Daily Reading for June 1 • The Third Sunday after Pentecost

“I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers” (Matthew 7:23). The New Testament contains many descriptions of the last judgment like this one: Be on the right side, they all say, or at the end of time Jesus will not choose you. It will be like those terrible, unforgettable moments in elementary school then, when you were last to be chosen to be on a team. So that’s what it’ll be like, then: It’s a competition in the afterlife, just as it is here on the earth.

We were hoping for something different.

And I think what we have is something different. That the people writing the many different books and letters that comprise these earliest documents of our faith were preoccupied with the end of the world is clear. They thought it was imminent, a matter of months, a year or two at the most. . . . They wrote out of who they were. Who they were was competitive and afraid of being wrong, defensive of their territory and their ways, anxious about being overrun by other cultures. In short, they were rather like us. They imagined that God was probably like that, too: territorial, anxious, defensive. We imagine that, as well.

But God is very different from us. We don’t get very far at all in our project of imagining God. Mostly, we try to stay in touch: to be still and hear the voice of God, always aware that we tend to mistake other voices for his. I never knew you, a gatekeeper Jesus says at the end of time, in the imagination of a New Testament writer. But he does know us. Better than we know ourselves.

From Let Us Bless the Lord, Year One: Meditations on the Daily Office, Vol. 1, Advent through Holy Week by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 2 • The Martyrs of Lyons, 177

Prayer is the spiritual offering which has abolished the ancient sacrifices. . . . We learn from the gospel what God has asked for. ‘The hour will come,’ we are told, ‘when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and so this is the kind of worshipper he wants.’ We are the true worshippers and the true priests: praying in spirit, we make our sacrifice of prayer in spirit, an offering which is God’s own and acceptable to him. . . . What will God deny to a prayer which proceeds from spirit and truth, seeing it is he who demands it?

How great are the proofs of its efficacy which we read and hear and believe. . . . It has no special grace to avert the experience of suffering, but it arms with endurance those who do suffer, who grieve, who are pained. It makes grace multiply in power, so that faith may know what it obtains from the Lord, while it understands what for God’s name’s sake it is suffering. . . .

It was Christ’s wish for it to work no evil: he has conferred upon it all power concerning good. And so its only knowledge is how to call back the souls of the deceased from the very highway of death, to straighten the feeble, to heal the sick, to cleanse the devil-possessed, to open the bars of the prison, to loose the bands of the innocent. It also absolves sins, drives back temptations, quenches persecutions, strengthens the weak-hearted, delights the high-minded, brings home wayfarers, stills the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, rules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports the unstable, upholds them that stand.

From On Prayer by Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160-c. 220).

Daily Reading for June 3 • The Martyrs of Uganda

On Nov. 15 1885, Mukasa became the first Catholic martyr, when he was beheaded at Nakivubo. Between December of 1885 and May of 1886 many more converts were wantonly murdered. Mwanga precipitated a showdown in May by ordering the converts to choose between their new faith, and complete obedience to his orders. Those unwilling to renounce their new faith would be subject to death. Courageously, the neophytes chose their faith. The execution of twenty-six Christians at Namugongo on June 3, 1886 was the climax of the campaign against the converts. The last person killed in this crusade was Jean-Marie Muzeeyi, who was beheaded at Mengo on Jan 27, 1887. The list of forty-five known Catholic and Protestant martyrs includes only those who could be formally accounted for; many more murders went unreported and without a record.

In his efforts to curb the Christian influence and try to regain the traditional and customary powers and authorities over his subjects, Mwanga was adding more chaos to an already chaotic situation. In the north Kabarega (the king of Bunyoro Kitara, a traditional arch enemy of Buganda) was raging, . . . Further south it was reported that the Germans were annexing territories in the regions of the present Tanzania, and Mwanga was caught in a threatening position. His suspicion of the missionaries was therefore real. Buganda also was experiencing internal strife; the Moslems were plotting to overthrow him and replace him with a Moslem prince. The political upheavals combined with religious instability constrained the country’s moral stamina. The kingdom was thrown into turmoil; Moslems fighting Christians, traditionalists plotting against all creeds, untimely alliances concocted to survive against a common foe and later unceremoniously discarded. The kingdom broke into civil strife, during which Mwanga was briefly deposed, although he was able to regain his throne later.

Rather than deter the growth of Christianity, the martyrdom of these early believers seems to have sparked its growth instead. As has been observed in many other instances, the blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of faith. Christianity (in its various flavours) is now the dominant faith in Buganda and Uganda as a whole.

From “The Christian Martyrs of Uganda” at http://www.buganda.com/martyrs.htm.

Daily Reading for June 4

You alone are holy, Lord God, you do wonderful things.
You are strong. You are great. You are the Most High.
You are the almighty King, the holy Father, King of heaven and earth.
You are Trinity and Unity, O Lord God, all goodness.
You are good, all good, the supreme good,
Lord God, living and true.
You are charity and love. You are wisdom.
You are humility. You are patience.
You are serenity. You are peace.
You are joy and gladness. You are justice and self-restraint.
You are our wealth, our treasure, and our satisfaction.
You are beauty. You are mercy.
You are our protector. You are our guardian and defender.
You are strength. You are refreshment.
You are our hope. You are our trust.
You are our delight. You are eternal life,
Great and wondrous Lord,
Almighty God,
Merciful Saviour.

