Daily Reading for February 1 • Brigid (Bride), 523

Brigit grew in exceptional virtues and by the fame of her good deeds drew to herself from all the provinces of Ireland inestimable numbers of people of both sexes who willingly made their votive offerings. On the firm foundation of faith she established her monastery on the open expanses of the planes of Mag Liffe, which is the head of almost all the churches of Ireland and holds the place of honor among all the monasteries of the Irish. Its jurisdiction extends over the whole of the land of Ireland, from coast to coast. Her concern was to provide for the orderly direction of souls in all things and to care for the churches of the many provinces which were associated with her, and she reflected upon the fact that this could not be without the help of a high priest, who could consecrate churches and perform ordinations. She summoned a famous hermit, therefore, who excelled in all ways, and through whom God had manifested many powers, telling him to leave his retreat and his solitary life and to make his way to join her, so that he might govern the church together with herself in episcopal dignity and there might be no lack of priestly order in her churches.

Afterward this anointed head and principal of all the bishops and most blessed head of all women established their chief church in felicitous and mutual cooperation under the guidance of all the virtues, and by both their merits their episcopal and feminine see spread throughout the whole island of Ireland, like a fertile vine pushing its burgeoning branches out on all sides.

From the Prologue to The Life of St. Brigit the Virgin by Cogitosus, quoted in Celtic Spirituality by Oliver Davies and Thomas O’Loughlin, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1999).

Daily Reading for February 2 • The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple

The Nunc Dimittis is ultimately a song about realizing personal inner tranquility and restfulness—as we see a spiritual calm brought to Simeon’s life. This is why it has been traditionally used during Evening Prayer services, as the day closes for the night’s rest. During the season of Lent our church in Cairo has a midweek contemplative service of Compline. For those who come, it provides a spiritual calm in the midst of the noise, chaos, dirt, and endless intensity of a city of twenty-two million people. After this occasion, or rather due to it, an internal peacefulness filled Simeon as never before, thereby becoming for us a marvelous lesson in peaceful living.

Simeon sings, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.” I love the way the writer Eugene Peterson paraphrases this line in The Message: “God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised. With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation.” The entire song is sung with the language of freedom. In the original Greek text, it has the connotation of releasing a slave. Simeon is describing his own experience as one of being released. In the song the word “now” is of utmost importance, emphasizing that an experience of profound liberation happened to him at that moment in time upon seeing the Christ Child.

Simeon’s song is his way of describing how he was finally “released” truly to live. Many biblical commentators have interpreted his song as meaning he was at last free to die, presumably due to his old age after all those years of waiting to see the Messiah. However, the heart of Simeon’s verse is that he was released into freedom, enabled to experience the gift of life anew. Essentially, Simeon now understood what it meant to be at peace with himself, because of what he “saw” in the temple.

From Songs in Waiting: Spiritual Reflections on the Middle Eastern Songs Surrounding Christ’s Birth by Paul-Gordon Chandler. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for February 3 • The Dorchester Chaplains: Lieutenant George Fox, Lieutenant Alexander D. Goode, Lieutenant Clark V. Poling, and Lieutenant John P. Washington, 1943

Now and then you hear wild and frightening talk about a “holy war” which will some day overtake and destroy America. The four chaplains of three faiths on the troopship Dorchester had the answer for that, and their answer is perhaps the epic experience of World War II. . . . These four were en route to Greenland on the troopship Dorchester when on Feb. 3, 1943, just after midnight, their vessel was torpedoed. More than 600 men were lost, and there were less than 300 survivors. . . .

Grady Clark, a young engineer who was rescued after several hours in the water, described the event: “They quieted the panic, forced men ‘frozen’ on the rail toward the boats and over the side, helped men adjust life jackets and at last gave away their own. They themselves had no chance without life jackets. I swam away from the ship and turned to watch. The flares now lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last I saw, the chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again.”

Each of the Dorchester chaplains had a dynamic loyalty to his particular faith. To each his vows of ordination were holy, and they were passionately held. Nowhere in America could four men be found more intense in their devotion to their own faiths. But these four became one in service, in sacrifice and dying. Standing shoulder to shoulder, their arms linked and braced against the rail as the waters rose about them, each in the tradition of his faith prayed to God the Father of us all. Each was loyal to himself, but each had found a cause transcending all differences and divisions, even as their deed transcends all debate and arguments.

From “A Protestant’s Faith” by Dr. Daniel A. Poling, in Life magazine (November 7, 1949).

Daily Reading for February 4 • Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865

We ought not to pass over in silence the fact that the Northalbingians on one occasion committed a great crime and one of a terrible nature. When some unhappy captives, who had been taken from Christian lands and carried away to the barbarians, were ill treated by these strangers, they fled thence in the hope of escaping and came to the Christians, that is to the Northalbingians who, as is well known, live next to the pagans, but when they arrived these Christians showed no compassion but seized them and bound them with chains. Some of them they sold to pagans, whilst others they enslaved, or sold to other Christians. When the bishop [Anskar] heard this he was greatly distressed that so great a crime had been perpetrated in his diocese, but he could not devise how he might mend matters because there were many involved who were esteemed to be powerful and noble.

