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

Then the queen asked saint Remi, bishop of Rheims, to summon Clovis secretly, urging him to introduce the king to the word of salvation. And the bishop sent for him secretly and began to urge him to believe in the true God, maker of heaven and earth, and to cease worshipping idols, which could help neither themselves nor any one else. But the king said: “I gladly hear you, most holy father; but there remains one thing: the people who follow me cannot endure to abandon their gods; but I shall go and speak to them according to your words.” He met with his followers, but before he could speak the power of God anticipated him, and all the people cried out together: “O pious king, we reject our mortal gods, and we are ready to follow the immortal God whom Remi preaches.” This was reported to the bishop, who was greatly rejoiced, and bade them get ready the baptismal font.

The squares were shaded with tapestried canopies, the churches adorned with white curtains, the baptistery set in order, the aroma of incense spread, candles of fragrant odor burned brightly, and the whole shrine of the baptistery was filled with a divine fragrance: and the Lord gave such grace to those who stood by that they thought they were placed amid the odors of paradise. And the king was the first to ask to be baptized by the bishop. . . . And when he entered to be baptized, the saint of God began with ready speech: “Gently bend your neck, Sigamber; worship what you burned; burn what you worshipped.” . . . And so the king confessed all-powerful God in the Trinity, and was baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and was anointed with the holy ointment with the sign of the cross of Christ.

From History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours (539-594). The entire text may be found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/gregory-hist.html.

Daily Reading for October 2

For Francis, poverty was the key to the loving, Christ-like life. He looked upon money as a kind of drug, addictive and lethal, to be shunned. Even minimal private property was repulsive to him. To own something, Francis believed, was to grasp for a security found only in day-to-day dependence upon God and would likely lead to divisions among people. When his bishop urged him to moderate his lifestyle, Francis said, “My lord, if we had possessions, we would need arms for our protection, for disputes and lawsuits usually arise out of them, and, because of this, love of God and neighbor are greatly impeded. Therefore, we do not want to possess anything in this world.” The only time Francis is recorded as having been angry was when he heard talk of modifying the rule of absolute poverty.

Real poverty is a state of the soul, not an outward circumstance, Francis felt. It must therefore be purely voluntary, an act of love—poverty that is imposed is not an act of love. Only in complete, chosen, inner poverty is freedom found, Francis believed, for it enables people simply to be who and what they are, neither dominating nor dominated. “You could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar,” Chesterton observes.

From God Seekers: Twenty Centuries of Christian Spiritualities by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2008).

Daily Reading for October 3

Let all humankind tremble,
let the whole world shake
and the heavens rejoice
when Christ, the Son of the living God,
is on the altar
in the hands of a priest.
O admirable heights and sublime lowliness!
O sublime humility!
O humble sublimity!
That the Lord of the universe,
God and the Son of God,
so humbles himself
that to save us
he conceals himself in a tiny piece of bread!

From the “Letter to the Entire Order” of Francis of Assisi, quoted in God Seekers: Twenty Centuries of Christian Spiritualities by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2008).

Daily Reading for October 4 • Francis of Assisi, Friar, 1226

Francis’ famous embrace of the leper he met on the road was not merely a response to human suffering but, in medieval terms, an encounter with the excluded “other.” Lepers were not simply infected with a fearful disease. They symbolized the dark side of existence onto which medieval people projected a variety of fears, suspicions, and guilty sinfulness that must be excluded from the community of the spiritually pure. Lepers were outcasts banished from society. As his Earlier Rule enjoins, the brothers that Francis gathered around him “must rejoice when they live among people of little worth and who are looked down upon, among the poor and the powerless, the sick and the lepers, and the beggars by the wayside.”

Even the famous Canticle of Creation expresses more than a rather romantic love of the natural world. The underlying meaning is more complex. The key notion is that all our fellow creatures as brothers and sisters reflect to us the face of Christ. . . . Verses 10-11 celebrate the peace that comes from mutual pardon or reconciliation.

“Be praised, my Lord,
Through those who forgive for your love,
Through those who are weak,
In pain, in struggle,
Who endure with peace,
For you will make them Kings and Queens,
O Lord Most High.”

The created world is to be a “reconciled space” because of the fraternity of all things in Christ. There is no room for violence, contention, or rejection of the “other.”

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

Daily Reading for October 5 • The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

It is not necessary to withdraw from the world in order to be holy. In fact, it may be more difficult to make a spiritual case for withdrawal than it is to understand creative immersion in the world around us. Otherwise, how do we explain the Jesus who walked from Galilee to Jerusalem, curing lepers, giving sight to the blind, raising women from the dead? Does Jesus qualify as a contemplative or not? And if so, then surely withdrawal is not the only way to get to be one.