From St. Francis’s blessing of Brother Leo, 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 June 5 • Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, 754

To his friend in loving embrace, to his brother in the bonds of the Spirit, to Archbishop Egbert, invested with the insignia of the highest office, many greetings and unfailing love in Christ, from Bonifice, a lowly bishop, legate in Germany of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The gifts and books you have sent us have been received with a joyful and grateful heart. With hands upraised to heaven we beseech the Supreme Majesty to repay you with an ample reward amongst the angels in heaven. But now we beg Your Holiness with earnest prayer that in your kindness and affection you would deign to pray for us in our struggles and trials. The great burden that weighs upon us compels us to seek the help of good men, as it is written: “The earnest prayer of the just man availeth much.” The brevity of this letter, however, prevents us from telling you all the ills we suffer both within and without.

For the present, we beg you from the bottom of our hearts to comfort us in our sorrow, as you have done before, by sending us a spark from that light of the Church which the Holy Spirit has kindled in your land; in other words, be so kind as to send us some of the works which Bede, the inspired priest and student of Sacred Scripture, has composed—in particular, if it can be done, his book of homilies for the year (because it would be a very handy and useful manual for us in our preaching), and the Proverbs of Solomon. We hear that he has written commentaries on this book.

In the meantime, we are greatly in need of your advice and counsel. When I find a priest who in the past has fallen into sin and has been restored to his office by the Franks after due penance, and now lives in a district where there are no other priests and continues to administer Baptism and celebrate Mass for a population which, though Christian, is prone to error, what should I do? If I relieve him of his post, acting on the established canons, then owing to the scarcity of priests, children will die without the sacred water of rebirth until I can find some better man to replace him.

Judge therefore between me and the living people. Is it better, or at least a lesser evil, to allow such a man to perform his sacred functions at the altar, or to leave the bulk of the people to die as pagans, seeing that they have no way of securing a better minister? Where there is no lack of priests, and I find one who has fallen into that same sin and, after doing penance, has been reinstated in his former rank, so that the whole body of priests and people have confidence in his good character, should I remove him? If at this stage he were to be degraded his secret sin would be revealed, the people would be shocked, many souls would be lost through scandal, and there would be great hatred of priests and distrust of the ministers of the Church, so that they would all be despised as faithless and unbelieving.

For this reason we have boldly ventured to tolerate the man under discussion and allow him to remain in the sacred ministry, thinking the danger from the offence of one man a lesser evil than the loss of the souls of almost the entire people. On this whole subject I earnestly desire to have your holy advice in writing. Tell me how far I must exercise forbearance in order to avoid scandal, and how much I must repress.

Finally, we are sending you by the bearer of this letter two small casks of wine, asking you in token of our mutual affection to use it for a merry day with the brethren. We beg you so to treat our requests that your reward may shine forth in the heavens.

A letter from Boniface to Archbishop Egbert asking for the works of Bede, quoted in C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, Being the Lives of SS. Willibrord, Boniface, Leoba and Lebuin together with the Hodoepericon of St. Willibald and a selection from the correspondence of St. Boniface (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954).

Daily Reading for June 6

O Lord, bright as is the sun, and the sky, and the clouds; green as are the leaves and the fields; sweet as is the singing of the birds; we know that they are not all, and we will not take up with a part of the whole. They proceed from a centre of love and goodness, which is thee thyself; but they are not thy fullness; they speak of heaven, but they are not heaven; they are but as stray beams and dim reflections of thine image; they are but the crumbs from the table. Shine forth, O Lord, as when on thy Nativity thy angels visited the shepherds; let thy glory blossom forth as bloom and foliage on the trees.

A prayer of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), 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 June 7

A brother said to a hermit, “How does the fear of God come into the soul?” He said, “If there is humility and poverty, and no judgment of others, the fear of God will be present there.”

Some of the hermits used to say, “Whatever you hate for yourself, do not do it to someone else. If you hate being spoken evil of, do not speak evil of another. If you hate being slandered, do not slander another. If you hate him who tries to make you despised, or wrongs you, or takes away what is yours, or anything like that, do not do such things to others. To keep this is enough for salvation.”

A hermit said, “This is the life of a monk: work, obedience, meditation, not to judge others, not to speak evil, not to murmur. For it is written, ‘You who love God, hate the thing that is evil’ (Ps. 97:10). This is monastic life: not to live with the wicked, not to see evil, not to be inquisitive, not to be curious, not to listen to gossip, not to use the hands for taking but for giving, not to be proud in heart or bad in thought, not to fill the belly, in everything to judge wisely. That is the life of the true monk.”

From “The Monastic Wisdom of the Christian Desert: A Selection of Sayings” by Laurence Freeman, in Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another by Rowan Williams (New Seeds, 2005).

Daily Reading for June 8 • The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

One of the things that will become increasingly obvious when we study the apostles is that Jesus did not wait for people to be perfect in order to call them into the circle of God’s love. It is important theologically where you place perfection in the great saga of our experience. If perfection were something we had to have before God would accept and help us, then there would be no hope for any of us. The Baptist preacher Carlisle Marney always said that it is too late to worry about innocence. Eventually, all we have left is a guilty self and the need to know what to do with it. Perfection is not a prerequisite of divine interaction, but the goal toward which we strive. Although we cannot fully embody it in this life, it is that omega point by which we measure our progress.

Extreme perfectionism is one of the highest forms of self-abuse. It is a dangerous misconception held by many throughout the Christian church that we have to be perfect before God will have anything to do with us. Since we are all flawed, perfectionism leads to the unbecoming pretense of being better than others, in order to hide our human failings and feelings of inadequacy. Trying to hide who we really are separates us from an authentic relationship with God. I believe that a true understanding of the Christian vision holds that we are acceptable to our gracious and merciful Lord just as we are, with all our imperfections. As I look at these disciples Jesus chose, it is clear that there is hope for every one of us, for they were far from perfect.

