Daily Reading for August 1 • Joseph of Arimathea

On the day of the Preparation, about the tenth hour, you shut me in, and I remained there the whole Sabbath in full. And when midnight came, as I was standing and praying, the house where you shut me in was hung up by the four corners, and there was a flashing of light in mine eyes. And I fell to the ground trembling. Then some one lifted me up from the place where I had fallen, and poured over me an abundance of water from the head even to the feet, and put round my nostrils the odor of a wonderful ointment, and rubbed my face with the water itself, as if washing me, and kissed me, and said to me, Joseph, fear not; but open thine eyes, and see who it is that speaks to thee. And looking, I saw Jesus; and being terrified, I thought it was a phantom. And with prayer and the commandments I spoke to him, and he spoke with me. And I said to him: Art thou Rabbi Elias? And he said to me: I am not Elias. And I said: Who art thou, my Lord? And he said to me: I am Jesus, whose body thou didst beg from Pilate, and wrap in clean linen; and thou didst lay a napkin on my face, and didst lay me in thy new tomb, and roll a stone to the door of the tomb. Then I said to him that was speaking to me: Show me, Lord, where I laid thee. And he led me, and showed me the place where I laid him, and the linen which I had put on him, and the napkin which I had wrapped upon his face; and I knew that it was Jesus. And he took hold of me with his hand, and put me in the midst of my house though the gates were shut, and put me in my bed, and said to me: Peace to thee! And he kissed me, and said to me: For forty days go not out of thy house; for, lo, I go to my brethren into Galilee.

From the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus, translated by Alexander Walker, in The Lost Books of the Bible (Bell Publishing, 1979).

Daily Reading for August 2

At the heart of the Spiritual Exercises is learning how to discern the origin of our desiring. Each of us knows the pull and tug of various urges, some for our well-being and some for our downfall. These pulls, tugs, urges, and desires are movements that come from different sources. One of these sources is God and the other is not-God or, as Ignatius calls it, “the enemy of our human nature.” We can tell where a movement is coming from if we can tell where it is leading, says Ignatius. If we can play out in our imagination where a particular desire will lead us—closer to God or farther away from divine love—we can be sure which spirit is behind that urge.

Ignatius calls those movements toward God and toward the deepest truth of ourselves “consolation,” and he calls those movements away from faith, hope, and love and into self-centeredness “desolation.” Harking back to his recuperation time in Loyola, Ignatius recognizes the movements of the spirits in his own life and wants the retreatant to know the same. Thus we can choose to follow the movements of grace and avoid falling into the temptations of the enemy of our human nature. We come to recognize the patterns of temptation in our lives as well as the gentle pull of divine grace. As we come to understand the value system of the Gospel more clearly and in greater detail, through contemplation of Jesus, and as we grow in our understanding of the value system of the world, we are equipped to make better choices in our lives.

From “How Ignatius Would Tend the Holy: Ignatian Spirituality and Spiritual Direction” by Marian Cowan, CSJ, in Tending the Holy: Spiritual Direction Across Traditions edited by Norvene Vest. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for August 3

Sometimes I need to explain to directees what is meant by the phrase “finding God in all things.” It has nothing to do with reading God into things, blaming God for disasters, saying this or that is God’s will. Rather, it involves opening ourselves to an encounter with God in whatever presents itself to us. God is present in all things, seen and unseen. We are invited to experience this presence in nature, in people, in circumstances, in everything. God is the essence of all that is, and God is within all, in ways that will benefit us. So I ask a directee, “Are you able to feel (or know) God with you in this terrible moment?” “Do you realize that what you are describing as luck is really God’s grace?” Finding God in all things turns life into a love story between God and the directee. It leads one far from self-centeredness into love of all creatures. It puts one at the disposal of God to bring all of creation one step closer to its fulfillment.