We must learn that life itself is of God, that the natural is sacred, and that an inward life and immersion in life are of a piece. If we are in God, then all of life becomes sacred to us. To seek God means to find God around us. The God-questions propel us into life, in fact. It is precisely when we begin to see the world through the eyes of God that life becomes the measure of our own godliness. Then life becomes the stuff of holiness for us, not a spiritual threat. Human life becomes the eternal life of the spirit.

From 40-Day Journey with Joan Chittister, edited by Beverly Lanzetta (Augsburg, 2007).

Daily Reading for October 6 • William Tyndale, Priest, 1536

The availability of printed Bibles in the language of the common people helped bring about what has been called a “Copernican revolution” in the history of spirituality. Although statistics are notoriously unreliable, there was clearly a symbiotic relation between literacy among the laity, Protestant piety, and the reading of the printed Bible. Popular preaching from the Bible, which had been experiencing an upsurge in the later Middle Ages; detailed portrayal of Bible stories from both the Old and the New Testament in stained glass and fresco; and narrative poems going back to Heliand and similar vernacular works—through all of these medieval channels the knowledge of the Bible had been far more extensive and thorough than Protestant propaganda usually gives it credit for being. Nevertheless, the Reformation did produce a growth in Bible-centered piety. The lives of the saints and the countless holidays and feast days devoted to their commemoration, especially the many days consecrated to legends of the Virgin Mary, slowly yielded to a church year and a devotional calendar shaped much more directly by the Bible. One index of the change was a gradual supplanting of saints’ names by biblical names (especially the more colorful and plentiful ones in the Old Testament such as Jedidiah and Hephzibah) at baptism.

Medieval warnings abut how difficult or even dangerous it was to read the Bible privately without the proper guidance of church and clergy yielded to earnest admonitions to read it between sermons, even to bring it to church—although those medieval warnings often seemed to be coming true whenever yet another sect arose, based on yet another idiosyncratic reading of the biblical text in the vernacular. The existing sources do give us occasional information about how biblically grounded the faith and life and everyday speech of common people became. It is difficult to imagine that any of this could have happened if the Bible had not been translated and printed for popular consumption.

From Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages by Jaroslav Pelikan (Viking, 2005).

Daily Reading for October 7

My five-year-old daughter asked me at breakfast one morning about her bedtime prayers. She wasn’t really sure, she admitted, just what to say to God. (Now this is the sort of opening I like: “Mom, teach us to pray.”) I poured orange juice and congratulated myself on such a splendid opportunity for age-appropriate instruction in confession and petition. “God likes to hear from us,” I told Emily, “the same things all mommies and daddies like to hear from their children: please and thank you and I’m sorry.”

Emily considered this, licking jam from her fingers in order to count to three: please; thank you; I’m sorry. She nodded, then waved the two unaccounted-for fingers and said, “Maybe there are two other things I say a lot that God would like to hear from me.”

“What’s that, honey?” I asked absently, beginning to clear the table (the lesson being over). “Maybe,” she suggested, “I could tell God ‘Wow!’ and ‘I love you.’”

I sat down, my hands full of silverware. “Yes, of course, darling, what a wonderful idea. Those are excellent prayers,” I assured her, and sent her off to brush her teeth. But when I got up a few moments later, I was under no illusions about who had received the lesson. I had forgotten—as I so often forget—that prayer begins in praise and adoration.

From The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things by Deborah Smith Douglas. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 8

The “closed heart” is a striking image for our condition. It is as if our selves are normally encased in a hard rind, in a tough shell. Why is this so? Why do we commonly have closed hearts? For some, it is the result of a chaotic childhood marked by abuse or radical instability. The self builds up layers of protection to defend itself against an unreliable and hurtful world.

But the condition does not develop only in people with difficult childhoods. The closed heart is the natural process of growing up. The birth and development of self-awareness involves an increasing sense of being a separated self. We live within this separated self, as if the self is enclosed in a dome, a transparent shell. Like an invisible shield, the dome is a boundary separating the self from the world. It can become hard and rigid. It closes us off from the world, and we live centered in ourselves. The same process of growing up that creates the need to be born again creates the need for our hearts to be opened. To mix metaphors, the reason we need to be born again is because we have closed hearts.

It is interesting to reflect about what opens and closes our hearts on a daily basis. I am aware that some days my heart is more open than other days. Even in the course of a single day, there are moments when my heart is more open or more closed. Sometimes it is closed because of tiredness, worry, or busyness. I know that my heart is closed whenever I feel grumpy or self-preoccupied, when the world looks ordinary, or when the critical voice is strong in my head, whether directed at myself or others. When I stand in a supermarket checkout line and all the people I see look kind of ugly, I know that my heart is closed.

When our hearts are closed, we live within a shell. To extend the egg metaphor: the shell needs to be broken open if the life within it is to enter into full life. What we need is the “hatching of the heart.” And if the heart is not hatched, we die. This hatching of the heart—the opening of the self to God, the sacred—is a comprehensive image for the individual dimension of the Christian life.

From The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus J. Borg (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).

