Daily Reading for October 1 • Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, c. 530

Hedge up my way with thorns,
that I find not the path for following vanity.
Hold thou me in with bit and bridle,
lest I fall from thee.
O Lord, compel me to come in to thee.

Two things have I required of thee, O Lord,
deny thou me not before I die;
remove far from me vanity and lies;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
feed me with food convenient for me;
lest I be full and deny thee and say, who is the Lord?
Or lest I be poor and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain.
Let me learn to abound, let me learn to suffer need,
in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.
For nothing earthly, temporal, mortal, to long nor to wait.
Grant me a happy life, in piety, gravity, purity,
in all things good and fair,
in cheerfulness, in health, in credit,
in competency, in safety, in gentle estate, in quiet;
a happy death,
a deathless happiness.

May thy strong hand, O Lord, be ever my defense;
thy mercy in Christ, my salvation;
thy all-veritable word, my instructor;
the grace of thy life-bringing Spirit, my consolation
all along, and at last.

A Prayer for Grace by Lancelot Andrewes, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for October 2

The Holy Ghost is a Dove, and he makes Christ’s Spouse, the church, a Dove, a term so oft iterate in the Canticles, and so much stood on by Saint Augustine and the Fathers, as they make no question. No Dove, no church.

And what shall we say then to them that will be Christians, and yet have nothing in them of the church, nothing in them of the dove; what shall we say? You may see what they are, they even seek and do all that in them lies to chase away this Dove, the Holy Ghost. The Dove, they tell us, that was for the baby-Church, for them to be humble and meek, suffer and mourn like a dove. Now, as if with Montanus they had yet “another Holy Ghost” to look for, in another shape, of another fashion quite, with other qualities, they hold these be no qualities for Christians now. Were indeed, they grant, for the baby-Christians, for the “three thousand” first Christians, this day; poor men, they did all in simplicitate cordis. And so too in Pliny’s time: harmless people they were; the Christians, as he writes, did nobody hurt. And so to Tertullian’s, who tells plainly what hurt they could have done, and yet would do none. And so all along the primitive churches, even down to Gregory, who in any wise would have no hand in any man’s blood. But the date of these meek and patient Christians is worn out, long since expired; and now we must have Christians of a new edition, of another, a new-fashioned Holy Ghost’s making.

For do they not begin to tell us in good earnest that they are simple men that think Christians were to continue so still; they were to be so but for a time, till their beaks and talons were grown, till their strength was come to them, and then this dove here might take her wings, fly whither she would; then a new Holy Ghost to come down upon them that would not take it as the other did, but take arms, depose, deprive, blow up; instead of an olive branch, have a match-light in her beak or a bloody knife.

Methinks, if this world go on, it will grow a question problematic, in what shape it was most convenient for the Holy Ghost to have come down? Whether as he did, in the meek shape of a dove? or whether, it had not been much better he had come in some other shape, in the shape of the Roman eagle, or of some other fierce fowl de vulturino genere?

But lying men may change—may, and do; but the Holy Ghost is unus idemque Spiritus, saith the Apostle, changes not, casts not his bill, moults not his feathers. His qualities at the first do last still, and still shall last to the end, and no other notes of a true Christian, but they.

From “Sermon VIII of the Sending of the Holy Ghost” by Lancelot Andrewes, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, compiled by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2001).

Daily Reading for October 3

St. Francis, regrettably, has become the captive of a thousand causes, among them the spirituality of escape. The popular domesticated reading of St. Francis, enshrined in backyard statuary and best-selling guides to the spiritual life, reflects the very schizoid spirituality that many North Americans take for granted. Francis is read by Christians and other seekers as the champion of an escapist nature mysticism: someone who can teach us by example how to move beyond the crowded ways of postmodern, computerized existence in order to experience transforming encounters with the beauties and the wonders of the natural world, encounters akin to those that seem to be articulated by Francis’s enormously popular “The Canticle of the Creatures.” Conversely, among devout Christians, Francis is sometimes read as the champion of spiritual interiority: as one who turns away from this world to seek solace within, exemplified, above all, by the mountaintop story of his spiritual and physical experience of being touched by the cross of Jesus, the stigmata.

These popular readings of Francis have had, as a matter of course, the effect of reinforcing today’s schizoid spirituality of escape and consumerism and have, in turn, provided spiritual support to those very forces that are working to destroy the earth and to abandon the poor, both loved so profoundly by Francis himself. To learn from Francis, therefore, we must divest ourselves of our own assumptions about him, such as they may be, and encounter him in his historical otherness.

