Daily Reading for April 1 • Maundy Thursday

To Him that loveth us. What is the limitation of this us? How are we to know who have been, who are included in it? St. John was the beloved disciple, the disciple who leaned on Christ’s breast at the Last Supper. He does not fear to give himself the name; writing in his old age, with his heart humbled and broken, he still dares to claim it. And why may we suppose that the Divine Spirit permitted this boldness, and urged him to it? I think, because that Spirit was teaching and compelling him, more than all the other disciples, to show forth Christ’s love, as having no partial ground, as resting on the eternal ground, and, therefore, as comprehending all within its circle.

Supposing St. Paul or St. Peter had used this all-embracing language, it might have been said: “Yes, but there was a special graciousness, a peculiar affection, altogether different from that which went forth upon you—how different from that which goes forth upon mankind!” St. John can say, “Even so; I was the object of that affection, I was permitted to experience it. I never knew the fulness and tenderness of it better than I knew it at the Last Supper. And this in my privilege; to announce this love to you, that you may share it, that you may have fellowship, as I have, with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” I do not know how the axe could have been laid to any notions of a limited love, bestowed upon certain qualities, or attracted by a certain faith, more completely; or yet how it could be shown more completely that the love of Christ is not vague philanthropy, but personal, and living, meeting and awakening all the qualities and tendencies of the creatures on whom it is bestowed.

Supposing we had the Epistles and Revelations of St. John, without being told anything of the relation in which he stood to the Son of man while he was upon earth, we might have been lost in the thought of a benevolence too vast and vague for any individual sympathy. If we had the record of St. John’s place among the disciples, without hearing him declare the message which he had received from Christ, and which it was his work to proclaim to men, we should have found a precedent and a warrant for all that glorification of different saints, as objects of Christ’s partial regard and mysterious favour, which have been so common, and so hurtful, in some parts of the Church; a kind of warrant for the notion, more prevalent in our day and more mischievous, that there are circles and schools which He favours, to the exclusion and condemnation of mankind at large.

Now that the individual and the universal are so wonderfully combined in the lessons and the life of the same man; now that we know this to have been the great and distinguishing reward which was conferred on him above others, that he should tell all men what God felt to them, and had wrought for them; we are able to enter through the disciple into the mind of the Master, who suffered for all and for each; through the Master into the mind of the Father, who rules in the armies of heaven, and without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground.

From “The Adoration of the Lamb,” a sermon preached by F. D. Maurice at Lincoln’s Inn on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, July 30, 1854; quoted in The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures: A Series of Sermons by Frederick Denison Maurice (London: Macmillian, 1893).

Daily Reading for April 2 • Good Friday

How precious is the gift of the cross!
See, how beautiful it is to behold!
It shows no sign of evil mixed with good, like the tree of old in Eden;
it is all beautiful and comely to see and to taste.

For it is a tree which brings forth life, not death.
It is the source of light, not darkness.
It offers you a home in Eden.
It does not cast you out.
It is the tree which Christ mounted as a king his chariot,
and so destroyed the devil, the lord of death,
and rescued the human race from slavery to the tyrant.

It is the tree on which the Lord,
like a great warrior with his hands and feet and his divine side pierced in battle,
healed the wounds of our sins,
healed our nature that had been wounded by the evil serpent.

Of old we were poisoned by a tree;
now we have found immortality through a tree.
Of old we were led astray by a tree;
now we have repelled the treacherous snake by means of a tree.
Indeed what an unheard-of exchange!
We are given life instead of death.

A hymn of Theodore the Studite (759-826), quoted in Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for April 3 • Holy Saturday

What is happening?
Today there is a great silence over the earth,
a great silence, and stillness,
a great silence because the King sleeps;
the earth was in terror and was still,
because God slept in the flesh and raised up those
who were sleeping from the ages.

God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.
Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep;
he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. . . .
And grasping Adam’s hand he raised him up, saying,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give you light.”

“I am your God, who for your sake became your son,
who for you and your descendants now speak
and command with authority those in prison:
Come forth,
and those in darkness,
Have light,
and those who sleep:
Rise. . .

“I command you:
Awake, sleeper,
I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld.
Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead.
Arise, O man, work of my hands,
arise, you who were fashioned in my image.
Rise, let us go hence;
for you in me and I in you,
together we are one undivided person.”

From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday, quoted in Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for April 4 • The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter

Christ’s resurrection is life for the dead, pardon for sinners, glory for the saints. And so the holy prophet invites every creature to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection: we should rejoice, he says, and be glad on this day which the Lord has made.

The light of Christ is day without night, day without end. Understanding that day to be Christ, Saint Paul says: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand.” “The night is far gone,” he says, it is not approaching; for he wishes you to understand that when Christ’s light draws near, the darkness of the devil is put to flight, and the shadows of sin do not approach; the old gloom is dispelled by the endless brightness, and the insidious approach of wrongdoing is halted.

Christ is the Son-day, to whom the Father-day has whispered the secret of his divinity. He is the day who says through the mouth of Solomon: “I have made an undying light rise in the heavens.”