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

In the opinion of Luard, the editor of [Robert Grosseteste’s] Letters, “probably no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and English literature for the two centuries that followed his age.” Wyclif ranks him even above Aristotle, and Gower calls him “the grete clerc.”

Apart from his important position as a patriot, a reformer and a statesman, and as a friend of Simon de Montfort, he gave, in the words of his latest biographer, F. S. Stevenson, “a powerful impulse to almost every department of intellectual activity, revived the study of neglected languages and grasped the central idea of the unity of knowledge.” One of the earliest leaders of thought in Oxford, a promoter of Greek learning, and an interpreter of Aristotle, he went far beyond his master in the experimental knowledge of the physical sciences. Roger Bacon lauds his knowledge of science, and he is probably referring to Grosseteste when he says that no lectures on optics “have as yet been given in Paris, or anywhere else among the Latins, except twice at Oxford.”

Matthew Paris, who resented his zeal for the reform of the monasteries, generously pays the following tribute to his memory: “Thus the saintly. . . bishop of Lincoln passed away from the exile of this world, which he never loved. . . . He had been the rebuker of pope and king, the corrector of bishops, the reformer of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the patron of scholars, the preacher of the people, . . . the careful student of the Scriptures, the hammer and the contemner of the Romans. At the table of bodily food, he was liberal, courteous and affable: at the table of spiritual food, devout, tearful and penitent: as a prelate, sedulous, venerable and never weary in well-doing."

From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume 1, From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.

Daily Reading for October 10 • Vida Dutton Scudder, Educator and Witness for Peace, 1954

[The doctrine of stewardship is the] belief that the Christian holds all his worldly possessions in trust for God and for his brothers. . . . The doctrine of stewardship is unsatisfactory on two counts. First . . . it implies no responsibility toward the source of wealth but only toward the use of it. . . . [Christians must] consider the connotation of their incomes in human values at the source. . . .

Stewardship taken by itself has nothing to say to us about property as an instrument of power. But . . . the concentration of power is the chief evil which progress toward social justice has to dread. . . . The main reason why possessions are valued is less the luxury they offer than the power they confer. . . . It behooves us to search our hearts, whether we escape the horrid dangers involved in [the] ability to give money away.

From The Christian Attitude Toward Private Property (1934) by Vida Dutton Scudder, quoted in Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality by Richard H. Schmidt (Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for October 11 • Philip, Deacon and Evangelist

Evangelism is fundamentally a spiritual practice, as important to our spiritual health as prayer, worship, fellowship, and study. As such, evangelism is not simply an act or a set of Christian techniques. It is not a programmatic effort or a formulaic recitation of a memorized speech. It is not a generation of false sentiments or a sale of artificial emotion. It is not wanton advertising of religious slogans. It need be neither demonstrative nor dogmatic. It is not recruitment. It is not judgment.

True evangelism emerges from a practiced disposition of gratitude, a willfully embraced motivation arising from our experience of wonder, delight, and gratification in the Holy Spirit that propels us out to others to share our good news. And it is a new way of seeing and hearing others—as people who also have stories of delight and gratitude for God’s movement in their lives. Evangelism is a willful, joyful spiritual discipline of seeing and naming the Holy Spirit at work in ourselves and those we encounter—giving voice to our own grace-filled experiences, and helping others find their voice. It is practicing what we read in the Psalms—no matter what our current state, we can recall for ourselves and others the great works of God in each others’ lives.

Evangelism begins most fundamentally with you. On your holy pilgrimage you carry gifts for the world that are far deeper than you can even begin to recognize.

From Transforming Evangelism by David Gortner, a volume in the series Transformations: The Episcopal Church of the 21st Century, edited by James Lemler. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for October 12 • The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

I can respond to all the myriad small demands each day presents only if I never stop moving. I can hold chaos at bay only by breaking each moment into as many pieces as possible, hoping almost desperately that there will be enough to go around, that I can spread myself thin enough to cover it all. Sometimes it feels not only as though time and strength and order are steadily eroded, but that somehow I am diminished as well; sometimes I feel myself disappearing.

It was at the Eucharist that an insight was given me that may help in my struggle against the entropic forces that regularly disintegrate my life.

As I watched, the priest cast a practiced eye over the congregation and proceeded to break the consecrated wafer into a corresponding number of pieces. The perfect unblemished circle of the host was broken. All that remained of its original integrity was a heap of fragments on the plate. “My life is like that,” I realized.

The fractioning of my days is not likely to end any time soon. But perhaps—by a miracle of grace, by the grace of God—I can come to see myself not as meaninglessly disintegrated but as broken and given like bread, poured out like wine. Maybe God will so enlighten the eyes of my heart that I will come to see that all my time—no matter how broken and scattered—is in God’s hand. There may even be such a miracle that I can come to see God present in small moments as surely as I find grace offered in a crumb at the Lord’s table.