From “The Spirituality of Nature and the Poor: Revisiting the Historic Vision of St. Francis” by H. Paul Santmire, Ph.D., 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 October 4 • Francis of Assisi, 1226

Francis broke radically with his wealthy class and its lifestyle in 1206, when, standing publicly before his own bishop, with his father looking on unhappily, he threw off his garments, the signs of his wealth and social standing, and revealed himself to be wearing a hair shirt, the sign of a new commitment to poverty on his part. He then threw off that shirt, too. Thus he began his new spiritual vocation—naked, with no possessions whatsoever. For some time he lived as a hermit, supporting himself by begging and reaching out, on occasion, to the poorest of the poor, even to lepers. In 1208 Francis heard Jesus calling him, as the Savior had called the first apostles, to take to the highways and byways to witness to the kingdom of God, all without any possessions of his own.

In his new apostolic ministry, Francis immersed himself in the emergent urban culture of his time, a setting that the spirituality of the then-declining feudal monasteries was generally ill equipped to influence. In this sense, Francis was an urban minister, first and foremost, not a spiritual recluse or a nature mystic. His mission was not to retreat to a solitary life in the wilderness, a still viable spiritual option in his time. Nor was it to retreat to a protected monastery, where he might have imagined himself to be living anew in Paradise, surrounded by a hostile world, awaiting the coming kingdom of God, also a spiritual option that many in the Christian West had been choosing for centuries. No, Francis’s spiritual retreat was in fact an advance into the rising urban culture of his time. His solitary life was in fact a commitment to seek out the lonely and the godforsaken, who were flocking to the cities. Even more comprehensively, the monastery where he awaited the coming of God’s kingdom was in fact the whole world, not just its cities. Francis had become a latter-day apostle who believed that he had been sent by Jesus to preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15).

From “The Spirituality of Nature and the Poor: Revisiting the Historic Vision of St. Francis” by H. Paul Santmire, Ph.D., 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 October 5

Francis led a life of exceedingly great joy and a life of constant praise of God, a life of blessedness in the midst of the fecund goodness of God’s creation, celebrated most forthrightly by his “Canticle of the Creatures.” As a citizen of the peaceable kingdom, transported there by his vision and his prayers, Francis could thereafter call every human, however different or distant, and each of the creatures of nature, however alien to human sensibilities, his brother or his sister. He could be a troubadour of a higher order, constantly rejoicing with friends and foes alike, and with birds and oxen and even wolves and worms. The mandate of Christ had claimed Francis’s soul profoundly: to preach the Gospel to every creature. This he made remarkable efforts to do, in deed most often and in word whenever necessary. And, notwithstanding all the challenges he experienced and all the pains that were thrust upon him, he found joy in the nearness of God to him in every creature, in his encounters with lepers no less than in his songs of praise with the birds of the air.

Francis found peace and joy in his vocation not by getting away from it all, but by getting into it all. His was a vision and a way of life that is open to all of us by the grace of God, even to the most affluent among us who choose to claim his vision and follow his way, to engage ourselves with this world as if it were the world of the kingdom to come.

From “The Spirituality of Nature and the Poor: Revisiting the Historic Vision of St. Francis” by H. Paul Santmire, Ph.D., 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 October 6 • William Tyndale, 1536

Prayer is a mourning, a longing, and a desire of the spirit to God-ward, for that which she lacketh; as a sick man mourneth and sorroweth in his heart, longing for health. Faith ever prayeth. For after that by faith we are reconciled to God, and have received mercy and forgiveness of God, the spirit longeth and thirsteth for strength to do the will of God, and that God may be honoured, his name hallowed, and his pleasure and will fulfilled. The spirit waiteth and watcheth on the will of God, and ever hath her own fragility and weakness before her eyes; and when she seeth temptation and peril draw nigh, she turneth to God, and to the testament that God hath made to all that believe and trust in Christ’s blood; and desireth God for his mercy and truth, and for the love he hath to Christ, that he will fulfil his promise, and that he will succour, and help, and give us strength, and that he will sanctify his name in us, and fulfil his godly will in us, and that he will not look on our sin and iniquity, but on his mercy, on his truth, and on the love that he oweth to his Son Christ; and for his sake to keep us from temptation, that we be not overcome; and that he deliver us from evil, and whatsoever moveth us contrary to his godly will.

Moreover, of his own experience he feeleth other men’s need, and no less commendeth to God the infirmities of other than his own, knowing that there is no strength, no help, no succour, but of God only. And as merciful as he feeleth God in his heart to himself-ward, so merciful is he to other; and as greatly as he feeleth his own misery, so great compassion hath he on other. His neighbour is no less care to him than himself: he feeleth his neighbour’s grief no less than his own.

From “The Parable of the Wicked Mammon” by William Tyndale, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, compiled by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2001).