When he was much distressed on this account there was granted to him one night the customary consolation. For it seemed to him that the Lord Jesus was in this world, as He had once been, when He gave to men His teaching and example. It seemed to him that He went with a multitude of the faithful and that he, the bishop, was with Him on His journey, glad and rejoicing because there was no opposition, but a divinely infused fear was upon the arrogant, and the oppressors were removed and a great quiet prevailed, so that there appeared to be no contradiction or opposition on the journey.

Having seen this vision he prepared to go to this people with the desire by some means or other to set free the unhappy men who had been sold and given over to an outrageous servitude and by the Lord's help to prevent anyone from committing hereafter so great a crime. On this journey the Lord so greatly assisted him and caused the fear of his power so to overawe those who were arrogant that, though these men were of rank and exercised harmful influence, none of them ventured to oppose his advice or resist his authority, but the unhappy men were sought out wherever they had been sold and were given their liberty and allowed to go wherever they desired. Furthermore, in order to prevent any deceit being practised thereafter they made an agreement that none of those who had defiled themselves by the seizure of these captives should defend himself, either by taking an oath or by producing witnesses, but should commend himself to the judgment of Almighty God, whether it was the man who was accused of the crime or the captive who accused him. Thus did the Lord manifest on this journey the truth of the promise which He made to those who believe when He said, "Lo I am with you all the days even unto the end of the world." [Matt xxviii., 20] So prosperously and joyfully did he accomplish this journey that those who were with him said that never in his life did he have such a good and pleasant journey, for they said, "Now of a truth we know that the Lord was with us."

From Life of Anskar by Bishop Rimbert, found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anskar.html.

Daily Reading for February 5 • Roger Williams, 1683, and Anne Hutchinson, 1643, Prophetic Witnesses

Cast out by men who themselves had been outcasts in their native England, Hutchinson is a classic rebel’s rebel, revealing how quickly outsiders can become authoritarians. The members of the Massachusetts Court removed Anne because her moral certitude was too much like their own. Her views were a mirror for their rigidity. It is ironic, the historian Oscar Handlin noted, that the Puritans “had themselves been rebels in order to put into practice their ideas of a new society. But to do so they had to restrain the rebellion of others.”

Until now, views of Anne Hutchinson in American history and letters have been polarized, tending either toward disdain or exaltation. The exaltation comes from women’s clubs, genealogical associations, and twentieth-century feminists who honor her as America’s first feminist, career woman, and equal marital partner. . . . Her detractors, starting with her neighbor John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, derided her as the “instrument of Satan,” the new Eve, and the “enemy of the chosen people.” In summing her up, Winthrop called her “this American Jezebel”--the emphasis is his—making an epithet of the name that any Puritan would recognize as belonging to the most evil and shameful woman in the Bible. . . .

One of her heresies was knowing that she was among God’s elect and then presuming that she could detect who else was too. . . . This view, which her opponents imputed to her, was not hers alone. An excessive concern with one’s own and others’ “spiritual estate” was also typical of her judges. Salvation—who had it, who didn’t—was the major issue of her day, as it may be, in various forms, today.

From American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans by Eve LaPlante (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

Daily Reading for February 6 • The Martyrs of Japan, 1597

The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet every generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need. This is surely the very much mistaken meaning of those words to the first saints, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” . . . Christ did not tell the apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people; and the text about the salt of the earth is really as sharp and shrewd and tart as the taste of salt. It is because they were the exceptional people, that they must not lose their exceptional quality. . . . If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world. Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

From Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox” by G. K. Chesterton (New York: Image Books, 1933, 1956).

Daily Reading for February 7 • The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

That you may understand that the Lord was speaking of spiritual fishing, however, Peter says, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” It is as if he were saying, “Through the whole night our fishing has brought us nothing, and we have been laboring in vain. Now I will not fish with fishing gear but with grace, not with diligence acquired by skill but with the perseverance acquired by devotion.” When Peter lets down the nets at the word, therefore, he is in fact letting down the teachings in Christ. When he unfolds the tightly woven and well-ordered nets at the command of the Master, he is really laying out words in the name of the Savior in a fitting and clear fashion. By these words he is able to save not creatures but souls. “We toiled all night,” he says, “and took nothing.” Peter, who beforehand was unable to see in order to make a catch, enduring darkness without Christ, had indeed toiled through the whole night. But when the Savior’s light shone upon him the darkness scattered, and by faith he began to discern in the deep what he could not see with his eyes.

From a sermon of Maximus of Turin, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III, Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just, Jr. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for February 8

Small, inconspicuous signs of love are important in all those places where people live in close proximity with each other and depend on each other. Huerre calls [the 32nd chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict, on the tools of the monastery] a “chapter of good mood” because concrete elements such as order, cleanliness, and attentiveness contribute much to a cheerful atmosphere. Rough and inconsiderate treatment shows disregard for people as well as for things. The way we treat objects is a criterion of our spirituality. If we come into a community where things are generally neglected, we may question the spiritual depth of the community. Anselm Grün says: “The way of treading things is normally a test for a person’s inner attitude,” for in the way “in which someone treats things, he treats himself.” Conservation of creation is not only a duty of the individual but also of the entire community, and in this a climate of treating objects reverently and even small rules can help. . . .