From “How Ignatius Would Tend the Holy: Ignatian Spirituality and Spiritual Direction” by Marian Cowan, CSJ, in Tending the Holy: Spiritual Direction Across Traditions edited by Norvene Vest. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for August 4

Centuries ago, Ignatius of Loyola urged readers of scripture to participate in the life of Christ through a disciplined use of all the senses. When reading a story from the gospels, like the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, Ignatius tells us to enter the scene fully and to become each character in turn:

With the eyes of the imagination we should look . . . at the persons. With our hearing we should perceive how they are speaking or could speak. With the sense of smell and taste we should smell and taste the infinite sweetness and loveliness of the Godhead. With our sense of place we should embrace and kiss the place where these persons have set their foot and where they come to rest.

From Sensing God: Reading Scripture With All Our Senses by Roger Ferlo (Cowley Publications, 2002).

Daily Reading for August 5 • The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

We are made to love, both to satisfy the necessity of our active nature and to answer the beauties in every creature. By love our souls are married and soldered to the creatures, and it is our duty like God to be united to them all. We must love them infinitely, but in God, and for God, and God in them, namely, all his excellencies manifest in them. When we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too much, but other things too little. Never was anything in this world loved too much, but many things have been loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.

From Centuries by Thomas Traherne, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for August 6 • The Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ

Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn or an herb. God knows infinite excellencies in it more than we. He sees how it relates to angels and to men, how it proceeds from the most perfect lover to the most perfectly beloved, how it represents all his attributes. And for this cause it cannot be beloved too much. God the author and God the end is to be beloved in it; angels and men are to be beloved in it; and it is highly to be esteemed for all their sakes. O what a treasure is every sand when truly understood! Who can love anything God made too much? His infinite goodness and wisdom and power and glory are in it. What a world would this be, were every thing beloved as it ought to be!

From Centuries by Thomas Traherne, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for August 7 • John Mason Neale, 1866

Amongst His Twelve Apostles
Christ spake the Words of Life,
And shew’d a realm of beauty
Beyond a world of strife:
‘When all My Father’s glory
Shall shine express’d in Me,
Then praise Him, then exalt Him,
For magnified is He!’

Upon the Mount of Tabor
The promise was made good;
When, baring all the Godhead,
In light itself He stood:
and they, in awe beholding,
The Apostolic Three,
Sang out to God their Saviour,
For magnified was He!

From “Transfiguration” by John Mason Neale, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Word: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, compiled by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2001).

Daily Reading for August 8 • Dominic, Priest and Friar, 1221

It is not unfair to suggest that the character of the two largest mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, reflected the personalities and backgrounds of their founders. St Dominic (1170-1221) was originally a Canon Regular of St Augustine at Osma in Castille. In 1203 he and his bishop were in southern France on diplomatic business when they came across the papal preaching mission confronting the dualist heretics known as Cathars or Albigensians. Bishop Diego and Dominic bolstered the mission by gathering together a band of dedicated preachers who, in line with the spiritual fervor of the time, also espoused a life of gospel poverty. As early as 1206 an associated community of women was founded at Prouille.

On the bishop’s death in 1207, Dominic remained in France and developed his group of preachers into a religious order. Basically Dominic followed his background experience as a Canon Regular. Thus he sought to combine liturgy, contemplation, and pastoral ministry. The Order of Preachers was formally approved in 1216 and from the start embraced women and lay associates, although their full incorporation only happened years after Dominic’s death.

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

Daily Reading for August 9

Dominican spirituality does not originate in high theory or in a particular spiritual wisdom embodied in clearly defined techniques. Effectively, Dominic’s vision was to respond to concrete pastoral needs. This, and a reliance on structures that he already knew, suggests a fundamental pragmatism and functionalism in his approach to the spiritual life. The Domincan structures were relatively simple and democratic rather than hierarchical. Clearly preaching as a medium for spreading the gospel lies at the heart of Dominican spirituality. In that sense, Dominican spirituality is evangelical and missionary.

As a foundation for preaching, Dominic placed a strong emphasis on study which really replaced the traditional monastic emphasis on manual labor as a critical spiritual discipline. Veritas (truth) became a kind of motto of the Order expressing its deepest ideals of intellectual integrity at the service of the gospel. Behind the ability to minister effectively also lay a contemplative spirit focused especially on liturgy. This connection between contemplation and action was expressed in a traditional phrase contemplate aliis tradere--it is what is contemplated that leads to everything else.

