Daily Devotional Guide - fsj.org · Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year Spring 2019 March 3rd — June 1st Volume 23, Number 2 The Fellowship of St. James Chicago, Illinois

The St. James Daily Devotional Guide

for the Christian Year

Spring 2019March 3rd — June 1st

Volume 23, Number 2

The Fellowship of St. JamesChicago, Illinois

2019

DG 23-2 (Spring19) fnl-Pages.indd 1 1/3/19 7:35 AM

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Using This GuideUnder each day’s heading there are four parts:

(1) A Gospel reading, recommended for morning devotion; (2) A second reading, usually from the New Testament, recommended for evening devotion; (3) Morning and Evening Psalms (set respectively before and after a small symbol †); and (4) A daily chapter, usually from the Old Testament, to be read whenever convenient.

Morning Psalms may be begun with the following versicle:Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.

and Evening Psalms with this versicle:O God, make haste to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me.

This is followed in each instance by the Gloria Patri either sung or spoken in some form, such as:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

The Psalms may be read, spoken, or said responsively, followed by a prayer (such as that given with each week). Following the prayer (whether at Morning or Evening Psalms) the appropriate Bible section may be read. After this, there may be a time of intercessory prayer for personal needs and the needs of others or similar petitions (see page 23), and a benediction (see page 24). Fol-lowing a very ancient tradition of the Church (already in the Didache by a.d. 100), we recommend that the Lord’s Prayer always be part of these devotions. The reading listed last each day—the daily chapter—may be read at any time during the day, including at morning or evening prayer. But if time is spent not only to read but also to study the passage, it may be more natural to do so separately. As you go through the two-year cycle of Bible readings, you will want to become familiar with each biblical book by reading the introduction to that book in the notes at the back of the guide.


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The Daily Bible Readings

The traditional “lectionaries,” or systematic readings, of Holy Scripture are of two kinds: (1) lectio continua, which means reading a given book of the Bible straight through, from start

to finish, over a certain period of time; and (2) lectio selecta, which means that particular readings are chosen for particular days or spe-cial reasons, without the intention of reading all of a given book of the Bible. Both methods are inherited from Judaism and have been in constant use among Christians from the beginning. Each method has its own merits. The “continuous reading” guar-antees that whole books of Holy Scripture will be read within the con-texts of their literary integrity and specific theological perspectives. The “select reading” picks biblical passages that are appropriate to special days or seasons in the Christian calendar or specified themes of our life in Christ. Believers have long been persuaded that a judicious combination of the two methods constitutes the best approach to reading Holy Scrip-ture. If we were to use only the first method, for example, we might find that our Bible reading on Christmas or Easter concerned Samson’s var-ious fights with the Philistines, making us wonder if this weren’t some-thing of a distraction. So we pick specific readings suitable to those special days: lectio selecta. Similarly, if we constantly picked selections from the Bible and always read them apart from their contexts within the biblical canon, we would eventually lose touch with the integrity of the various biblical books as such. There is a distinct advantage in reading, say, the book of Genesis, or Daniel, or Mark straight through, in order to grasp it in its fullness: lectio continua.

Our MethodThe lectionary system used in this Devotional Guide employs both tra-ditional methods. Moreover, the readings are arranged with certain goals in mind: (1) that some section of the Gospels be read every day; (2) that every part of the New Testament be read at least once every year; (3) that the entire Old Testament be read over each two-year period; (4) that readings of the Holy Scriptures occasionally be juxta-posed in order for them to throw light on one another; (5) that a certain respect be shown to the ancient lectionary traditions of the churches, according to which certain parts of Holy Scripture are normally read during certain seasons; and (6) that special consideration be given to the Book of Psalms as a normal component of daily Christian prayer. It will be useful to say a word or two on each of these points.


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1. The Daily Gospel Reading

The four Gospels have always enjoyed a certain preeminence in the Christian mind, because they concentrate on “the things that Jesus did and said” (Bernard of Clairvaux). “Surely everything our Savior did and said,” wrote John Henry Newman, “is characterized by mingled simplicity and mystery.” It is very significant that the word “Gospel,” which originally meant “the Christian message,” early—at least by the second century, long before the New Testament canon was for-mally determined—came to be applied to a specific type of literature, of which the New Testament contains four examples. If one has time for only one biblical reading each day, the prescribed section from the Gospels makes a special claim to be that reading. One may read the Gospel at any time during the day, but ancient custom assigns it to the morning. For consistency’s sake we habitually list it first. On a few days, especially in festal seasons, we give two readings from the Gospels.

2. The New Testament Readings

Before any of the four Gospels was written, most of the apostolic epis-tles were already widespread and well known. Beginning with First Thessalonians about the year 50, these letters were read within the regular weekly assemblies of Christians. They were copied and sent from church to church. To these were added, in due course, the books of Revelation (which also contains seven apostolic letters) and the Acts of the Apostles. The claim of this literature on the Christian mind is just as strong today as it was then.