And so, my brethren, we ought all to rejoice on this holy day. No one should separate himself from the general rejoicing because he has sins on his conscience; no one should refuse to take part in the public worship because of the burden of his misdeeds. However great a sinner he may be, on this day he should not despair of pardon, for the privileges granted by this day are great. If a thief should be thought worthy of paradise, why should not a Christian be thought worthy of forgiveness?

From Maximus of Turin (c. 380-c. 465), quoted in Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for April 5 • Monday in Easter Week

I am the Christ.
It is I who destroyed death,
who triumphed over the enemy,
who trampled Hades underfoot,
who bound the strong one
and snatched man away to the heights of heaven;
I am the Christ.

Come then . . .
It is I who am your ransom, your life,
your resurrection,
your light,
your salvation, your king.
I am bringing you to the heights of heaven,
I will show you the Father who is from all eternity,
I will raise you up with my right hand.

From Melito of Sardis, quoted in Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for April 6 • Tuesday in Easter Week

Resurrection of the Easter-kind is not regeneration, but re-creation. A new miracle of creation establishing Jesus physically as Jesus. The physical body of Jesus. Oh, the implausibility of it all!

Could it be that Jesus’ body no longer belonged to this universe? That his physical cells had been translated into a type of body that would be fit—ready to live—in some other world? Some other universe? Another dimension? Visible and tactile in ours, but not of our world? Otherwise it makes no sense, right? This resurrection makes no sense if something atomic didn’t happen. Universes—our world and God’s world—standing completely apart. Yet, because of Jesus new constitution these two worlds—God’s and ours—appear standing side by side like a Kenmore refrigerator. That makes you this close to the world that is God’s, only you can’t access it, at least on your own. . . .

Scientists, however, have reported the detection of dark matter, dust, if you will, belonging to another dimension. Matter here, in our world, actually owned by another. The evidence of this matter is Dark particle annihilation, meaning they can’t quite see the matter, but they know it is there because of evidence left behind. . . . And the question is no longer whether dark matter exists, but rather, what is it? Where is it? Where does it come from? . . . Imagine—and this is how it appears—dust of some other world is translated from some other dimension, or universe, into ours. Cosmic dust.

Which begs the question—if dust from another universe can find its way here, can dust from our dimension or universe find its way there? Universes existing side by side like the refrigerator, elbow to elbow, with translation impossible by design, but, perhaps. . . .The body of Jesus is somehow different, now. Physical yes, you can touch and see him—but different. Peculiarly different. . . . Later, this same Jesus appears physically to the disciples behind locked doors, suddenly and impossibly, flowing through earth like air through a screen door. And when the two on the Road to Emmaus—check out this fun story in Luke’s Gospel —when the two men finally recognize Jesus he instantly disappears from sight.

I’m not saying that the resurrected body of Jesus is made up of what we call dark matter, particles from another dimension, but I’m not saying he isn’t, either. If the news reports from the disciples are to be believed—and why shouldn’t they be? —it suddenly makes sense: Jesus is resurrected physically in a body that can move easily into God’s dimension.

At the very least, what I believe is this: God is right here, this close, that heaven is located even in your breath—and that Jesus as the Christ somehow broached an impenetrable barrier. And if fledgling physics theory explains the phenomenon, so be it—or if the theory simply provides a metaphor, so be it.

The point is this: the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom at the moment of crucifixion, as if to say the river of life—from God’s dimension—finally can flow freely into this universe of death. . . .

Ironically, Richard Holloway points out that Jesus has now gone to heaven—and has already taken some of our dust with him. Some of you. A part of you extant in heaven. . . . You are made holy dust, elements of some other world, even while you are dust of this world.

From a sermon preached on Easter 2009 by the Reverend Robert K. Gieselmann, Christ Episcopal Church, Sausalito, California. Used by kind permission of the author.

Daily Reading for April 7 • Wednesday in Easter Week

Sing with your voices,
Sing with your hearts,
Sing with your lips,
Sing with your lives.

“Sing to the Lord a new song.”
Do you ask what you should sing about the one whom you love?
Of course you want to sing about the one you love.
Do you ask what you should sing in praise of him?
Listen:
“His praise is in the assembly of the saints.”
The singer himself is the praise contained in the song.
Do you want to speak the praise of God?
Be yourself what you speak.
If you live good lives,
you are his praise.

From Augustine of Hippo (354-430), quoted in Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2009).

Daily Reading for April 8 • Thursday in Easter Week

In springtime, I have seen a daffodil unfold, the pale yellow petals burst from their green sheaths. At the tips of branches I have seen buds, pregnant with life, ready to spring forth. I put my hand to my heart and listen to the dull, pulsating beat driving the blood of life through me. I am alive, I have life. Again, I’ve looked up and seen a bird drifting in the wind, or at evening sat and watched the sun, a huge red ball, go down upon the sea. So I affirm, this world is good. Despite all the darkness of evil, I belong here. My life is a gracious gift, given me to live. I will be baptized in the name of the Father, Creator of heaven and earth.

But there is more than the living, physical world of beauty. I take my stand on love, the depths of love that forgives and accepts me, love that gives itself for others, love that is stronger than death, the love that I see around me in children, women and men, but most clearly in Jesus. I will be baptized in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

As well as love, I believe in a creative spirit, the enthusiasm of the young with their hopes and dreams, the creativity of artists, writers, musicians, poets. There is a spirit, too, which ties together those with a common purpose, families, groups, the spirit of unity, the spirit of humanity. I will be baptized in the Name of the Holy Spirit. . . .