This chapter is of great current interest because we are much more aware today that our environment is subjected to great dangers and how necessary the conservation of our creation has become. We know that overexploitation has continued over a long time and that neglect of things, even on a small scale, does add to the destruction of our cosmos. Joan Chittister says: “Benedictine spirituality is as much about good order, wise management, and housecleaning as it is about the meditative and immaterial dimensions of life. Benedictine spirituality sees the care of the earth and the integration of prayer and work, body and soul, as essential parts of the journey to wholeness that answers the emptiness in each of us.”

From Around the Monastic Table—RB31-42: Growing in Mutual Service and Love by Aquinata Böckmann (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for February 9

Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Remember too every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself: “Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today.” For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected; no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not. And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him. And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much more will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you. And He will forgive him for your sake.

From The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett (New York: Macmillan, 1923).

Daily Reading for February 10

In prayer, we have first to experience the dissatisfaction of our own desire, confess our own lack, and recognize in faith the absent presence of God. This should lead us to desire the desire of God himself, that is, to desire what God desires and to let God desire in us. At this point, prayer appears as the mystery of God in us and an event of the Spirit, because it is the function of the Holy Spirit to be the desire of God in God himself and also the desire of God in us. The Spirit forms, deepens, expands, and adjusts our desire to the desire of God by giving it the same object. The Spirit makes our desire live from the life of God himself, to the point where God himself comes to desire at the heart of our desire.

From Jean-Claude Sagne, quoted in Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer: From the Early Church to the Present, edited by Lorraine Kisly (Boston: New Seeds, 2006).

Daily Reading for February 11 • Frances Jane (Fanny) Van Alstyne Crosby, Hymnwriter, 1915

In the twilight of the morning,
When the shadows steal away,
And we wake from balmy slumber
To behold another day,
Let us go alone in secret,
And unburden all our care
At the feet of our Redeemer,
In the simple, earnest prayer.

Refrain
Let Thy presence, blessèd Savior,
Our protection ever be;
Give us strength for every trial,
Keep, oh, keep us close to Thee.

In the noontide, calm and peaceful,
When we pause awhile to rest,
Ere the sun in all its glory
Is declining towards the west;
In the midst of our temptation,
When the cross is hard to bear,
If we cannot go in secret,
God will hear the silent prayer.

Refrain

When the toils of day are over,
And we seek the hallowed place
Where by faith we meet our Savior,
And adore Him for His grace;
How we feel our burden lighter,
Till we loose our weight of care,
While we lift our hearts together
In the simple, earnest prayer.

Refrain

Words to the hymn “Simple, Earnest Prayer” by Fanny Crosby, in Winning Songs, edited by John R. Sweney, William J. Kirkpatrick, and Henry L. Gilmour (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John J. Hood, 1892). Found at http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/s/e/seprayer.htm

Daily Reading for February 12 • Charles Freer Andrews, Priest and “Friend of the Poor” in India, 1940

I first met Charlie Andrews when he was a member of the Cambridge Mission in Delhi, on the staff of St. Stephen’s College. He was keen on Indian leadership and went with me to see his own bishop of the Punjab, Dr. Lefroy, about recognizing the newly organized National Missionary Society of India so that they could open an Anglican mission in the Punjab. I later came in contact with leading Hindus and Mohammedans who had been influenced by Andrews’ remarkable character, and who called him, after his three initials, C. F. A., “Christ’s Faithful Apostle.” He seemed to many in North India, as Larsen was in the South, the one foreigner who bore the most striking resemblance to his Master, especially in his Christlike humility and love. One brilliant Hindu editor, who was accused of being a Christian because he had hung a portrait of Jesus at the foot of his bed, where he could see it on waking and retiring, said to me: “I have read little of the Bible, but I have seen Christ in Andrews’ life; and I would give anything to be like him.”. . .

When ordained under his beloved Bishop Westcott, he took a parish among poor shipyard laborers in an industrial village in Durham, and tried to live as they did on ten shillings, or $2.50, a week. He then labored until his health gave out in the Pembroke College Mission in the slums of East London. When his friend Basil Westcott died of cholera in India, Andrews immediately felt that he must take the vacant place; and he arrived in Delhi in 1904 at the age of thirty-three. He went to India to teach, but soon found that he had need to learn more than to teach. His fellowship with Bishop Westcott had instilled this attitude in him, for the Cambridge Mission at Delhi had been founded by the three great Cambridge scholars Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort, to represent in India what the school of Clement and Origen at Alexandria had meant for the early church.

Andrews had always had great intellectual difficulty in subscribing with conviction to all the articles of the Book of Common Prayer. In India he found that there were two recitations in the services which he could not tolerate without shame in a Christian church. One was the imprecatory psalms of hatred and vengeance which had to be recited in the daily service, and the other was the damnatory clauses at the beginning of the Athanasian Creed: “Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” Andrews felt his whole soul shrink from such crude dogmatic narrowness in the condemnation of all believers.

From Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade by Sherwood Eddy (Whitmore and Stone, 1945).

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

Whereas, a few of our race did in the Name and fear of God, associate for the purpose of advancing our friends in a true knowledge of God, of true religion, and of the ways and means to restore our long lost race, to the dignity of men and of christians; — and . . .

Whereas, through the various attempts we have made to promote our design, God has marked out made our ways with blessings. And we are now encouraged through the grace and divine assistance of the friends and God opening the hearts of our white friends and brethren, to encourage us to arise out of the dust and shake ourselves, and throw off that servile fear, that the habit of oppression and bondage trained us up in. And in meekness and fear we would desire to walk in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. That following peace with all men, we may have our fruit unto holiness, and in the end, everlasting life.

And in order the more fully to accomplish the good purposes of God's will, and organize ourselves for the purpose of promoting the health the people all, but more particularly our relatives, of color. We, after many consultations, and some years deliberation thereon, have gone forward to erect a house for the glory of God, and our mutual advantage to meet in for clarification and social religious worship. And more particularly to keep an open door for those of our race, who may be into assemble with us, but would not attend divine worship in other places; and . . .

Whereas, for all the above purposes, it is needful that we enter into, and forthwith establish some orderly, christian-like government and order of former usage in the Church of Christ; and, to avoid all appearance of evil, by self-conceitedness, or an intent to promote or establish any new human device among us.

Now be it known to all the world and in all eyes thereof, that we the founders and trustees of said house did on Tuesday the twelfth day of August, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and ninety four.

Resolve and decree,

To resign and conform ourselves to the Protestant Episcopal Church of North America. —And we dedicate ourselves to God, imploring his holy protection; and our house to the memory of St. Thomas, the Apostle, to be henceforward known and called by the name and title of St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church of Philadelphia; to be governed by us and our successors for ever as follows.

Given under our hands, this Twelfth day of August, 1794.

From “The Causes and Motives for Establishing St. Thomas’s African Church” by Absalom Jones; found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h1588t.html

Daily Reading for February 14 • The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Jesus is praying, and the light shines on his face. We do not know that it is a prayer of agony and conflict like the prayer in Gethsemane, but we know that it is a prayer near to the radiance of God and the prayer of one who has chosen the way of death. Luke tells us that the two witnesses were conversing about the exodus which Jesus would accomplish in Jerusalem: not the death alone, but the passing through death to glory, the whole going forth of Jesus as well as the leading forth of the new people of God in the freedom of the new covenant. Luke tells us that after the resurrection Jesus spoke of the witness of Moses and of all the prophets to his suffering and glory.

It was not a glory which the disciples at the time could fathom. No doubt they would have welcomed a glory on the mountain far away from the conflicts which had happened and the conflicts which were going to happen as Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. Yet when Jesus went up the mountain to be transfigured he did not leave these conflicts behind, but rather carried them up the mountain so that they were transfigured with him. It was the transfiguration of the whole Christ, from his first obedience in childhood right through to the final obedience of Gethsemane and Calvary.

The disciples could not grasp this at the time, but the writings of the apostolic age were to show that the link between the suffering and the glory came to be understood as belonging to the heart of the Christian message.

From Be Still and Know by Michael Ramsey (Collins Fount/Faith Press, 1982).

Daily Reading for February 15 • Thomas Bray, Priest and Missionary, 1730

In conversation with him one day I said, “Mahatma Gandhi, I am very anxious to see Christianity naturalised in India, so that it shall no longer be a foreign thing identified with a foreign people and a foreign government, but a part of the national life of India and contributing its power to India’s uplift and redemption. What would you suggest that we do to make that possible?”

He very gravely and thoughtfully replied, “I would suggest, first, that all of you Christians, missionaries and all, must begin to live a lot more like Jesus Christ. Second, I would suggest that you must practice your religion without adulterating or toning it down. Third, I would suggest that you must put your emphasis upon love, for love is the centre and soul of Christianity. Fourth, I would suggest that you study the non-Christian religions and culture more sympathetically in order to find the good that is in them, so that you might have a more sympathetic approach to the people.”

From E. Stanley Jones, quoted in Titus Presler, The Horizons of Mission, Volume 11 in the New Church’s Teaching Series (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2001).

Daily Reading for February 16 • Charles Todd Quintard, Bishop of Tennessee, 1898

There are many, very many mistakes about Lent. People generally speak of it as a time of fasting, a season of self-denial, and so it is; but this is not all. There are many persons in the Church who have no definite idea about this holy season, whose notions fall as far short of the truth as those of persons out of the Church. To think or speak of Lent merely as a season of abstinence from food, or as a time in which we are required to eat courser food than we usually do, is very wrong—very much short of the truth. . . . It is a very precious legacy of the primitive Church, and if we make a proper use of it, we shall find it a means of grace full of blessing to our souls.