From the Introduction to The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus by John R. Claypool, edited by Ann Wilkinson Claypool. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 9 • Columba, Abbot of Iona, 597

Delightful it would be
From a rock pinnacle to trace
Continually
The Ocean’s face:
That I might watch the heaving waves
Of noble force
To God the Father chant their staves
Of the earth’s course.

That I might mark its level strand,
To me no lone distress,
That I might hark the seas-bird’s wondrous band—
Sweet source of happiness.
That I might hear the clamorous billows thunder
On the rude beach.
That by my blessed church side might I ponder
Their mighty speech. . . .
That I might well observe of ebb and flood
All cycles therein;. . .
That I might bless the Lord who all things orders
For their good.

The countless hierarchies through heaven’s bright borders—
Land, strand and flood
That I might search all books and from their chart
Find my soul’s calm.
Now kneel before the Heaven of my heart,
Now chant a psalm;
Now meditate upon the king of heaven,
Chief of the Holy Three;
Now ply my work by no compulsion driven
What greater joy could be?

Now plucking dulse from rocky shore,
Now fishing eager on,
Now furnishing food unto famished poor;
In heritage anon:
The guidance of the king of kings
Has been vouchsafed to me;
If I keep watch beneath His wings,
No evil shall undo me.

From “St. Columba on Iona,” quoted in A Celtic Primer: The Complete Celtic Worship Resource and Collection, edited and compiled by Brendan O’Malley. Copyright © 2002. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 10 • Ephrem of Edessa, Deacon, 373

Glorious is the Wise One Who allied and joined
Divinity with humanity,
one from the height and the other from the depth.
He mingled the natures like pigments
and an image came into being: the God-man.

Glorious is the Compassionate One Who did not use
violence, and without force,
by wisdom He was victorious. He gave a type
to human beings that by power
and wisdom they might conquer discerningly.

Blessed is Your flock for You are her gate,
and You are her staff, and You are her Shepherd,
and You are her drink; You [are] her pilot
and You are her overseer. O to the Only-begotten
who was fruitful and multiplied in all [His] benefits.

The farmers who cultivated life
came and worshipped before Him. They prophesied to Him,
bursting into song, “Blessed is the Farmer
by Whom is worked the earth of the heart;
He gathers His grains of wheat into the storehouse of life.”

The children cried out, “Blessed [is] He Who was for us
a brother and companion in the streets.
Blessed is the day that with branches
glorified the Tree of Life
Who inclined His height toward our childishness.”

Women heard that behold a virgin indeed
would conceive and bring forth. Well-born women hoped
that He would shine forth from them, and elegant women
that He would appear from them. Blessed is Your height
that bent down and shone forth from the poor.

From “Nativity Hymn 8” by Ephrem the Syrian, translated by Kathleen McVey. Quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for June 11 • St. Barnabas, Apostle

Greetings, sons and daughters, in the name of the Lord who loved us, in peace. so great and abundant are the righteous acts of God toward you that I am exceedingly overjoyed, beyond measure, by our blessed and glorious spirits. For you have received such a measure of this grace planted within you, the spiritual gift! And so I share your joy all the more within myself, hoping to be saved; for truly I see that, in your midst, the Spirit has been poured out upon you from the abundance of the Lord’s fountain—so amazed have I been by the sight of your face, which I have so desired.

And so, since I have been persuaded about this and realize that I who have spoken to you know many things (since the Lord has traveled along with me in the path of righteousness), I have also felt fully compelled to love you more than my own soul. For a great faith and love dwell within you in the hope of his life. I have thus come to realize that I will be rewarded for serving spirits like yours, if I care for you enough to hand over a portion of what I have received. I have hastened, then, to send you a brief letter, that you may have perfect knowledge to accompany your faith.

There are three firm teachings of the Lord of life: hope, which is the beginning and end of our faith; righteousness, which is the beginning and end of judgment; and love, which is a testament to our joy and gladness in upright deeds. For through the prophets the Master has made known to us what has happened and what now is; and he has given us the first fruits of the taste of what is yet to be. And as we see that each and every thing has happened just as he indicated, we should make a more abundant and exalted offering in awe of him.

From “The Letter of Barnabas,” chapter 1, translated by Bart D. Ehrman, who notes: “The second- and third-century Christians who refer to the book attribute it to Barnabas, the companion of the apostle Paul. But this may have involved little more than guesswork on the part of Christians who were eager to have the book read and accepted as ‘apostolic.’ It was considered part of the New Testament Scriptures in some Christian communities down to the fourth century.” Quoted in The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Daily Reading for June 12 • Enmegahbowh, Priest and Missionary, 1902

The irony in Enmegahbowh’s name is evident in his life and ministry. Born Ojibwa, and reborn a Christian by baptism, he was a man of two peoples. To be “the man who stands by his people” meant, in his case, to be forever in the middle ground between two peoples. . . .Those in the middle really know the poverty of having no country of their own; to them God’s kingdom is offered as homeland. Those in the middle cannot rely upon either side to feed or nurture them; for them God will provide sustenance and the laughter that balances and buttresses the spirit against heartbreak. Those in the middle know what it is to be hated and mistrusted by both sides; their reward in this life is elusive, their reward in God’s realm guaranteed.

