of Anglicanism was in doubt. Amid the turmoil of revolution, the old Church of England in the American colonies had been shattered, and many of its clergy had fled. The Philadelphia Convention was composed of clergy and laity who had supported the revolutionary cause. They set to work to fashion an independent church in an independent nation. Led by the brilliant young William White of Pennsylvania, they sought to re-form the Church with the democratic ideas of their new republic. So, in the ‘Philadelphia plan’ the Episcopal Church was to be independent of any outside authority and responsible for its own doctrine, canons and liturgy. The dioceses were to be federated under the triennial general convention. Bishops were to be elected officers working under a constitution, and the laity were to have equal voice with the clergy.

It was a scheme which accorded well with the aspirations of the independent United States, and its basic wisdom has been shown by the way it has become a model for other independent Anglican churches. But it was right for Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, then the only American bishop, to sound a word of warning. He refused to attend the Convention until the authority of bishops as guardians of the faith of the whole Catholic Church had been safeguarded. He feared that Enlightenment philosophy might separate the Convention from the body of Catholic Christianity.

When the Convention began to revise the wording of the creeds his worst fears were fulfilled, and there was danger of two Episcopal Churches. You will not mind my reminding you that the tension was eased by the counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The changes in the creeds were withdrawn and in 1786 William White and Samuel Prevoost were consecrated bishops in the chapel of Lambeth Palace. A sound Anglican compromise was reached by the creation of a separate House of Bishops in the General Convention of 1789.

From “A New Presiding Bishop” in One Light for One World by Robert Runcie (SPCK, 1988).

Daily Reading for July 18

I looked at my hands, to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything, the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven. I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks, and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came: I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there. Oh, how I prayed then, lying all alone of the cold, damp ground; “Oh, dear Lord,” I said, “I ain’t got no friend but you. Come to my help, Lord, for I’m in trouble!”

From a story by Harriet Ross Tubman, the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. Quoted in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 19

Among the many important questions which have been brought before the public, there is none that more vitally affects the whole human family than that which is technically called Woman’s Rights....The world waits the coming of some new element, some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and love. The voice of woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided. There are deep and tender chords of sympathy and love in the heart of the down-fallen and oppressed that woman can touch more skillfully than man. . . God, in his wisdom has so linked the whole human family together that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt throughout its length, and here, too, is the law of restoration, as in woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the race be recreated.

From Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s first public address to the First Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19, 1848. Quoted in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 20 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Ross Tubman

Unfortunately, her name is forever associated with a type of woman’s undergarment, but Amelia Bloomer was actually a distinguished writer, publisher, and social reformer and a pioneer in the woman’s suffrage movement. She was also devoted to her church. When she moved to Cedar Bluffs, Iowa, she helped organize an Episcopal congregation in the community and entertained visiting missionaries in her home. She took it for granted that God was at work in the causes she espoused, writing, “The same power that brought the slave out of bondage will, in His own good time and way, bring about the emancipation of women, and make her the equal in power and dominion that she was in the beginning.”

Bloomer became an articulate speaker for women’s rights. Using her magazine Lily as a vehicle, she wrote that women ought to be admitted to institutions of higher learning, that they should own property and receive paychecks in their own name, and that the law should do more to protect victims of abuse. She even produced a woman’s Bible to challenge patriarchal views.

And, yes, she did advocate less restrictive clothing. The whalebone, tight-laced corsets, and voluminous skirts then fashionable restricted movement and injured health. Dressing like this made women, in Bloomer’s words, “unpaid street sweepers.” She didn’t invent the garment that was given her name, but Bloomer did popularize it. She gave up wearing bloomers herself after eight years, though, because she felt they detracted attention from issues that mattered more.

From “Amelia Bloomer” in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 21

Born black and female at the end of the 18th century, Isabella Baumfree had two strikes against her—but only two. To balance the account, she stood six feet tall and had a commanding voice and personality. She used these assets to preach the gospel and for other causes as well. She preached “God’s truth and plan for salvation” in Long Island and Connecticut and arrived in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she met and worked with such abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Olive Gilbert. Later she went to Washington, met President Lincoln, and spoke before Congress. She spoke about abolition and woman’s suffrage as well as her own experience of slavery. She is best remembered for a speech she gave at a women’s rights conference when she noticed that no one was addressing the rights of black women.

“Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped over carriages, and lifted ober ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober muddpuddles, or bigs me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me. Looka at me arm. I have ploughes and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman.”

From “Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree),” in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 22 • The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

After saying this, the Blessed One greeted them all, saying: “Peace be with you—may my Peace arise and be fulfilled within you! Be vigilant, and allow no one to mislead you by saying: ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For it is within you that the Son of Man dwells. Go to him, for those who seek him, find him. Walk forth, and announce the gospel of the Kingdom.” Having said this, he departed.

The disciples were in sorrow, shedding many tears, and saying: “How are we to go among the unbelievers and announce the gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? They did not spare his life, so why should they spare ours?”

Then Mary arose, embraced them all, and began to speak to her brothers: “Do not remain in sorrow and doubt, for his Grace will guide you and comfort you. Instead, let us praise his greatness, for he has prepared us for this. He is calling upon us to become fully human [Anthropos].” Thus Mary turned their hearts toward the Good, and they began to discuss the meaning of the Teacher’s words.

From The Gospel of Mary Magdelene. Translation from the Coptic and Commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup (Inner Traditions, 2002).

Daily Reading for July 23 • St. Mary Magdalene

Having said all this, Mary became silent, for it was in silence that the Teacher spoke to her. Then Andrew began to speak, and said to his brothers: “Tell me, what do you think of these things she has been telling us? As for me, I do not believe that the Teacher would speak like this. These ideas are too different from those we have known.” And Peter added: “How is it possible that the Teacher talked in this manner with a woman about secrets of which we ourselves are ignorant? Must we change our customs, and listen to this woman? Did he really choose her, and prefer her to us?”

Then Mary wept, and answered him: “My brother Peter, what can you be thinking? Do you believe that this is just my own imagination, that I invented this vision? Or do you believe that I would lie about our Teacher?”

At this, Levi spoke up: “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered, and now we see you repudiating a woman, just as our adversaries do. Yet if the Teacher held her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely the Teacher knew her very well, for he loved her more than us. Therefore let us atone, and become fully human [Anthropos], so that the Teacher can take root in us. Let us grow as he demanded of us, and walk forth to spread the gospel, without trying to lay down any rules and laws other than those he witnessed.” When Levi had said these words, they all went forth to spread the gospel.

From The Gospel of Mary Magdelene. Translation from the Coptic and Commentary by Jean-Yves Leloup (Inner Traditions, 2002).

Daily Reading for July 24 • Thomas à Kempis, Priest, 1471

If your heart be right, then every created thing will become for you a mirror of life and a book of holy teaching. For there is nothing created so small and mean that it does not reflect the goodness of God.

Were you inwardly good and pure, you would see and understand all things clearly and without difficulty. A pure heart penetrates both heaven and hell. As each man is in himself, so does he judge outward things. If there is any joy to be had in this world, the pure in heart most surely possess it; and if there is trouble and distress anywhere, the evil conscience most readily experiences it. Just as iron, when plunged into fire, loses its rust and becomes bright and glowing, so the man who trusts himself wholly to God loses his sloth and becomes transformed into a new creature.

From The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, translated by Leo Sherley-Price (Penguin 1952).

Daily Reading for July 25 • St. James the Apostle

The next martyr we meet with, according to St. Luke, in the History of the Apostles’ Acts, was James the son of Zebedee, the elder brother of John, and a relative of our Lord; for his mother Salome was cousin-german to the Virgin Mary. It was not until ten years after the death of Stephen that the second martyrdom took place; for no sooner had Herod Agrippa been appointed governor of Judea, than, with a view to ingratiate himself with them, he raised a sharp persecution against the Christians, and determined to make an effectual blow, by striking at their leaders. The account given us by an eminent primitive writer, Clemens Alexandrinus, ought not to be overlooked; that, as James was led to the place of martyrdom, his accuser was brought to repent of his conduct by the apostle’s extraordinary courage and undauntedness, and fell down at this feet to request his pardon, professing himself a Christian, and resolving that James should not receive the crown of martyrdom alone. Hence they were both beheaded at the same time. Thus did the first apostolic martyr cheerfully and resolutely receive that cup, which he had told our Savior he was ready to drink. These events took place A.D. 44.