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

Daily Reading for August 10

What you hold, may you [always] hold,
What you do, may you [always] do,
and never abandon.
But with swift pace [and] light steps
stir up no dust,
go forward:
securely, joyfully
and swiftly
on the path of prudent happiness.

Letter 2 of Clare of Assisi, quoted in Peaceweavers: Medieval Religious Women, Volume 2, edited by John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Cistercian Publications, 1987).

Daily Reading for August 11 • Clare, Abbess of Assisi, 1253

Although Francis’ life and writings are a primary source for Franciscan spirituality, it is now widely recognized that Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) was not merely a dependent figure but a significant personality in her own right in the origins of the Franciscan tradition. Inspired by Francis’ preaching, Clare dedicated herself to a gospel life in 1212 and became the first woman member of the Order. She held to the same vision of poverty and gospel living in the face of considerable opposition from Church officials. Some historians have suggested that Clare originally wished her sisters to have an unenclosed lifestyle of service rather alone the lines of the lay movement of Beguines. Whatever the case, Clare was forced to accept the Rule of St Benedict for her sisters but this was mitigated in 1216 by papal permission to observe the same “privilege” of poverty as the friars—that is, freedom from normal monastic possessions, buildings, estates, and complex finances. However her moderate Rule for the Poor Sisters (the Poor Clares) was only finally approved on her deathbed in 1253.

Although the sisters were dedicated to a life of contemplation, this should not be contrasted with the men’s dedication to preaching in poverty. Enclosure was not the end purpose of Poor Clare life. This was the bond between poverty and contemplation—contemplation in poverty and poverty as itself a form of gospel-centered contemplation. In her famous Letters to Agnes of Prague Clare writes of Christ the Mirror into which the contemplative gazes and there discovers the poverty of Christ and his intense love of the world expressed in the cross. In turn, Clare suggests that the sisters are to be mirrors to those living in the world—mirrors in which people can see the gospel life.

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

Daily Reading for August 12 • The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The desert is the threshold to the meeting ground of God and man. It is the scene of the exodus. You do not settle there, you pass through. One then ventures on to these tracks because one is driven by the Spirit towards the Promised Land. But it is only promised to those who are able to chew sand for forty years without doubting their invitation to the feast in the end.

Alessandro Pronzato, quoted in The Desert: An Anthology for Lent by John Moses. © 1997. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com.

Daily Reading for August 13 • Jeremy Taylor, 1667

It is probable our hearts are right with God, and our intentions innocent and pious, if we set upon actions of religion or civil life with an affection proportionate to the quality of the work; that we act our temporal affairs with a desire no greater than our necessity; and that in actions of religion, we be zealous, active, and operative, so far as prudence will permit; but in all cases, that we value a religious design before a temporal, when otherwise they are in equal order to the several ends: that is, that whatsoever is necessary in order to our soul’s health be higher esteemed, than what is for bodily; and the indispensable necessities, of the spirit, be served before the needs of nature; or plainer yet, when we choose any temporal inconvenience, rather than commit a sin, and when we choose to do a duty, rather than to get gain.

From Holy Living and Dying With Prayers: Containing the Complete Duty of A Christian by Jeremy Taylor (Thomas Wardle, 1835).

Daily Reading for August 14 • Jonathan Myric Daniels, 1965

Like the early Christian witness, Daniels could write, “We are beginning to see as we never saw before that we are truly in the world and yet ultimately not of it.” He was sickened by signs saying “White Only,” but uncomfortable as well with making too “smart” an answer to a segregationist. He wrote: “We are beginning to believe deeply in original sin—theirs and ours.”

In the midst of this ambiguity, the reality of hatred remained, along with the possibility of death. Shortly after writing his report, Daniels was struck down by a supremacist’s bullet. An instinctive reaction led Daniels to throw himself in front of a young black woman when a white man aimed a rifle at her. Yet instincts are the product of prayer and a commitment to justice made long before the event. Daniels seems to have understood that his commitment might require the highest price. He also knew that the way of life can conquer the powers of death. He had written not long before: “A crooked man climbed a crooked tree on a crooked hill. Somewhere, in the mists of the past, a tenor sang of valleys lifted up and hills made low. Death at the heart of life, and life in the midst of death. The tree of life is indeed a Cross.”