Now I am washed clean. I have stepped out of the bath. I smell with the perfume of fragrant oil. White clothes, clean and fresh, cover me. The dawn is breaking outside, and the first fingers of light spread across the sky. I feel new, made whole. My life has meaning. The darkness has been washed away. I have seen the darkness of death, the gloom of despair. I have stood on the brink of the void of nothingness, but I am alive. Nothing can terrify me now, neither death nor prison, neither earthquake nor sin. I am Christ’s and Christ is mine. Nothing can separate me from his life and love. His Spirit is with us, refreshing, comforting, insistently urging us to live.

From A Vision of Wholeness by John Gaden, edited by Duncan Reid (Sydney, 1994).

Daily Reading for April 9 • Friday in Easter Week

And what, then, on this “our triumphant Holy Day,” should his Life be? What but the sealing to us of all which he had wrought for us? What but the bursting of the bars of our prison-house, the restoration of our lost Paradise, the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven, the earnest of our endless life? . . . Can there be more than this? There can. The text unfolds to us a yet deeper mystery, that all this is to us “in Christ,” “In Christ shall all be made alive.” The Endless Life . . . shall be a life “in God.” “In Christ shall all be made alive.” We shall live then, not only as having our souls restored to our bodies, and souls and bodies living on in the presence of Almighty God. Great and unutterable as were this blessedness, there is a higher yet in store—to live on “in Christ.” For this implies Christ’s living on in us. . . .

To dwell in God is not to dwell on God only. It is no mere lifting up of our affections to God, no being enwrapt in the contemplation of God, no going forth of ourselves to cleave to God. All this is our seeking God, not his taking us up; our stretching after God, not our attaining him; our knocking, not his opening. To dwell in God must be by his dwelling in us. God takes us out of our state of nature, in which we were, fallen, estranged, in a far country, out of and away from him, and takes us up into himself. God comes to us, and if we will receive him, God dwells in us, and makes his abode in us. He enlarges our hearts by his sanctifying Spirit which he gives us, by the obedience which he enables us to yield, by the acts of faith and love which he strengthens us to do, and then dwells in those who are his more largely. By dwelling in us, God makes us parts of himself, so that in the Ancient Church they could boldly say, “He deifieth me”; that is, God makes me part of him, of his Body, who is God.

From a sermon for Easter by E. B. Pusey, in Sermons during the Season from Advent to Whitsuntide (Oxford, 1848).

Daily Reading for April 10 • Saturday in Easter Week

Morning awakes, and morn awaking sings;
Light speeds from heaven to earth with glowing wings.

Haste to the tomb! Ye mourners, haste, with glee!
Christ hath arisen, from death's grim fetters free.

Gone are the night, the terror, and the gloom;
Christ hath arisen, and left the awful tomb.

Death now is dead, the grave hath lost its power;
Death and the grave are vanquished at this hour

Thou art the Christ, victorious Christ art Thou,
Death has no sting, and grave no victory now.

Glory to Thee, O Christ, Thy people bring;
Thou art our God, and our Immortal King.

An Easter hymn, from Hymns of the Apostolic Church, translated from the Greek by John Brownlie; found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/brownlie/aposthymns.hymns.top5.h18.html

Daily Reading for April 11 • The Second Sunday of Easter

Humbly I adore Thee, hidden Deity,
Which beneath these figures art concealed from me;
Wholly in submission Thee my spirit hails,
For in contemplating Thee it wholly fails.

Taste and touch and vision in Thee are deceived:
But the hearing only may be well believed:
I believe whatever God’s own son averred;
Nothing can be truer than Truth’s very Word. . . .

Though thy wounds, like Thomas, I behold not now,
Thee my Lord confessing, and my God, I bow:
Give me ever stronger faith in Thee above,
Give me ever stronger hope and stronger love. . . .

Jesu, whom thus veiled, I must see below,
When shall that be given which I long for so,
That at last beholding Thy uncover’d Face,
Thou wouldst satisfy me with Thy fullest grace?

From the hymn “Adoro Te Devote” by Thomas Aquinas, translated by John Mason Neale in his Collected Hymns, Sequences and Carols (London, 1914).

Daily Reading for April 12 • Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burma, 1850

Night. All is dark. I can see no sense in things. Thousands are dying of starvation, thousands drowned in floods for no reason. Nations promise one thing and do another. Our leaders mislead us. I feel repressed, restricted. All is dark. The darkness is outside; it is inside, too. In myself I see darkness, failures. I hurt those whom I love. I shout and scream at them. Is there any light?

Look! A light, but it is so faint. And there’s another, and another. All through the world, and the history of humankind, I see lights. Where does this light come from? Is it a reflection? This man’s life, this hero, his life stands out like a light. Or this woman, she reflects a bright spot in the gloom. This man, this woman, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, that mother who gives herself to her family, all these and many more, appear to shine with a light that is not their own. As I look now, I can see the light behind them, brighter than the rest, which all the others reflect. This Light shines in the darkness, and is not put out. This Light is the life of all human beings.

