Daily Reading for February 1 • Brigid (Bride), 523
Father,
by the leadership of your blessed servant Brigid
you strengthened the Church in this land:
As we give you thanks for her life of devoted service,
inspire us with new life and light,
and give us perseverance to serve you all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect Two for Saint Brigid, in The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2004).
Daily Reading for February 2 • The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple
Hope and fear, laughter and tears have been part of our journey.
Joy and pain, longing and doubt meet on the pathway.
Often we do not believe, O God,
and sometimes we doubt that your promises can be true.
Grant us and our world the freedom to laugh,
the courage to cry,
the heart to be open,
and the faith to believe.
From Celtic Treasure: Daily Scriptures and Prayer by J. Philip Newell (Eerdmans, 2005).
Daily Reading for February 3 • The Last Sunday After the Epiphany
Consider one of the central symbols of the Bible: the exodus from Egypt. It recurs again and again in both the Old and New Testaments. At first the symbol may work on us by inviting us to explore in prayer the implications of the historic event itself. The event reveals God as the One who takes up the cause of the defenseless, the exiled and oppressed. God does not soothe the oppressed with promises of heaven, but wants their freedom in this life. In our meditation on the Exodus event we find ourselves challenged: do we really look to God as liberator? Do we hear God saying today to those who hold their fellow human beings in various kinds of political, social and economic bondage, “Let my people go”? Where do we stand with regard to the oppression perpetrated by the powerful of our own day?
The symbol may then have another effect on us. It is used in the New Testament to interpret redemption, the liberation which Christ achieved through the cross. Luke represents Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration speaking of “the exodus which [Jesus] was to accomplish at Jerusalem.” In meditation on the theme of redemption we find our hearts searched and tested. What do we believe Christ has done for us? What was the slavery we were powerless to escape from? What did Christ do to set us free? Do we in reality look to him as our liberator and rescuer? As we explore for ourselves what it is we have been emancipated from, what kind of promised land is now ours to enter, our meditation begins to turn into praise of Christ.
From The Word is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying with Scripture by Martin L. Smith (Cowley Publications, 1989).
Daily Reading for February 4 • Cornelius the Centurion
If a boundary defines, then moving or removing that boundary means redefinition. Something new is being identified and named. The work of changing a boundary—or moving ourselves across a threshold—demands attention and a willingness to listen to the voices around us. . . .
Any decision to include or exclude either creates a different system altogether or modifies the existing one. Indeed, revolution itself might be defined as the setting of a new boundary. Responsible shifting of boundaries requires our asking a number of questions: Where is the boundary? Who or what determined it in the first place? Is this line of God, or was it set by powers acting contrary to God’s will? Does there need to be a line drawn where there was none before? How do we know? The answers we make to these questions can help us discover when and where boundaries need to be maintained, shifted, or abolished altogether, especially concerning those areas of human life in which there is considerable disagreement. Answers do not come easily. They will emerge only after intense work in personal and communal discernment—prayer, wrestling with God’s word in scripture, honest exchange.
From Good Fences: The Boundaries of Hospitality by Caroline Westerhoff (Cowley Publications, 1999).
Daily Reading for February 5 • The Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Shrove Tuesday calls us to think about sin in preparation for the season of repentance, yet the tradition of revelry associated with Mardi Gras militates against deadly seriousness. Can we let ourselves into the subject of sin a little lightly?
Ogden Nash has a delightful poem called “Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man” that explores comically the classic distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission. He warns us not to bother our heads about the first kind, “because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be committing them.” It is through the sins of omission that we get bitten. These are the things that “lay eggs under our skin.” What we do wrong is often less harmful than our failure to do good. Our wrongdoing is so often powered by an energy that can be converted to good. The secret of sin does not lie in our energetic but misdirected action; it lies in our inertia and forgetfulness, in our inner deadness, denial, and boredom. The secret of hell lies in our not loving, in our not risking, in our withholding. Evil is our paralysis in the face of love’s invitation, our great refusal.
From “What Shall We Do For Lent?” in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation by Martin L. Smith (Cowley Publications, 1995).
Daily Reading for February 6 • Ash Wednesday
Lent is not a temporary affectation of gloom or a brisk interlude for self-improvement. It is for being in the wilderness, which means stopping long enough to recognize the truth of our inertia and faithlessness. This deadness inside is a fact. On Ash Wednesday we are called first to face this fact—but then what? What shall we do?
