Daily Reading for February 1 • The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Call to mind with me the time when Peter was praised and called blessed. Was it because he merely said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? No, he who pronounced him blessed regarded not merely the sound of his words, but the affections of his heart. Compare that with the words of the demons who said almost the same thing: “We know who you are, the Son of God,” just as Peter had confessed him as “Son of God.” So what is the difference? Peter spoke in love, but the demons in fear. . . . So tell us how faith is to be defined, if even the devils can believe and tremble? Only the faith that works by love is faith.

From Augustine’s Sermons on New Testament Lessons, 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 February 2 • The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple

Opening Sentence
Her hands steadied the first steps
of him who steadied the earth to walk upon;
her lips helped the Word of God
to form his first human words.

Canticle
God chose to be our mother in all things
and so made the foundation of this work,
most humbly and most pure, in the virgin’s womb.
God the perfect wisdom of all,
was arrayed in this humble place.
Christ came in our poor flesh
to share a mother’s care.
Our mothers bore us for pain and for death;
our true mother, Jesus, bears us for joy and endless life.
Christ carried us within him in love and travail,
until the full time of his passion.
And when all was completed
and he had carried us so for joy,
still all this could not satisfy
the power of his wonderful love.

Blessing
Holy One, who has loved us from our first cry to this day and this hour,
help us to find within ourselves the nurture and tenderness you have for all creation.
Help us to be your mothering love for our beautiful and strife-torn planet.
We ask this in the name of him who was once a child of this earth. Amen.

Opening sentence from John of Damascus; Canticle based on Julian of Norwich, from Community of St. Francis Office Book; Blessing by Penelope Duckworth. All quoted in Mary’s Hours: Daily Prayer with the Mother of God by Penelope Duckworth. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for February 3 • Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865

On my worst days, many of which seem to come in February, I need to know of people like Anskar. Anskar labored long and hard, but saw few, if any, accomplishments. His efforts only began to pay off long after his death. I need the memory of Anskar in this hurry-up-and-get-there culture where the bottom line is all that counts for anything; Anskar is the antidote to our demand for instant results.

Little is said these days about the importance of the seemingly small contribution to the world. Yet life is lived and changed in the small things. Our world is made one life at a time, our lives ordered one day at a time. How can we look at this world, and at one another, and not appreciate the care God has lavished in our creation? After all, we Christians claim to have seen the face of God in the face of a child.

God, by whose power this world might be transformed in the twinkling of an eye, has such patient love for us and such admiration for our abilities that all creation awaits our handiwork. God patiently attends our halting attempts to help, even as God waited for Anskar.

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

Daily Reading for February 4 • Cornelius the Centurion

Our ability to make room for others, and the joy we do or do not find in such activity, depends largely on our experience of being accepted or not. We build shelter for others because somewhere along the way someone sheltered us and thereby taught our hungry heart how to love.

From Daniel Homan’s Radical Hospitality, quoted in Finding Jesus, Discovering Self: Passages to Healing and Wholeness by Caren Goldman and William Dols. © 2006. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for February 5 • The Martyrs of Japan

Gather us in, Thou love that fillest all;
Gather our rival faiths within thy fold.
Rend each man’s temple-veil and bid it fall,
That we may know that Thou hast been of old;
Gather us in.

Gather us in: we worship only Thee;
In varied names we stretch a common hand;
In diverse forms a common soul we see;
In many ships we seek one spirit-land;
Gather us in.

Each one sees one colour of thy rainbow-light,
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven;
Thou art the fullness of our partial sight;
We are not perfect till we find the seven;
Gather us in.

Prayer by G. D. Matheson (1842-1906), quoted in The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by George Appleton (Oxford, 1985).

Daily Reading for February 6

Lord Jesus Christ
alive and at large in the world,
help me to follow and find you there today,
in the places where I work,
meet people,
spend money,
and make plans.
Take me as a disciple of your kingdom,
to see through your eyes,
and hear the questions you are asking,
to welcome all men with your trust and truth
and to change the things that contradict God’s love,
by the power of the Cross
and the freedom of your Spirit.
Amen.

Prayer by John Taylor, Bishop of Winchester, quoted in The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by George Appleton (Oxford, 1985).

Daily Reading for February 7

Pray remember what I have recommended to you, which is, to think often of God, by day, by night, in your business, and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave Him not alone. You would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you: why then must God be neglected? Do not then forget Him, but think of Him often, adore Him continually, live and die with Him; this is the glorious employment of a Christian; if we do not know it we must learn it.

