Daily Reading for January 1 • The Feast of the Holy Name

Naming in myth and fairy story has always been associated with power and identity. Thus, Adam named the beasts; in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; let his name not be remembered; thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; and so on. The process by which we name things and by which we are named is one which gives life its focus and meaning. Our spiritual journey is undertaken in order that we may discover our real name, that is, our true identity. Only God knows our real name, who we really are. We are on the voyage to that discovery.

Naming is the clue to such identity and purpose as we have. It is also the source of inner power. In the famous fairy tale, as soon as the princess had guessed the true name of the dwarf, Rumpelstiltskin, his power over her was destroyed. It can, of course, be taken to mean too much. The fact that my name is Alan has very little to do with my identity and sense of purpose. . . . When a total stranger calls me Alan, the name is virtually meaningless. When my wife calls me Alan, name and identity are very close. When God calls me by name, then and only then, is Alan my real name. . . .On the journey with God and to God in the power of the Spirit, we slowly increase our capacity for bearing reality, for bearing glory. In this way we see, with the professor in Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers, that “atheism is the crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.” Belief in God entails fearful risks. For in him we find our true identity. By him we are known by name. As we begin to know who we are, so also the final and eternal imprint of the imago Dei takes hold upon us and fills us with a new spirit even as we are called by name.

From Journey Into Christ by Alan Jones (Cowley Publications, 1992).

Daily Reading for January 2

The point of telling infancy stories about the one who was to die bravely and mightily rise is to remind us that we are invited to a relationship with the divine that is never built on force. It is built on vulnerability, intimacy, and complete trust.

This is not to reduce the Christian religion to a club for innocuous ne’er-do-wells whose integrity is fulfilled only when they fail or someone uses them for a doormat. Intimacy, trust, and vulnerability take lots of work. Christians must engage what is amiss in our culture, and do so nonviolently. Vulnerability requires courage. The starving and undereducated children of the world need our constant care. Liking babies requires sacrifice. . . .

The news at Christmas is that in vulnerability there can be community. In trust can be found the power of God. In simple honesty with ourselves about ourselves, grace can flourish. In swallowing pride and accepting forgiveness from God or one another, a new creation can take place. . . . What God wants from us before all else is love. The rest will follow.

From “Behind the Tinsel (Christmas)” 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 January 3

Let us awake, awake and give praise
Before daybreak,
To the divine heir of the heavenly land
There is a welcome.
The stars sang from the morning of the world,
All God’s angels together.
All the prophets sang
Without being false;
And why should we not sing as one
For having great Jehofa himself
In the manner of a man, and in our image
To truly heal us.

But despite his poverty on earth
He is still great.
All treasure under his seal
A gift of the most High;
He is the All-rich, famous One,
A strong tower to save humanity
He has every fullness in Himself
For Adam and his seed;
His is life for the dead to live again
He is a joyful physician to the broken heart,
A garment for the naked, complete and just
And justification.

“The Great Clumsy Carol,” a Welsh carol sung in the Plygain (Christmas carol service); 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 January 4 • The Second Sunday after Christmas Day

But why was the Christ child sent into Egypt? The text makes this clear: he was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” From that point onward we see that the hope of salvation would be proclaimed to the whole world. Babylon and Egypt represent the whole world. Even when they were engulfed in ungodliness, God signified that he intended to correct and amend both Babylon and Egypt. God wanted humanity to expect his bounteous gifts the world over. So he called from Babylon the wise men and sent to Egypt the holy family.

Besides what I have said, there is another lesson also to be learned, which tends powerfully toward true self-constraint in us. We are warned from the beginning to look out for temptations and plots. And we see this even when he came in swaddling clothes. Thus you see even at his birth a tyrant raging, a flight ensuing and a departure beyond the border. For it was because of no crime that his family was exiled into the land of Egypt.

Similarly, you yourself need not be troubled if you are suffering countless dangers. Do not expect to be celebrated or crowned promptly for your troubles. Instead you may keep in mind the long-suffering example of the mother of the Child, bearing all things nobly, knowing that such a fugitive life is consistent with the ordering of spiritual things. You are sharing the kind of labor Mary herself shared. So did the magi. They both were willing to retire secretly in the humiliating role of fugitive.

From “The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 8.2” by John Chrysostom, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Matthew 1-13, edited by Manlio Simonetti (InterVarsity Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for January 5

You know how sometimes on a pitch black night in the country, you see far off one glimmer of light and you follow it and it turns out to be just a candle in a cottage window—but it was enough to assure you of life ahead, to give you the lead you wanted in the dark. In the same way, when the Magi turned from their abstruse calculations in search of heaven and followed a star, they did not arrive at a great mathematical result or revelation of the cosmic mind. They found a poor little family party and were brought to their knees—because, like the truly wise, they were really humble-minded—before a baby born under most unfortunate circumstances, a mystery of human life, a little living growing thing. What a paradox! the apparently rich Magi coming to the apparently poor child. There they laid down their intellectual treasures—all pure gold to them—and, better than that, offered the spirit of adoration, the incense which alone consecrates the intellectual life and quest of truth, and that reverent acceptance of pain, mental suffering and sacrifice, that death to self which, like myrrh, hallows the dedicated life in all its forms.