From The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things by Deborah Smith Douglas. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 13

I am lying on my back. Maybe I am in a crib or a baby carriage, but I am not on someone’s lap. I am alone but I am not lonely. My eyes are following the yellow-green sparkles of light through a hazy screen. My arms are free and my hands reach to touch what my eyes can see and my heart can feel. I feel breath in me and in the trees and gently whirling between us.

Forty-five years later I ask my mother whether our house in Nashville, where I was born, had a porch. At first she says she can’t remember. “Tree tops,” I say, “where I might have been taking a nap in a baby carriage, looking through the screen at tree tops.” Still she remembers nothing. “Was there a street?” I press on. It feels important to me to remember. “A street. Yes, there was Meharry Boulevard. We lived in Mr. Price’s house, and oh, how he loved you. He’d come up the back steps and—oh yes, you were napping on the side porch.” But Mom is so anxious to tell me the rest that she doesn’t pause on the answer to my original question. “Mr. Price would bound up the porch steps, lift you up in the air and bellow out, ‘I love my little Charlie!’”

Yes. This is what I remember. Not Mr. Price. Not a person. But the feeling. I remember the feeling of being at peace, the feeling of the breath of God at once hidden deep within me and all around me, the feeling of being expectant, of being lifted up, of being safe and loved and adored in everlasting arms. It is a treasure that God hides inside of me and then sends me on a lifetime of seeking to find it. One day I will hear a call that draws me back to the place of this hidden treasure. And as it is revealed to me, I will hear the rejoicing: Somebody’s calling my name.

From A Gathering of Gifts by Paula Lawrence Wehmiller. Copyright © 2002. A Journey Book from Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for October 14 • Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, Bishop of Shanghai, 1906

There have, indeed, been missionaries who, almost immediately after their arrival, having picked up a few broken phrases, commenced, as they supposed, to preach the Gospel to the heathen, but which preaching most likely consisted in nothing more than uttering some sounds wholly unintelligible to the hearers. It can be fairly asserted that preaching the Gospel in such a manner is exhibiting a zeal without much knowledge. The Gospel of Christ is to be made honorable in every respect. Now, to preach in an incomprehensible gibberish to such a people as the Chinese, who, perhaps, more than any other people, are fastidious about language, is anything but making it honorable.

In my humble opinion it will require at least eighteen months’ very hard study before one would be enabled to express himself on any topic, not belonging to the routine of common life, intelligibly and clearly in a foreign tongue. This is true with reference to all other languages—some of the easy European languages, perhaps, excepted—but more especially is this the case with regard to the Chinese language. I say Chinese language; I should rather say the Chinese languages, for really one desiring to become usefully familiar with the speech of China has to study at least two, if not three distinct languages.

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 October 15 • Teresa of Avila, Nun, 1582

In explaining the nature of union to me, He said:

1. “Don’t think, daughter, that union lies in being very close to me. For those, too, who offend me are close, although they may not want to be. Neither does it consist in favors and consolations in prayer, even though these may reach a very sublime degree. Though these favors may come from Me, they are often a means for winning souls, even souls that are not in the state of grace.”

I was experiencing a lofty elevation of the spirit when I heard those words. The Lord gave me understanding of what spirit was and in what state my soul then was and how to understand the words of the Magnificat, Exultavit spiritus meus. I wouldn’t know how to describe this experience. It seems to me I was given an understanding that the spirit is the higher part of the will.

2. Getting back to union, I understood that it consists in the spirit being pure and raised above all earthly things so that there is nothing in the soul that wants to turn aside from God’s will; but there is such conformity with God in spirit and will, and detachment from everything, and involvement with Him, that there is no thought of love of self or of any creature.

A spiritual testimony on the nature of union by Teresa of Avila, quoted in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume 1, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976).

Daily Reading for October 16 • Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishops, 1555, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1556

But one word is left, which we must needs consider; Noster, ‘our.’ He saith not ‘my,’ but ‘our.’ Wherefore saith he ‘our’? This word ‘our’ teacheth us to consider that the Father of heaven is a common Father; as well my neighbour’s Father as mine; as well the poor man’s Father as the rich: so that he is not a peculiar Father, but a Father to the whole church and congregation, to all the faithful. Be they never so poor, so vile, so foul and despised, yet he is their Father as well as mine: and therefore I should not despise them, but consider that God is their Father as well as mine. Here may we perceive what communion is between us; so that when I pray, I pray not for myself alone, but for all the rest: again, when they pray, they pray not for themselves only, but for me: for Christ hath so framed this prayer, that I must needs include my neighbour in it. Therefore all those which pray this prayer, they pray as well for me as for themselves; which is a great comfort to every faithful heart, when he considereth that all the church prayeth for him. For amongst such a great number there be some which be good, and whose prayer God will hear. . . . So that it is a great comfort unto us to know that all good and faithful persons pray for us.

From Hugh Latimer’s “First Sermon on the Lord’s Prayer,” in The Works of Hugh Latimer, ed. G. E. Corrie (Parker Society, 1844).