The Lenten season is especially a season of prayer.
It is a season during which the Church demands more than ordinary devotion from her children. Her services are increased—are of a more solemn character—are such as are best adapted to lead our thoughts away from the things of this world, to contemplate the mysteries of Redemption. Every day she would have her children prostrate themselves in God’s house, and pray that He would “create and make within them new and contrite hearts.” The services of the Church keep two facts prominently before our minds: our sinfulness, Christ’s holiness; our need, Christ’s sufficiency.

The Lenten season is a season of fasting.
Many good people seem to think that religion has been so greatly improved in these latter days that they can get along very well without fasting. But they are mistaken. . . . On the subject of fasting, our Lord has not left us in any doubt; he refers to it often as an undoubted duty, and gives us rules for the proper observance of it. . . . The Church wisely leaves her members each one to determine for himself how much self-denial he can put upon himself. She gives us no rules. She bids us fast, each one of us according to our ability, but she does not tell us how to do so. . . . Each one must judge for himself the measure of his ability; only let us all be sure that we do “gladly,” after our power.

The Lenten season is a season of withdrawal from worldly pleasures and amusements.
It is the part and duty of every person who, by baptism, has put on Christ, at all times “to walk answerably to their Christian calling, and as becometh the children of light.” All baptized Christians have renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, and how far, under ordinary circumstances, they may mingle in the amusements of the world, is a question which each individual must determine for himself. To his own Master he must stand or fall. Yet there are times and seasons when there can be no mistake on this subject, and “when the Church has decided that her children must retire, in a peculiar manner, from this world, to think of that which is to come.” Lent is such a season.. . .

I have thus told you plainly how you must act, what you must do if you would in deed and in truth enjoy the rich blessings which the Lenten season affords to all who properly improve it. Be constant in your attendance on the services of the Church—regular in your private devotions—give gladly of your goods. Judge yourselves—afflict yourselves—bring your bodies into subjection, and keep aloof from the world. Take up your cross daily. . . . Exercise your hearts in a loving sympathy with sorrow in every form; soothe it, minister to it, succor it, revere it. It is a relic of Christ in the world, an image of the great Sufferer, a shadow of the cross. It is a holy and a venerable thing.

From Charles Todd Quintard’s introduction to A Few Words about Lent, With Penitential Psalms, Sentences from Scripture, and Other Devotions Suitable for that Holy Season. Selected by a Layman (Charleston: Steam-Power Press of Evans & Cogswell, 1861). Found at http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/quintlent/quintard.html

Daily Reading for February 17 • Ash Wednesday

Repentance itself is nothing else but a kind of circling; to return to Him by repentance, from whom by sin we have turned away. . . which circle consists of two things; which two must needs be two different motions. One is to be done with the whole heart; the other with it broken and rent: so as, one and the same it cannot be.

First, a turn, wherein we look forward to God, and with our whole heart resolve to turn to Him. Then, a turn again, wherein we look backward to our sins, wherein we have turned from God: and with beholding them, our very heart breaketh. . . . These two between them make up a complete repentance or a perfect revolution.

From Sermon Four on Repentance by Lancelot Andrewes, preached Ash Wednesday, 1619; quoted in Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer: From the Early Church to the Present, edited by Lorraine Kisly (Boston: New Seeds, 2006).

Daily Reading for February 18 • Martin Luther, Theologian, 1546

Erasmus of Rotterdam is famously quoted as asserting that he was not willing to burn for one of Luther’s paradoxes. For Luther, the life of the Christian on earth is necessarily characterized by the presence and regular manifestation of a series of contrasting realities. His spirituality is built around these polarities that cannot be resolved. Luther’s various opponents had, in his eyes, this in common: They tried one way or another to flatten out the paradoxes of life under the gospel and thus to rob discipleship of its relentless tension. In this respect Luther’s theology is rightly described as acutely eschatological at its core: to live in paradox is to live in a state of crisis that cries out for resolution, a resolution that for Luther only God can effect. The work of those living in the time before the end is to manage the polarities and pray fervently for the coming of the Lord. Luther’s own experience, in opposition first to Rome and then later to Zwingli and the radicals as well, caused him to defend these polarities ever more insistently, lest they be thrown out of balance by challengers from both sides. . . .

Luther’s relationship with God is a remarkably volatile one. He cowers before God’s wrath against sin; he takes sharply to heart God’s unrelenting demand for righteousness; he knows God’s love as both fierce and tender; and he make bold to call God to account. A promise is a promise, Luther insists, writing in his Genesis commentary that if God appeared in majesty and announced that, having had second thoughts about human worthiness, God had decided to retract the promise of salvation, he would not yield but fight tooth and nail against the Creator. The heights and depths of the soul’s life, the cunning and courage required for such discipleship, are not, in Luther’s view, the purview of the spiritual elite. Every Christian must develop the competence to make a good confession in the midst of temptation, fear, and obscurity. To do this one must be tireless in hearing the gospel.