The utmost man can achieve on his own here capitulates before the unspeakable simplicity of the methods of God. He is the Light of the World—all of it. He does not only want or illuminate spiritual things. His hallowing touch is for the ox and the ass, as afterwards for the sparrows and the flowers. There never was a less high-brow religion or one more deeply in touch with natural life than Christianity, although it is infinite in its scope. Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same shall be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is no use being too clever about life. Only so far as we find God in it do we find any meaning in it.

From Light of Christ by Evelyn Underhill, quoted in Advent with Evelyn Underhill, edited by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for January 6 • The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The first king was very young,
O balow, balow la lay,
With doleful ballads on his tongue,
O balow, balow la lay,
He came bearing a branch of myrrh
Than which no gall is bitterer,
O balow, balow la lay,
Gifts for a baby King, O.

The second king was a man in prime,
O balow, balow la lay,
The solemn priest of a solemn time,
O balow, balow la lay,
With eyes downcast and reverent feet
He brought his incense sad and sweet,
O balow, balow la lay,
Gifts for a baby King, O.

The third king was very old,
O balow, balow la lay,
Both his hands were full of gold,
O balow, balow la lay,
Many a gaud and glittering toy,
Baubles brave for a baby boy,
O balow, balow la lay,
Gifts for a baby King, O.

“The Three Kings” by Dorothy L. Sayers; found at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sayers/opi/dls-opi.html#kings

Daily Reading for January 7

The mysterious “wise men” from the East caught popular Christian fancy earlier and more often then did Luke’s rather pedestrian shepherds-visitors to Bethlehem. In the Protoevangelium of James (second century) only magi come to pay homage at the Bethlehem cave—an interesting mixture of Matthew and Luke. In the Roman catacombs the magi made their pictorial debut a good two centuries before the shepherds, who belatedly appear in the fourth century in Sts. Peter and Marcellinus as subsidiary to the magi. If interest in relics is taken as a gauge, there is simply no contest between the magi and the shepherds. Indeed, the corporeal relics of the magi traveled on a grander scale than their original owners, to the point that in the twentieth century the relics were still traveling and even going back to their earlier home “by another route.” We are told that the relics of the magi were brought from Persia to Constantinople in 490 by the Emperor Zeno. Relics (the same or others) appeared much later in Milan, and from there they went to Cologne in 1162 as part of the booty dispersed by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who had ravaged Italy. The magi’s remains were none the worse for travel, apparently, for the report speaks of still incorrupt bodies. Today these relics remain in Cologne in a magnificently enameled shrine, although in 1903 the cardinal of Cologne sent some of the relics back to Milan as a gift to the cardinal of that city. . . .

We may smile at the anachronisms in [medieval] descriptions, but this imaginative reflection on the magi is not too far from Matthew’s own intent. In the persons of the magi Matthew was anticipating the Gentile Christians of his own community. Although these had as their birthright only the revelation of God in nature, they had been attracted to Jesus; and when instructed in the Scriptures of the Jews, they had come to believe in and pay homage to the Messiah.

From The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke by Raymond E. Brown (Image Books, 1979).

Daily Reading for January 8 • Harriet Bedell, Deaconess and Missionary, 1969

Harriet Bedell, missionary and friend to the Seminole Indians of Florida, was born in Buffalo, New York on March 19, 1875. She was trained as a schoolteacher but was inspired several years later by an Episcopalian missionary who spoke at her church describing the many needs of missionary work. In 1906 she applied to, and was accepted by, the New York Training School for Deaconesses, where her one-year course of study included instruction in religious matters, missions, teaching, hygiene, and hospital nursing. Following her training she was sent as a missionary-teacher to the Cheyenne Indians at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma.

Bedell’s duties at the Whirlwind Mission were many. She cared for the sick and the poor, organized social services for the tribe, performed the duties of the rector in his absence, and provided education for the women and children. She provided religious instruction, hoping to win the confidence of the Indians and convert them to Christianity.

Because of her experience in both teaching and working with Indians, in 1916 an Episcopal bishop requested that she consider an assignment in a remote area of Alaska. Saddened by the prospect of leaving Oklahoma, she nevertheless accepted her new assignment in Stevens Village, Alaska. While there, in 1922 she was finally made a deaconess in the church, instilling in her a new and profound dedication to her vocation. The mission at Stevens Village was moved to Tanana so that a boarding school funded by church members' contributions could be established for the children who could not travel in the bad winter weather. However, by 1931, funds were so scarce that Deaconess Bedell traveled to New York to plea for more contributions. Because of the Great Depression, there was little available money, and although the church paid off the school's existing debt, there was little reason for Bedell to return to Alaska.