I turn to the Light, the Light of the world. “Give me your light: let me reflect your light. Light of the world, Light of Christ, shine through my life too. Bright Sun, let me shine with your light, as the full moon now shines in the dark sky.”

From A Vision of Wholeness by John Gaden, edited by Duncan Reid (Sydney, 1994).

Daily Reading for April 13

I am not going to do anything so foolish as to try to tell over again, less vividly, this well-known story. We all remember its outlines, I suppose: the absence of Thomas from Christ’s first meeting with the assembled disciples on Easter evening; the dogged disbelief with which he met their testimony; his arrogant assumption of the right to lay down the conditions on which he should believe, and Christ’s gracious acceptance of the conditions; the discovery when they were offered that they were not needful; the burst of glad conviction which lifted him to the loftiest height reached while Christ was on earth, and then the summing up of all in our Lord’s words—‘Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed!’—the last Beatitude, that links us and all the generations yet to come with the story, and is like a finger pointing to it, as containing very special lessons for them all.

I simply seek to try to bring out the force and instructiveness of the story. The first point is—The isolation that misses the sight of the Christ. . . . Thomas did the very worst thing that a melancholy man can do, went away to brood in a corner by himself, and so to exaggerate all his idiosyncrasies, to distort the proportion of truth, to hug his despair, by separating himself from his fellows. Therefore he lost what they got, the sight of the Lord. He ‘was not with them when Jesus came.’ Would he not have been better in the upper room than gloomily turning over in his mind the dissolution of the fair company and the shipwreck of all his hopes?

May we not learn a lesson? I venture to apply these words, dear friends, to our gatherings for worship. The worst thing that a man can do when disbelief, or doubt, or coldness shrouds his sky, and blots out the stars, is to go away alone and shut himself up with his own, perhaps morbid, or, at all events, disturbing thoughts. The best thing that he can do is to go amongst his fellows. If the sermon does not do him any good, the prayers and the praises and the sense of brotherhood will help him. If a fire is going out, draw the dying coals close together, and they will make each other break into a flame. . . . Solitude is not the best medicine for any disturbed or saddened soul. It is true that ‘solitude is the mother-country of the strong,’ and that unless we are accustomed to live very much alone, we shall not live very much with God. But on the other hand, if you cut yourself off from the limiting, and therefore developing, society of your fellows, you will rust, you will become what they call eccentric. Your idiosyncrasies will swell into monstrosities, your peculiarities will not be subjected to the gracious process of pruning which society with your fellows, and especially with Christian hearts, will bring to them. And in every way you will be more likely to miss the Christ than if you were kindly with your kind, and went up to the house of God in company.

From “Thomas and Jesus” by Alexander Maclaren, D. D., Litt. D., in Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John, Chaps. XV to XXI; found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/maclaren/john2.ii.xxxix.html

Daily Reading for April 14 • Edward Thomas Demby, 1957, and Henry Beard Delany, 1928, Bishops

After Jim Crow, there were separate cars for colored people and white people. And there were Pullmans, which colored people could ride if they had enough money, but most of us didn’t. Anyway, the Pullman was for interstate travel only, and most Negroes were taking local trains. When Papa [Henry Beard Delany] became a bishop, he occasionally was encouraged by a friendly conductor to take the Pullman instead of the Jim Crow car. But Papa would say no. He would be amiable about it, though. He would say to the conductor, “That’s OK. I want to ride with my people, see how they’re doing.” And he’d go sit in the Jim Crow car. . . . Jim Crow’s not law anymore, but it’s still in some people’s hearts. I don’t let it get to me, though. I just laugh it off, child. I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life. . . .

When Papa became bishop in 1918, people were mighty impressed. His accomplishment was so extraordinary, I still wonder how he did it. He put up with a lot to get where he got. One time, not long after Papa was consecrated to the bishopric, he did a service at Christ Church in Raleigh. It was a white, segregated church. Our family attended, and do you know what happened? We had to sit in the balcony, which was built for slaves! And we were not given the privilege of Communion. Ooooh, that makes Bessie mad. At the time, she wanted to make a fuss, but she did not, because she did not want to embarrass Papa.

Somehow, Papa always endured this kind of degradation. He saw the hypocrisy, but he felt that gently, slowly, he was making true progress for himself and his people, and he was at peace with that. I learned a lot from my Papa about coping with institutional racism. The way to succeed was simple: You had to be better at what you did than any of your white competition. That was the main thing. But you couldn’t be too smug about it, or white folks would feel threatened. . . . My way to get ahead was to be better than my white competition. Papa had set a good example for me of how to work within the system.

From Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth (New York: Dell Publishing, 1993).

Daily Reading for April 15 • Damien, Priest and Leper, 1889, and Marianne, Religious, 1918, of Molokai

At. St. Philomena, Father Damien . . . looked out over his flock. They dressed as finely as they could in their circumstances, the men in white shirts and the women in flowing holokus, wrapped around the waist with folds of colorful cloth. Garlands of flowers encircled their necks or were worn as bands on broad-brimmed hats. The bouquets served double duty. . . . Skin eruptions gave off an odor even beneath fresh bandages. At times the air inside the church grew so thick that Damien struggled to continue. “I have had great difficulty in getting accustomed to such an atmosphere,” he confessed to Pamphile. “One day . . . I found myself so stifled that I thought I must leave the altar to breathe a little of the outer air.” He had weighed his moment of suffering against his congregation’s and forced himself to remain.