This may seem strange, but this year every time I have asked myself the question “What shall I do for Lent?” I have immediately thought of a brief exchange that occurs in a droll Russian novel by Goncharov. The hero, Oblomov, is asked what he does. The question astonishes and offends him. “What? What do I do? why, I am in love with Olga!” To him, the question about what he does is a question about his identity. He is a man in love, and that is who he understands himself to be.
The question that should be put to us all at the beginning of Lent is not “What shall we do?” The right question is the one to which the answer is, “Why, I am in love with God!” What begins to enliven our inertia is remembering and realizing that we are in love with God. True repentance, true change of heart, consists in grasping the fact that we are called to be in love with God, and that the love with which we love God is something already given to us. Repentance is coming alive to our given identity as lovers of God.
So, what shall we do for Lent? We shall act on our identity as women and men who are in love with God. We shall do whatever helps us remember and realize that identity and do what arises from it.
From “What Shall We Do For Lent?” in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation by Martin L. Smith (Cowley Publications, 1995).
Daily Reading for February 7
If prayer is something important to us, then much more of our time will be directed to trying to bring about possible conditions for prayer than to actually doing it. I have several times compared the act of prayer with the act of writing, and here once again the comparison holds true. As a writer I seem to devote an awful lot of effort and time to clearing a space in which to write. I means turning down invitations to things like coffee mornings and conferences. It means trying to persuade my friends not to telephone me in the mornings. It means finding someone to do the housework that I can’t get done.
It means, on a more seductive level, refusing jobs, and friendships, and good works, and hobbies, that simply would not leave enough time and energy over.
Prayer seems to me to work in much the same way. We want the space in which to deepen our awareness of ourselves and of God by one method or another; but, much as we want it, we can still be tempted into activities which exhaust us and leave us as unsatisfied as ever. These may not necessarily be what people used to call ‘frivolous’ activities—frivolity can often feed us in unexpected ways. In fact for many Christians now it often seems to be the sheer weight of earnest and worthy duties which makes self-discovery no more than a wistful hope.
Perhaps if, collectively, we had a bit more spiritual insight, we should know that there are occasions in people’s lives when a kind of moratorium on works, even good works, is what is needed most, and that this is as much a proof of their love for mankind as feeding the hungry.
From Christian Uncertainties by Monica Furlong (Cowley Publications, 1982).
Daily Reading for February 8
The perennial question, centuries old and ever new, harries us: What is the spiritual life? How do we develop it? Is it real? Is it possible? Is it even desirable? Isn’t earth about earth and heaven time enough for heaven? The questions plague us in the deepest parts of ourselves, to the blackest recesses of our souls. “We live most of our life,” Wendy Miller wrote, “oblivious to our true identity as persons created and provided for by God.” The starkness of the statement catapults us into another dimension of religion entirely. To know our true identity—to really know down deep where we came from, to whom we belong, out of whose life we live—is to know that the God who made us is with us still. God is the eternal memory, the inseparable presence, the unending energy that beats within us yet, inchoate but clear. . . .
Once we empty ourselves of our certainties, we open ourselves to the mystery. We expose ourselves to the God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” We bare ourselves to the possibility that God is seeking us in places and people and things we thought were outside the pale of the God of our spiritual childhood. Then life changes color, changes tone, changes purpose. We begin to live more fully, not just in touch with earth, but with the eternal sound of the universe as well.
From Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir by Joan D. Chittister, OSB (Sheed & Ward, 2004).
Daily Reading for February 9
When the season of Lent is at hand, it is observed in the following manner. Now whereas with us the forty days preceding Easter are observed, here they observe the eight weeks before Easter. This is the reason why they observe eight weeks: On Sundays and Saturdays they do not fast, except on the one Saturday which is the vigil of Easter, when it is necessary to fast. Except on that day, there is absolutely no fasting here on Saturdays at any time during the year. And so, when eight Sundays and seven Saturdays have been deducted from the eight weeks—for it is necessary, as I have just said, to fast on one Saturday—there remain forty-one days which are spent in fasting, which are called here “eortae,” that is to say, Lent.
This is a summary of the fasting practices here during Lent. There are some who, having eaten on Sunday after the dismissal, that is, at the fifth or sixth hour, do not eat again for the whole week until Saturday, following the dismissal from the Anastasis. These are the ones who observe the full week’s fast. Having eaten once in the morning on Saturday, they do not eat again in the evening, but only on the following day, on Sunday, that is, do they eat after the dismissal from the church at the fifth hour or later. Afterwards, they do not eat again until the following Saturday, as I have already said. Such is their fate during the Lenten season that they take no leavened bread (for this cannot be eaten at all), no olive oil, nothing which comes from trees, but only water and a little flour soup. And this is what is done throughout Lent.