3. The Old Testament Readings

Exclusive of the Book of Psalms, the Hebrew Scriptures (which is the Old Testament canon among Protestant Christians) contains 757 chap-ters. At one chapter each day, a reader will finish 730 chapters over a two-year period. (The remaining 27 chapters will be distributed in other parts of the lectionary.) This “daily chapter” will be the longest reading each day and may be done whenever convenient. As oppor-tunity permits, there will also be readings from those books found only in the Greek Old Testament. In Protestant Bibles these books are known as the Apocrypha; in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, these books do not form a separate section but are spread throughout the entire text, intermixed with the other books.


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4. Juxtaposition of Biblical Texts

Within the limits compatible with the three foregoing goals, certain readings will be chosen on certain days with a view to throwing light on some other reading assigned for that day. This method of reading Holy Scripture is amply justified within the New Testament itself, where both Jesus and the Apostles appeal to the Old Testament by way of instruction on some part of the Christian message. No firm rule will be used to determine these selected readings. Sometimes a Gospel reading or an Epistle will be chosen to accompany the “daily chapter,” sometimes another Old Testament text to accompany the Gospel se-quence, sometimes a special insertion on a following day, etc.

5. Seasonal Readings

Even in pre-Christian times the Jews had perceived a propriety in read-ing certain biblical passages at particular times of the year. Thus, the Song of Solomon was read at Passover, and Ruth at Pentecost. Similarly, Christians have long been fond of reading Genesis during Lent, for ex-ample, Isaiah during Advent and the Christmas season, and the Gospel of John during the time of Easter. In our own lectionary some respect will be shown to such traditions about seasons and special days.

6. The Psalms

The Psalter is the Old Testament book most quoted in the New Tes-tament and has been considered an essential, non-replaceable part of Christian prayer from the very beginning. Two sections from the Psalms are assigned for each day, one for morning and one for evening, mainly (but not slavishly) following the pattern outlined in The Book of Common Prayer currently used by the Episcopal Church.

More CommentaryReaders who would like to pursue the study of the assigned biblical texts more carefully are encouraged to consult our website (www.touchstonemag.com/daily_reflections), where they will find the “Dai-ly Bible Reflections,” which offer more extensive and detailed com-ments on one of the assigned biblical readings for each day. Indeed, in order to provide sufficient space to publish new material in these pages, several of the standard introductions to various biblical books, already published in this Daily Devotional Guide in previous years, will be made available only at our web page. In each instance, this will be noted when appropriate.


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March 3 – 9, 2019

SMTWTFS

March 3 The Ways of Wisdom & Folly (See p. 25)

March 4 Sayings of Solomon

March 5 A Study in Contrasts

March 6 Ash Wednesday (See p. 25)

March 7 Prosperity & Poverty

March 8 A Heart of Wisdom

March 9 Guarding the Tongue

Matthew 15:12–20 Romans 11:25–36Psalms 148,149,150 † 114,115Daily Chapter: Proverbs 9

Matthew 15:21–28Romans 12:1–9Psalms 25 † 9,15Daily Chapter: Proverbs 10

Matthew 15:29–31Romans 12:10–21Psalms 26,28 † 36,39Daily Chapter: Proverbs 11

Matthew 6:1–6,16–24Joel 1:13—2:2Psalms 95,32,143 † 102,130Daily Chapter: Proverbs 12

Matthew 15:32–39Romans 13:1–7Psalms 37:1–18: † 37:19–42Daily Chapter: Proverbs 13

Matthew 16:1–4Romans 13:8–14 Psalms 95,31 † 35Daily Chapter: Proverbs 14

Matthew 16:5–12Romans 14:1–13 Psalms 30,32 † 42,43Daily Chapter: Proverbs 15

O God, Who by Thy Word dost marvelously work out the reconciliation of mankind; grant, we beseech Thee, that by observing this holy time of repentance and fasting we may be subjected to Thee with all our hearts and be united to each other in our common prayer to Thee. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Gelasian Sacramentary


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March 10 – 16, 2019

SMTWTFS

March 10First Sunday of Lent

March 11Wise & Foolish Sons

March 12Death & Life

March 13Mission to the Gentiles

March 14Future Plans

March 15Final Greetings

March 16The Epistle to Titus (See p. 28)

Matthew 4:1–11 Romans 14:14–23 Psalms 63,98 † 103Daily Chapter: Proverbs 16 (See p. 27)