In his sermons Father Damien often stressed that leprosy offered an opportunity for grace. Although their disease was divinely inflicted, the exiles’ torment was “helping them to get out of sin and return to God,” as one Sacred Hearts priest wrote. Father Damien had long ago embraced the Christian notion that leprosy was a type of curse; most people in Kalawao who were religious believed the same. Yet something about this idea began to trouble Damien. After several months in the colony he began to voice suspicions that the concept was faulty, or theologically incomplete. Certainly the afflicted children in the settlement were innocent of sin; already Damien had charge of a half dozen orphans, and if a divine plan existed for their leprosy he did not see it. . . .

From the moment he had stepped ashore in the settlement, Damien had disregarded the warnings made by the board and his superiors concerning infection. “Be careful not to expose yourself to catching this awful disease,” his provincial had cautioned. Yet Damien could see no alternative. Every month, the settlers endured visits from skittish doctors, legislators, and clergymen whose detestation of the disease was obvious. Damien decided that he must not be seen as similarly fearful. How could he refrain from embracing the members of his congregation, or touching a dying patient with oil, or laying the host on the offered tongue of the communicant? To be a genuine priest, he concluded, he had to behave as if the disease held no power over him. Within days of arriving in Kalawao, Damien had abandoned all safeguards. A board physician later reported, “Fr. Damien took no precautions whatever. In the kindness of his nature, he never forbade lepers from entering his house; they had access to it any time, night and day. I named his house ‘Kalawao Family Hotel and Lepers’ Rest.’” Others observed Damien eating from communal bowls of poi, sharing his pipe with patients, and bandaging “the most frightful wounds as though he were handling flowers.”

More than 125 years after Damien contracted leprosy, in early 2004, a team of Canadian scientists discovered the “genetic quirk” within a person’s DNA that causes susceptibility to the disease. . . . Susceptibility followed genetic pathways, concentrating along particular bloodlines, both familial and ethnic. . . . . Often these lines of susceptibility were hidden among other, unrelated data. Four priests from the Paris-based Sacred Hearts order, all of whom served the mission in Hawaii, eventually contracted leprosy. Damien interpreted his infection as inevitable, and part of a divine plan. “Our Lord has willed that I be stigmatized with it,” he wrote after the first symptoms appeared. “God certainly knows what is best for my sanctification and I gladly repeat: ‘Thy will be done.’”

From The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman (New York: Scribner, 2006).

Daily Reading for April 16 • Mary (Molly) Brant (Konwatsijayenni), Witness to the Faith among the Mohawks, 1796

The traditional Mohawk greeting of She:kon, skennenkowa ken literally translates into English as “Do you still have the Great Peace?” Most Mohawk speakers shorten the phrase, using “She:kon,” pronounced “say-go,” as slang for “hello.” The Great Peace is the foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the greeting is more than a casual hello. It is an earnest enquiry into the person’s wellbeing.

To help non-Mohawks understand this, in Judeo-Christian terms, the person who is being greeted is being asked if they are experiencing “shalom,” a sense of peace that pervades one’s whole body, mind and spirit. It implies wholeness and wellbeing, with oneself, others and Creation. It is the hope of our worshipping community that all may find peace, or skennen, through our relationship with God the Creator and Jesus Christ the Son of God, being faithful both to our Christian faith and our Mohawk identity, language and tradition.

From the website of the Anglican Parish of Tyendinaga, of the Anglican Church of Canada, a parish which “uses a mixture of traditional and contemporary worship and music (including Mohawk language and customs when possible), abiding by the principle that we are here to worship God and to give God thanks for the many blessings we experience in our lives.” Found at http://www.parishoftyendinaga.org/.

Creator we give you thanks for all you are and all you bring to us, for our visit within your Creation. In Jesus, you place the Gospel in the centre of this Sacred Circle through which all of creation is related. Give us the strength to live together with respect and commitment as we grow in your Spirit, for you are God, now and forever. Amen.

From the Indigenous Prayer Calendar, 2002-2003, of the Anglican Church of Canada, quoted in Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2004. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for April 17

I didn’t know where I was going, but I headed south and ended up at the Bosque del Apache. When I got out there, the light was turning to evening. I drove out to one of the dikes, and then pulled over and parked. None of the fancy birds were left: the sandhill cranes were gone as well as the snow geese. But there were red-winged blackbirds, Canada geese, and ducks, making their soft sounds. The light was falling evenly on the bull rushes, the yellow millet, and the water. A raven was dive-bombing each pond and the little birds rose and flocked before him and then settled back. Very suddenly, for the first time in months, I felt comforted. Here was life—birds, rushes, and water.