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

From Ignatius, whose other name is Theophorus, to the deservedly happy church at Ephesus in Asia; notably blessed with greatness by God the Father out of His own fullness; marked out since the beginning of time for glory unfading and unchanging; and owing its unity and its election to the true and undoubted Passion, by the will of the Father and Jesus Christ our God. Every good wish to you for perfect joy in Jesus Christ.

Your visit to me was a godsend. The warm affection your name inspires is yours by right of nature, as well as by virtue of your faith and your love for our Saviour Jesus Christ. Taking God as your pattern and example, you have indeed fulfilled to perfection the duties of brotherliness, with an ardour kindled into flame by the Divine Blood. For as soon as you heard that I was on my way from Syria, as a prisoner for the Name and the Hope we all share (and trusting through your prayers to be granted an encounter with the wild beasts at Rome—a boon that will enable me to become a true disciple), you were all eagerness to visit me. Thus I have now been able to play the host, in God’s name, to your whole community in the person of your bishop Onesimus. His endearing kindliness is beyond all words; I pray you to cherish him in the true spirit of Jesus Christ, and that every one of you may be the sort of man that he is. Blessings on Him who gave you the privilege of having such a bishop, and well indeed do you deserve it. . . . For we can have no life apart from Jesus Christ; and as He represents the mind of the Father, so our bishops, even those who are stationed in the remotest parts of the world, represent the mind of Jesus Christ.

That is why it is proper for your conduct and your practices to correspond closely with the mind of the bishop. And this, indeed, they are doing; your justly respected clergy, who are a credit to God, are attuned to their bishop like the strings of a harp, and the result is a hymn of praise to Jesus Christ from minds that are in unison, and affections that are in harmony. Pray, then, come and join this choir, every one of you; let there be a whole symphony of minds in concert; take the tone all together from God, and sing aloud to the Father with one voice through Jesus Christ, so that He may hear you and know by your good works that you are indeed members of His Son’s Body.

From The Epistle to the Ephesians of Ignatius of Antioch, quoted in Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, translated by Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin Books, 1968).

Daily Reading for October 18 • St. Luke the Evangelist

Luke, which is a familiar form of Lucius, was a Gentile, a physician, and a close friend of Paul (Col. 4:10ff.), a fellow worker with Paul (Phlm. 24), and a companion of Paul’s in prison, probably in Rome (2 Tim. 4:11). Greek was obviously his native tongue, as his language is flawless Koine, the common Greek of the time (which was much less sophisticated than the language of Homer and the great philosophers). He was a Gentile, and thus probably a Greek, although Lucius was a common Roman name and all upper-class Romans were fluent in Greek. It is most likely that he was Greek, however, and there is much circumstantial evidence that he was from Philippi.

No one knows how he came to be in Judea. . . .It is possible that as a physician Luke was attached to the Roman army. Most good physicians spent at least some time in their training as army doctors or as surgeons to the gladiators. This exposed them to a wide variety of critical wounds through which they could learn anatomy and surgery on a living patient. . . .

There is no evidence that Luke ever met Jesus, and he was thus never considered an apostle. He was highly regarded by Paul as an evangelist, however. Also, his knowledge of many details of Jesus’ birth and childhood support the ancient tradition that he was a close friend of Mary, who shared these stories with him. His account of the crucifixion also indicates that, while he probably did not witness it, he was particularly interested in the physiological aspects of it. One would expect this of a physician. If he were a Roman or associated with the Roman army, he would have seen many crucifixions. . . .

He apparently worked alongside Paul for years, remaining with him right to the end. He was obviously loved and admired by Paul. After Paul’s death in about 64 CE, Luke apparently continued to evangelize in his home region, and sometime in the early 80s CE he wrote his Gospel and the book of Acts, the first history of Christianity.

From “Luke” in All the People in the Bible: An A-Z Guide to the Saints, Scoundrels, and Other Characters in Scripture by Richard R. Losch (Eerdmans, 2008).

Daily Reading for October 19 • The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for Proper 24)

This prayer links the glory of God not only to Christ but to the church, the body of Christ. The church is the primary means by which God’s glory is manifest in the world today, but Christians must be careful not to take that truth for granted. The glory of God is not automatically or always found in the Christian church. When the church devotes more energy to maintaining her institutional privileges than to walking humbly in the footsteps of her Lord, more time bickering over secondary things than proclaiming primary things, the church cannot reflect the glory of God to others. The glory of God shines on; it is not within the church’s power to diminish or extinguish it, but the church can exclude herself from it. At such times God does not abandon his church; it is the church that abandons God. . . .

The glory of God is broader than the church. We must not think too narrowly of that glory, limiting God’s domain to the places and people where we expect to find him. All things shine with the glory of God, and when we pray to God to “preserve the works of your mercy,” we ask his blessing on all things, seen and unseen, good and evil. . . . To “persevere with steadfast faith” is to trust God when no one else does and when we cannot see him clearly, to sing his praises when every other voice is singing a different song.