From Fox’s Book of Martyrs (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1926).

Daily Reading for July 26 • Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The blessed and glorious ever-virgin Mary, sprung from the royal stock and family of David, born in the city of Nazareth, was brought up at Jerusalem in the temple of the Lord. Her father was named Joachim, and her mother Anna. Her father's house was from Galilee and the city of Nazareth, but her mother's family from Bethlehem. Their life was guileless and right before the Lord, and irreproachable and pious before men. For they divided all their substance into three parts. One part they spent upon the temple and the temple servants; another they distributed to strangers and the poor; the third they reserved, for themselves and the necessities of their family. Thus, dear to God, kind to men, for about twenty years they lived in their own house, a chaste married life, without having any children. Nevertheless they vowed that, should the Lord happen to give them offspring, they would deliver it to the service of the Lord; on which account also they used to visit the temple of the Lord at each of the feasts during the year....

Now, when Joachim had been at the temple for some time, on a certain day when he was alone, an angel of the Lord stood by him in a great light. And when he was disturbed at his appearance, the angel who had appeared to him restrained his fear, saying: Fear not, Joachim, nor be disturbed by my appearance; for I am the angel of the Lord, sent by Him to you to tell you that your prayers have been heard, and that your charitable deeds have gone up into His presence. . . . Conceptions very late in life, and births in the case of women that have been barren, are usually attended with something wonderful. Accordingly your wife Anna will bring forth a daughter to you, and you shall call her name Mary: she shall be, as you have vowed, consecrated to the Lord from her infancy, and she shall be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from her mother's womb. She shall neither eat nor drink any unclean thing, nor shall she spend her life among the crowds of the people without, but in the temple of the Lord, that it may not be possible either to say, or so much as to suspect, any evil concerning her. Therefore, when she has grown up, just as she herself shall be miraculously born of a barren woman, so in an incomparable manner she, a virgin, shall bring forth the Son of the Most High, who shall be called Jesus, and who, according to the etymology of His name, shall be the Saviour of all nations. And this shall be the sign to you of those things which I announce: When you shall come to the Golden gate in Jerusalem, you shall there meet Anna your wife, who, lately anxious from the delay of your return, will then rejoice at the sight of you. Having thus spoken, the angel departed from him.

From the apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary.

Daily Reading for July 27 • William Reed Huntington, Priest, 1909

Three years later at the 1880 Convention, the persistent Dr. Huntington tried again. He proposed a joint committee to consider “whether in view of the fact that this Church is soon to enter upon the second century of its organized existence in this country, the changed conditions of national life do not demand certain alterations in the Book of Common Prayer, in the direction of Liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use.” A joint committee, consisting of seven bishops, seven presbyters, and seven laymen, was appointed and ordered to report to the Convention of 1883. . . .

The 1892 Convention was businesslike and determined that nothing would be permitted to set aside or delay the completion of Prayer Book revision. The task was completed by noon, October 11, 1892. The Church had a new Book of Common Prayer. It was a very conservative revision of the Book, especially considering the years of discussion and the number of proposed changes. Unquestionably, the primary force behind the movement for revision was Dr. William Reed Huntington. It was his resolution which had set the process in motion back in 1880. He was secretary of the first joint Committee on Revision which served until 1886 and was the recognized floor leader in the debates on the subject in all five Conventions, 1880-1892. Huntington was respected and admired by his colleagues, not only for his ability but also for his affability and kind consideration of everyone. The Churchman of October 22, 1892, spoke of him as a man of “consummate tact . . . so conciliatory that his very opponents cannot help wishing they could agree with him, even when they are compelled to differ.”