From the Travels of Egeria, Abbess, and Pilgrim to Jerusalem [late fourth century]. From Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church, edited by J. Robert Wright. Copyright © 1991. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 10 • The First Sunday in Lent
There are so many difficulties in life that we seem to be engaged in a daily battle just to keep from going under. We struggle to keep on top of our job, maintain our household, take care of our children, cope with bad health, homework, and money problems. None of us is without difficulties, sometimes overwhelming ones. We are often advised to turn to religion for help, and in fact the phrase “Christ is the Answer” has even appeared on a bumper-sticker.
But genuine religion begins by revealing to us that Christ is the answer, not in the sense of lifting all our troubles from us, but in directing us to the place where the right battles are to be fought. He reveals to us where we should be struggling. He does not magically remove us from all strife, but shows us which specific struggles will lead us into a haven.
The situation then is not that there are those with troubles and those without them, but that there are those caught in a whirlpool, going around and around, and those making for shore. Christ is the answer in showing us the direction to take, the place where we are to struggle, if we are to find a way that leads to the kingdom of his Father.
We discover what we ought to struggle with by looking at what he struggled with. He did not calmly inform us of the gateway, but he himself labored and pioneered his way through the place we are to follow. All three synoptic gospels tell us that Jesus was tempted; and all three portray the temptation scene as a gateway through which he passed. Before he began his life’s work of healing and teaching, he had to pass through temptation. Mark only records the fact; Luke and Matthew give the details so as to reveal which specific conflicts or temptations form the gateway. They tell us that there were three specific temptations, concerned with how he should direct his life in order to create a path to lead people into the kingdom.
From Temptation by Diogenes Allen. A Seabury Classic from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 11
Temptation does not usually come when we are ready for it. It does not come when we are strongest, when we are at our best. It comes when we are weak. It came to Jesus when he was hungry, very hungry. . . . When he had grown weak, when he was not physically strong, when it became hard to see straight and clearly in the dazzling sun of that sun-drenched land, it was then that temptation came.
Jesus was exposed to terrible hunger, his body giving him no rest. Perhaps he was looking at the smooth round stones that lay at his feet. They looked something like the smooth loaves just out of a baker’s oven, and then it struck him, “Turn these stones into bread.”
It was a temptation to use his powers to bring comfort to his body, to use his unique relationship to God as a magic wand to care for his earthly needs. That was a personal temptation he faced: to avoid the pains of a bodily life. More broadly, it was to avoid being subject to one of the common human conditions we face. It was a temptation to reject a condition set by God, namely, that we are to seek him as beings who must eat, who are vulnerable to starvation, as beings who are made to desire material goods and who can therefore become greedy, covetous, envious. To use his powers to provide food in a miraculous way when he was in trouble would have been to reject a condition his Father sets for us. He could hardly have pioneered a new way for us to the Father if he rejected one of the conditions to which we are subject in our pilgrimage.
But it was also for him a temptation that concerned the welfare of others. He could have made his mission to the world an attempt to satisfy people’s bodily needs. He could have tried to see to it that everyone had food, clothing, and shelter; to see that everyone’s sensuous needs and desires were fully satisfied.
His Father faced that decision when he made the universe; he could have protected us from all shortages, from being vulnerable to starvation. But clearly we are vulnerable and we are not fully protected. Whatever the reason for this situation, it is where we are. The decision the Father made at creation, to allow this, was now faced by Jesus. He had to ratify or to reject his Father’s decision by deciding what his mission was to be—bread or obedience to his Father’s will.
That was for him a temptation, a terrible temptation. For are not we all, as he was, frequently moved by compassion at the suffering of people, their terrible suffering? All people are not being fed. At the same time do not we all know that people do not live by bread alone? None of us is hungry. . . . We consume and consume and consume, and we learn the hard way—if we learn at all—that we cannot be satisfied this way. We need it; it is good; yet it does not fill us. We find here that we are tempted into evil, not by something that is evil, but by something that is good.
From Temptation by Diogenes Allen. A Seabury Classic from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 12
So we are faced each day with the terrible temptation, the powerful pull of two forces: our need and enjoyment of goods that are of this world, and our need for the good that is not. We need both. For we cannot live by bread alone; we do not live without it either. How can we face that temptation?
Jesus faced it by quoting the Old Testament: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” We shall live by listening to all that God tells us. So attend to that craving in yourself that only God’s words can fill. The danger is that we shall not notice or we shall forget that the world cannot satisfy us. We overlook that craving that goods do not satisfy. That emptiness is only one desire among a multitude of desires, and so it may easily be thought to be insignificant.