From A Gracious Rain: A Devotional Commentary on the Prayers of the Church Year by Richard H. Schmidt. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 20

The word healing comes from a word meaning “entire” or “complete,” and signifies a restoration to wholeness. For that reason it is a more “holistic” word than therapy. While many people are helped by psychotherapy, I suspect that there are also many like me who have benefited from occasional counseling but have received more help from spiritual practices such as prayer and lectio divina, or holy reading. Perhaps the most radical aspect of the psychology of the desert monastics is the extent to which they believed that Scripture itself had the power to heal. In The Word in the Desert, his study of how thoroughly the early monks integrated Scripture into their lives, Douglas Burton-Christie notes that they regarded these “sacred texts [as] inherently powerful, a source of holiness, with a capacity to transform their lives.”

Appreciating this monastic perspective on the Bible means abandoning the modern tendency to regard it as primarily an object of intellectual study, or as a handy adjunct to our ideology, be it conservative or liberal. The desert father who expounds on the inherent value of meditating on Scripture by observing, “Even if we do not understand the meaning of the words we are saying, when the demons hear them, they take fright and go away,” insults our intelligence. What is left to us, if we relinquish our intellectual comprehension? Isn’t it necessary to retain more control than that? Maybe not, if we want to experience the Word of God as these monks did, as “a living force within them.”

From Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead Books, 2008).

Daily Reading for October 21

I once had a colleague whose home contained an impressive array of house plants. Looking at the abundance of healthy green foliage, I asked her to share her secret. “My secret?” she responded. “When they begin to die, I throw them on the compost heap.”

Throwing away plants—whether they be houseplants at the end of their lives or vegetable seedlings at the beginning of theirs—onto the compost heap is extremely difficult for me. The back of the carrot seed package directs me to “scatter seed in the row at the rate of three to five seeds per inch.” Then come those awful words: “When seedlings have three leaves, thin to stand two inches apart.” I usually cannot bring myself to follow the directions to the letter. I cheat, hoping that they will grow equally well if they are only one-and-a-half inches from their neighbors. I want to hold on to the houseplants and to each carrot seedling. I need, instead, to learn that their dying is a way of giving. Their dying contributes to living.

On our nature walk, Stuart Mace explained that death is the keystone of nature’s life cycle. If deciduous trees stubbornly clung to their leaves, there would be no black loam at their roots to nurture next year’s greenery. Giving is the pattern in the animal world as well, although it might also be seen as taking, depending on one’s place in the chain! Algae give their lives in the fish’s watery cafeteria, who in turn meet their end when a sharp-eyed seagull plunges to spear them. Each death gives life to something else. The things of the earth give themselves for one another and for future generations.

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 October 22

Receiving, and then giving back, is the way nature works. Since we are part of God’s earthly creation, we share in its cycles of living and dying. . . . Knowing that we will ultimately give back our physical selves—“these last few molecules of ‘I’”—to the earth, we can choose to live with either gloom or humor, which is delightfully related to the word humus, the Latin form of adamah.

A teacher . . . once spoke the language of the mountain valley: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). When I have learned that truth, I can apply it elsewhere, letting die what needs to die. Perhaps I can even learn to welcome change, or at least to make peace with it. Most of it I cannot control, after all. Our bodies shed dead cells, and new ones take their place. One kind of family life—life with young children—dies, so that it can grow into another kind of family life in which young adults and their parents discover a new mutuality. Our work changes, our friendships change, we move, we age, we lose dear ones. All of the dying is the compost of our lives, even as we resist it. It is, in the end, the way we live. . . .

Nature teaches me to let go of past sorrows or resentments so that I can move on. It is an environmental issue: if my inner landscape is polluted with hoarded resentments and sadness, I cannot see beyond myself to the world around me. Infertile lives beget infertile meadows, woodlands, or communities. When I allow myself to let go, I am often surprised by the power of healing, as gratuitous and surprising as the sun bursting through clouds on a dull day.

Like the plants in the mountain meadow, we are dying and growing all the time. Every event of life, no matter how tragic, can become a means of growth for us; it depends on what we do with it. There is no garbage—only compost.

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

Then the Priest signs the Gifts, bows and says:

We make this offering to you, Master, for your holy places also, which you glorified by the divine Epiphany of your Christ, and by the visitation of your all-holy Spirit, especially for the holy and glorious Sion, the mother of all the Churches; and for your holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church throughout the whole inhabited world. Richly bestow on it now too, Master, the gifts of your all-holy Spirit.

People (quietly, many times, as the Priest prays): Remember, Lord our God.

Remember, Lord, also our holy fathers and bishops in your Church, who throughout the inhabited world rightly proclaim the word of truth. . . .