Enmegahbowh reveals that all Christians are called to the centrism we Episcopalians can only emphasize, but never monopolize. We are all of at least two peoples, and sometimes more. Standing by our own peoples of necessity puts us in the margins, in the spaces between. Thus we do not minister at the center so much as on the edge, in the hard places, where emotions are conflicted, opinions divided, and motives mixed.

But Enmagahbowh reveals also that this is the work of the true “Medicine Man,” that this is where and how healing comes to the peoples who, despite their pluralism, are all God’s people. In baptism we are made members of multiple peoples in order that we might be ministers to all peoples. In a world increasingly balkanized, tribalized, atomized, particularized, individualized, and personalized, we die to our singularity that we might rise to new life and new ministry as old as humankind and as urgent as ever—to be medicine to this fragmented, broken world.

From Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts by Sam Portaro (Cowley, 2001).

Daily Reading for June 13

Returning from the nursing home, I feel empty.
She who nurtured me no longer knows me.
Suddenly, I need to be taken care of.
The unkempt homeless man on the steps of the church invites me in.
“The food here is good,” he says.
Trained early not to talk to strangers, I think only, “Do I look poor or hungry?
Why should he call to me?” It’s his soup kitchen, and more his church than mine.
There is a noon Eucharist. How I’ve missed it.
Communion, and the taste of my mother’s kitchen. A meager celebration.
But the bread and wine feed my soul.
Outside, he calls to me again as I walk past.
“Did you get to eat? Did they feed you? Did you get what you needed?”
I glance back over my shoulder. He smiles.
“Yes,” my heart silently shouts.
He nods.

“Homeless Angel” by Julie Krause, in Women’s Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated edited by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Marjorie A. Burke, and Ann Smith. Copyright © 2000. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 14 • Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, 379

Community life offers more blessings than can be fully and easily enumerated. It is more advantageous than the solitary life both for preserving the goods bestowed on us by God and for warding off the external attacks of the Enemy. . . . Wherein will [the solitary] show his humility, if there is no one with whom he may compare and so confirm his own greater humility? Wherein will he give evidence of his compassion, if he has cut himself off from association with other persons? And how will he exercise himself in long-suffering, if no one contradicts his wishes? If anyone says that the teaching of the Holy Scripture is sufficient for the amendment of his or [her] ways, they resemble a person who learns carpentry without ever actually doing a carpenter’s work or a person who is instructed in metal-working but will not reduce theory to practice. . . .Consider, further, that the Lord by reason of His excessive love for humanity was not content with merely teaching the word, but, so as to transmit to us clearly and exactly the example of humility in the perfection of love, girded Himself and washed the feet of the disciples. Whom, therefore will you wash? To whom will you minister? . . . So it is an area for combat, a good path of progress, continual discipline, and a practicing of the Lord’s commandment, when Christians dwell together in community.

From “The Long Rules” by Basil the Great, translated by Sister M. Monica Wagner. Quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for June 15 • The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

One of the first things that Jesus did in his ministry was to reach out to twelve individuals and draw them into a circle of close companionship with him. . . . Jesus began his ministry alone, but it soon became a communal movement as he called followers to his side, not only because he sensed their potential in helping to build the kingdom of God but also because they were so curious about what he was doing. . . . It was to those who showed the greatest curiosity about what he was teaching that he gave the most of himself, saying, “To you has been give the secret of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11). One of my wisest seminary professors told his classes, “You need to distinguish between the people who really want to hear what you have to say and those who are not interested. It is important to remember that you cannot bless them all.” I think he was right on the point that the key to effective ministry is to answer readiness rather than to press reluctance. As we read Scripture, we clearly see that Jesus was answering readiness in others, rather than pressing those who were less inclined toward him. He sought those who showed the greatest interest, and drew them into a close, intimate relationship. As we look at the first disciples that Jesus called and consider ourselves as part of that enlarging circle, I hope we gain a deeper sense of our own spirituality and how Christ would like to relate to us.

From the Introduction to The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus by John R. Claypool, edited by Ann Wilkinson Claypool. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 16 • Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham

That which we more strictly call piety, or the love of God, and which is an essential part of a right temper, some may perhaps imagine no way connected with benevolence: yet surely they must be connected, if there be indeed in being an object infinitely good. Human nature is so constituted, that every good affection implies the love of itself; i.e., becomes the object of a new affection in the same person. Thus, to be righteous, implies in it the love of righteousness; to be benevolent, the love of benevolence; to be good, the love of goodness; whether this righteousness, benevolence, or goodness, be viewed as in our own mind, or in another’s: and the love of God as being perfectly good, is the love of perfect goodness contemplated in a being or person. Thus morality and religion, virtue and piety, will at last necessarily coincide, run up into one and the same point, and love will be in all senses ‘the end of the commandment.’

O Almighty God, inspire us with this divine principle; kill in us all the seeds of envy and ill-will; and help us, by cultivating within ourselves the love of our neighbour, to improve in the love of Thee. Thou has placed us in various kindreds, friendships, and relations, as the school of discipline for our affections: help us, by the due exercise of them, to improve to perfection; till all partial affection be lost in that entire universal one, and Thou, O God, shalt be all in all.

From “Sermon II: Upon Human Nature” in The Works of Bishop Butler, vol. 1, 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 June 17

We can understand the Bible best if we read it as a five-act play, the five acts being Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus, and Church. We are not living in an unfallen creation; or in a fallen world without promise; or in the time of Israel BC; or, indeed, in the time of Jesus himself. We are living in the fifth act, and have to improvise, under the guidance of the Spirit, in such a way as to bring this narrative (not some other one!) to its appointed and proper conclusion: in other words, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thus to anticipate the promise of new heavens and new earth.