I was looking out at the bull rushes when I saw something else. I saw, or understood, that [my brother] Kit was there. His singular, unique life. He was there somehow, burning in the rushes, in the light and in the birds. It was as if his life was exploding into them, and was about to become them, and I had been given the miraculous luck to catch him just as he dove in. He was traveling at a great speed, it seemed to me, into the place where all things are alive. I reached toward him, hardly able to believe it, wanting to hold on to him and to the moment, sheltering my hope in doubt. I thought, He is alive.

From Practicing Resurrection: A Memoir of Doubt, Discernment, and Moments of Grace by Nora Gallagher (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).

Daily Reading for April 18 • The Third Sunday of Easter

For what else do the words “Do you love me? Feed my sheep” mean than if it were said, If you love me, do not think of feeding yourself but feed my sheep as mine and not as your own. Seek my glory in them, and not your own; my dominion, and not yours; my gain, and not yours. Otherwise, you might be found in the fellowship of those who belong to the perilous times, lovers of their own selves, and all else that is joined on to this beginning of evils. . . .

With great propriety, therefore, Peter is asked, “Do you love me?” and he is found replying, “I love you.” And then the command to “Feed my lambs” is applied to Peter, not only once but also a second and a third time, which also demonstrates here that love and liking are one and the same thing. For the Lord, in the last question, did not say “Diligis me,” [as he had the first two times] but, “Amas me?” Let us, then, love not ourselves, but him.

And in feeding his sheep, let us be seeking the things which are his, not the things which are our own. For in some inexplicable way that I cannot understand, everyone who loves himself, and not God, does not love himself. And whoever loves God, and not himself, that is the person who loves himself. For whoever cannot live by himself will certainly die by loving himself. The person, therefore, who loves himself while losing his own life does not really love himself. But when Christ, who preserves life, is loved, a person who does not love himself ends up loving all the more when he does not love himself for this reason, namely, that he may love Christ by whom he lives.

From Tractates on the Gospel of John by Augustine, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb, John 11-21, edited by Joel C. Elowsky (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2007).

Daily Reading for April 19 • Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Martyr, 1012

There is a great deal said today in favour of the Vikings, and an impression exists that they were either fellow-Europeans looking for new trade outlets or well-meaning tourists with long hair who sometimes roughed up the natives. Whatever the hindsight of history has to say about them, the chroniclers of the times were unanimous in their view of them as mad, bad and dangerous to know. It may well have been an error of ignorance when they drank communion wine, raped nuns, burned churches, took away crosses and reliquaries; what they saw was, no doubt, wine, girls, and gold, and wooden churches easily caught fire at a party; but for the Christians, the effect was of sacrilege and the challenge that of martyrdom. . . .

There is here a key to the spirituality of the first English Christians. At first they were promised a new kingdom and tended to see God as the god of battles, who would reward devotion with victory. But they learned another lesson by experience, and that was the priority of God in all circumstances. They were concerned at first with amassing the new glories of the Mediterranean world and an ancient Christian culture; they learned to put first the love of God and the salvation of souls. They learned that belief could not be separated from conduct, and they learned to undertake specific acts of charity not for their own glory but with the humility that regards God as the only pastor, using only damaged tools. The response of these English Christians to personal anguish or to desolation on a tremendous scale lay not in despair or in applying secular solutions to spiritual ills but in the costly assertion that Christ reigns. The answer in both situations was stillness before God to allow him to act: “Nailed and spread fast on this rood in my holy order as thou was nailed for me on thy hard rood.” . . . This was the answer to sorrow for the Anglo-Saxons of those early centuries, for the Irish and missionaries from Rome, for Bede and for Cuthbert, for Alfred the Great. In darkness, desolation and shame, in facing the poverty and weakness of the heart, there is the place of the Cross and of the light of life and redemption, because that is the place where God is and no other. If Christianity is true, the only success we know anything about is a man nailed to a cross and still with the Father.

From High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality by Benedicta Ward SLG (Mowbray, 1999).

Daily Reading for April 20

I do not know why so many of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances have something to do with food, but they do. It happens twice in Luke—first on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus is made known to two of his disciples in the breaking of the bread, and then later, when he appears to them all and eats a piece of broiled fish in their presence. Maybe it is because eating is so necessary for life, and so is he. Or maybe it is because sharing food is what makes us human. It is, at any rate, one of the clues to his presence. There is always the chance, when we are eating together, that we will discover the risen Lord in our midst.

“It is the Lord!” That is what the beloved disciple said. How did he know? How does any of us know? By staying on the lookout, I suppose. By watching the shore, and the sky, and each other’s faces. By listening real hard. By living in great expectation and refusing to believe that our nets will stay empty or our nights will last forever. For those with ears to hear, there is a voice that can turn all our dead ends into new beginnings.

“Come,” that voice says, “and have breakfast.”

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon “The First Breakfast,” found in Gospel Medicine (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1995).

Daily Reading for April 21 • Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1109

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
you are gentle with us like a mother with her children.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

Jesus by your dying we are born to new life:
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

Your warmth gives life to the dead;
your touch makes sinners righteous.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.
In your love and tenderness, remake us.

A prayer of Anselm of Canterbury, 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 April 22 • John Muir, Naturalist and Writer, 1914, and Hudson Stuck, Priest and Environmentalist, 1920

The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols. He is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentlemen in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet at a half- penny theater.