From The Prayer Book Through the Ages by William Sydnor. Copyright © 1978. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 28

Just as this Eucharistic action is the pattern of all Christian action, the sharing of this Bread the sign of the sharing of all bread, so this Fellowship is the germ of all society renewed in Christ.

From On Being the Church in the World by John A. T. Robinson (SCM, 1974).

Daily Reading for July 29 • The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

From very early times, human beings have shared meals together, and seen in such an act a symbol of fellowship, common life, common love. The sharing of food and fellowship, the drinking of wine in the atmosphere of warmth and joy, such activities are among the most important in life. It is not surprising therefore that at the heart of the worship and experience of God in Christian tradition is the activity of a meal, the Eucharist. Christian spirituality is of a eucharistic type, that is, it comes to see and know and even digest God within the framework of the liturgy of eating and drinking. It has thus the marks of an active and social experience, not those of a passive and private one. And both the involvement in action, and the social character of the experience, are of the essence, and not simply incidental aspects, of the Christian spiritual path. It is an experience of God which takes place within the context of an action involving movement, responses, manual acts, greetings of our fellow participants, the offering of gifts, the receiving of communion; and this action is the action of a community in which individuals are caught up. It is not therefore on the fringes of the common life, but at its centre, that Christian spirituality, even Christian contemplation, happens. ‘Now is the time for God to act’ as the Eastern liturgy says of the eucharistic action. To come to the sacred meal of the community is to expect a divine encounter, it is both to consume and be consumed.

From Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality by Kenneth Leech (Harper and Row, 1985).

Daily Reading for July 30 • William Wilberforce

Compared with the work of the Quakers, the Salvation Army, or Anglo-Catholic “slum priests” later in the nineteenth century, the Evangelical movement has sometimes been accused of lacking a spirituality of social engagement. This is an unfair generalization. It is true that “action” implied an active spreading of the word of God (evangelism) expressed, for example, in the work of the Church Missionary Society throughout the British Empire. However, for many people action also implied social philanthropy. The former slave trader John Newton, later Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London, became a notable supporter of William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish slavery. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was the leading champion of the abolition of slavery as a result of his evangelical conversion. Wilberforce witnessed to the direct connection between spirituality and social action by beginning each working day with two hours of prayer and Bible reading. Wilberforce became the political leader of the Evangelical movement and on his death this role was taken on by Anthony Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a leading Conservative parliamentarian and one of the greatest social reformers of the nineteenth century.

From A Brief History of Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

Daily Reading for July 31 • Ignatius of Loyola

The Spiritual Exercises is one of the most influential spiritual texts of all times. Despite their Reformation origins they are nowadays used as a medium for spiritual guidance and retreats among an ecumenical spectrum of Christians. The text is not intended to be inspirational but is a series of practical notes for a retreat-guide that suggest how to vary the process according to the needs of each person. The ideal is a month away from normal pressures but a modified form “in the midst of daily life” is allowed. Much of the text consists of advice about the structure and content of prayer periods, guidance about spiritual discernment and making a choice of life, and helpful hints about practical matters such as the physical environment for prayer, moderate use of penance, rules about eating, and about scruples.

The explicit aim of the Spiritual Exercises is to assist a person to grow in spiritual freedom in order to respond to the call of Christ. From the Exercises, it is possible to detect fundamental features of Ignatian spirituality. First, God is encountered above all in the practices of everyday life which themselves become a “spiritual exercise.” Second, the life and death of Jesus Christ is offered as the fundamental pattern for Christian life. Third, the God revealed in Christ offers healing, liberation, and hope. Fourth, spirituality is not so much a matter of asceticism as a matter of a deepening desire for God (“desire” is a frequent word in the text) and experience of God’s acceptance in return. The theme of “finding God in all things” suggests a growing integration of contemplation and action. The notion of following the pattern of Jesus Christ focuses on an active sharing in God’s mission to the world—not least in serving people in need. Finally, at the heart of everything is the gift of spiritual discernment—an increasing ability to judge wisely and to choose well in ways that are congruent with a person’s deepest truth.

From A Brief History of Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (Blackwell Publishing, 2007).