The Bible is here to equip God’s people to carry forward his purposes of new covenant and new creation. It is there to enable people to work for justice, to sustain their spirituality as they do so, to create and enhance relationships at every level, and to produce that new creation that will have something of the beauty of God himself. The Bible isn’t like an accurate description of how a car is made. It’s more like the mechanic who helps you fix it, the garage attendant who refuels it, and the guide who tells you how to get where you’re going. And where you’re going is to make God’s new creation happen in his world, not simply to find your own way unscathed through the old creation.

From an interview with N. T. Wright, quoted in Rising From the Ashes: Rethinking Church by Becky Garrison. Copyright © 2007. Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 18 • Bernard Mizeki, Catechist and Marytr in Rhodesia, 1896

The word “friend” recurs frequently in the story of Bernard Mizeki’s life, ministry, and martyrdom. Fleeing oppression in Portuguese East Africa, Mizeki was befriended by Anglican missionaries and became a Christian. He, in turn, befriended the people of Central Africa, and they likewise came to Christianity. In Mashonaland he was caught in conflict between the natives and the Europeans who lived there—both of whom he loved as friends—and was killed. Bernard’s experience is a story of deadly friendship. . . .

Even when they are not fatal, friendships can be life-changing, introducing death in another guise. Friendship can change us, profoundly convert us, challenge and confront us. Friendship can bring death to old ideas, set us in opposition to prevailing norms, bind us in loyalty to the undesirable or despised. Deadly friendships can cost us our jobs, our securities, our lives. White students from Princeton Seminary were felled by bullets in the South because they befriended blacks; physicians and nurses have lost their own lives caring for persons with AIDS and other deadly diseases; congregations have died because they befriended the unlovely, the untouchable, the unfortunate. Bernard Mizeki reminds us that the measure of ministry is sometimes taken in friendships—deadly friendships.

From Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts by Sam Portaro (Cowley, 2001).

Daily Reading for June 19

Recognizing our origins in earth and in God prepares the ground for our understanding of our place on this planet. It saves us from the terrible hubris, or pride, which is the source of so much of our destructiveness. When we feel disconnected from our bodies, from our earthiness, we are also disconnected from the rest of creation. But once we fully experience our own creatureliness, we can discover new pleasure in God’s other creatures—animal, mineral, and vegetable. We will care about them because they are our extended family, sharing with us the molecules that make up adamah.

When we feel disconnected from God, from ruach or “spirit,” we are disconnected from the very source of our being. How often we let other kinds of breath fill us—the breath of selfishness, acquisitiveness, power, greed—so that we fall prey to a kind of spiritual and moral “breathlessness.” Once we begin to allow God’s breath to fill us, we will find we are more human, not less so. My favorite second-century theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons, who said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive,” would have enjoyed looking over his compatriot’s shoulder as Rodin chiseled the Hand of God.

One of humanity’s most destructive misconceptions is that, since we consider ourselves the apex of creation, we are therefore separated from nature. The Judeo-Christian tradition, in its attentiveness to another verse of Genesis—“have dominion...over every living thing that moves upon the earth”—to the neglect of the wisdom contained in Genesis 2:7, has much to answer for.

We can no more be happy separated from nature than we can be happy separated from God. When we acknowledge our place on earth and celebrate our unity in God with the creation that surrounds us, we take our place in the community composed of all living things, and it feels like a homecoming.

From Organic Prayer: A Spiritual Gardening Companion by Nancy Roth. Copyright © 1993, 2007. From Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 20

God, fill my heart with gratitude.
Like a child, I cry for my wants, rather than my needs.
My sense of entitlement is immense.
Focus my mind on abundance rather than lack.
Keep me aware that I have all that I need—and then some.

Amen.

A prayer by C. Lee Richards, quoted in Women’s Uncommon Prayers: Our Lives Revealed, Nurtured, Celebrated edited by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Marjorie A. Burke, and Ann Smith. Copyright © 2000. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 21 • Alban, First Martyr of Britain, c. 304 (transferred)

When these unbelieving Emperors were issuing savage edicts against all Christians, Alban, as yet a pagan, gave shelter to a Christian priest fleeing from his pursuers. And when he observed this man’s unbroken activity of prayer and vigil, he was suddenly touched by the grace of God and began to follow the priest’s example of faith and devotion. Gradually instructed by his teaching of salvation, Alban renounced the darkness of idolatry, and sincerely accepted Christ. But when the priest had lived in his house some days, word came to the ears of the evil ruler that Christ’s confessor, whose place of martyrdom had not yet been appointed, lay hidden in Alban’s house. Accordingly he gave orders to his soldiers to make a thorough search, and when they arrived at the martyr’s house, holy Alban, wearing the priest’s long cloak, at once surrendered himself in the place of his guest and teacher, and was led bound before the judge.

When Alban was brought in, the judge happened to be standing before an altar, offering sacrifice to devils. Seeing Alban, he was furious that he had presumed to put himself in such hazard by surrendering himself to the soldiers in place of his guest, and ordered him to be dragged before the idols where he stood. ‘Since you have chosen to conceal a sacrilegious rebel,’ he said, ‘rather than surrender him to my soldiers to pay the well-deserved penalty for his blasphemy against our gods you shall undergo all the tortures due to him if you dare to abandon the practice of our religion.’ But Saint Alban, who had freely confessed himself a Christian to the enemies of the Faith, was unmoved by these threats, and armed with spiritual strength, openly refused to obey this order. ‘What is your family and race?’ demanded the judge. ‘How does my family concern you?’ replied Alban; ‘if you wish to know the truth about my religion, know that I am a Christian, and carry out the Christian rites.’ ‘I demand to know your name,’ insisted the judge, ‘tell me at once.’ ‘My parents named me Alban,’ he answered, ‘and I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.’