From 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 August 15 • St. Mary the Virgin

It is the moment of the annunciation which makes sense of all other moments. It is a moment which is truly in time, not out of time. It has a whole series of temporal consequences; the embryo begins to stir in the womb. But it is a moment in which eternity has really come, in which God is present and at work. Both the birth and the death of Jesus witness to the depth and immensity of God’s love, and to the infinite openness and potential of human life. And just as, in baptism, the death of each one who is baptized is included in Christ’s death, in order that the whole process of dying may become dying into life, so also the birth of each one is included in Christ’s birth, in order that the whole process of living may be open to the coming of the Spirit, who is Lord and giver of life.

It is in this sense that we may rightly think of Mary as the mother of us all; in this sense that Andrewes speaks of the font as the womb of the Church, of one substance with the Virgin’s womb, with a power given it by the Spirit of bringing forth sons of God. From his participation in our human nature follows our participation in his divine nature. The life of eternity enters into time, so that the life of time may find its fulfillment in eternity.

From The Joy of All Creation by A. M. Allchin (Cowley Publications, 1984).

Daily Reading for August 16

There is a closer relationship between faith in the Virgin birth and faith in the bodily resurrection of Christ than might at first sight appear. Both doctrines affirm the depth of God’s love, the extent of his involvement in the human mass, in the very substance of our human history, its reality of flesh and blood. And both doctrines affirm the potential greatness, the infinite openness of that human history. In the reality of flesh and blood, the eternal is made present and made known. It is not surprising that our own society, with its sense of being held in an ‘iron reign’ of necessity and death, with its particular difficulty in believing that human life can open out into something larger than itself, finds these doctrines difficult to accept. In some sense, however, this has always been the case, for at all times these articles of faith have brought a judgement on our fallen ways of thinking. They are bound to come to our minds first as a cross and only afterwards as a fulfillment.

Neither Christ’s conception nor his rising again is an isolated wonder, unrelated to the rest of human history, to the nature of the universe as a whole. ‘The truth, which is revealed in them, is at the same time situated at the heart of history, at the basis of creation and at the goal of history.’ All stories of strange or miraculous births, and there are many in legends and mythology of man, hint at the potential of a birth from above, at the mystery of each human life as a new creation, a possible point of intersection of the timeless with time. The birth and death of Christ, given from on high, are a full and perfect confirmation of these half-lost human longings. They are at one and the same time a revelation of the mysteriousness of the divine love which goes far beyond anything the mind could have thought or the heart desired, and also a revelation of the mysteriousness of the human calling and destiny. Planted at the heart of man’s being there is an openness to what is beyond him.

From The Joy of All Creation by A. M. Allchin (Cowley Publications, 1984).

Daily Reading for August 17

Thus in Christ it is revealed both at birth and at death, man’s life can conquer time through time. The moments which in themselves can be and are the perfect symbols of man’s bondage to time and of his imprisonment in a world of endless recurrence, birth, copulation, and death, become the very symbols of man’s liberation from death, and of the liberation of all creation. This is not only a liberation from the cycle of birth and death, it is a liberation through them by the taking up of time into eternity. She who stands at the entrance to this mystery, the place where the Spirit is made manifest, is indeed the gate of heaven, the joy of all creation.

From The Joy of All Creation by A. M. Allchin (Cowley Publications, 1984).

Daily Reading for August 18 • William Porcher DuBose, 1918

We have our religion through the medium of languages that have been long dead, and that present tendencies in education threaten to render more and more dead to us. Along with the languages, there is a growing disposition to relegate the ideas, the entire symbolic expression and form, of Christianity to the past. The modern world calls for modern modes of thought and modern forms of speech. We have to meet that demand and be able to answer and satisfy whatever of reason or truth there is in it.

There are two tasks before us as students and teachers of Christianity. The first is to know and understand our sources. To begin with, we must know our Old Testament as we have never known it before, if we are to take part in the new interpretation of our New Testament that the times demand. For each time must have its own living interpretation, since the interpretation cannot but be, in half measure at least, relative to the time. If the divine part in it is fixed, the human is progressive and changing just in so far as it is living.