Daily Reading for October 7 • The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

I love
the recklessness of faith.
First you leap,
and then you grow wings.

From Credo by William Sloane Coffin (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).

Daily Reading for October 8

When Jesus says, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” I listen. Even during my doubting days in college I listened, and carefully, because Jesus not only knew more about God than I did—that was obvious—he also knew more about the world. He could talk convincingly to me about a father in heaven because he took seriously the earth’s homeless orphans. He could talk to me convincingly about living at peace in the hands of love because he knew that the world lived constantly at war in the grip of hatred. He could talk to me of light, and joy, and exultation, because I knew that he himself knew darkness, sorrow, and death.

From Credo by William Sloane Coffin (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).

Daily Reading for October 9 • Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 1253

Robert Grosseteste was a convinced expositor of the ‘light metaphysic’, regarding light both as the first metaphysical constituent of bodies and as the genetic power of all being. Divine and intellectual light, which to us are no more than analogical applications of the physical term, were to him different manifestations of the same entity. There was for him, therefore, no gulf, no partition between metaphysics and physics such as existed for his thoroughgoing Aristotelian contemporaries, and sciences such as mathematics, geometry, optics and astronomy were an essential part of the philosopher’s equipment. It was only a stage from this, easily traversed under the guidance of Aristotle, to take interest in the subject-matter and methods of science for their own sake, and in order to enlarge and perfect positive knowledge of all kinds. This stage was rapidly attained by Roger Bacon and other pupils and they rightly claimed Grosseteste as their standard-bearer.

He gave them two principles of permanent value: the use of mathematics as a means of description, not (as they were to Plato) as revealing physical or metaphysical cause of things; and the use of observation and experiment controlled by logical methods of analysis and verification. The characteristics of his teaching were: a close attention to the study of the Bible, read textually and critically, as the basis of theology; the study of languages, especially Greek; an interest in securing faithful translations of all ancient works as a necessary part of a scholar’s equipment; and, above all, an attention to mathematics and kindred sciences.

Grosseteste, like the other eminent scholastics of his age, lacked the qualities and tastes of a humanist. His treatises and private letters are wholly without beauty of form and language. Indeed, the element of charm and the impress of personality are almost entirely absent from his correspondence; it is not easy to instance any other man, equally and as justly celebrated for his mental and moral qualities, of whom such a judgement can be made. To us, there is a massive quality about his learning that borders on the ponderous, and an aridity that hides from us the appeal of his holiness. Yet to acute contemporaries, to Adam Marsh, Roger Bacon and Geoffrey of Fontaines, he is the great master, the most learned man of his day.

From The Evolution of Medieval Thought by David Knowles (Vintage Books, 1962).

Daily Reading for October 10

You bishops, gather the faithful with much patience, and with doctrine and exhortation, as ministers of the kingdom everlasting. Hold your assemblies with all decent order, and appoint the places for the brethren with care and gravity.

And for the presbyters let there be assigned a place in the eastern part of the house; and let the bishop’s throne be set in their midst, and let the presbyters sit with him.

But of the deacons let one stand always by the oblations of the Eucharist; and let another stand without by the door and observe them that come in; and afterwards, when you offer, let them minister together in the church.

And if any one be found sitting out of his place, let the deacon who is within reprove him and make him rise up and sit in a place that is meet for him. And let the deacon also see that no one whispers, or falls asleep, or laughs, or makes signs.

For so it should be, that with decency and decorum they watch in the church, with ears attentive to the word of the Lord. But if, while young men or women sit, an older man or woman should rise and give up their place, do thou, O deacon, scan those who sit, and see which man or woman of them is younger than the rest, and make them stand up, and cause him to sit who had risen and given up his place; and him whom thou hast caused to stand up, lead away and make him to stand behind his neighbours: that others also may be trained and learn to give place to those more honourable than themselves.

But if a poor man or woman should come, especially if they are stricken in years, and there be no place for such, do thou, O bishop, with all thy heart provide a place for them, even if thou have to set upon the ground; that thou be not as one who respects the persons of men, but that thy ministry may be acceptable with God.

From the Didascalia Apostolorum, quoted in Deacons and the Church: Making Connections between Old and New by John N. Collins. Copyright © 2002. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 11 • Philip, Deacon and Evangelist

Deacons have constantly been inspired by the story of the seven Greek men who were presented to the apostles who, in turn, ‘prayed and laid their hands on them’ (Acts 6:6). Tradition has seen in these men, and in particular the most famous of them, Stephen, the forerunners and prototype of the church’s deacons. Ancient authority and nineteenth-century scholarship give to the idea of an original seven deacons the look and feel of authenticity. And yet Lightfoot himself was aware that the idea of deacons so early in the church’s life—and in this passage in particular—had been ‘much disputed’. A prominent contemporary voice here would be that of James Monroe Barnett, a long-standing champion of the diaconate, who closes his pages on the subject with the plain statement, ‘we must conclude that the Seven were not deacons’. This too has been the view which my own study of Acts 6 has demanded. . . .