Through speaking engagements following her service in Alaska, Bedell was invited to visit a Seminole Indian reservation in southern Florida. Appalled by their living conditions, she began her campaign to improve the quality of life among the Mikasuki-Seminole Indians by living and working with them, not merely teaching them. She sought to revive the doll making and basket weaving skills which had become nearly extinct. She encouraged the incorporation of the intricate patchwork designs made by Indian women into articles of clothing for both women and men. Sales from the arts and crafts store at Blades Cross Mission helped to provide improved income for the Mikasuki-Seminoles.

Bedell emphasized health and education rather than religious conversion in her work with the Seminoles; their spiritual and physical comfort was more important to her than religious conversion, and her work and friendship with the Seminoles of Florida reflected those values.

From the Bedell Collection of the State of Florida Archives, found at http://www.floridamemory.com/Photographiccollection/Collection_page.cfm?PR_ID=2

Daily Reading for January 9 • Julia Chester Emery, 1922

If we are lucky, once or twice in a lifetime we might experience an example of thanksgiving so deep, so wide, that we can recall it and use it to move ourselves away from the sense of scarcity that the world embraces and move us to the sense of the abundant life which Christ promises us. One of those experiences for me is that I, a man, had the privilege and joy of serving on the United Thank Offering Committee from 1985-1988 as an Executive Council Liaison from the Episcopal Church.

The UTO Committee members were most welcoming. And wow, do those women work hard! A hard worker myself, even as a young man I could scarcely keep up with UTO Committee members, some of whom were old enough to be my mother. In each and everything we did there was a sense of giving thanks at all times and in all places. After all, what other response can we human beings have for the extravagant and unconditional love of our God for us, and for all creation? Mine is a story of how UTO in its mission and ministry has created a sense of thanksgiving in those whose lives it has touched all over the globe.

In 1987, Presiding Bishop Ed Browning sent me to the South Pacific Anglican Council Meeting in Suva, Fiji to represent the Episcopal Church. What an adventure! . . . While we were there a number of people, children in particular, were made very ill with malaria. The Bishop, some clergy and lay leaders, and I agreed to help evacuate the sickest of the children to the only medical facility. We carried them across fast flowing rivers that forced us to hang on to heavy ropes with one hand and carry the children draped over our shoulders, holding them with our other hand. The one medical vehicle on the island in those days was, you guessed it, purchased with a grant from the UTO. The only trained medical personnel in the mid 80’s, there in the rural part of the island, was an Anglican priest who had been trained as an R.N. by an Episcopal Church overseas development grant. After loading the children in the “ambulance” they were taken to the one medical clinic there. Yes: it was built with a UTO grant.

I had been directing Native American ministries in the Dioceses of Minnesota and North Dakota, and every new church building for a Native American community had been built with UTO grants. So I was not surprised, after getting blank stares when he said I was from the Episcopal Church, the Bishop introduced me as “Howard Anderson, from the UTO Committee.” That brought broad smiles, much nodding of heads and the comment, “Oh the Episcopal Church, is that a part of the UTO?”

UTO continues teaching people all across the world to be thankful at all times and in all places, and gives each one of us a concrete way to say “thanks be to God” for all that we have been given.

From “At all times and in all places,” a sermon on the United Thank Offering by the Rev. Howard Anderson in Washington National Cathedral, June 2007; http://www.episcopalchurch.org/88389_88633_ENG_HTM.htm

Daily Reading for January 10 • William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645

Gracious Father, I humbly beseech thee
for thy holy catholic church.
Fill it with all truth, in all truth, with all peace.
Where it is corrupt, purge it.
Where it is in error, direct it.
Where it is superstitious, rectify it.
Where anything is amiss, reform it.
Where it is right, strengthen and confirm it.
Where it is in want, furnish it.
Where it is divided and rent asunder,
make up the breaches of it,
O thou holy one of Israel.

From Works, Vol. III of William Laud, 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 January 11 • The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord

Today the Source of all the graces of baptism comes himself to be baptized in the river Jordan, there to make himself known to the world. Seeing him approach, John stretches out his hand to hold him back, protesting: Lord, by your own baptism you sanctify all others; yours is the true baptism, the source of perfect holiness. How can you wish to submit to mine? But the Lord replies, I wish it to be so. Come and baptize me. Do as I wish, for surely you cannot refuse me. Why do you hesitate, why are you so afraid? Do you not realize that the baptism I ask for is mine by every right? By my baptism the waters will be sanctified, receiving from me fire and the Holy Spirit. . . .

See the hosts of heaven hushed and still, as the all-holy Bridegroom goes down into the Jordan. No sooner is he baptized than he comes up from the waters, his splendor shining forth over the earth. The gates of heaven are opened, and the Father’s voice is heard: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” All who are present stand in awe as they watch the Spirit descend to bear witness to him. O come all you peoples, worship him! Praise to you, Lord, for your glorious epiphany which brings joy to us all! The whole world has become radiant with the light of your manifestation.

From Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on Nativity: Epiphany, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament II, Mark, edited by Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for January 12 • Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167

Bouts of acute pain from arthritis and the stone had compelled Aelred reluctantly to submit to mitigations in his daily regime from about 1157 onwards, and to find a way of being as little trouble as possible to everyone else on these occasions. His solution had been to erect an outbuilding near the common infirmary of the abbey, where he could have a fire and be close enough to benefit from the provisions normally made for the sick. There, at the same time, he could conduct the business of the monastery and see members of his community without disturbing anyone else. In this place, when he was at home, he more and more worked and talked and prayed.

By Walter Daniel’s account there must have been a good deal of talking to be done. Rievaulx had been growing steadily all through Aelred’s life and, towards the end, on the greater feast days, when the lay brothers came in from the granges, the church was crowded with the brethren “like bees in a hive.” There were, we are told, one hundred and forty monks and five hundred lay brethren at the time of Aelred’s death. Inevitably the life of this large community converged upon the abbot’s simple lodging, where there was an atmosphere of freedom in which to talk about scripture and the problems of monastic life and anything that was wholesome and interesting. For Aelred, who had often had to be very firm with himself in his search for the appropriate self-discipline, knew the importance of allowing the immature their root-room. He understood, as his own ascetic teaching makes clear, when to insist but, unlike disciplinarians whom Walter Daniel calls “silly abbots,” Aelred never crushed the spontaneity of his young men. Twenty or thirty at a time could be found any day round his bed, or sitting on it, talking to him. Walter Daniel says that they felt able to be so open with him that they were rather like children with their mother.

From Aelred of Reivaulx by Aelred Squire, O.P., quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).

Daily Reading for January 13 • Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, 367

St. Hilary of Poitiers is one of the greatest, yet least studied, of the Fathers of the Western Church. He has suffered thus, partly from a certain obscurity in his style of writing, partly from the difficulty of the thoughts which he attempted to convey. But there are other reasons for the comparative neglect into which he has fallen. He learnt his theology, as we shall see, from Eastern authorities, and was not content to carry on and develop the traditional teaching of the West; and the disciple of Origen, who found his natural allies in the Cappadocian school of Basil and the Gregories, his juniors though they were, was speaking to somewhat unsympathetic ears. Again, his Latin tongue debarred him from influence in the East, and he suffered, like all Westerns, from that deep suspicion of Sabellianism which was rooted in the Eastern Churches. Nor are these the only reasons for the neglect of Hilary. Of his two chief works, the Homilies on the Psalms, important as they were in popularising the allegorical method of interpretation, were soon outdone in favour by other commentaries; while his great controversial work on the Trinity suffered from its very perfection for the purpose with which it was composed. It seems, at first sight, to be not a refutation of Arianism, or of any particular phase of Arianism, but of one particular document, the Epistle of Arius to Alexander, in which Arian doctrines are expressed; and that a document which, in the constantly shifting phases of the controversy, soon fell into an oblivion which the work of Hilary has nearly shared. . . .

And furthermore, Hilary never does himself justice. He was a great original thinker in the field of Christology, but he has never stated his views systematically and completely. They have to be laboriously reconstructed by the collection of passages scattered throughout his works; and though he is a thinker so consistent that little or no conjecture is needed for the piecing together of his system, yet we cannot be surprised full justice has never been done to him. . . . It is not his practical share, in word or deed, in the conflicts of his day that is his chief title to fame, but his independence and depth as a Christian thinker. He has, indeed, exerted an important influence upon the growth of doctrine, but it has been through the adoption of his views by Augustine and Ambrose; and many who have profited by his thoughts have never known who was their author.

From the Introduction to Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, volume IX in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II; found at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF2-09/Npnf2-09-03.htm#P89_9093.

Daily Reading for January 14

Do you see, beloved, how many and how great blessings we would have lost if the Lord had yielded to the exhortation of John and declined baptism? For the heavens had been shut before this. The region above was inaccessible. We might descend to the lower parts, but not ascend to the upper. So it happened not only that the Lord was being baptized—he also was making new the old creation. He was bringing the alienated under the scepter of adoption. For straightway “the heavens were opened to him.” A reconciliation took place between the visible and the invisible. The celestial orders were filled with joy, the diseases of earth were healed, secret things made known, those at enmity restored to amity. For you have heard the word of the Evangelist, saying, “The heavens were opened to him,” on account of three wonders. At the baptism of Christ the Bridegroom, it was fitting that the heavenly chamber should open its glorious gates. So when the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, and the Father’s voice spread everywhere, it was fitting that “the gates of heaven should be lifted up.”

From “The Discourse of the Holy Theophany” by Hippolytus, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament II, Mark, edited by Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998).