We must cease to treat the phraseology, the forms, definitions, and dogmas of Christianity as sacred relics, too sacred to be handled. We must take them out of their napkins, strip them of their cerements, and turn them into current coin. We must let them do business in the life that is living now, and take part in the thought and feeling and activity of the men of the world of today.

From High Priesthood and Sacrifice by William Porcher DuBose, 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 August 19 • The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

There is a profound sense in which all of one’s life is lived out in God’s presence, and this recognition becomes a powerful tool for understanding all of one’s life as being consecrated unto God. The Carmelite lay brother Nicholas Herman (1611-91), known as “Brother Lawrence,” cultivated and practiced this sort of life, and its character has been preserved for us under the title Practice of the Presence of God (1692). Without forsaking the mysterium tremendum, Brother Lawrence advocated a style of spirituality that developed a continual sense of being in God’s presence, and the practice of returning to God’s presence through deliberate acts of prayer. He aspired to a habitual sense of God’s presence that penetrated and invigorated all of a Christian’s life. Brother Lawrence wrote: “This presence of God, if practiced faithfully, works secretly in the soul and produces marvelous effects, and leads it insensibly to the simple grace, that long sight of God every where present, which is the most holy, the most solid, the easiest, the most efficacious manner of prayer.”

From Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 20 • Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 1153

As a theologian Bernard stood in the Augustinian tradition. Like Anselm before him, St. Bernard believed it was necessary to grasp religious truth by faith before one could probe its meaning. His personal mysticism caused Bernard to look from the mind (as in Anselm) to religious experience for certitude. His theology was deeply concerned about the reality of humans being created in the image of God, and the unity that remains between humans and their Creator. Bernard found this most powerfully expressed and experienced in terms of love (Latin caritas). His interior theology was often phrased in the language of romantic love and courtship. Bernard understood the love song of the Hebrew Scriptures, Canticles, as a vivid description of the soul’s relationship with God; his sermons on Song of Songs were among his most influential works.

From “Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)” in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 21

To love one’s neighbor with perfect love it is necessary to be prompted by God. How can you love your neighbor with purity if you do not love him in God? But he who does not love God cannot love in God. You must love God, so that in Him you can love your neighbor too. God therefore brings about your love for Him, just as He causes other goods. This is how He does it: He who made nature also protects it. For it was so created that it needs its Creator as its Protector, so that what could not have come into existence without Him cannot continue in existence without Him.

From “Four Degrees of Love” by Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 22

Humanity’s frequent needs make it necessary for us to call upon God often, and to taste by frequent contact, and to discover by tasting how sweet the Lord is. It is in this way that the taste of His own sweetness leads us to love God in purity more than our need alone would prompt us to do.

There is a need of the flesh which speaks out, and the body tells by its actions of the kindness it has experienced. And so it will not be difficult for the person who has had that experience to keep the commandment to love his [or her] neighbor. He truly loves God, and therefore he loves what is God’s. This love is acceptable because it is given freely. It is chaste because it is not made up of words or talk, but of truth and action. It is just because it gives back what it has received. For he who loves in this way loves as he is loved.

From “Four Degrees of Love” by Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 23

Since Scripture says that God made everything for himself, there will be a time when He will cause everything to conform to its Maker and be in harmony with Him. In the meantime, we must make this our desire; that as God Himself willed that everything should be for Himself, so we, too, will that nothing, not even ourselves, may be or have been except for Him, that is according to his will, not ours. The satisfaction of our needs will not bring us happiness, not chance delights, as does the sight of His will being fulfilled in us and in everything which concerns us. That is what we ask every day in prayer when we say, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

To love in this way is to become like God. As a drop of water seems to disappear completely in a quantity of wine, taking the wine’s flavor and color; as red-hot iron becomes indistinguishable from the glow of fire and its own original form disappears; as air suffused with the light of the sun seems transformed into the brightness of the light, as if it were itself light rather than merely lit up; so, in those who are holy, it is necessary for human affection to dissolve in some ineffable way, and be poured into the will of God.

From “Four Degrees of Love” by Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for August 24 • St. Bartholomew the Apostle

Prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If our prayer is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life—and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and “safe”—God will act in us and through us to renew the Church by preparing, in prayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth.