From A History of the English Church and People by Bede, translated by Leo Sherley-Price (Penguin Books, 1968).

Daily Reading for June 22 • The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Desmond Tutu of Capetown observed recently that “God is continually breathing into our nostrils.” It is a vivid way of expressing the fact that not only is our life the creation of God, but that every moment of our life is also sustained by God. We are not only made. We continue to be made. It is possible to say that we are not so much human “beings” as human “becomings.”

[The collect for this day] begins, “O Lord, make us. . . .” It is so easy to leave those four words behind, so easy to hurry on to the seemingly more significant words that immediately follow. But we would be wrong to do so. Instead, it is very much worth our while to stop and reflect on the fact that God not only has made us, but continually makes us. . . .

In what sense does God make us? We are most aware of being made physically. . . .As we learn to see life more in terms of the whole, we come to perceive it as a great web of being. We realize we are being made in every way—physically, mentally, psychologically, spiritually.

The reason it is so important for us to realize this is that only then can we open all the elements of our lives to God. Western culture has so thoroughly divided up reality that we have lost a sense of the whole being through which God’s grace is manifested. Our physical exercise, our eating habits, our sexuality, our thinking—all these can become as spiritual an activity as receiving the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Our reading, our use of television or movies, our education, and our job can all be channels for God. Our concern for self-development and the development of others around us, our fostering of relationships, all this energy in our lives can be understood as the process of God’s making of us. Thus our spirituality does not float around on the margin of our lives, but every activity is the stuff of spirituality. To achieve this realization is to become a man or woman made by and for God, a truly whole human being.

From Prayers for the Breaking of Bread: Meditations on the Collects of the Church Year by Herbert O’Driscoll (Cowley Publications, 1991).

Daily Reading for June 23

We have three compost heaps, and even they are not capacious enough to contain all the castoffs of our garden and our kitchen. When the leaves begin to fall, we will have to begin a new pile near the border of our small woods. Our compost piles include a variety of vegetable material: carrot peelings, strawberry hulls, tomato prunings, the weeds I have dug before they have gone to seed, grass clippings, coffee grounds, eggshells, cornhusks, dry leaves, melon rinds. Although some people might consider the contents of our piles to be “garbage,” this material is not garbage. As it decays, assisted by earthworms as well as by organisms I cannot even see, my compost becomes “black gold,” rich humus that will contribute to the garden’s future well-being.

Composting teaches me that nothing in life is, in fact, “garbage.” The way of nature is the way of use and reuse. When this lunchtime’s carrot peeling is dumped on top of the seething compost pile, it enters into the slow process of becoming fertilizer for next summer’s crop of carrots.

I learn, from observing nature’s economy, that God intends me also to use all that I am given. I am meant to use my gifts and skills, my sorrows, and all the random happenings of life, spreading them out, as it were, in the fresh air of God to be transformed so that they can become life-giving, both for myself and for the world around me.

From Organic Prayer: A Spiritual Gardening Companion by Nancy Roth. Copyright © 1993, 2007. From Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 24 • The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

According to legend, Anne yearned in vain for a child until she was well advanced in years. Then, miraculously, she became the mother of Mary. . . . Anne’s legend fits comfortably into scriptural tradition; it is a repetition of the familiar story of the matriarchs, our foremothers. It is a variation on the theme of barrenness over against the divine promise of fruitfulness. Sarah, the mother of Isaac; Rebekah and Rachel, the mothers of Jacob and Joseph; Hannah and Elizabeth, who bore the prophets Samuel and John the Baptist late in their lives—these are the women of our family history, our direct ancestors. . . .

These are stories about women who want children desperately and who feel ashamed and deficient because of their childlessness. There is a quality of expectancy about them; it is vital that they bring forth new life. Without children, they are nothing. Their plight is accentuated by the presence of “lesser” women around them who bear children easily—slaves like Hagar, Bilhah, and Zilpah, or Leah, the unloved and unwanted wife. “Why,” the barren women must have asked, “are they rewarded so undeservedly while we are denied what is rightfully ours?”

Human fertility is a powerful metaphor. I would in no way minimize either the almost numinous experience of birthgiving or the suffering of those who yearn in vain for children. Some women choose not to give birth, and men can be fathers but not mothers. Hence for some of us, the imagery of childlessness is painful, and for others it seems irrelevant. It remains, however, a compelling evocation of spiritual barrenness.

In the fourteenth century, Meister Eckhart, the learned Dominican mystic whose personal life must have been far removed from the intimate concerns of human reproduction, preached compellingly of the birth of God in the soul. Again and again he drove home his point: we can all become pregnant with God. Conversely, man or woman, old or young, we can also share in the barrenness of Sarah and her sisters. . . . A barren landscape is colorless, bleak, and dry; so, perhaps, is a barren person. Yet there is, albeit hidden, the potential for new life awaiting the right conditions for fertility—perhaps darkness, moisture, or enriching nutrients. Perhaps the acceptable time. Perhaps the gracious action of God.

From Toward Holy Ground: Spiritual Directions for the Second Half of Life by Margaret Guenther (Cowley Publications, 1995).