Daily Reading for January 15

To be “in the mystery,” and thus live a “mystical” life, is to be “in Christ,” dwelling by faith in the light of this great work of God, reconciling his creation. By the same token, “mystical theology” is reflection upon our formation in this “Mysterium Magnum.” Mystical theology asks how we enter, act, and share in this mystery and what we should and should not say of it. This theology seeks to hear what the Spirit of Christ demands of us and how we discern this Spirit from all other spirits, including our own. The mystical theologian strains to articulate the beauty now revealed, the “excellencies of Christ,” the ways of restoration, the suffering that they entail, and the “fullness of time” in preparation for us.

From Quenching Hell: The Mystical Theology of William Law by Alan Gregory. Copyright © 2008 by Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for January 16

When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, “Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?” A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at this work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, “Do this and you will be saved.” At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.

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

Daily Reading for January 17 • Antony, Abbot in Egypt, 356

Whenever a large crowd such as this came to his cell, Antony was never put out. He listened patiently to all they had to tell him and treated each person gently and with immense courtesy. And they recognized that the Living Word informed all his actions and his every utterance. Among those who came to him were many who had all manner of afflictions both of mind and body; and Our Lord healed them by the hand of this blessed man. Moreover God graced his words to them so that everyone found consolation and fresh strength to suffer their particular lot. The sick endured their illness in patience, the proud became humble, the arrogant changed their ways at the very sight of such a holy man. He used to tell them: “We should own nothing superfluous but love Christ alone: neither possessions, nor family, not even our own soul. For if God himself did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for our sins, how much more just is it that we, having tasted and known his Divine grace, should surrender our souls to him. And this we should do, not for his sake for that is not what is wanted: but to save our very lives!”

When he spoke in this way, many were persuaded to give up the world and all its busy ways and hide themselves away where monks lived.

From Life of Antony Abbot by Athanasius of Alexandria, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister: A Monastic Reader, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).

Daily Reading for January 18 • The Second Sunday after the Epiphany and the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Let us thank God that, because we are all made in his image, it is possible for all to be united. Let us thank God for the special unity which those who are new creatures in Christ Jesus can enjoy. Let us ask God to forgive the sin that has destroyed the unity he intended for humanity.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Let us thank God for the growth of understanding between Christians of different outlooks and traditions. Let us thank God for the growth in unity of our local churches. Let us pray that we may grow together in truth and love.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Let us pray that we may learn from Christians of other traditions. Let us pray that they may learn from us. May they and we remember that Jesus prayed for us to be sanctified in truth before he prayed for us to be one. May God so guide us that we might seek unity through the truth.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Let us pray for our own church, that we and all its members may be filled with the spirit of faith, hope, and love, and so attain to that unity which will lead people to acknowledge the truth of the Gospel.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Let us pray for the unity of our country, for a greater understanding and sympathy between the young and those who are older, between employers and those they employ, between migrant workers and their host communities, and between the Church and those who have rejected organized religion.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Finally, let us pray for the unity of the world, for reconciliation, peace and compassion between rich and poor, white and people of color, followers of one religion and another, and nations which have long been embattled against each other.
Lord of mercy: Hear our prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, “Peace I give to you; my own peace I leave with you”: Regard not our sins, but the faith of your Church, and give to us the peace and unity of that heavenly City, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, now and for ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Today’s Church and The Book of Common Prayer (1979) quoted in The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Litanies to Enlarge Our Prayer, revised and updated edition, compiled and adapted by Jeffery Rowthorn with W. Alfred Tisdale. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for January 19 • The Confession of St. Peter the Apostle and a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gracious, loving, and compassionate God of our fathers and mothers, we give you thanks for your faithful servants in every age who have struggled against injustice and oppression and who have fought to root out the evil and sin of racism and discrimination. Through witnesses such as Harriet Tubman, Absalom Jones, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we have learned the merits of self-sacrifice, courageous action, and redemptive suffering. Grant that we in this day, following their example, may continue to resist oppression in all its forms and guises. May we resolve to remain committed to do the work to which you have called each of us and which you require of us all—to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly” with you, our God. Trusting in your grace and mercy, and in the power of your holy enabling and sustaining Spirit, we ask this in the name of our Liberator, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

A prayer by Bishop Barbara C. Harris, quoted in 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 January 20 • Fabian, Bishop and Martyr of Rome, 250

By the third century C.E., Christianity had become a widespread religious movement that crossed ethnic, class, and gender lines throughout the Roman Empire. While population numbers for the ancient world are notoriously elusive, conservative estimates suggest that by the year 300, Christians may have numbered in the several millions (out of a population of about 60 million). Despite the highly rhetorical presentation of Christian apologists and historians from these early centuries, however, this rapid growth was neither uniform nor coherent. In its first centuries, Christianity was characterized by diversity and marginalization. From its origins, different groups understood the significance of “faith in Christ” in radically different ways and expressed their belief in different forms.