But do you remember the experience of thinking that if only I had—a what? Whatever it was, you fill it in. And remember when you got it? How wonderful it was? Remember how after a while it didn’t matter so much and you wanted other things? Such experiences are of vital importance. They tell us about our restless heart, our craving. For we are tempted to forget the one thing that points us to God: our restlessness with all that the world has to offer. Only he can fill that void.
We must, in other words, forsake the world. This is what we must renounce before we can enter the gateway of a new reality and receive. To forsake is not to hate the world, or to reject it. It is not to turn from material goods—food, drink, clothing—and become an ascetic; for as Jesus said, “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” It is instead to recognize that all this world’s goods are not able to satisfy us.
From Temptation by Diogenes Allen. A Seabury Classic from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 13 • Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818
I thought I would stop in Philadelphia a week or two. I preached at different places in the city. My labour was much blessed. I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people and few of them attended public worship. I preached in the commons, in Southwark, Northern Liberties, and wherever I could find an opening. I frequently preached twice a day, at 5 o’clock in the morning and in the evening, and it was not uncommon for me to preach from four to five times a day. I established prayer meetings; I raised a society in 1786 of forty-two members. I saw the necessity of erecting a place of worship for the coloured people. I proposed it to the most respectable people of colour in this city; but here I met with opposition. I had but three coloured brethren that united with me in erecting a place of worship--the Rev. Absalom Jones, William White, and Dorus Ginnings. These united with me as soon as it became public and known by the elder who was stationed in the city. . . .
We felt ourselves much cramped; but my dear Lord was with us, and we believed, if it was his will, the work would go on, and that we would be able to succeed in building the house of the Lord. We established prayer meetings and meetings of exhortation, and the Lord blessed our endeavours, and many souls were awakened; but the elder soon forbid us holding any such meetings; but we viewed the forlorn state of our coloured brethren, and that they were destitute of a place of worship. They were considered as a nuisance.
A number of us usually attended St. George’s Church in Fourth Street; and when the coloured people began to get numerous in attending the church, they moved us from the seats we usually sat on, and placed us around the wall, and on Sabbath morning we went to church and the sexton stood at the door, and told us to go in the gallery. He told us to go, and we would see where to sit. We expected to take the seats over the ones we formerly occupied below, not knowing any better. We took those seats. Meeting had begun, and they were nearly done singing, and just as we got to the seats, the elder said, “let us pray.” We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees, H-- M--, having hold of the Rev. Absalom Jones, pulling him up off of his knees, and saying, “You must get up--you must not kneel here.” Mr. Jones replied, “wait until prayer is over.” Mr. H-- M-- said “no, you must get up now, or I will call for aid and I force you away.” Mr. Jones said, “wait until prayer is over, and I will get up and trouble you no more.” With that he beckoned to one of the other trustees, Mr. L-- S-- to come to his assistance. He came, and went to William White to pull him up. By this time prayer was over, and we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church. This raised a great excitement and inquiry among the citizens, in so much that I believe they were ashamed of their conduct. But my dear Lord was with us, and we were filled with fresh vigour to get a house erected to worship God in. . . .
We then hired a store room, and held worship by ourselves. Here we were pursued with threats of being disowned, and read publicly out of meeting if we did continue worship in the place we had hired; but we believed the Lord would be our friend. We got subscription papers out to raise money to build the house of the Lord. By this time we had waited on Dr. Rush and Mr. Robert Ralston, and told them of our distressing situation. We considered it a blessing that the Lord had put it into our hearts to wait upon those gentlemen. They pitied our situation, and subscribed largely towards the church, and were very friendly towards us, and advised us how to go on. We appointed Mr. Ralston our treasurer. Dr. Rush did much for us in public by his influence. I hope the name of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Mr. Robert Ralston will never be forgotten among us. They were the two first gentlemen who espoused the cause of the oppressed, and aided us in building the house of the Lord for the poor Africans to worship in. Here was the beginning and rise of the first African church in America.
From The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (Martin & Boden, Printers, 1833). http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/allen/allen.html
Daily Reading for February 14 • Cyril and Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869, 885
When the time came for him to set out from this world to the peace of his heavenly homeland, [Cyril] prayed to God with his hands outstretched and his eyes filled with tears: “O Lord, my God, you have created the choirs of angels and spiritual powers; you have stretched forth the heavens and established the earth, creating all that exists from nothing. You hear those who obey your will and keep your commands in holy fear. Hear my prayer and protect your faithful people, for you have established me as their unsuitable and unworthy servant.