Daily Reading for June 25

All religious groups I know about seem to have many people who are afraid of conflict. They cannot distinguish in their minds between disagreement and condemnation. Afraid to say “no,” they live with things they cannot agree with or do jobs they do not really want to do. One day they explode. Then the situation often cannot be repaired, and the group has a problem that may take years to overcome, if it can be overcome. . . .

I have been aware of people storming out of meetings after committing atrocious behavior, and the rest of the group then nervously wondering how they could get the offender back. Such groups operate with the unspoken belief that if they stand up against bad behavior and for their basic principles, they will not survive. The opposite, in fact, is true. One compromise leads to another, and their major goals are missed altogether, because there is no backbone in the organism.

There is no law against conflict in either the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures. Rather than encouraging silence, the New Testament urges readers to “speak the truth in love.”. . . Jesus is not remembered as just going along with things for the sake of apparent peace. In fact, the gospels have him on one occasion more or less “disowning” his mother and brother and sisters when they tried to stop him from disturbing the public mind. . . .

There is nothing wrong with saying, “I think you did the wrong thing,” or, “Where I disagree with you is. . . .” (It is often helpful to ask a question first, however!) There is everything wrong with saying, “Because you did such and such, you are stupid, worthless, etc.”. . .

Conflict—disagreement discussed thoroughly and fairly—is the primary means of advancing the truth. Careful listening and thoughtful response advance common understanding and progress. Conflict that is kept on the level of ideas but does not discuss personalities is a sign of health, of thinking. . . .It is no sin to disagree vigorously with an idea or someone’s perception of events. On the other hand, perhaps it is a sin to confuse being valuable with being right. Surely, no one is always right! The first sign of healthy humility is the ability to be taught. Conflict without nastiness, then, may be the most caring path of all.

From “Conflict Advances Truth” in Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less by Paul V. Marshall. Copyright © 2008. Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 26

“Too often in the past, the appointment of a prior has been the source of serious contention in monasteries. Some priors, puffed up by the evil spirit of pride and thinking of themselves as second abbots, usurp tyrannical power and foster contention and discord in their communities.” . . . (The Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 65)

This is the least prayerful chapter in the Rule. It is fairly bristling with tension. Perhaps because of his own personal experience, Benedict is wary of the office of prior, probably because of the problems arising from the appointment by an outside authority and the dangers of a power struggle that it carries. The ideal, of course, is what we have been given in the previous chapter, a community of “peace and love.” But Benedict is completely realistic about human nature and its weaknesses and what happens when the spirit of pride enters in. . . .

When there is a split between the head and one of the responsible members, it leads to a state of confusion in the whole community, becomes an open invitation to faction and disorder of every kind and to the envy, quarrels, slander, and rivalry that he lists in verse 7. He is worried that the abbot may get drawn into this maelstrom of violence and fears how destructive such conflicting aims and goals will become. This is the price that is paid for anyone putting his or her personal ends above the interests of the group. It is a dark warning against exploiting a position of power or authority for self-advancement to the detriment of the whole. . . .

A split personality can be as dangerous to the corporate situation as to the individual. It is something that we can all be only too aware of around us. We can see it at work in a marriage where husband and wife are deeply at odds and damage the whole family, in a parish where people split into factions and tear apart the tissue of the congregation, and in a community caught in a power struggle and living off negative energy because it fails to deal with the underlying issues. But if Benedict knows how destructive divergent and centrifugal elements can be, he also knows the importance of accepting the wide range and variety of human nature and human experience. The question is how to hold these elements together and integrate them so that the whole body becomes life-giving rather than life-denying. In the previous chapter Benedict has been showing us the role of the abbot holding the center with loving firmness. So that is what I now ask myself: Can the center hold? Where is the axis on which everything turns? If the abbot points me to Christ, it will be there that I shall find the creative force and power to make my relationships meaningful and life-giving.

From A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Liturgical Press, 1995).

Daily Reading for June 27

I suppose my greatest curiosity about the afterlife is whether I will continue to be me. I want to continue being me, of course. I want not only to see all of those creatures that I have rescued through the years; I also want to see the loved ones whom I have lost. I want to lay my head on Grandma Lucy’s lap again. I want to shell field peas with Fannie Belle and listen to Schubert with Earl. The problem with this scenario is that it turns heaven into my perfect version of earth, with a perfect me in the middle of it. As appealing as this is, it strikes me as an underutilization of God’s gifts.

Since ecstatic union with God is my best idea of heaven, I think I have to be ready to let myself go—literally, I mean. I think I have to entertain the possibility that joining God in heaven may mean surrendering everything I hold dear on earth, including my me-ness, in order to be made entirely new. In Christian terms, I think I really do have to die, and be willing to leave the rest to God.

When my father lay dying several years ago, I hardly left his room for the last two weeks of his life. This gave me a lot of time to think about what was happening to him, and where he might be going. . . .One Sunday afternoon I lay my head on my father’s pillow so I could whisper in his ear. “I think I finally get what’s taking you so long,” I said. “You’re having to let it all go, aren’t you? All the places you haven’t traveled yet, all the places you’ve been. Your first girlfriend, your favorite chair, your prize students, your grandsons.” I was crying now. “Everything that makes you you, you’re having to let go now. Oh, Poppa, I don’t know how you can do it. It has to be so hard.”

He died at three that afternoon. After the undertaker had taken my father’s body, I lay down in his hospital bed. I fully expected him to be there in spirit somehow, but when I got up, the room was dark and empty as a tomb. Around the same time the next day, I was thinking of him when I felt him take off like a rocket. For about three seconds, a wave of pure bliss washed through my body. Then I knew my father was gone. He had left all his Earl-ness behind.