Luke does not use a diakon- word again until Acts 6:1, where he refers to ‘the daily ministry/diakonia’ (which we have already met in the phrase of the modern translation, ‘daily distribution [of food]’). Then, in the same part of the story, the Twelve rededicate themselves to their original commission of ‘the ministry/diakonia of the word’ (6:4). Luke then closes the scene of the Seven with the tell-tale phrase, ‘the word of God continued to spread’ (6:7).

With these touches Luke keeps us in mind of his major theme as he moves into the great preaching event in the brief career of Stephen, one of the Seven (7:2-53). With Stephen’s death immediately following, the theme of the progress of the Word re-emerges in the account of another member of the Seven, Philip, engaging in a mission to Samaria; Samaria is the first station outside Jerusalem and Judea according to the stages of the Lord’s programme outlined by Luke (1:8). This mission leaves Philip poised at Caesarea, the port leading to Rome (8:4-14, 26-40), which is Luke’s ultimate objective in the trajectory of the Word. . . .

What does this make of the Seven? It makes of the Seven a new group of preachers, directed at first to the needs of the Hellenists—note how happily the story ends at 6:7: ‘the word of God continued to spread; the number of disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem. . . ’ —and then, after the death of Stephen in Jerusalem, to the wide worlds beyond, as begun in Philip’s mission (8:5). Indeed the only other time we hear of Philip he is called simply ‘the evangelist, one of the seven’ (21:8).

From Deacons and the Church: Making Connections between Old and New by John N. Collins. Copyright © 2002. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 12

The range and variety of intermediary functions of the deacon have been emphasized in recent studies of diakonia. Ormonde Plater, for example, notes that in the liturgy the deacon “embodies two symbols, servant and angel” and recalls from the New Testament the image of the four living creatures guarding the altar of heavenly liturgy, as seen in Revelation 4. Thus the deacon, Plater tells us, is not only a liturgical table waiter but a liturgical angel—a guard and messenger, one who manages and conducts transactions with the outside.

In one of the earliest patristic references to deacons, Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to the Philadelphians, indicates that one of the deacon’s functions is to serve as a messenger outside the liturgy, traveling between the churches of distant cities:

News has reached me that the church at Antioch in Syria is at peace. Consequently, it would be a nice thing for you, as a church of God, to elect a deacon to go there on a mission, as God’s representative, and at a formal service to congratulate them and glorify the Name. (Philadelphians 10)

Bishop Richard Grein has recently generalized the go-between status of the deacon in this way:

I like to think of deacons as people on the boundary, that is, on the boundary where the church and the world interface. On this boundary they sometimes face the world to speak the message of the Gospel. Other times they face the church to speak on behalf of the world. In this their task is to keep the boundary open to exchanges between church and world.

The media of those exchanges are matter/energy (for example, bread and wine) and information (money, words, pictures). Whenever the church is in transaction with the world, there is diakonia and there should be its deacons.

From “Serving Intermediary” by Frederick Erickson, in Diaconal Ministry: Past, Present and Future, edited by Peyton Craighill (North American Association for the Diaconate, 1994).

Daily Reading for October 13

You know that God is everywhere, which is a great truth; wherever God dwells there is heaven, and you may feel sure that all which is glorious is near His Majesty.

Remember what St Augustine tells us—I think it comes form his Meditations; how he sought God in many places and at last found the Almighty within himself. Do you consider it of slight importance for a soul given to wandering thoughts to realize this truth and to see that it has no need to go to heaven in order to speak to the eternal Father or to enjoy his company? Nor is it requisite to raise the voice to address him, for he hears every whisper, however low.

Teresa of Avila, quoted in The Joy of the Saints: Spiritual Readings throughout the Year, edited by Robert Llewelyn (Templegate, 1988).

Daily Reading for October 14 • The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

The soul that truly loves God loves all good, seeks all good, protects all good, praises all good, joins itself to good people, helps and defends them, and embraces all the virtues: it only loves what is true and worth loving.

Do you think it possible that one who truly loves God cares, or can care, for vanities, or riches, or worldly things, or pleasures or honours? Neither can such a soul quarrel or feel envy, for it aims at nothing save pleasing the Beloved. It dies with longing for his love and gives its life in striving how to please him better.

Teresa of Avila, quoted in The Joy of the Saints: Spiritual Readings throughout the Year, edited by Robert Llewelyn (Templegate, 1988).