“Keep them free from harm and the worldly cunning of those who blaspheme you. Build up your church and gather all into unity. Make your people known for the unity and profession of their faith. Inspire the hearts of your people with your word and your teaching. You called us to preach the Gospel of your Christ and to encourage them to lives and works pleasing to you.
“I now return to you, your people, your gift to me. Direct them with your powerful right hand, and protect them under the shadow of your wings. May all praise and glorify your name, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Once he had exchanged the gift of peace with everyone, he said: “Blessed be God, who did not hand us over to our invisible enemy, but freed us from his snare and delivered us from perdition.” He then fell asleep in the Lord at the age of forty-two.
From an Old Slavonic Life of Cyril, Monk, and missionary to the Slavs in the ninth century, quoted in They Still Speak: Readings for the Lesser Feasts, edited by J. Robert Wright. Copyright © 1993. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 15 • Thomas Bray, Priest and Missionary, 1730
But since, I am not over sanguine to hope for any publick Funds for the PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, either in this, or the other Colonies: And my great hopes are from the pious Clergy themselves, and such particular Persons amongst the devout Laity, whose Hearts are inflamed with a Love of God, and of those Souls which he has purchased with his own Blood: I shall rather turn my self to you, my most Reverend Fathers, and other Noble Patrons of Religion, giving you a general Estimate of the number of Missionaries, which we hope to be supplied withal from your Paternal Care, and Pious Assistance: . . . .And the necessity that there should be both so many, and those singularly well qualify’d for the purpose, I am next to shew you. . . . The Persons which alone can do good there, as I conceive, must,
In the First place, be of such nice Morals, as to abstain from all Appearance of Evil;. . . It is the worst Fault of the Plantations, that they give their Tongues too much liberty that way, especially if they can find the least Flaw.
Secondly, They must be Men of good Prudence, and an exact Conduct, or otherwise, they will unavoidably fall into Contempt, with a People so well vers’d in Business, as every the meanest Planter seems to be.
Thirdly, They ought to be well experienced in the Pastoral Care, having a greater Variety, both of Sects and Humours, to deal with in those Parts, than are at home; and therefore it would be well, if we could be provided with such as have been Curates here for some time.
Fourthly, More especially they ought to be of a true Missionary Spirit, having an ardent Zeal for God’s Glory, and the Salvation of Mens Souls.
Fifthly, Of a very active Spirit, and consequently, not so grown into Years, as to be uncapable of Labour and Fatigue, no more than very Young, upon which account they will be more liable to be despised.
And, lastly, They ought to be good, substantial, well-studied Divines, very ready in the Holy Scriptures, able with sound Judgment to explicate and prove the great Doctrines of Christianity, to state the Nature and Extent of the Christian Duties, and with the most moving Considerations to enforce their Practice, and to defend the Truth against all its Adversaries: To which purpose, it will be therefore absolutely requisite to prove each of them with a Library of necessary Books, to be fix’d in those places to which they shall be sent, for the Use of them, and their Successors for ever: This to be a perpetual Encouragement to good and able Divines, always to go over, and to render them useful when they are there.
From A Memorial Representing the Present State of Religion, on the Continent of North-America by Thomas Bray, D. D. http://anglicanhistory.org/england/tbray/memorial1701.html
Daily Reading for February 16
Openness is not gentility in the social arena. It is not polite listening to people with whom we inherently disagree. It is not political or civil or “nice.” It is not even simple hospitality. It is the munificent abandonment of the mind to new ideas, to new possibilities. Without an essential posture of openness, contemplation is not possible. God comes in every voice, behind every face, in every memory, deep in every struggle. To close off any of them is to close off the possibility of becoming new again ourselves.
From Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light by Joan Chittister (Orbis Books, 2000).
Daily Reading for February 17 • The Second Sunday in Lent
How was it possible, I thought, that a change could be great enough to strip away in a single moment the innate hardness of our nature? How could the habits acquired over the course of many years disappear, since these are so deeply rooted within us? If someone is used to fine feasts and lavish banquets, how can they learn restraint? If someone is used to dressing conspicuously in gold and purple, how can they cast them aside for ordinary simple clothes? Someone who loves the trappings of public office cannot become an anonymous private person. While temptation still holds us fast, we are seduced by wine, inflated with pride, inflamed by anger, troubled by greed, goaded by cruelty, enticed by ambition and cast headlong by lust. . .