From “Luther’s Spiritual Journey” by Jane E. Strohl, in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, edited by Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for February 19 • Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, and Martyr, 1977 (transferred)

Luwum was as concerned for the spiritual welfare of his people as he was for their physical well-being. As a leader whose own Christian experience had been shaped by the East African revival, he stressed the importance of a personal relationship with the Lord of the Scriptures for both his flock and his clergy. He frequently led evangelistic missions and preached throughout the diocese. . . .

Archbishop Luwum was criticized for maintaining an official relationship to the government because it seemed to give legitimacy to the murderous dictator. Luwum attended government functions in the hope of maintaining leverage with the regime. To his critics, Luwum replied, “I face daily being picked up by the soldiers. While the opportunity is there I preach the Gospel with all my might, and my conscience is clear before God that I have not sided with the present Government which is utterly self-seeking. I have been threatened many times. Whenever I have the opportunity, I have told the President the things the churches disapprove of.”

Luwum used his relatively strong influence on behalf of those who were being wrongfully arrested, detained without trial and killed. He often went personally to the office of the torture chamber known as the State Research Bureau to intercede for prisoners. Any accusations that Luwum had government sympathies were silenced for good in February 1977, when the archbishop’s courageous confrontation of Amin finally resulted in his death. . . .

In June 1977, more than twenty-five thousand Ugandans gathered in Kampala to celebrate the centennial of the first preaching of the Gospel in Uganda. Many of the participants had fallen away from their faith but had come back to Christ as a result of seeing the courage of Archbishop Luwum and other Christians in the face of persecution and death.

From Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children by Faith J. H. McDonnell and Grace Akallo (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Chosen Books, 2007).

Daily Reading for February 20 • Frederick Douglass, Prophetic Witness, 1895

The real feelings and opinions of the slaves were not much known or respected by their masters. The distance between the two was too great to admit of such knowledge; and in this respect Col. Lloyd was no exception to the rule. His slaves were so numerous he did not know them when he saw them. Nor, indeed, did all his slaves know him. It is reported of him, that riding along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in what was the usual way of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the South: “Well, boy, who do you belong to?” “To Col. Lloyd,” replied the slave. “Well, does the Colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What, does he work you hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough to eat, such as it is.” The Colonel rode on; the slave also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his master.

He thought and said nothing of the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards, he was informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered from his family and friends by a hand as unrelenting as that of death. This was the penalty of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.

It was partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the character of their masters, would almost invariably say that they were contented and their masters kind. Slaveholders are known to have sent spies among their slaves to ascertain, if possible, their views and feelings in regard to their condition; hence the maxim established among them, that “a still tongue makes a wise head.” They would suppress the truth rather than take the consequences for telling it, and in so doing they prove themselves a part of the human family. I was frequently asked if I had a kind master, and I do not remember ever to have given a negative reply. I did not consider myself as uttering that which was strictly untrue, for I always measured the kindness of my master by the standard of kindness set up by the slaveholders around us.

From The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History, Written by Himself (Cleveland: Hamilton, Rewell, & Co., 1883).

Daily Reading for February 21 • The First Sunday in Lent

Our journey begins in an apparently unpromising way—with temptations. We do not usually think of temptations as a place to find help. But there are some temptations that stand at the entrance. There are some temptations that even to recognize as temptations and to feel the conflict of being pulled in two directions is to have found the gateway to a new path. In the very conflict, we find our world more wonderful and more dangerous than we ever before realized.

Jesus showed us the gateway we are to enter, if we are to begin to be religious, when he himself encountered three temptations just before he began to teach people about God. In facing these temptations, he pioneered a path for us to follow to reach fullness of life. . . .

Temptation means being asked to renounce something that is good or at least needed. In the first temptation we are asked to renounce the goods of this world; in the second, we are asked to renounce security. We see in this how deceptive evil is, for we are not tempted into evil by things that are evil, but by things that are good or needful. The opening into the spiritual realm is blocked not by evil things, but by good ones. This is why a renunciation is required of us—to give up something of value, to give up pearls for the one pearl of great price. That is why the spiritual world, when genuinely encountered, is initially unattractive. In fact one of the tests for whether we have ever genuinely encountered very much of the divine reality is whether or not we have experienced this initial unattractiveness of its terms.

The third temptation has to do with a renunciation of ourselves. Again this is a renunciation of something that is of value; for we are indeed precious to God and all of us individually find ourselves to be of unconditional value to ourselves. But we are asked to renounce our will, which is our control over ourselves, and this means that it is we ourselves who stand as the final barrier at the very entrance to the spiritual world.

From Temptation by Diogenes Allen. A Seabury Classic from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for February 22 • Eric Liddell, Missionary to China, 1945

Liddell arrived in Saiochang at a time of drought, locust plague, famine, and war. Traveling by bicycle or on foot, he served as an itinerant preacher, communicating with the help of an interpreter, Wang Feng Chou, until his childhood Mandarin fluency returned.

His brother went on furlough in the summer of 1938, leaving the clinic to Liddell, who was given rudimentary training. Patients of all sorts, including wounded Japanese soldiers and Chinese bandits, were welcomed with Christian love and care. Refugees found a haven, and his co-worker Annie Buchan provided soy milk for babies whose malnourished mothers could not nurse them. Liddell preached daily to desperate people, offering them hope in Christ. . . .