In addition to this internal diversity, various forms of antagonism from the dominant culture around them meant that Christians were often viewed with suspicion and mistrust. After all, they met in private homes, performed secretive rituals of initiation and communion, and stayed away from the public religious festivals of their friends and neighbors. Organized, government-sponsored persecution was rare in the first two hundred years of Christianity (although no less painful for being rare), but localized and sporadic attempts to root out religious subversives resulted in violence against some Christian communities. Our earliest account of martyrs (witnesses) who died rather than renounce Christianity appear in the mid-second century, and the circulation of martyr texts provided a theological and political framework within which Christian resistance and opposition to “the world” crystallized. This sense of marginalization cut across the diversity of Christian beliefs and practices: the perceived Christian conflict with the “powers of this world” perhaps predominated for a time over the internal pressures and contradictions of diversity within the movement.

From the introduction to Christianity in Late Antiquity: 300-450 C. E.: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs (New York: Oxford, 2004).

Daily Reading for January 21 • Agnes, Martyr at Rome, 304

The late third and early fourth centuries brought sweeping changes to the Roman Empire and to Christianity. In 284 a successful general named Diocles assumed the imperial throne under the name Diocletian and set out to enact military, political, and economic reorganizations. He instituted fixed prices, new provincial boundaries, and a system of shared governance between two senior emperors (called Augustuses) and two junior emperors (called Caesars). Diocletian also instituted reform that was designed to ensure religious unity in the Roman Empire, including confiscation of Christian churches and property and punishment of Christian leaders. Diocletian retired in 305, and the Augustuses and Caesars continued his policy of enforcing uniformity around the Empire, including the legal proscription of Christianity.

In 306, Constantine, the son of one of Diocletian’s imperial colleagues, was proclaimed Augustus by the imperial troops stationed in York. . . Constantine passed an edict of religious toleration in 313 that recognized Christianity as a legal religion in the Roman Empire. The last “Great Persecution” initiated by Diocletian came to an end.

From the introduction to Christianity in Late Antiquity: 300-450 C. E.: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs (New York: Oxford, 2004).

Daily Reading for January 22 • Vincent, Deacon of Saragossa and Martyr, 304

Some of the basic tensions that existed in Christianity before Constantine’s conversion still remained, now recast into new contexts. Issues of cultural marginalization and internal division persisted as Christians came to terms with their increasingly prominent place in society. Whereas Christians of the second and third century had struggled to achieve intellectual and social legitimacy in the face of their non-Christian neighbors, they now strove to delineate with more care the precise boundaries between Christian and “pagan” culture. The incorporation of classical literatures and philosophies into the elaboration of Christian theology and interpretation caused, for some, a crisis of cultural identity. When was ancient Greek philosophy “pagan,” and when could it be appropriately Christianized? When were classical ideals of family, society, and politics to be rejected as suspect, irreligious remnants of a bygone era, and when might they be fruitfully employed to articulate a new vision of imperial Christianity? The conceptual transition from “Church of the Martyrs” to “Church Triumphant” required reimagining historical and social categories from new vantage points. Cultural and political distinction was increasingly expressed along religious lines. Although the fourth-century non-Christian Roman politician Symmachus tried to argue for religious plurality, famously remarking that “we cannot arrive at so great a mystery by only one road,” Christians in Late Antiquity insisted more and more on creating and policing sharp external boundaries.

Likewise, the manner in which internal religious difference was theorized continued to trouble many Christians as the perils of deviance were projected onto a wider, imperial stage. Christians in the second and third centuries had already introduced the categories of orthodoxy (“right thinking”) and heresy (“deviance”) in ways that drew absolute boundaries among various Christian communities. But as Christian networks of community now overlapped directly with the political concerns of Roman emperors, these intolerant discourses of orthodoxy and heresy took on a new absolutist character. Debates over correct belief and practice were now always intertwined with questions of political loyalty and social deviance. Pre-Constantinian concerns for uniformity within the Roman Empire and within Christian communities now dovetailed, producing new forms of authority and new anxieties about difference. Bishops, charged with enforcing orthodoxy, now operated with the backing of Roman law and imperial troops, and theological debates could now erupt into wide-scale violence.

From the introduction to Christianity in Late Antiquity: 300-450 C. E.: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs (New York: Oxford, 2004).

Daily Reading for January 23 • Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893

Here lies the sublime and beautiful variety of human life. It is as beings come to their reality that they assert their individuality. . . . The intense variety of Light! The awful monotony of Darkness! Men are various; Christians ought to be various a thousand-fold. Strive for your best, that there you may find your most distinctive life. We cannot dream of what interest the world will have when every being in its human multitude shall shine with his own light and color, and be the child of God which it is possible for him to be,—which he has ever been in the true home-land of his Father’s thought. . . .