Daily Reading for October 15 • Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila taught us to pay attention to the potential of our humanity and to the process of growing into the fulfillment of our baptismal promises. Openness to God’s spirit at work in our lives can lead to the transformation of our desires. Eventually, our desires become less and less fragmented and we desire more and more what God desires. Assuming that God desires the well-being of humanity, a person transformed by him then lives in a way that furthers the actualization of that desire of God. Our desires become consonant with God’s. Yet this intensification of personal encounters with God is not a matter of smooth, always ascending biographies. On the contrary, breaks, leaps, bounds, detours, and crises necessarily form a part of this concept of growth and are often the needed impetus toward the next step in the maturation process. “In spiritual growth nothing can be forced. Periods of growth occur, as well as creative incubation periods—containing regressive arrests and progressive spurts of growth.”

The guide on this way of growth, as in all concepts of Christian spirituality, is God, or rather the Holy Spirit. Thus spiritual growth can be more precisely characterized as growth guided by God’s good Spirit. It is growth toward freedom and maturity, particularly freedom from various kinds of dependency and slavery. And it is growth that is progressive, a process beginning with the purgative way, continuing with the illuminative way, leading towards the fulfillment in the unitive way. It is like a science of psychological health. Holiness is true wholeness of the human incarnate spirit.

From “Freedom to Souls: Spiritual Accompaniment According to the Carmelite Tradition” by Michael Plattig, O. Carm., 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 October 16 • Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, 1555, 1556

If you will build a glorious church unto God, see first yourselves to be in charity with your neighbours, and suffer not them to be offended by your works. Then, when ye come into your parish-church, you bring with you the holy temple of God; as Saint Paul saith, ‘You yourselves be the very holy temples of God:’ and Christ saith by his prophet, ‘In you will I rest, and intend to make my mansion and abiding place.’

O heavenly Father, the author and fountain of all truth, the bottomless sea of all understanding, send, we beseech thee, thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, and lighten our understandings with the beams of thy heavenly grace. We ask this, O merciful Father, for thy dear Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

From The Second Sermon on the Card by Hugh Latimer and a prayer by Nicholas Ridley, both quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 17 • Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch and Martyr, c. 115

I am writing letters to all the churches, to assure them that I am dying for God of my own free will--that is, if you don’t interfere. Please, please don’t make a misguided attempt to do me a kindness. Let me be fodder for the wild beasts--that’s how I can come to God. I am God’s wheat, and the teeth of the beasts are grinding me to flour, to be made into a pure loaf for Christ. Please encourage the animals to become my tomb; don’t let them leave any scraps of my body behind. That way, when I have fallen asleep I shall be a nuisance to nobody. Then I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world can no longer see my body. Pray to Christ for me, that in this way I may become a sacrifice to God.

From the Letter to the Romans of Ignatius of Antioch, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 18 • Saint Luke the Evangelist

Our tradition has always been that the author of the third gospel and Acts is “Luke, the beloved physician.” This title comes, however, from a letter written by one of Paul’s disciples to the Colossians (Col. 4:14). The tradition is appropriate and—though we can never prove it—it may even be true. As we do, our forebears could see that the third gospel has more emphasis upon Jesus’ ministry of healing than Matthew, Mark, or John. Luke’s healing stories stand out, then and now. In our time, however, we can see even more evidence for the tradition. Luke uniquely distinguishes among “caring,” “curing,” and “healing” with his Greek vocabulary. Much of this language occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, but does have parallels in the medical journals and records of the first century.

For Luke, the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth is healing for the world. For Luke, the power of God’s Holy Spirit and the incarnation of God in Jesus is healing for the world. For Luke, the power of evil in the world is overcome by the power of God’s Spirit in the person of Jesus and in the life and work of the faithful. This is true, he says, before and after the resurrection. This is true, Luke claims, from the moment of Gabriel’s good news for Zechariah until this very day. The healing embrace the writer of Luke–Acts offers describes a creation that is healed when God and creation love each other in return.

From One to Watch, One to Pray: Introducing the Gospels by Minka Shura Sprague. A Seabury Classic from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for October 19 • Henry Martyn, Priest, and Missionary to India and Persia, 1812

O send thy light and thy truth, that we may live always near to thee, our God. Let us feel thy love, that we may be as it were already in heaven, that we may do all our work as the angels do theirs. Let us be ready for every work, be ready to go out or come in, to stay or to depart, just as thou shalt appoint. Lord, let us have no will of our own, or consider our true happiness as depending in the slightest degree on anything that can befall us outwardly, but as consisting altogether in conformity to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A prayer of Henry Martyn (1781-1812), quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 20

We have never run or knowingly patronized sweat shops, or underpaid workers; the struggle between organized labor and company unions is wholly out of our picture. Indeed, we have really no direct contact with these great abuses and injustices which wise men are denouncing. We live within the capitalistic order, to be sure; and we are being taught not to approve of it; yet we can not run away. We could not escape the profit system for that matter, even if we wove cloth for our own garments on Gandhi’s spinning wheels. There are always a few interesting idealists who are trying to run away but they are very partially successful. We can not escape; we do not feel responsible for the system; we agree with our spiritual guides that it is a very bad system. Then they tell us that “we” must change it, and we inevitably ask them, “how?” No answer comes. . . .