With such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. To such properly trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an easy problem—food and clothing “for us,” eating grass and daisies white by divine appointment for this predestined purpose, on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.

In the same pleasant plan, whales are storehouses of oil for us, to help out the stars in lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident destination for ships’ rigging, wrapping packages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is another plain case of clothing. Iron was made for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets; all intended for us. And so of other small handfuls of insignificant things. . . .

Now, it never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers that Nature’s object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit—the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. . . . This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation’s plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.

From A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir, edited by William Frederic Badè (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916).

Daily Reading for April 23 • George, Soldier and Martyr, c. 304 and Toyohiko Kagawa, Prophetic Witness in Japan, 1960

Of the true history of St. George very little is known. When we turn to the few accurate and early accounts which have come down to us, we find that there are two claimants to the title. According to the generally accepted version, St. George was born at Lydda about the year 270 A.D., and was martyred at Nicomedia in 303. In the writings of Eusebius, a contemporary of St. George, who was Bishop of Constantinople in the year 338, the following entry is found:

“Immediately on the promulgation of the edict (of Diocletian) a certain man of no mean origin, but highly esteemed for his temporal dignities, as soon as the decree was published against the churches in Nicomedia, stimulated by a divine zeal and excited by an ardent faith, took it as it was openly placed and posted up for public inspection, and tore it to shreds as a most profane and wicked act. This, too, was done when the two Caesars were in the city, the first of whom was the eldest and chief of all, and the other held fourth grade of the imperial dignity after him. But this man, as the first that was distinguished there in this manner, after enduring what was likely to follow an act so daring, preserved his mind, calm and serene until the moment when his spirit fled.” This nameless martyr has been generally supposed to be St. George. . . .

Among other early records of St. George, we have the decree of Pope Gelasius in 494 A.D.; the Book of Martyrs of St. Gregory of Tours in the sixth century, which mentions him; the beautiful poem of Venantius Fortunatus, written in his honour in the year 500 A.D., and the dedication of the Velabro church in Rome by Leo II in the year 682 A.D. The church built over the tomb of St. George at Lydda (which existed, until recent years, in a ruinous state) has, from the earliest times, been called the work of Constantine. . . .

Although St. George was reverenced in England in Anglo-Saxon times, it was Richard I who first brought his cult to England, and Edward III who raised it to that great height of popularity which it held for so long. . . . The story runs, that Richard I, when fighting the Holy War in Palestine, also beheld the radiant figure of St. George in shining armour and a red cross, leading the armies on to victory. We know that Richard repaired the church of St. George at Lydda when in Palestine, and he certainly returned to England full of enthusiasm for the warrior Saint. In the reign of his nephew, Henry III, in 1220, St. George’s name was passed into the calendar for April 23.

From St. George for Merrie England by Margaret Hattersley Bulley (London: George Allen and Sons, 1908).

Daily Reading for April 24 • Genocide Remembrance

O Lord, we cry to you,
with deep pain in our hearts and souls.
Our hearts ache, because of genocide
caused by the lust for power,
cruel hatred for others,
because of their race, religion or physical differences.

God of all, the heavens weep, the winds whisper
through this great world you have created.
We hear and feel the weeping in our own souls.
Open our eyes and cleanse our souls
that we may always remember the awful injustices.

How long, O God,
will we look with empty souls and eyes,
how long?
The answer, “Until you feel my pain for all my children.”
We cry in shame. Forgive us Lord.

Amen.

A Prayer to End Genocide, by Education for Justice; found at http://www.educationforjustice.org/node/1039

Daily Reading for April 25 • The Fourth Sunday of Easter

He whose goodness is his own nature and not some nonessential gift, says, “I am the good Shepherd.” He adds the character of this goodness, which we are to imitate, saying, “The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” He did what he taught; he gave an example of what he commanded. The good Shepherd has laid down his life for his sheep in order to change his body and blood into a sacrament for us and to satisfy the sheep he had redeemed with his own body as food. The way of contempt for death that we are to follow has been shown us, the mold that is to form us is there.

The first thing we are to do is to devote our external goods to his sheep in mercy. Then, if it should be necessary, we are to offer even our death for these same sheep. . . . If someone does not give his substance to the sheep, how can he lay down his life for them?

From Forty Gospel Homilies by Gregory the Great, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVa, John 1-10, edited by Joel C. Elowsky (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for April 26 • Saint Mark the Evangelist (transferred)

As a youngster I somehow convinced myself that the twenty-fifth was called “St. Mark’s Day” because it “marked” the last possible date for Easter—and because those in the ancient church were always fond of having fun with things like that. Years of living have not appreciably changed my suspicions, at least not about the church fathers, but they have changed my perception of what St. Mark’s marks. St. Mark’s Day means the final and irrefutable death of winter for yet another year.

The spring comes so quietly in the country—so without announcement—that I walk into it morning after morning without knowing until abruptly, on some perfectly ordinary day, I think, It’s warm! and realize that I have already been jacketless and easy in my kingdom for several such mornings. Faith is a bit like that, I suspect, quiet and without announcement till it, too, seeps into our clothing and our decisions and only at the last into our consciousness, till it, too, cuts us loose from chores and clothes and the awkwardness of ice underfoot.