From The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

Daily Reading for February 8 • The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Related to keeping a rule is maintaining the balance between attachment and detachment, between activity and reflection. It is probably fair to say that, without an intentional focus on maintaining such a balance, most of us will end up out of balance most of the time. . . . The fact is, most of us are too heavily weighted on the side of attachment. Necessary periods of self-reflective “space” are largely missing. It is good to remind ourselves that what we are seeking to “claim” when we seek solitude is not an unworldly lifestyle as an alternative to our own but rather a balanced lifestyle, one in which the inner and the outer are in creative harmony.

How do we maintain such a balance in the face of constant intrusions? The answer is, we do what Jesus did: we keep working at it. There were times that Jesus withdrew to a “deserted place” to pray but was pursued by his disciples and the crowds. At such times Jesus responded to the human needs of the moment, telling the disciples, “let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark 1:38). But afterward Jesus inevitably returned to the prayerful silence and solitude that renewed him. . . .

If you experience solitude as a familiar rhythm, you will gradually strengthen your ability to experience a solitude of the heart regardless of your external circumstances. Even in the midst of active engagement, you will be able to enter into a silent space inside yourself.

From Solitude: A Neglected Path to God by Christopher C. Moore (Cowley Publications, 2001).

Daily Reading for February 9

If your approach to this kind of healing is less ideological and more empirical, you can always give it a try. Pray for it. If it’s somebody else’s healing you’re praying for, you can try at the same time laying your hands on her as Jesus sometimes did. If her sickness involves her body as well as her soul, then God may be able to use your inept hands as well as your inept faith to heal her.

If you feel like a fool as you are doing this, don’t let it throw you. You are a fool, of course, only not a damned fool for a change.

If your prayer isn’t answered, this may tell you more about you and your prayer than it does about God. Don’t try too hard to feel religious, to generate some healing power of your own. Think of yourself instead (if you have to think of yourself at all) as a rather small-gauge clogged-up pipe that a little of God’s power may be able to filter through if you can just stay loose enough. Tell the one you’re praying for to stay loose too.

If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he’s giving you something else.

From “Healing” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith by Frederick Buechner (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

Daily Reading for February 10

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people. Although, like the author of Job before him, he specifically rejected the theory that sickness was God’s way of getting even with sinners (John 9:1-3), he nonetheless seems to have suggested a connection between sickness and sin, almost to have seen sin as a kind of sickness. . . . This is entirely compatible, of course, with the Hebrew view of the human being as a psychosomatic unity, an indivisible amalgam of body and soul in which if either goes wrong, the other is affected. It is significant also that the Greek verb sōzō was used in Jesus’ day to mean both “to save” and “to heal,” and sōtēr could signify either “savior” or “physician.”

Ever since the time of Jesus, healing has been part of the Christian tradition. Nowadays, it has usually been associated with religious quackery or the lunatic fringe; but as the psychosomatic dimension of disease has come to be taken more and more seriously by medical science, it has regained some of its former respectability. How nice for God to have this support at last.

From “Healing” in Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith by Frederick Buechner (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

Daily Reading for February 11

How can we bear to pray for all the horrors of the world? The Quakers have a tradition of having “a concern,” usually seen as an area of good works. They believe that God gives each of us one particular concern: to work for peace, or with the blind, the elderly, the homeless, children, and so forth. Not for all the troubles in the world, but just for that one concern to which God is calling someone. And in good works, so in prayer.

Some of us may be called to pray for all the pain and problems of the world, as in the old Hasidic tale in which God says that he hasn’t destroyed the world because of the insistent prayers of a poor widow. But if praying for the whole world seems overwhelming to you, then ask God what specific problem you are called to pray for. I find that I can bear to look deeply at one large and terrible dilemma and hold it up to God in prayer. Opening myself in this way to the despair of one problem I may—with good conscience—say of the others, “They are too much for me, Lord. With gratitude I leave them to you.”. . .

I speak now not about healing prayer specifically but about the landscape of prayer—that deep opening to the Spirit which not only gives us an interior vision but influences how we see our exterior world. It is the Spirit of God who can lead us to see new ways of understanding the church, world, and civilization that are both tied to our traditions and open to the future.

From Healing in the Landscape of Prayer by Avery Brooke (Cowley Publications, 1996).