The hope of the world is in the ever richer naturalness of the highest life. “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.” Your hope and mine is the same. The day of our salvation has not come till every voice brings us one message; till Christ, the Light of the world, everywhere reveals to us the divine secret of our life; till everything without joins with the consciousness all alive within, and “the Spirit Itself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God.”

From “The Light of the World” by Phillips Brooks, quoted in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for January 24 • Ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi, First Woman Priest in the Anglican Communion, 1944

A hundred years ago a baby was about to be born in the fishing village of Aberdeen on Hong Kong island. Its gender was not known. Boy babies were highly prized. At that time, in that culture, a bowl of ash could be at hand to smother unwanted new-born girls. The baby who was born on 5 May 1907 was wanted. Her Christian father, a doctor turned headteacher, valued his new daughter and called her Tim-Oi, “Much Beloved.” That decision began a chain of events which has changed the Church.

Tim-Oi completed her primary schooling at 14, but her five brothers and 2 sisters meant there were no funds for further schooling until she was 21. She left school aged 27. While a student she joined an Anglican church, and at her baptism took the Christian name Florence, because her birth-month, May, is a month of flowers, and because she admired Florence Nightingale.

In 1931 she was at the ordination in Hong Kong cathedral of an English deaconess. The Chinese preacher asked if there was a Chinese girl also willing to sacrifice herself for the Chinese church. She prayed: “God, would you like to send me?” That call never left her. In 1934 she started a four year course at Union Theological College in Canton, where her New Testament tutor was Geoffrey Allen, later to be Bishop of Derby, England. Her family couldn’t afford the college fees which were paid by the Anglican church. While at college she led a team of students rescuing the casualties of Japanese carpet bombing, and narrowly escaped being a casualty herself.

Time does not allow to tell her full story: of her licence to preside for two years at Holy Communion in the absence of a priest in Macau; of the bishop brought up in a Tractarian [High Church] vicarage who was not happy with lay celebration and ordained her a Priest of God on 25 January 1944, because God had clearly shown that He had already given her the gift of priesthood. After the War, pressured by what I call a “Purple Guard,” to the dismay of the Bishop, she resigned her licence as a Priest, but not her Holy Orders. She was put in charge of a parish near Vietnam, and there she started a large maternity home to ensure that new-born girls were not smothered at birth. Her witness to the value of every child, girl and boy, made many friends for Jesus—making friends for Jesus was her mission in life. But also she showed that “It Takes ONE Woman” to change the culture of her community.

From “Memories of Li Tim-Oi” by Canon Christopher Hall, Lambeth Palace, 30 April 2007; http://www.ittakesonewoman.org/lto.html

Daily Reading for January 25 • The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

As you ponder the scene [from Mark’s gospel], you may encounter Jesus taking the initiative and walking into your life, just as he took the initiative and walked into Peter’s life. Jesus always starts the relationship; we respond—or do not respond. We are free to invite Jesus to sit in our boat or to tell him to get out. He never coerces, but waits upon our willing consent to welcome him into our lives. Love is always a gift which we are free to accept or reject.

Again, ponder what it means to be known. What did Peter experience when he suddenly realized he was entirely known? Very few people truly know us, or want to. How difficult it is to enter fully into the heart and mind of someone else, even those we love most deeply! Yet there is One who sees into the depths of our hearts, knows all about us, from whom we can hide nothing. It is both wonderful and terrifying to be known as Jesus knows us!

When the boat starts to sink, we are afraid. Our fear is mixed with guilt, for confronted by the holiness of Christ, we see ourselves as we truly are. Being known by Christ is the means by which we know ourselves. Or ponder the meaning of “Be not afraid.” All our anxiety, loneliness, and fear are wiped away as we know ourselves to be with One who loves us forever and will never leave us alone.

Consider that Jesus always enters our lives in the company of other people. We do not meet him alone, but always with others. At first, we know him through our parents, church school teachers, and friends. But sooner or later, we deal with Jesus alone. This usually involves a struggle, for our first impulse is to tell Jesus to go away—we must choose Jesus or our sins. But once this is settled and we understand that we are known and forgiven and there is nothing to fear, we can go on. We go about our daily living in company with others and with Jesus. And we accept our responsibility to carry Jesus into the lives of people, as he once came into our life through others. Like Peter, James, and John, we become fishers of men.

From Prayer and Personal Religion by John Coburn, revised by Richard Schmidt. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Forward Movement and Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for January 26 • The Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

From Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1956).

Daily Reading for January 27 • John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, 407

The Baptismal Instructions of John Chrysostom, among others, focus our attention on what a Christian initiation into the Church consisted of at one time. Let us briefly summarize the spiritual themes that recur most frequently.

The Christian Identity. The glory of the stars, and that of emperors, is nothing compared to that of Christians.

A Sense of Church, especially of the local church, so typical of the Christian East. Although Chrysostom does not systematize this concept, it is found frequently in his Instructions.