My joy, of course, is in my freedom. The animals are with us again, or I am with them. The fence line no longer holds me separate. I move into their pastures, walking among them as they graze, or they join me in my ramblings down to the pond or off to the close. The world under our feet and about our faces and above our heads is alive again with bees and moths and butterflies and grasshoppers and dragonflies and ladybugs and a myriad of such lives. Their energy charms me, but it is their variety—more infinite than the stars—that beguiles me.

It would be so easy, walking these acres, sharing this space, to grow placid and fat of soul—to love these creatures and their haunts beyond their function and place. So beautiful they are to me that only a cross keeps me from the metaphor of pantheism. . . .

A cross, a Book, and an Other who, because of the two, lives so close now that I have lost our borders as well as our beginnings. And each Eastertide our conversation is laid aside more completely, more readily, than in the previous spring, while what has been in history and what is always being in nature blend into that sureness of resurrection that contains both.

From “Through the Veil Torn” in Wisdom in the Waiting: Spring’s Sacred Days by Phyllis Tickle, in her series “Stories from The Farm In Lucy” (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004).

Daily Reading for April 27 • Christina Rosetti, Poet, 1894

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

“A Better Resurrection” by Christina Rossetti, from Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1862). Found at http://www.poetry-archive.com/r/a_better_resurrection.html

Daily Reading for April 28

The basic text for Christian practice is “the Father and I are one.” Christ came to save us from our sins, but only as the essential preliminary to our ultimate destiny. The source of all sin is the sense of a separate self. . . . Christ came to communicate to each of us his own personal experience of the Father. However, even when the separate self has been joined to Christ, it is still a self. The ultimate state to which we are called is beyond any fixed point of reference such as a self. It transcends the personal union with Christ to which Paul referred when he said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

The death of Jesus on the cross was the death of his personal self, which in his case was a deified self. Christ’s resurrection and ascension is his passage into the Ultimate Reality: the sacrifice and loss of his deified self to become one with the Godhead. Since all reality is the manifestation of the Godhead and Christ has passed into identification with It, Christ is present everywhere and in everything. The cosmos is now the Body of the glorified Christ who dwells in every part of it.

Union with Christ on the cross—our entrance into his experience—leads to the death of our separate-self sense. To embrace the cross of Christ is to be willing to leave behind the self as a fixed point of reference. It is to die to all separation, even to a self that has been transformed. It is to be one with God, not just to experience it.

From The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, in Foundations for Centering Prayer and the Christian Contemplative Life by Thomas Keating (New York: Continuum, 2006).

Daily Reading for April 29 • Catherine of Siena, 1380

We were enclosed,
O eternal Father,
within the garden of your breast.
You drew us out of your holy mind
like a flower
petaled with our soul's three powers,
and into each power
you put the whole plant,
so that they might bear fruit in your garden,
might come back to you
with the fruit you gave them.
And you would come back to the soul,
to fill her with your blessedness.
There the soul dwells—
like the fish in the sea
and the sea in the fish.

A prayer by Catherine of Siena, translated by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. and quoted in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, edited by Jane Hirshfield (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995).

Daily Reading for April 30 • Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, Editor and Prophetic Witness, 1879

Good society, in all Christian countries, is the meeting on a footing of equality, and for the purpose of mutual entertainment, of men, or women, or men and women together, of good character, good education, and good breeding. But what is the real spirit of the observances which this society requires of its frequenters for the preservation of harmony, and the easy intercourse of all of them? Certainly, one may have a spotless reputation, a good education, and good breeding, without being either good in reality, or a Christian. . . .

I am, of course, quite aware that good society will never make you a good Christian. You may be charming in a party, and every one may pronounce you a perfect and agreeable gentleman; but you may go home, and get privately intoxicated, or ill-treat your wife, or be unkind to your children. Or, if you be a lady, you may be smiling and attractive abroad, but fretful, peevish, or petulant in your home. . . .The difference between the laws of God and the laws of men is, that the former address the heart from which the acts proceed; the latter, which can only judge from what they see, determine the acts without regard to the heart. . . .

The great law which distinguishes Christianity from every other creed, that of brotherly-love and self-denial, is essentially the law which we find at the basis of all social observances. The first maxim of politeness is to be agreeable to everybody, even at the expense of one’s own comfort. Meekness is the most beautiful virtue of the Christian; modesty the most commendable in well-bred people. Peace is the object of Christian laws; harmony, that of social observances. Self-denial is the exercise of the Christian; forgetfulness of self, that of the well-bred. Trust in one another unites Christian communities; confidence in the good intentions of our neighbors is that which makes society possible. . . . The one demands an upright life, the other requires the appearance of it. The one bids us make the most of God’s gifts, and improve our talents; the other will not admit us till we have done so by education. . . . The more religious a man is, the more polite he will spontaneously become, and that, too, in every rank of life; for true religion teaches him to forget himself, to love his neighbor, and to be kindly even to his enemy, and the appearance of so being and doing is what society demands as good manners.

From Manners: Happy Homes and Good Society All the Year Round by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (Boston: J. E. Tilton and Co., 1868).