Maybe he got it all back again when he arrived where he was going, or maybe he discovered that “me” was too small a box for who he became in God. I may never know, but ever since then I have become less attached to my beliefs about heaven. In their place, I am cultivating what I hope is radical trust in God. In the face of all that I do not know about heaven, I am still willing to go where God wants me to go and to be what God wants me to be, even if I have to leave me behind.

From “Leaving Myself Behind” by Barbara Brown Taylor, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. Copyright © 2007. Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for June 28 • Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, c. 202

Many and various are the things that are made. When you take them in detail they are mutually antagonistic and discordant. But, taken in connection with the whole creation, they are agreeable and harmonious. Just as the sound of the harp, composed of many different notes, makes one symphony. The love of truth must not be misled by the difference of each sound, nor suspect that there was one author for this and another for that, or that one composed the bass, another the treble, and a third the middle notes; but considering the wisdom, justice, goodness and service of the whole work he should regard it as one thing. For they who hear a melody ought to praise the musician, and admire the raising of some notes, attend to the lowering of others and listen attentively to the careful modulation of chords. . . .

Suppose we agree and confess that not one of the things that have been made or are being made escapes the knowledge of God, but through His providence each individual thing received and receives its condition, order, number and quantity, and that not one of these has been made or is being made casually or without significance, but with great skill and sublime understanding, and that the reason is wonderful and truly divine which can analyze and announce the particular causes of this kind. . . .A sound and safe and reverent mind that loves the truth will study with eagerness the things that God has left within the reach of man. . . . Having, then, the very rule of truth, and the testimony openly given about God, we ought not reject the sound and sure knowledge of God; but rather directing our solutions of our problems to this end, we should be disciplined by the investigation of the mystery and dispensation of the God who is, and grow more and more in our love of Him, who has done and does so much for us. But if we cannot find the solution of every scriptural difficulty we should not be driven to seek another God, for that were gross impiety. All such matters we should leave in the hands of God, who has made us, being duly aware that the Scriptures are perfect, having been uttered by the Word of God and His Spirit. It is no wonder if in spiritual and celestial matters we have this experience, seeing that many things which are practically before our eyes are beyond our ken. These very things we commit to God.

From “The Treatise of Irenaeus of Lugdunum Against the Heresies,” quoted in Readings in Christian Thought, edited by Hugh T. Kerr (Abingdon, 1983).

Daily Reading for June 29 • The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Benedictine life is full of reminders that each monk is a sacrament of the presence of God to his brethren. The times of community prayer, for example, are a daily affirmation of the commitment of the community’s members one to another. Sheer physical presence—something that abbots always have to nag monks about—matters immensely. I remember being very struck as a novice by hearing of an abbot who told his community: “Fathers, please do try to fit the office into your timetables.” The comment might surprise those who have never lived as monks. But it can seem that by being in the choir for office we are achieving nothing, and—especially if we are not the world’s greatest singers—we might suppose that really we would accomplish more by being somewhere else. The school, the parish, the retreat house—anywhere.

There is, in fact, a vital significance in the community being physically together in the same place at the key moments of our lives. A former abbot of my own community used to say that attendance at office was the way each monk gave himself to the brethren. Certainly in common prayer the monk tries to give himself to God, but there is an important sense in which we are giving ourselves to one another in these times—supporting one another’s prayer, simply being there because presence matters. Monks go to God together, and are the vehicles of grace to one another, just as spouses are. The parallel is very far from exact, but there are common features. It was such an experience of the power of the presence of monks to one another that gave me the insight I needed to enter religious life.

From Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives by Mark Barrett. Second edition. Copyright © 2002, 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for June 30 • St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles (transferred)

Nobody knows where Saul is, although it is said he has changed his name to Paul. Now he appears in Jerusalem, asking to meet Peter.

If we can trust the second-century writer Onesiphoros, the figure who entered the room that day and walked forward to meet Peter and James was not impressive. We have Onesiphoros’s detailed description of Paul: “A man rather small in size, bald-headed, bow-legged, with meeting eyebrows, and a large, red, and hooked nose.” . . . Appearances aside, he was a brilliant scholar, sophisticated, a mind like a razor, politically astute, at home in any society, with the social advantages of full Roman citizenship.

The introductions over, the questions began. It was probably not easy sailing. Luke suggests that the local communities still mistrusted Paul; as he puts it bluntly, “They did not believe that he was a disciple.”

Whatever the outcome and however long it took to make the alliance, that was the first encounter of Peter and Paul, who were to become two of the great change agents in history. The relationship between them fascinates Christians for many reasons, not least because their differing gifts, personalities, and roles provide a pattern of contrasts that were to be important in the formation of the future church. These two were to have their moments of deep disagreement and confrontation. Given what we know of both of them—one a seasoned fisherman in the harsh environment of the lake, the other a seasoned debater in the cut and thrust of the Greco-Roman schools of rhetoric and law—we can imagine the intensity of their disagreement over eating with Gentiles! Who knows what went on between them as they hammered out their response to the challenges presented by the first council of Jerusalem? . . . Yet, at the end of the day, the instinctive conservatism of the one met the far-seeing vision and boundless energy of the other to rocket the news of their Lord from one end of that empire to the other.

From For All the Saints: Homilies for Saints’ and Holy Days by Herbert O’Driscoll (Cowley Publications, 1995).