Daily Reading for February 12

Early in September, a solicitation appeared in the Public papers, to the people of colour to come forward and assist the distressed, perishing, and neglected sick [from yellow fever]; with a kind of assurance, that people of our colour were not liable to take the infection. Upon which we and a few others met and consulted how to act on so truly alarming and melancholy an occasion. After some conversations, we found a freedom to go forth, confining in him who can preserve in the midst of a burning fiery furnace, sensible that it was our duty to do all the good we could to our suffering fellow mortals. We set out to see where we could be useful. The first we visited was a man in Emsley's alley, who was dying, and his wife lay dead at the time in the house, there were none to assist but two poor helpless children. We administered what relief we could, and applied to the overseers of the poor to have the woman buried. We visited upwards of twenty families that day—they were scenes of woe indeed! The Lord was pleased to strengthen, and remove all fear from us, and disposed our hearts to be as useful as possible.

In order the better to regulate our conduct, we called on the mayor next day, to consult with him how to proceed, so as to be most useful. The first object he recommended, was a strict attention to the sick, and the procuring of nurses. This was attended to by Absalom Jones and William Gray; and, in order that the distressed might know where to apply, the mayor advertised the public that upon application to them they would be supplied. Soon after, the mortality increasing, the difficulty of getting a corpse taken away, was such, that few were willing to do it, when offered great rewards. The black people were looked to. We then offered our services in the public papers, by advertising that we would remove the dead and procure nurses. Our services were the production of real sensibility;—we sought not fee nor reward, until the increase of the disorder rendered our labour so arduous that we were not adequate to the service we had assumed. The mortality increasing rapidly, obliged us to call in the assistance of five hired men, in the awful discharge of interring the dead. They, with great reluctance, were prevailed upon to join us. It was very uncommon, at this time, to find any one that would go near, much more, handle, a sick or dead person.

From A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793: And a Refutation of some Censures, Thrown upon Them in Some Late Publications by Absalom Jones (1746-1818) and Allen Richard (1760-1831); http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=history.chapter.Jones

Daily Reading for February 13 • Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818

Ye Ministers, that are call'd to preaching,
Teachers, and exhorters too;
Awake! behold your harvest wasting!
Arise! there is no rest for you.
To think upon that strict commandment,
That God has on his teachers laid,
The sinner's blood, who dies unwarned,
Shalt fall upon their Shepherd's head.

But oh! dear brethren, let's be doing,
Behold the nation's in distress,
The Lord of Hosts forbid their ruin,
Before the day of grace is past.

We read of wars and great commotions,
Before the great and dreadful day,
Oh, Sinners! turn your sinful courses
And trifle not your time away.

But Oh! dear sinners, that's not all that's dreadful!
You must before your God appear!
To give an account of your transactions,
And how you spent your time, when here.

From a manuscript note inside the back cover to A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793: And a Refutation of some Censures, Thrown upon Them in Some Late Publications by Absalom Jones (1746-1818) and Allen Richard (1760-1831); http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=history.chapter.Jones

Daily Reading for February 14 • Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869, 885

O Cyril and Methodius, inspired by God,
You became equal to the Apostles by your life.
Since you were teachers of the Slavs,
Intercede with the Master of all
That He may strengthen all Orthodox peoples in the True Faith,
And that He may grant peace to the world
And great mercy to our souls.

Let us praise the two priests of God who enlightened us,
And poured upon us the fount of the knowledge of God by translating the Holy Scripture.
O Cyril and Methodius, as abundant learning has been drawn from this work,
We exalt you who now stand before the Most High,
Interceding with fervor for the salvation of our souls.

Orthodox hymns in honor of Cyril and Methodius, found at http://orthodoxwiki.org/Cyril_and_Methodius

Daily Reading for February 15 • The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

When Jesus chooses to touch the leper he is not just curing him of chronic eczema or psoriasis. Nor is he simply forgiving the man’s sins, although most people who have assumed that the leper’s crawling skin was both the result and the sign of sinfulness. By stretching out his hand and touching the leper, Jesus muddies the boundary separating the clean from the unclean, what is socially acceptable from what is socially anathema.

Such a touch has political as well as therapeutic implications. In effect, it redefines how God acts in the world. Jesus tells the man he is to show himself to the priests, thus starting a process of political and social reintegration that will restore the healed leper to full status in the ritual system that once had cast him out. But Jesus’ touch, as Mark describes it, is more powerful than even Jesus himself had imagined. Instead of going quietly to the priests, the leper spreads the news through all the neighboring towns. It is not a story that can be kept quiet. In the gospel’s larger picture, the leper’s new wholeness is a sign that the entire system that had separated clean from unclean is in jeopardy, about to be blown wide open.

From Sensing God: Reading Scripture With All Our Senses by Roger Ferlo (Cowley Publications, 2002).