The Good Fight. Evil lies at the gate. His series of warnings should be understood within this context.

Witness. Christians live in the world and are to be its salt and its light.

Eschatological Tension. We live on earth as in an inn, which we will one day have to leave to return to our homeland. The martyrs wonderfully symbolize this pascha (Easter Passover, pesah), which is at one and the same time painful and glorious, and toward which we are all moving.

From Prayer: The Spirituality of the Christian East, Volume 2 by Tomaš Špidlík SJ (Cistercian Publications, 2005).

Daily Reading for January 28 • Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Friar, 1274

Question II. Is it appropriate to pray? . . .

In the case of prayer we do not pray in order to change God’s plan, but in order to obtain by our prayers those things which God planned to bring about by means of prayers, in order, as Gregory says, that our prayers should entitle us to receive what almighty God planned from all eternity to give us. . . . We do not have to present our prayers to God in order to disclose to Him our needs and desires, but in order to make ourselves realize that we need to have recourse to His help in these matters. . . . Our prayer is not designed to change what God has already planned.

God gives us many things out of sheer generosity, without being asked. The reason why He wants to give us some things in response to our petitions is that it is profitable for us to acquire a certain confidence in running to Him and to recognize that He is the source of all that is good for us. So Chrysostom says, “Consider what a joy is granted you, what glory is bestowed upon you, that you can speak with God in your prayers, that you can engage in conversation with Christ, and plead for whatever you want, whatever you desire."

From “On Prayer” by Thomas Aquinas, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for January 29

Question V. Should we ask God for particular things when we pray? . . .

Reply: As Maximus Valerius tells us, “Socrates thought we should ask nothing more from the immortal gods except that they would grant us good things, because they know what is good for each individual, whereas we often ask for things it would be better for us not to obtain.” In some ways this view is correct, at least so far as those things are concerned which can turn out badly and which we can use badly or well, such as wealth which, as he goes on to say, “has been a disaster for many people, and honors which have ruined people, and kingdoms which we often see coming to a wretched end, and splendid marriages which sometimes completely destroy families.” But there are some things which we cannot use badly, things which cannot turn out badly: the things by which we are made blessed or by which we earn beatitude. The saints ask for these things unconditionally when they pray: “Show us your face and we shall be saved” [Ps 80:4], or “Lead me in the way of your commandments” [Ps 119:35]. . . . Although of ourselves we do not know what we ought to pray for, the Spirit, as the same text [Rom 8:26] says, helps our weakness by inspiring us with holy desires so making us plead rightly. This is why the Lord says that the true worshipper must worship “in spirit and truth” [Jn 4:23].

From “On Prayer” by Thomas Aquinas, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for January 30

Suffering, disappointment, bad economies, lost jobs—all these are part of our lives. We all will have times of dependence, of being patients, of having to be patient. But those are times with a dignity and even a beauty all their own. To be a Christian is to believe that our lives are not our own, and that the worth of our lives is not measured on our resumes. It is to believe that suffering and disappointment come as opportunities to grow and to love and to receive love, and that God is working through all these events. . . .

And our larger public life calls for patience. I remember several years ago when former President Carter had been sent to negotiate with North Korea, former UN Ambassador Andrew Young told an interviewer, “This is the sort of situation which you can afford to talk to death. We ought to be willing to take all the time in the world with this one. We must be patient.” Our leaders need that kind of patience.

Years ago, not long before he was murdered, Archbishop Oscar Romero offered words of encouragement to his companions in the struggle for justice in San Salvador.

“We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. . . .
We plant seeds that will one day grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
That enables us to do something, and to do it well. . . .
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
Between the master builder and the worker.”

Those are words of patience. Of course patience alone can’t be our only guide. Sometimes we should be impatient—impatient when we see injustices that should be righted. At a conference at Georgetown University this week focusing on stopping the terrible devastation of malaria in Africa, you could feel the impatience in the room. We have the resources, we know what to do, and millions are dying, they said. We have to act. But even that impatience is meant to flow out of a patient discernment of God’s timing, and even that commitment to impatience will require patient persistence over the long haul.

From a sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, December 14, 2008 by the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, preached at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. ; http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/stl081214.shtml

Daily Reading for January 31

Peace between victor and vanquished
Peace between old and young
Peace between rich and poor
The peace of Christ above all.

Always keep God's peace and love among you, and when you have to seek guidance about your affairs, take great care to be of one mind. Live in mutual good-will also with Christ's other servants. . . .Never think you are superior to other people who share your faith and way of life. —Cuthbert's last words

Christ be within me
Christ be beside me
Christ in the stranger
Christ in the friend
Christ in my speaking
Christ in my thinking
Christ in my working
Christ at my end.

May you see the face of Christ in everyone you meet. May everyone you meet see the face of Christ in you.

From the reflection for “Week 5: Morning” in A Holy Island Prayer Book: Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer by Ray Simpson. Copyright © 2002. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com