Cycling from one place to another, Liddell sought to pastor his scattered flock and spread a message of joy in the midst of deepening sorrow. Finally, in 1941 all missionaries were expelled from Siaochang, returning to Tianjin, where Japan’s alliance with Germany made its treatment of British nationals more and more harsh. Liddell’s wife and children sailed back to Canada in May of 1941 as rumors spread that all Westerners would soon be interned. Sure enough, in March of 1943 foreigners were taken to Weihsien (Weifang), Shandong, where a former missionary compound had been turned into a crowded camp for missionaries, merchants, civil servants, and their families. Order was quickly brought out of chaos as various work committees were set up.

Liddell assumed more responsibilities than anyone else, as teacher of math and science for the children, coach and teacher of sports, minister in the chapel, supervisor of two dormitories, and interpreter for the Japanese. He also helped to fetch water and coal, empty garbage, and clean the rooms. Soon he had formed a Christian fellowship, in which he served as Bible teacher and counselor. The Sermon on the Mount and Paul's portrait of love in 1 Corinthians 13 were two favorite sources for his sermons.

As the months dragged on, more and more people came to him for advice and comfort, always finding in him a source of hope. He even broke his own rule against sports on Sundays in order to referee hockey games for the restless youth. Although he sorely missed his own family, he never complained, but turned his attention towards the children in the camp, becoming their beloved “Uncle Eric” in the process.

His immense physical reserves finally began to give out, inducing fatigue and sadness. He especially regretted not giving his wife and family more of his time. Despite his chronic headaches and other symptoms, no one suspected that a brain tumor was slowly killing him, for he typically did not speak of deteriorating condition. Even the doctors were surprised by his death. Long dependent upon Liddell to cheer them up, the grieving internees could only lament the loss of their hero, as did all of Scotland, where immense memorial services were held when the news reached them.

From “Eric Henry Liddell” by G. Wright Doyle, in the online Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity; http://www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/l/liddell-eric-henry.php

Daily Reading for February 23 • Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr of Smyrna, 156

I urge all of you to obey the word of righteousness and to practice all endurance, which you also observed with your own eyes not only in the most fortunate Ignatius, Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others who lived among you, and in Paul himself and the other apostles. You should be convinced that none of them acted in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and that they are in the place they deserved, with the Lord, with whom they also suffered. For they did not love the present age; they loved the one who died for us and who was raised by God for our sakes. And so, you should stand firm in these things and follow the example of the Lord, secure and unmoveable in your faith, loving the brotherhood, caring for one another, united in the truth, waiting on one another in the gentleness of the Lord, looking down on no one. When you are able to do good, do not put it off, since giving to charity frees a person from death.

From the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians (9:1-10:2), quoted in The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Daily Reading for February 24 • Saint Matthias the Apostle

[Judas must be replaced by] “one of the men who have accompanied us,” continues Peter. Note how he requires them to be eyewitnesses, even though the Spirit was about to come. There was still great care concerning this: “One of the men who have accompanied us,” he says, “during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us.” He means those who had dwelt with Christ, not simply been present as disciples. . . .

“Until the day he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.” He did not say a witness of the rest of his actions but a witness of the resurrection alone. For indeed more trustworthy is the man who can say, “he, who ate, and drank, and was crucified, he rose again.” Therefore, he must be a witness not only of the time preceding this event or of what followed it and the miracles: the thing required was the resurrection. The other matters were evident and acknowledged, but the resurrection took place in secret and was evident to these only. And they do not say, “Angels told us,” but, “We have seen.” Why is this evident? Because we perform miracles. For this reason they had to be trustworthy, especially then.

From John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament V: Acts, edited by Francis Martin (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for February 25 • John Roberts, Priest, 1949

The United States agent at the Shoshone Agency, Wyoming, writes of the Rev. John Roberts, missionary at that place:

There is an Episcopal minister in charge of the Indian school here. The school has now seventy-five scholars, and the present gentleman has been mainly instrumental in building it up. He has won my respect and confidence by his unselfish devotion to duty and the pluck and courage and energy he has displayed in meeting and fighting the discouragements in his path.

His salary is very small, and he has so many demands upon him for charity that he is kept poor all the time, and I have made up my mind to appeal to all the Churches I know (of all denominations), to aid him in his noble work.

There is no more urgent demand upon the Christian denominations than the sufferings among these people. No foreign mission can compare with it. These people are ours; they, by God’s Providence, are thrown on our shoulders, and while the government does much for them, it does not propose to meet the demands of delicacies for the sick-bed in the tipis; a cup of tea or a lemonade for a famished child has to fall to the minister’s care.

The agencies further east get the attention of religious people, but ’way here, under the cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, these two tribes, Shoshones and Arapahoes, get very little, and often what they do get is injudiciously sent. Even small sums of money sent to the minister or myself would be directed in the right way.