The responsibility for social intercession is not satisfied by vague aspiration, “Thy Kingdom Come.” That petition, to be sure, covers all our desires; but if we pray specifically for the recovery to health of a beloved friend, for example, we should be equally specific in our prayers for the health of the body politic. Now we can not be specific unless we have some conviction and some intelligence. There is a type of purely formal prayer; not wholly, useless, we hope. But most Christian people have some little experience at least of another kind of prayer, the prayer of power. That kind of a prayer must be enlightened; it must be lit at the torch of knowledge. The chief reason why all Christian people should be making themselves intelligent about the great issues of the day, is that they may learn to pray with fervor and to use the prayer of power.

To cultivate social imagination; to study; to pray; here even if no practical activity is possible to us, are outlets for that need of action native to men, here is sure release from bewildered and unworthy private-mindedness. . . . But let us not suppose that what lies before us will be easy. To evolve that “new economic order” which the Churches desire, will mean heavy cost to every single man. Let us rejoice; for tests of heroism and of readiness for sacrifice await us. The fate of our whole Western civilization hangs today in the balance; and on the Church, that is, on the body of her children, this fate may well depend.

From “Social Problems Facing the Church” by Vida Dutton Scudder, 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 October 21 • The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Again, we pray and pray, and no answer comes. The boon does not arrive. Why? Perhaps we are not spiritually ready for it. It would not be a real blessing. But the persistence, the importunity of faith, is having a great effect on our spiritual nature. It ripens. A time comes when we are ready for an answer. We then present ourselves to God in a spiritual condition which reasonably causes him to yield. The new spiritual state is not the answer to our prayer, but it is its effect; and it is the condition which makes the answer possible. It makes the prayer effectual. The gift can be a blessing now. So God resists us no more. Importunity prevails, not as mere importunity (for God is not bored into answer), but as the importunity of God’s own elect, that is, as obedience, as a force of the kingdom, as increased spiritual power, as real moral action, bringing corresponding strength and fitness to receive. I have often found that what I sought most I did not get at the right time, not till it was too late, not till I had learned to do without it, till I had renounced it in principle (though not in desire). Perhaps it had lost some of its zest by the time it came, but it meant more as a gift and a trust. That was God’s right time—when I could have it as though I had it not. If it came, it came not to gratify me, but to glorify him and be a means of serving him.

From The Soul of Prayer by P. T. Forsyth, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Meditations, compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for October 22

Perseverance is not merely the crown and stamp of perfection, it must accompany every step in the growth of every grace; just as the texture of the tree must be woven firm in every stage of its growth, so perseverance has to watch over the growth of each virtue day by day; every day in which it fails, the graces which are under its care begin to droop and lose their bloom.

Thus perseverance is not only a virtue in itself, but it is one without whose constant presence and assistance no other virtue can develop on step in its growth. If charity, then, be the soil into which all must spread their roots, perseverance is the cohesive force that gives form and consistency to all over whose development it presides. And thus temptation will often leave all the graces that the soul is trying to form unassailed, and attack the one grace of perseverance; for it knows well that if it can destroy this, all else must fail with it. We often meet with people with very high aspirations and the beginnings of many graces and with great possibilities, but nothing in them matures, nothing attains its full bloom, for they are lacking in the one grace which is the guardian and protector of all—they have no perseverance.

From Some Principles and Practices of the Spiritual Life (1899) by B. W. Maturin, quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Meditations, compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for October 23 • St. James of Jerusalem, Brother of our Lord Jesus Christ and Martyr, c. 62

It is quite easy to found a community. There are always plenty of courageous people who want to be heroes, are ready to sleep on the ground, to work hard hours each day, to live in dilapidated houses. It’s not hard to camp—anyone can rough it for a time. So the problem is not in getting the community started—there’s always enough energy for take-off. The problem comes when we are in orbit and going round and round the same circuit. The problem is in living with brothers and sisters whom we have not chosen but who have been given to us, and in working ever more truthfully towards the goals of the community.