From Contemplation in a World of Action by Thomas Merton (Doubleday, 1971).

Daily Reading for August 25

Better just to smell a flower in the garden . . . than to have an unauthentic experience of a much higher value. Better to honestly enjoy the sunshine or some light reading than to claim to be in contact with something that one is not in contact with at all.

From Contemplation in a World of Action by Thomas Merton (Doubleday, 1971).

Daily Reading for August 26 • The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The feature of Celtic spirituality that is probably most widely recognized, both within and outside the Church, is its creation emphasis. Like most children, I had grown up with a sense of awe at creation. Our earliest memories are generally of wonder in relation to the elements. Connected to these moments will be recollections of experiencing at the deepest levels a type of communion with God in nature, but there will usually have been very little in our religious traditions to encourage us to do much more than simply thank God for creation. The preconception behind this is that God is separate from creation. How many of us were taught actually to look for God within creation and to recognize the world as the place of revelation and the whole of life as sacramental? Were we not for the most part led to think that spirituality is about looking away from life, so that the Church is distanced from the world and spirit is almost entirely divorced from the matter of our bodies, our lives and the world?

I had discovered characteristics of the old Celtic Church in the prayers of the Western Isles, but where was the original source of this spiritual tradition? When I explored the earliest manifestations of Celtic Christianity, in the fourth-century writings of Pelagius, for example, I found a similar emphasis on the life of God within creation. This much-maligned early British Christian stressed not only the essential goodness of creation—and our capacity to glimpse what he called ‘the shafts of divine light’ that penetrate the thin veil dividing heaven and earth—but the essential goodness of humanity. It was a spirituality characterized by a listening within all things for the life of God.

From Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality by J. Philip Newell (Paulist Press, 1997).

Daily Reading for August 27 • Thomas Gallaudet, 1890, and Henry Winter Syle, 1902

The growth of the spiritual kingdom, as a divinely appointed organization, is a mystery; and the growth of spiritual life in the hearts of each individual member of the spiritual kingdom is a mystery. We behold indications, from time to time, marking the gradual progress of these two kinds of growth; we believe in them, as realities coming to pass, in consequence of Christ’s redemption, and yet we know not how. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Oh! let those to whom the gospel announcements have come, be not faithless, but believing. Beholding the wonderful work which God, through Christ, has wrought for mankind by the mysterious instrumentalities of his infinitely wise appointment, let all become genuine, devout communicants of the organization which has existed, though they know not how, for upward of eighteen hundred years, as the grand regeneration of the human race; and in due time, they shall be the possessors of the peace of God, which passing understanding, is the earnest of the good things to come in the future life, of which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Oh! let us have entire faith in the Divine arrangements for the growth of spiritual life, although they are to us, in our present condition, unfathomable mysteries.

From the sermon preached at the first service held at St. Ann’s Church for Deaf-Mutes by Thomas Gallaudet, 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 August 28 • Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 430

In his system, [Pelagius] posits and distinguishes three faculties, by which he says God’s commandments are fulfilled, —capacity, volition, and action: meaning by “capacity,” that by which a man is able to be righteous; by “volition” that which he wills to be righteous; by “action,” that by which he actually is righteous. The first of these, the capacity, he allows to have been bestowed on us by the Creator of our nature; it is not in our power, and we possess it even against our will. The first of these, the capacity, he allows to have been bestowed on us by the Creator of our nature; it is not in our power, and we possess it even against our will. The other two, however, the volition and the action, he asserts to be our own; and he assigns them to us so strictly as to contend that they proceed simply from ourselves. In short, according to his view, God’s grace has nothing to do with assisting these two faculties which he will have to be altogether our own, the volition and the action, but that only which is not in our own power and comes to us from God, namely the capacity; as if the faculties which are our own, that is, the volition and the action, have such avail for declining evil and doing good, that they require no divine help, whereas that faculty which we have of God, that is to say, the capacity, is so weak, that it is always assisted by the aid of grace.