But after the life-giving water of baptism came to my rescue and washed away the stain of my former years and poured into my cleansed and purified heart the light which comes from above, and after I had drunk in the Heavenly Spirit and was made a new man by a second birth, then amazingly what I had previously doubted became clear to me. What had been hidden was revealed. What had been dark became light. What previously had seemed impossible now seemed possible. What was in me of the guilty flesh now confessed it was earthly. What was made alive in me by the Holy Spirit was now quickened by God.
From the treatise To Donatus by Cyprian of Carthage, quoted in Spiritual Classics from the Early Church by Robert Atwell (National Society/Church House Publishing, 1995).
Daily Reading for February 18 • Martin Luther, 1546
One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ, as Christ says, John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”. . . Let us then consider it certain and firmly established that the soul can do without anything except the Word of God and that where the Word of God is missing there is no help at all for the soul. If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks nothing, since it is the Word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and of every incalculable blessing. . . .
You may ask, “What then is the Word of God, and how shall it be used, since there are so many words of God?” I answer: The Apostle explains this in Romans 1. The Word is the gospel of God concerning his Son, who was made flesh, suffered, rose from the dead, and was glorified through the Spirit who sanctifies. To preach Christ means to feed the soul, make it righteous, set it free, and save it, provided it believes the preaching. Faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the Word of God.
From “The Freedom of a Christian” by Martin Luther, in Martin Luther, Three Treatises, second revised edition (Fortress Press, 1970).
Daily Reading for February 19
When Jesus came to Jordan’s stream his Father’s will obeying,
and was baptized by John, there came a voice from heaven saying,
“This is my dear beloved Son upon whom rests my favor,”
And till God’s will is fully done he will not bend or waver,
for he is Christ the Savior.
The Holy Spirit then was shown, a dove on him descending;
the Triune God is thus made known in Christ as love unending.
He taught, he healed, he raised the dead, yet in his great endeavor
to save us, his own blood was shed; but death could hold him never.
He rose, and lives for ever.
He came by water and by blood to heal our lost condition;
he cleanses, reconciles to God, and gives the Great Commission.
Then let us not heed worldly lies nor rest upon our merit,
but trust in Christ who will baptize with water and the Spirit
that we may life inherit.
Hymn text by Martin Luther (1483-1546), paraphrased by F. Bland Tucker. Hymn 139 in The Hymnal 1982. Copyright © 1985. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Daily Reading for February 20
What are we assuming when we ask to know God’s will? Are we imagining a God who, like a master planner, has a five-year, ten-year, or lifetime plan mapped out for us and leaves it up to us to figure out what it is? Are our discernments basically concerned with “getting it right,” with making the choice that down the road we will be able clearly to see was “correct” because everything came out in the end in a neatly wrapped, manageable package?
I prefer to rephrase the question and thus to reframe the reference somewhat. I ask instead, “What is God’s longing for our lives?” Such reframing will situate us in the arms of a God who desires the fulfillment of creation, who longs for justice, mercy, and love to dwell among the creatures and the created world fashioned in the divine image and likeness. We are unique, unrepeatable, loving responses to the divine desire. There is a particularity to our reciprocal desiring. But the path of love that I walk is neither predetermined nor clear-cut. It is forged in the process of walking day by day, listening deeply to the silence brooding beneath the noisy instructions issuing from without and within our own hearts. God’s will is not a puzzle to be solved but a mystery to be lived into. It is a mystery whose contours emerge as we journey on.
One of the pieces of our Lenten journey is cultivating the art of discernment, listening for the voice of God in the wilderness of our hearts, trying to sense the divine will. Discernment is part of our ongoing conversion, our ongoing struggle with the holy mystery and creative chaos that we encounter as we turn toward the rising beacon of the light of Christ.
From The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost by Wendy M. Wright (Upper Room Books, 1994).
Daily Reading for February 21
The patient process of untangling the threads of voices, of settling down to the center was the lifelong work of the desert. It is our work as well. Like the desert ascetics, we must learn the art of inner listening. . . . Lent is a time for tuning our ears, for listening carefully, for discerning the texture and quality of our own demons, for attending to God's unceasing, creative plea amidst the noise of cultural pressures, the busyness of life, and our own self-limiting habits. Some of our Lenten discernments may be fairly straightforward. We may have become inattentive in our eating or drinking and need to give our oversatiated bodies a holiday. We may need to cultivate a more rhythmic pattern of prayer or bring the scriptures into clearer focus in our everyday life. We may need to mend the pieces of a broken relationship. We may need to take some of the time we hoard so tightly for work and lavish it on our children or friends. We may be called to respond to the cry of the poor, to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless, or to visit the prisoner. All these can rightly be discerned as God's prompting to a freer life.