A community which is just an explosion of heroism is not a true community. True community implies a way of living and seeing reality; it implies above all fidelity in the daily round. And this is made up of simple things—getting meals, using and washing the dishes and using them again, going to meetings—as well as gifts, joy and celebration.

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that human greatness is to accept our insignificance, our human condition and our earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of humanity is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.

From Community and Growth by Jean Vanier (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979).

Daily Reading for October 24

Holy Wisdom in your power
Hold us fast in every hour.

Enclose us in your threefold wings
Spreading to embrace all things.

One pierces heaven’s heights above,
Another touches earth with love.

The other moves with tender care
In mystery through the cosmic air.

Holy Wisdom in your power
Enlighten us in every hour.

A prayer of Hildegard of Bingen, quoted in Invincible Spirits: A Thousand Years of Women’s Spiritual Writings, compiled by Felicity Leng (Eerdmans, 2006).

Daily Reading for October 25

May the Lord be my friend,
Who once on earth endured on the gallows-tree
Suffered here for the sins of men.
He has redeemed us, he has given us life
And a home in Heaven. Hope was renewed
With bliss and blessing for those who had been through burning.
The Son was successful in that expedition,
Mighty in victory, when with a mass,
A great crowd of souls came to God’s kingdom.
The Almighty Ruler, to joy among the angels
And all the saints, who in heaven already
Lived in glory. Then the Lord,
Almighty God, came home to his own land.

From “The Dream of the Rood” (c. 780), attributed to Cynewulf, a poet in Northumbria. Quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 26 • Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, 899

We pray to you, O Lord, who are the supreme Truth, and all truth is from you. We beseech you, O Lord, who are the highest Wisdom, and all the wise depend on you for their wisdom. You are the supreme Joy, and all who are happy owe it to you. You are the highest Good, and all goodness comes from you. You are the Light of minds, and all receive their understanding from you. We love you—indeed we love you above all things. We seek you, follow you, and are prepared to serve you. We desire to dwell under your power, for you are the King of all. Amen.

A prayer of Alfred the Great, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 27

Lord God almighty,
I pray you for your great mercy,
and by the token of the holy rood,
guide me to your will, to my soul’s need,
better than I can myself;
and shield me against my foes,
seen and unseen;
and teach me to do your will,
that I may love you inwardly before all things
with a clean mind and a clean body.
For you are my maker and redeemer,
my help, my comfort, my trust and my hope.
Praise and glory be to you now,
ever and ever, world without end. Amen.

A prayer of Alfred the Great, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 28 • The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Identity, vocation, and mission for Christians are not three separate realities, but are mutually dependent. Christian identity is realized through Christian mission. Mission defines and fulfills identity. Vocation, a word derived form the Latin verb vocare, “to call,” is the calling every Christian has both to be with God and to carry out God’s mission. We can see all this as a theological expression of the relationship between being and doing, living and working. One’s being is only partly separable from one’s doing, for just as our doing is grounded in our being, our being is realized through our doing. Our doing expresses who we are, but we also discover who we are through our doing. Just that intimate is the relationship between Christian identity and Christian mission. As the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner is reputed to have said, “The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.”

From Horizons of Mission by Titus Presler, Volume 11 of the New Church’s Teaching Series (Cowley Publications, 2001).

Daily Reading for October 29 • James Hannington and his Companions, Martyrs, 1885

The Church Missionary Society had had for some years a station at Mombasa, on the coast, but when the discoverer Stanley, who had visited Uganda, told the story at home of his intercourse with King Mtesa and with his people there, they at once resolved to send a mission to Lake Victoria Nyanza and its neighbourhood. In 1876 the first band went forth, but in the course of a year and a half four out of the eight had fallen in Africa, and two men were obliged to return home. . . . The news reached England—it reached the Sussex village, and it stirred the heart of the young minister there. Why should not he go forth and fill the place of those who had fallen? He had had thoughts of missionary work before, but there were home claims—he was a husband and father—and the way was not clear.

Now, however, he deemed the call from God had come, and he offered himself to the Society to go out for a time without finally giving up his church at Hurst. He was accepted, and leaving his quiet parsonage and peaceful home, the brave soldier of Jesus Christ went forth to hardship and exile for His dear sake. He sailed with five other missionaries for the east coast of Africa, in May, 1882, and in the following month they left Zanzibar for the interior, whither they were bound. . . . It was not such an easy life as he had known before, as regards outward comfort, but when the love of Christ is in the heart we can do without being easy and comfortable. . . .

What were the Bishop's thoughts on this, his last journey? He has told us himself. After speaking of his difficulties and trials, he adds, “Yet I feel in capital spirits, and feel sure of results, though perhaps they may not come in the way that we expect. In the midst of the storm I can say—

‘Peace, perfect peace, the future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.’