The apostle, however, holds the contrary, when he says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” [Phil. 2:12]. And that they might be sure that is was not simply in their being able to work but in their actual working that they were divinely assisted, the apostle does not say to them, “For it is God that worketh in you to be able,” as if they already possessed volition and operation among their own resources, without requiring His assistance in respect to these two; but he says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to perform of His own good pleasure” [Phil. 2:13]; or, as the reading runs in other copies, especially the Greek, “both to will and to operate.” God works within us those two very things, even “willing” and “operating,” which [Pelagius] so determined to be our own, as if they were in no wise assisted by the help of divine grace.

From On the Grace of Christ by Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation, by William C. Placher (Westminster / John Knox, 1988).

Daily Reading for August 29

Augustine’s influence was particularly harmful in relation to sexuality. While he did not actually identify concupiscence with sexual desire, his general orientation—and even more, that of his successors—did lead to a devaluing of sex. Sex was in fact basically bad, but tolerable for the purpose of procreation. For, in Augustine’s view, the essence of the fall was loss of control of mind over body. On this view, all sexual acts have the nature of sin, because they are inherently lustful. The view that original sin was actually transmitted by sexual intercourse was accepted by Thomas Aquinas, and has remained a powerful strain within conventional Western Christianity to this day.

By contrast, incarnational theology involves the acceptance of the goodness and wonder of our physical bodies, and more than acceptance: a joyful, awesome, tender joy in them. Sebastian Moore, in a moving prayer-poem, speaks of the ‘accuracy of the flesh’, the place of knowledge:

Christ! I’m ready now
ready to get lost in the evangel of people’s bodies
accuracy of the flesh
kiss of truth
we cannot say what we are
we can only be to each other
touch each other with truth.

Having known deeply and quietly the goodness of the flesh
I cannot follow the safe self-crucified men who say ‘God alone’.

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

Daily Reading for August 30

Pelagius, born in the latter half of the fourth century, was a Celtic Briton. Tradition has it that he was the son of a Welsh bard, which would help to explain his breadth of learning. He was a big, enthusiastic man; even his physical appearance became subject to adverse comment. Augustine’s friend Orosius describes him as a huge, proud Goliath, over-confident in his own strength, and even criticizes Pelagius’ hair-style, which may well have been an early example of the Celtic monastic style modeled on the pre-Christian Druidic tonsure (long but shaved around the sides and back), as opposed to the traditional Roman cut (shaved at the crown of the head). This same issue was to draw attention a few centuries later, at the Synod of Whitby, and of course was much more than a mere disagreement about hair-style. It signaled an unease about the Celtic mission’s readiness to incorporate aspects of the thought and symbolism of the nature mysticism and religious practice that preceded Christianity in Celtic Britain.

The early writings of Pelagius contain themes that would develop into some of the main characteristics of the Celtic tradition over the following centuries. Pelagius even makes reference, for example, to the practice of finding an anamchara or ‘soul friend’, a well-known feature of the spiritual discipline within the Celtic Church in later centuries. Typically, he focuses less on looking to the organized Church for spiritual counsel than on finding in life a ‘friend of the soul’, one to whom the inner self can be opened, ‘hiding nothing’, as Pelagius says, ‘revealing everything’ in order to know and further explore what is in one’s own heart.

From Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality by J. Philip Newell (Paulist Press, 1997).

Daily Reading for August 31 • Aiden, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 651

The most typical mark of the spirituality of the Celtic tradition apparent in Pelagius’ writings is his strong sense of the goodness of creation, in which the life of God can be glimpsed. Everywhere, he says, ‘narrow shafts of divine light pierce the veil that separates heaven from earth’. Because Pelagius saw God as present within all that has life, he understood Jesus’ command to love our neighbour as ourself to mean loving not only our human neighbour but all the life forms that surround us. ‘So when our love is directed towards an animal or even a tree,’ he wrote, ‘we are participating in the fullness of God’s love.’

Much of Pelagius’ teaching can be seen to stem from the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament. He saw Christ as the fulfillment of that tradition, as the perfect exemplar of wisdom and humility. Again, his Celtic emphasis was not so much on religious belief and the doctrines of the Church as on living a life of wisdom; by that he meant such things as loving all people, friends and enemies alike, and doing good in return for evil.

From Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality by J. Philip Newell (Paulist Press, 1997).