Daily Reading for February 16

And why did Jesus touch the leper, since the law forbade the touching of a leper? He touched him to show that “all things are clean to the clean.” Because the filth that is in one person does not adhere to others, nor does external uncleanness defile the clean of heart. So he touches him in his untouchability, that he might instruct us in humility; that he might teach us that we should despise no one, or abhor them, or regard them as pitiable, because of some wound of their body or some blemish for which they might be called to render an account. . . . So, stretching forth his hand to touch, the leprosy immediately departs. The hand of the Lord is found to have touched not a leper, but a body made clean! Let us consider here, beloved, if there be anyone here that has the taint of leprosy in his soul, or the contamination of guilt in his heart? If he has, instantly adoring God, let him say: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

From Origen’s Fragments on Matthew, 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 February 17 • Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr, 1977

O God our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he was suffering shame and death: strengthen those who suffer for the sake of conscience; when they are accused, save them from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be cleansed and strengthened. This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge. Amen.

A prayer entitled “For those who suffer for the sake of Conscience,” written by the Rev. Dr. Charles P. Price for the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Copyright © 1979. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for February 18 • Martin Luther, 1546

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that He was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with His righteousness and wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’ [Rom. 1:17].” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning; the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “he who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.

From Luther’s Works, Volume 34, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for February 19

The original audience for Luther’s defense of his writings may have been the university context of Wittenberg or Leipzig, or the Imperial Parliament or Diet at Worms in 1521, where the Holy Roman emperor was flanked by the nobility, the clerical hierarchy, and the wealthy burgesses from the towns. When Luther’s arguments were catapulted into print, however, the ordinary reader in town or village could eavesdrop on them. The audience of theology, then, was widening.

The origins of the whole Reformation have often been traced back to Luther’s perhaps apocryphal nailing of his Ninety-Five Theses against indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. More important than any such symbolic act is that he tossed out philosophical language in favor of biblical and pastoral. The Latin theses, originally conceived for a scholarly disputation among professional theologians, were then translated into German and rapidly broadcast in print, together with explanatory material. This is a good illustration of the widening ripples of attention, as scholars broke out of the halls of learning and “took to the road,” adapting their language as they did so to their new readers. The language of lay authors, moreover, reflected their very different field of experience. . . . Popular pamphlets, colloquies, and disputations could be seen, therefore, as exciting new vehicles that took the sacred language of theology into the public square, the epicenter of secular life.

From “The Language of the Common Folk” by Peter Matheson, in Reformation Christianity, edited by Peter Matheson. Volume 5 in the series A People’s History of Christianity (Fortress Press, 2007).

Daily Reading for February 20

Your way of acting should be different form the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue. —The Rule of St. Benedict

The end of Benedictine spirituality is to develop a transparent personality. Dissimulation, half answers, vindictive attitudes, a false presentation of self are all barbs in the soul of the monastic. Holiness, this ancient rule says to a culture that has made crafty packaging high art, has something to do with being who we say we are, claiming our truths, opening our hearts, giving ourselves to the other pure and unglossed. Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted once: “A man can smile and smile and be a villain.” Benedict is intent on developing people who are what they seem to be.

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

Daily Reading for February 21

Almighty God, dwelling in the beauty of holiness, from whom all skills of mind, hand and tongue do come; may those who give their lives to the creation of beauty be surprised by the joy of discovering your presence in your world, and give others the hope of beholding your glory unveiled in heaven, where you are alive and reign, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

A prayer by Michael John Radford Counsell, 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 February 22 • The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

If anyone asks what the Lord’s garments, which became white as snow, represent typologically, we can properly understand them as pointing to the church of his saints [who] . . . at the time of the resurrection will be purified from every blemish of iniquity and at the same time from all the darkness of mortality. Concerning the Lord’s garments the evangelist Mark remarks that “they became as bright as snow, such as no bleacher on earth can make them white.” It is evident to everyone that there is no one who can live on earth without corruption and sorrow. So it is evident to all who are wise, although heretics deny it, that there is no one who can live on earth without being touched by some sin. But what a cleansing agent (that is, a teacher of souls or some extraordinary purifier of his body) cannot do on earth, that the Lord will do in heaven. He will purify the church, which is his clothing, “from all defilement of flesh and spirit,” renewing [her] besides with eternal blessedness and light of flesh and spirit.

From Bede’s Homilies on the Gospels, 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 February 23 • Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr of Smyrna, 156

Let us then persevere unceasingly in our hope, and in the pledge of our righteousness, that is in Christ Jesus, “who bare our sins in his own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” but for our sakes, that we might live in him, he endured all things. Let us then be imitators of his endurance, and if we suffer for his name’s sake let us glorify him. For this is the example which he gave us in himself, and this is what we have believed.