But the ongoing process of discernment, which I think is the more subtle invitation of the Lenten season, is not always so straightforward. It involves a radical and risky self-evaluation and a commitment to rethink and rework everything you know and are. God is always calling us out of ourselves, into a more generous freedom, so that we can love and serve ourselves and one another more authentically.
From The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost by Wendy M. Wright (Upper Room Books, 1994).
Daily Reading for February 22
A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us. He moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us. All variety, all complexity, all paradox, all multiplicity cease. Our mind swims in the air of an understanding, a reality that is dark and serene and includes in itself everything. Nothing more is desired . . . you feel as if you were at last fully born.
From Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton (Dell, 1949).
Daily Reading for February 23 • Polycarp, Bishop and Marytr of Smyrna, 156
Ignatius, who is also called God-bearer, to Polycarp, bishop of the church of the Smyrnaeans—rather, the one who has God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ as his bishop. Warmest greetings.
I welcome your godly way of thinking, which is fixed firmly as upon an unmoveable rock; and I exult all the more, having been found worthy of your blameless face. I hope to enjoy it in God! But I urge you by the gracious gift with which you are clothed, to forge ahead in your race and urge all to be saved. Vindicate your position with all fleshly and spiritual diligence. Consider unity, for nothing is better. Bear with all people, just as the Lord bears with you. Tolerate everyone in love, just as you are already doing. Be assiduous in constant prayers; ask for greater understanding than you have. Be alert, as one who has obtained a spirit that never slumbers. Speak to each one according to God’s own character. Bear the illnesses of all as a perfect athlete. Where there is more toil, there is great gain.
From “The Letter of Ignatius to Polycarp,” quoted in The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Daily Reading for February 24 • The Third Sunday in Lent
That Jesus’ revelation and the woman’s realization of him come through dialogue is an important feature to notice about the Gospel of John. Jesus does no sign here. There is no “miracle.” Rather he makes a claim and offers living water to this stranger. To understand it requires back and forth question and answer, partial understanding, correction, and deeper knowledge. Martha’s conversation with Jesus after the death of Lazarus is like this too. So are the Easter conversations of Mary and of Thomas. These dialogues in John’s gospel reflect a way individuals and peoples come to faith—through a process of effort and discussion. Those who converse with Jesus put Jesus’ claims into relationships with their own traditions and beliefs: I know he will be raised on the last day. I know that the Messiah will come. I am the resurrection and the life. I am he, the one who is speaking to you.
From Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, in the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars Study Series. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
Daily Reading for February 25 • St. Matthias the Apostle
All we know is that his name was Matthias and that for some reason he was chosen to replace the traitor Judas in the circle of Jesus’ apostles. . . . I have a feeling that Matthias turns up many times in our lives. He is the person who just failed to get into the photograph; either he was not there when it was taken or he stood behind someone taller or bigger. Matthias is the new neighbor we have glimpsed only once; is he worth getting to know? Or is he the person we have met only briefly, and yet when he walks out of our lives forever we are intrigued and haunted?
Matthias turns up many times in the lives of parish churches, especially in the very large ones, the kind we call corporate parishes these days. These are the people that you never really get to know beyond the shake of the hand at coffee hour, the exchange of smiles. At first she may volunteer her name, but somehow it never settles in your mind and she remains anonymous in her quiet, faithful way. Months, even years, go by until something happens or something is said that makes you realize that there is within this person a very great soul. Perhaps it turns out that the whole congregation comes to realize that hidden within its life is someone whose courage or faithfulness or generosity puts others to shame. I call someone like that my Matthias.
From For All the Saints: Homilies for Saints’ and Holy Days by Herbert O’Driscoll (Cowley Publications, 1995).
Daily Reading for February 26
Two old men had lived together for many years and they had never fought with one another. The first said to the other, “Let us also have a fight like other men.” The other replied, “I do not know how to fight.” The first said to him, “Look, I will put a brick between us and I will say: it is mine; and you will reply: no, it is mine; and so the fight will begin.” So they put a brick between them and the first said, “This brick is mine,” and the other said, “No, it is mine.” And the first replied, “If it is yours, take it and go.” So they gave it up without being able to find a cause for an argument.
From The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers, edited by Benedicta Ward (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988).