Please, if possible, speak a good word to the Churches of my State for these poor people. . . . It is encouraging to see how Mr. Roberts has drilled the children in the services and the Prayer Book, and he has a nice little chapel, the gift of some lady in the North. Even the smallest sums sent to him will aid more than you can imagine.

From an appeal for support of the Roberts Mission made in the classified advertisements section of The Churchman (April 3, 1886).

Daily Reading for February 26 • Emily Malbone Morgan, Prophetic Witness, 1937

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Society of Companions of the Holy Cross, Father J. O. S. Huntington, O.H.C., conducted a Retreat. At the last breakfast, at which Emily Malbone Morgan, Founder of the Society, was not present, Father Huntington spoke as follows: “I am glad that Miss Morgan is not with us this morning, for I want to say something about her. She always reminds me of a great river, flowing steadily and swiftly, bringing vital refreshment to every country through which it flows.”. . .

Emily Morgan loved at recurrent intervals to tell her Companions how the S.C.H.C. began. . . . .Let us listen to the briefer account given in the talk in 1921, at the celebration of the twentieth year of Adelynrood, the house which bears her friend’s name:

“Dear Adelyn Howard had moved into a new town away from old friends and associations, and I wanted to form a group of her friends into a little society which should add companionship, merriment, and diversion to her life. As she lay there helpless on her bed she said she missed above all her Church, and if anything was started for her she wanted it to be a religious society, and one which would give her spiritual companionship. I did not understand about religious societies, and they did not interest me. My leading characteristic at the time was undeviating and hilarious high spirits; but dear Adelyn wanted such a society, and I loved Adelyn.

“In the early winter of 1884, during a visit to Boston, I talked over the matter of such a society with Harriet Hastings, who was religious and who understood all about religious societies. . . . It was also that afternoon, looking over a number of books, that I selected our prayer, an ancient collect, and we called ourselves ‘Companions of the Cross,’ neither of us, in our teens, knowing much about the Cross and what it meant, but because Adelyn had sounded the depths of pain, and reached the heights above it, and it was her society and to be composed of her friends. . . .

“'Give us grace, O Eternal Father, that we strive to keep the way of the Cross, and carry in our hearts the image of Jesus crucified. Make us glad to conform ourselves to Thy divine will, that, being fashioned after His life-giving death, we may die according to the flesh, and live according to the Spirit of Righteousness, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour. Amen.'

“What that prayer has taught us in all these years! We, in our human associations, our companionship, touch only by surfaces, ‘but spirit is the core of these,’ as the old English adage says. Way down in the depths of our being where we carry the image of Jesus crucified is our real life lived and our real battle fought. . . . We felt the sense of the generations of Christians through the centuries who may have said them, and who knew the full meaning of His life-giving death, which had opened for them the doors of endless and abundant life."

From the Vida Dutton Scudder’s Foreword to Letters to Her Companions by Emily Malbone Morgan (Privately printed, 1944); found at http://anglicanhistory.org/women/adelynroodforeword.html

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

“These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.”

The poet and priest who has taught so many of us to see God “in all things” has a further lesson for us here: to see God beyond all things in the constancy of his promise. So also he calls us from a prayer enclosed in the present moment to one which begins in the present moment but longs hopefully for eternity. Certainly the experience of freedom and joy can be seen as a momentary confirmation of that hope, but confirmation is not fulfillment—fulfillment lies ahead. The truth grasped in the last line of “The Crosse” is nowhere repented of. The gift we are given now to possess without qualification is to share Christ’s agony in our own experience. We cannot with equal truth claim that we share in his Resurrection, for that would be to say that we had left the agony behind and were past change. Herbert, surprisingly perhaps (but the negative truth is needed to enforce what he has been saying positively), ends “The Flower” with severe words against those who claim, as it were, that for them the resurrection has already taken place. We know the power of Christ’s Resurrection now within the fellowship of his sufferings.

From George Herbert: Priest and Poet by Kenneth Mason (Oxford: SLG Press, 1980).

Daily Reading for February 28 • The Second Sunday in Lent

Each succeeding year, Lent calls each of us to renew our ongoing commitment to the implications of the Resurrection in our own lives, here and now. But that demands both the healing of the soul and the honing of the soul, both penance and faith, both a purging of what is superfluous in our lives and the heightening, the intensifying, of what is meaningful.

Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull, perhaps, by a life more marked by routine than by reflection. After a lifetime of mundane regularity or unconsidered adherence to the trappings of faith, Lent requires me, as a Christian, to stop for a while, to reflect again on what is going on in me. I am challenged again to decide whether I, myself, do truly believe that Jesus is the Christ—and if I believe, whether I will live accordingly when I can no longer hear the song of angels in my life and the star of Bethlehem has grown dim for me.

Lent is not a ritual. It is a time given to think seriously about who Jesus is for us, to renew our faith from the inside out. It is the moment when, as the baptismal waters flow on every Easter Vigil altar, we return to the baptismal font of the heart to say yes once more to the call of Jesus to the disciples, “Come and see” (John 1:39). It is the act of beginning our spiritual life all over again refreshed and reoriented.

From The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life by Joan Chittister (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009).