Now I beseech you all to obey the word of righteousness, and to endure with all the endurance which you also saw before your eyes, not only in the blessed Ignatius, and Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and in the other Apostles; being persuaded that all of these “ran not in vain,” but in faith and righteousness, and that they are with the Lord in the “place which is their due,” with whom they also suffered. For they did not “love this present world” but him who died on our behalf, and was raised by God for our sakes.

Stand fast therefore in these things and follow the example of the Lord, “firm and unchangeable in faith, loving the brotherhood, affectionate to one another,” joined together in the truth, forestalling one another in the gentleness of the Lord, despising no man. When you can do good defer it not, “for almsgiving sets free from death; be ye all subject one to the other, having your conversation blameless among the Gentiles,” that you may receive praise “for your good works” and that the Lord be not blasphemed in you. “But woe to him through whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed.” Therefore teach sobriety to all and show it forth in your own lives.

From Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians, in Apostolic Fathers, translated by Kirsopp Lake (Loeb Classical Library, 1912).

Daily Reading for February 24 • Saint Matthias the Apostle

Come, true light.
Come, life eternal.
Come, hidden mystery.
Come, treasure without name.
Come, reality beyond all words.
Come, person beyond all understanding.
Come, rejoicing without end.
Come, light that knows no evening.
Come, unfailing expectation of the saved.
Come, raising of the fallen.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, all-powerful, for unceasingly you create,
refashion, and change all things by your will alone.
Come, invisible whom none may touch and handle.
Come, for you continue always unmoved,
yet at every instant you are wholly in movement;
you draw near to us who lie in hell,
yet you remain higher than the heavens.
Come, for your name fills our hearts with longing and is ever on our lips;
yet who you are and what your nature is, we cannot say or know.
Come, Alone to the alone.
Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me.
Come, the consolation of my humble soul.
Come, my joy, my endless delight.

From Hymns of Divine Love by Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), 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 February 25 • Ash Wednesday

God bless this city
and move our hearts with pity
lest we grow hard.

God bless this place
with silence, solitude and space
that we may pray.

God bless these days
of rough and narrow ways
lest we despair.

God bless the night
and calm the people’s fright
that we may love.

God bless this land
and guide us with your hand
lest we be unjust.

God bless this earth
through pangs of death and birth
and make us whole. Amen.

A prayer by Jim Cotter, 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 February 26

For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.

From The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen (New York: Image Books, 1992).

Daily Reading for February 27 • George Herbert, Priest, 1633

What doth this noise of thoughts within my heart
As if they had a part?
What do these loud complaints and pulling fears,
As if there were no rule or ears?

But, Lord, the house and family are thine,
Though some of them repine.
Turn out these wranglers, which defile thy seat:
For where thou dwellest all is neat.

First Peace and Silence all disputes control,
Then Order plays the soul;
And giving all things their set forms and hours,
Makes of wild woods sweet walks and bowers.

Humble Obedience near the door doth stand,
Expecting a command:
Than whom in waiting nothing seems more slow,
Nothing more quick when she doth go.

Joys oft are there, and griefs as oft as joys;
But griefs without a noise;
Yet speak they louder, than distemper’d fears.
What is so shrill as silent tears?

This is thy house, with these it doth abound:
And where these are not found,
Perhaps thou com’st sometimes, and for a day;
But not to make a constant stay.

“The Family” by George Herbert, from The Church, quoted in George Herbert: The Country Parson, The Temple, edited by John N. Wall, Jr., The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1981).

Daily Reading for February 28 • Anna Julia Heyward Cooper, Educator, 1964

Life must be something more than dilettante speculation. And religion (ought to be if it isn’t) a great deal more than mere gratification of the instinct for worship linked with the straight-teaching of irreproachable credos. Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development—begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself—it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

Do you believe that the God of history often chooses the weak things of earth to confound the mighty, and that the Negro race in America has a veritable destiny in His eternal purposes—then don’t spend your time discussing the “Negro Problem” amid the clouds of your fine havanna, ensconced in your friend’s well-cushioned arm-chair and with your patent leather boot-tips elevated to the opposite mantel. Do those poor “cowards in the South” need a leader—then get up and lead them! Let go your purse-strings and begin to live your creed. Or is it your modicum of truth that God hath made of one blood all nations of the earth; and that all interests which specialize and contract the broad, liberal, cosmopolitan idea of universal brotherhood and equality are narrow and pernicious, then treat that truth as true.

From A Voice from the South by Anna Julia Cooper, 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