Daily Reading for February 27 • George Herbert, Priest, 1633
Herbert had a particular fondness for the imagery of bees and herbs. Bees represent productive lives not least when Herbert expresses his deep desire to serve God usefully (‘Employment I’) or when he laments his spiritual weakness (‘Praise I’). Bees also become an image of the natural wisdom that all creatures have that enables God’s providence to express itself effectively in the world’s workings.
Bees work for man; and yet they never bruise
Their master’s flower, but leave it, having done,
As fair as ever, and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.
(‘Providence’)
Heaven may be compared to a hive to which our lives are drawn like laden bees.
Surely thou wilt joy, by gaining me
To fly home like a laden bee
Unto that hive of beams
And garland-streams.
(‘The Star’)
For all that Herbert relishes natural imagery and offers a positive view of the created order, his vision is not merely romantic or a form of nature mysticism. Creation is the second book of revelation precisely because it draws us to the deeper truth of God’s reality, loving presence and powerful action.
From Love Took My Hand: The Spirituality of George Herbert by Philip Sheldrake (Cowley Publications, 2000).
Daily Reading for February 28 • Anna Julia Heyward Cooper, Educator, 1964
Anna Julia Cooper, the widow of an Episcopal priest and a teacher at St. Augustine’s College in North Carolina, was an important supporter of [Alexander] Crummell’s efforts to foster racial uplift. Cooper, who was born in slavery, emphasized the value of education, religion, and proper conduct in assisting the rise of black women and men in the South. One of six delegates from the United States to the Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, Cooper was an active public speaker and writer. In an address to a convocation of black priests in 1886, she summoned the clergy to the task of saving their people from “the peculiar faults of worship” into which they fell when left on their own. She praised the Episcopal Church for the positive influence it had offered African Americans before the Civil War, but she was concerned that, following emancipation, white Episcopalians had been pathetically slow in recruiting and ordaining black priests. Although white southerners complained that African Americans were no longer interested in the Episcopal Church, they had created the problem themselves. Since most southern bishops advised black ministerial candidates to aspire only to deacon’s orders, they not only relegated black men to “a perpetual colored diaconate” but also tacitly encouraged them to seek full ordination in other denominations. African Americans in the Episcopal Church needed priests of their own race, Cooper said, for only black men could be fully trusted to “come in touch with our life and have a fellow feeling for our woes.”
From Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights by Gardiner H. Shattuck (The University Press of Kentucky, 2000).
Daily Reading for February 29
True progress is never made by spasms. Real progress is growth. It must begin in the seed. Then, “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” There is something to encourage and inspire us in the advancement of individuals since their emancipation from slavery. It at least proves that there is nothing irretrievably wrong in the shape of the black man’s skull, and that under given circumstances his development, downward or upward, will be similar to that of other average human beings.
But there is no time to be wasted in mere felicitation. That the Negro has his niche in the infinite purposes of the Eternal, no one who has studied the history of the last fifty years in America will deny. That much depends on his own right comprehension of his responsibility and rising to the demands of the hour, it will be good for him to see; and how best to use his present so that the structure of the future shall be stronger and higher and brighter and nobler and holier than that of the past, is a question to be decided each day by every one of us.
The race is just twenty-one years removed from the conception and experience of a chattel, just at the age of ruddy manhood. It is well enough to pause a moment for retrospection, introspection, and prospection. We look back, not to become inflated with conceit because of the depths from which we have arisen, but that we may learn wisdom from experience. We look within that we may gather together once more our forces, and, by improved and more practical methods, address ourselves to the tasks before us. We look forward with hope and trust that the same God whose guiding hand led our fathers through and out of the gall and bitterness of oppression, will still lead and direct their children, to the honor of His name, and for their ultimate salvation. . . .
Now the fundamental agency under God in the regeneration, the re-training of the race, as well as the ground work and starting point of its progress upward, must be the black woman. With all the wrongs and neglects of her past, with all the weakness, the debasement, the moral thralldom of her present, the black woman of to-day stands mute and wondering at the Herculean task devolving around her. But the cycles wait for her. No other hand can move the lever. She must be loosed from her bands and set to work. . . .
Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” Is it not evident then that as individual workers for this race we must address ourselves with no half-hearted zeal to this feature of our mission. The need is felt and must be recognized by all. There is a call for workers, for missionaries, for men and women with the double consecration of a fundamental love of humanity and a desire for its melioration through the Gospel; but superadded to this we demand an intelligent and sympathetic comprehension of the interests and special needs of the Negro.
From “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” by Anna Julia Cooper; read before the convocation of colored clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Washington, D. C., 1886 and published in A Voice from the South by Anna J. Cooper. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/cooper/cooper.html