The party arrived safely at the north-east corner of the lake, and a few days from here would have taken them to Uganda, where welcome would have awaited them. For the work had been prospering, other helpers had joined Mr. Wilson, and more than a hundred natives had been baptized into the Christian faith. But there was a new danger of which the Bishop was unaware. Mtesa had died some time before. He had been very uncertain in his behaviour to the Christians, though he had professed himself one; his son Muangu was much the same, and just now he had been alarmed about German invasion and annexation in this part of Africa. So when he heard of a party of Europeans entering his dominions by the north side, a thing never done before, he put the two things together, and sent to forbid them.

The Bishop meanwhile had gone forward with about fifty men, leaving Mr. Jones with the rest. The messengers of King Muangu met them, and arrested them, saying it was the “back door” into their country, and they must not proceed. They were kept in confinement eight days, and then, alas! were killed, the men being speared and the Bishop shot with his own rifle. Four men only escaped, and fled back to Mr. Jones with the terrible news; then the sad remains of the party retraced their steps back to the coast.

It was a sad ending (as it seems to us) to a brave and noble Christian life. But God's ways are not as our ways. He makes no mistake, and there is no such thing as failure in His purposes. Already the death of the good Bishop has fired anew the missionary spirit, so that even in the few weeks after the news came fifty-three young men offered themselves to the Church Missionary Society for the mission field. Let us pray that many more may do the same.

From the introduction to Peril and Adventure in Central Africa: Being Illustrated Letters to the Youngsters at Home by the late Bishop James Hannington (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1886).

Daily Reading for October 30

Mistakes that Christian missionaries from the Global North made in their work in the Global South have become so well known that caution and suspicion are the first reactions many people have to the mention of world mission. Many missionaries have dismissed the primal religions of Africa and Polynesia and have demonized such world religions as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Some have presented the gospel through their own ethnic and cultural identity, depicting Jesus, for instance, as a blonde European. Missionaries have sometimes not bothered to learn the language of the people to whom they were sent, insisting that their hosts should learn English or French or German. Some missionaries have disparaged and dismissed indigenous cultures as lacking worthwhile values and have sought to substitute western norms. In their evangelistic zeal, they have ignored human needs, and some have lived a lifestyle far removed from that of the people they seek to serve. The style and content of development projects have sometimes been misconceived and poorly implemented.

It is very important that Christians in the Global North absorb this history and avoid naïve optimism about mission, both historically and for the future. It is equally important that we not be paralyzed by this history. Not only is Christianity now a global religion, but Christians in many recently evangelized societies have vital and growing autonomous churches, and they have their own affirmations and critiques of the western missionary enterprise. These indigenous Christians describe the mistakes that western missionaries made much more acutely and eloquently than we can, for they experience them from the inside. Often they also celebrate how missionaries preached the gospel, established churches, and founded institutions of education and healthcare that continue to be crucial in the indigenous churches’ witness in newly independent nations. Assessments of those on the receiving end, in other words, tend to be more balanced between shortcomings and gifts, while our own soul-searching is often more uniformly negative about the past and pessimistic about the future. If we are serious about learning from our partners, we need to listen to their perspective on the missionary legacy.

From Horizons of Mission by Titus Presler, Volume 11 of the New Church’s Teaching Series (Cowley Publications, 2001).

Daily Reading for October 31

Three weeks after Celusim’ne’s death her mother turned up at our nutrition office. She placed before me two bulging baskets of large, ripe Haitian grapefruits. She had walked six hours from Bouly in the hot sun just to offer me this gift. I was overwhelmed, speechless under the generous donation of such wealth out of such dire poverty. “But . . . we failed,” I wanted to say. “We didn’t save her.”

But then I saw the gift for what it was: her act of resurrection in the face of death. This was her work of hopeful solidarity. More pointedly, for me her gift was a sacrament of understanding and perception; through it I began to learn how it is that Christian solidarity can and should move from failure to serious hope, from hiddenness to revelation, and through death toward life.

Herein lies a central principle of Christian solidarity often neglected in certain ecclesiastical circles that issue amorphous calls to “social justice.” Far too often we see but do not perceive. We must learn that it is not we, Christians of the developed world, who bear the right to define the contours of our companionship with the poor and the suffering. Rather, it is the poor and the suffering themselves who bear that right. It is they whose knowledge of death and marginalization is terribly intimate, and thus it is often they who can point us the way forward through destitution and toward practical resurrection. Our task, then, is as much one of listening to and understanding suffering as it is a responsible and determined work toward its alleviation.

From “Solidarity with the Suffering” by Justin Mutter, in The Scripture of Their Lives: Stories of Mission Companions Today, edited by Jane Butterfield. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com