Remember, Lord, the honourable order of presbyters here and everywhere, the diaconate in Christ, all the rest of the ministers, every order in the Church and our brotherhood in Christ and the whole Christ-loving people.

Remember, Lord, the deacons who stand round your holy altar and them a life without reproach, preserve their diaconate unstained and grant them good standing.

Remember, Lord, those who travel by land, sea and air, Christians who live far from home, those in bondage and prisons, those in captivity and exile, those in mines and in tortures and bitter slavery, our fathers, mothers and brethren, and a peaceful return for each of them to their own homes.

Remember, Lord, those in old age and incapacity, the sick, the suffering, those troubled by unclean spirits, and for their speedy healing from God and for their safety and salvation.

Remember, Lord, those who pass their lives in virginity, purity and asceticism, and in holy wedlock, and for our venerable fathers, mothers and brethren who struggle on mountains, in caves, and in the hollows of the earth, and Orthodox communities in every place and for our community in Christ in this place.

Remember, Lord, all for their good. Have mercy on all, Master. Be reconciled with us all. Give peace to the multitudes of your people. Disperse scandals; put an end to wars; ends the schisms of the churches; speedily dissolve the uprisings of heresies; throw down the pride of the nations; exalt the horn of Christians; grant us your peace and your love, O God, our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth.

Remember, Lord, seasonable weather, gentle showers, fair dews, abundant harvests, perfect seasons and the crowning of the year with your goodness. For the eyes of all hope on you, and you give them their food in due season; you open your hand and fill every living being with your good pleasure.

Remember, Lord, those who have brought and those who bring offerings in the holy Churches of God, those who remember the poor, and those who have asked us to remember them in our prayers.

Also be pleased to remember, Lord, those too who have brought offerings today for your holy altar, and those for whom each has brought them, or whom each one has in mind, and those whose names are now read to you. And he commemorates those whom he wishes of the living. . . .

Also be pleased to remember, Lord, those who have been well-pleasing to you from the beginning of time, generation by generation, holy Fathers, Mothers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Teachers, Ascetics, and every righteous spirit, made perfect in faith.

Deacon: And for the peace and stability of the whole world and of the holy Churches of God, and those for whom each has made offerings or whom they have in mind and for the people here present, and for all people.

Priest (aloud): Through whom for us and for them, for you Master are a good God and a Master who loves humankind:

People: Remit, forgive, pardon, O God, our transgressions, voluntary and involuntary, in knowledge and in ignorance.

Priest (aloud): By the grace, compassion and love for humankind of your Christ, with whom you are blessed and glorified with your all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages.

People: Amen.

Excerpts of prayers offered with the gifts in the Divine Liturgy of St James, which until recently was only celebrated on the island of Zakynthos on his feast on 23 October and in Jerusalem on the Sunday after Christmas, but is today celebrated in an increasing number of Orthodox churches. It was the ancient rite of Jerusalem, as the Mystagogic Catecheses of St Cyril of Jerusalem imply. The entire text may be found at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ephrem/lit-james.htm.

Daily Reading for October 24

When the Lord who spoke to Moses came to fulfill his own law, he likewise gave a clear explanation to his disciples, laying bare the meaning of what had previously been said in a figure when he said, If anyone wants to be a follower of mine and not “If any man will go before me.” And to the one asking about eternal life he proposes the same thing, for he says Come, follow me. Now, he who follows sees the back.

So Moses, who eagerly seeks to behold God, is now taught how he can behold Him: to follow God wherever he might lead is to behold God. His passing by signifies his guiding the one who follows, for someone who does not know the way cannot complete his journey safely in any other way than by following behind his guide. He who leads, then, by his guidance shows the way to the one following. He who follows will not turn aside from the right way if he always keeps the back of his leader in view.

For he who moves to one side or brings himself to face his guide assumes another direction for himself than the one his guide shows him. Therefore, he says to the one who is led, My face is not to be seen, that is, “Do not face your guide.” If he does so, his course will certainly be in the opposite direction, for good does not look good in the face, but follows it.

From The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa, translated and introduced by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. A volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series (Paulist Press, 1978).

Daily Reading for October 25

Give, looking for nothing again, that is, without consideration of future advantages: give to children, to old men, to the unthankful, and the dying, and to those you shall never see again: for else your alms and curtesy is not charity, but traffick and merchandise: and be sure that you omit not to relieve the needs of your enemy and the injurious; for so possibly you may win him to your self; but do you intend the winning him to God.

From Holy Living by Jeremy Taylor, quoted in Readings in Anglican Spirituality, complied by David Hein (Forward Movement Publications, 1991).

Daily Reading for October 26 • The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Moses did not set foot on the land below for which the people were longing by reason of the promise. He who preferred to live by what flowed from above no longer tasted earthly food. But having come to the very top of the mountain, he, like a good sculptor who has fashioned well the whole statue of his own life, did not simply bring his creation to an end but he placed the finishing touch on his work.

What does the history say about this? That Moses the servant of Yahweh died as Yahweh decreed, and no one has ever found his grave, his eyes were undimmed, and his face unimpaired. From this we learn that, when one has accomplished such noble actions, he is considered worthy of this sublime name, to be called servant of Yahweh. . . .

What then are we taught through what has been said? To have but one purpose in life: to be called servants of God by virtue of the lives we live. . . .The goal of the sublime way of life is being called a servant of God.

From The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa, translated and introduced by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. A volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series (Paulist Press, 1978).

Daily Reading for October 27

A Prayer for Morning

I am so weary, Father, of using myself
as the measure of everything and everybody.
Just for this one day, I beg you,
help me to find release from the old pattern
of seeing the different-from-me
as either less-than or more-than me.
Grant instead that, for just this one day at least,
I may see everything and everybody I meet
in terms of how I want you to see me
at this day’s end.

—Phyllis Tickle

An Intercession

God of diversity,
Help us to love otherness.
God of the Jesus mystery,
Help us to burn out hatred.
God of the Woman at the Well,
Help us to know our true need.
And God of the Ethiopian,
Help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Amen.

—Michael Battle

From Race and Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams, edited by Malcolm Boyd and Chester Talton. Copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 28 • St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles

O Lord Jesus our God,
Who called people from their daily work
Saying to them, ‘Come ye after me’,
May your children today hear your voice
And gladly answer your call
To give their lives to you,
To serve your Church,
To offer their gifts
And give away their hearts
To you only.
Bless their hopes,
The first tiny stirrings of desire,
The little resolve to go forward,
The small vision of what might be.
Deal gently with their fears
The hesitation of uncertainty,
The darkness of the unknown,
The lack of confidence in their own capacity,
And turn it all to trust in you.

A prayer by Gabrielle Hadington of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, quoted in The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by George Appleton (Oxford, 1985).

Daily Reading for October 29 • James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa and his Companions, Martyrs, 1885

But now, I think that almost all missionaries come as people who want to be servants. Now the exchange of missionaries tends to affirm the good that is in each culture and also allow Christ to judge every culture, as Christ does. Yes, there are some elements of African culture that are not compatible with the Christian gospel, just as there are many aspects of European culture that are contrary to the gospel. But I prefer to think on the many things that the Christian gospel affirms about every one of us. Now we have mission companions who, on the whole, are not prone to using verbs in the imperative mood. . . . A more healthy exchange has developed and the giving is no longer in one direction. Today I would say there is a mutuality in the mission relationship. . . .

I hope those involved in the mission movement will continue in a gentle, non-abrasive way to stand for the truth that they believe. I hope that by who they are they will break down those barriers that tend to make people unresponsive to other aspects of truth. I think one of my greatest weaknesses, looking back in the struggle against apartheid, was that I became too abrasive. When you are right it is so easy to become self-righteous. Those who seek to be messengers of the gospel of grace do well to remember that it helps enormously if they communicate that message graciously.

It was an American philosopher who said, “What you are is so loud that I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Some of the most eloquent witnesses to the Christian gospel are those who are side by side with people in need, incarnating God’s concern and love. If they do that with integrity people may ask, “What makes you want to do this?” And then you have the opportunity to say, “I am here really because I love Jesus, and Jesus has impelled me to come here and I hope that my touch will be to some extent his touch.”

From Desmond Tutu’s Foreword to The Scripture of Their Lives: Stories of Mission Companions Today, edited by Jane Butterfield. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for October 30

The messages of the Prologue [to the Rule of St. Benedict] are clear: Life is very short. To get the most out of it, we must begin to attend to its spiritual dimensions without which life is only half lived. Holiness is in the Now but we go through life only half conscious of it, asleep or intent on being someplace other than where we are. We need to open our eyes and see things as they exist around us: what is valuable and what is not, what enriches and what does not, what is of God and what is not. It may be the neighborhood we live in rather than the neighborhood we want that will really make human beings out of us. It may be the job we have rather than the position we are selling our souls to get that will finally liberate us from ourselves. It may be what we do rather than the prayers we pray that will finally be the measure of our sanctity.

God is calling us to more than the material level of life and God is waiting to bring us to it. All we have to do is to live well with others and live totally in God. All we have to do is to learn to listen to the voice of God in life. And we have to do it heart, soul, and body. The spiritual life demands all of us.

From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

Daily Reading for October 31 • All Hallows Eve

Each occasion
we glimpse them:
that turn of a head,
that smile,
the way she walked,
his sense of humor,
each time
a knife turns
in our heart.
In time,
through the windows of our tears
we see them
and smile.
In time,
we let go of sorrow.
In time,
beauty and music,
remembered places
bring solace not pain.
In your time,
God of all time,
may what we have sown in pain
be reaped in joy.

“Surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses,” in The Pattern of Our Days: Worship in the Celtic Tradition from the Iona Community, edited by Kathy Galloway (Paulist Press, 1996).