Matthew 16:13–20 Romans 15:1–6Psalms 41,52 † 44Daily Chapter: Proverbs 17

Matthew 16:21–23Romans 15:7–13 Psalms 45 † 47,48Daily Chapter: Proverbs 18

Matthew 16:24–28 Romans 15:14–21 Psalms 119:49–72 † 49,53Daily Chapter: Proverbs 19

Matthew 17:14–23Romans 15:22–33Psalms 50 † 59,60Daily Chapter: Proverbs 20

Matthew 17:24–27Romans 16:1–27Psalms 95,40,54 † 51Daily Chapter: Proverbs 21

Matthew 18:1–5Titus 1:1–16 Psalms 55 † 138,139Daily Chapter: Proverbs 22

O God, the Ruler and Creator of Thy people, drive away the sins which beset us, that being ever pleasing unto Thee, we may abide secure under Thy protection. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE OLD ROMAN MISSAL


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March 17 – 23, 2019

SMTWTFS

March 17The Second Sunday of Lent

March 18The Sweetness of Wisdom

March 19The Epistle to the Galatians (See p. 28)

March 20Wicked Heart, Wicked Lips

March 21Practical Diligence

March 22On Avoiding Violence

March 23On Controlling the Passions

Matthew 18:6–9Titus 2:1–15Psalms 24,29 † 8,84Daily Chapter: Proverbs 23

Matthew 18:10–14Titus 3:1–15Psalms 56,57,58 † 64,65Daily Chapter: Proverbs 24

Matthew 18:15–20Galatians 1:1–10Psalms 61,62 † 68Daily Chapter: Proverbs 25

Matthew 18:21–35Galatians 1:11–24Psalms 72 † 119:73–96Daily Chapter: Proverbs 26



Matthew 19:23–30 Galatians 3:1–14 Psalms 75,76 † 23,27Daily Chapter: Proverbs 29

Grant, we beseech Thee, loving Father, that we who are disciplined by the Lenten fast may find our worldly desires weakened, and our desire for heaven rendered more fervent. This we seek of Thy mercy in the name of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who with Thee and Thy Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Celtic Collect


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March 24 – 30, 2019

SMTWTFS

March 24Third Sunday of Lent

March 25The Annunciation (See p. 30)

March 26The Book of Ecclesiastes (See p. 32)

March 27Mrs. Zebedee’s Sons

March 28Two Blind Men Healed

March 29Liberty & Love

March 30Walking in the Spirit

Luke 18:18–27 (See p. 29)Galatians 3:15–25Psalms 93,96 † 34Daily Chapter: Proverbs 30

Luke 1:26–38Hebrews 2:6–18Psalms 80 † 77,79Daily Chapter: Proverbs 31 (See p. 31)

Matthew 20:1–16 Galatians 3:26—4:7Psalms 78:1–39 † 78:40–72Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 1

Matthew 20:17–28 Galatians 4:8–20Psalms 119:97–120 † 81,82Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 2

Matthew 20:29–34 Galatians 4:21–31Psalms 83 † 85,86Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 3

Matthew 21:28–32 Galatians 5:1–15Psalms 95,88 † 91,92Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 4

Matthew 22:1–14Galatians 5:16–26Psalms 87,90 † 136Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 5

Almighty Father, who hast given Thine only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification, grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve Thee in truth and purity of life. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer


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March 31 — April 6, 2019

SMTWTFS

March 31Fourth Sunday of Lent

April 1Boasting in the Cross

April 2The Epistle to the Philippians (See p. 33)

April 3Life in Christ

April 4Matthew’s List of Woes

April 5The Service of Christ

April 6The Prophecy of Zechariah (See p. 33)

Matthew 22:15–22 Galatians 6:1–10Psalms 66,67 † 19,46Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 6

Matthew 22:23–33 Galatians 6:11–18Psalms 89:1–18 † 89:19–52Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 7

Matthew 22:34–40 Philippians 1:1–11Psalms 97,99,100 † 94,95Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 8

Matthew 22:41–46 Philippians 1:12–26Psalms 101,109 † 119:121–144Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 9

Matthew 23:1–22Matthew 23:23–36 Psalms 69 † 73Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 10

Matthew 24:1–14Philippians 1:27—2:4Psalms 95,102 † 107Daily Chapter: Ecclesiastes 11

Matthew 24:15–28Ecclesiastes 12:1–14Psalms 108,109 † 33Daily Chapter: Zechariah 1

O God, from Whom our redemption comes, and our adoption is bestowed, regard with favor the works of Thy mercy, that those who have been reborn in Thy Christ may attain to a true freedom and an everlasting inheritance. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



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April 7 – 13, 2019

SMTWTFS

April 7Fifth Sunday of Lent

April 8 The High Priest & the Branch

April 9The Lampstand & the Olive Trees

April 10The Flying Scroll

April 11Joshua & the Chariots

April 12The Tears & Mind of Christ

April 13Lazarus Saturday

Matthew 24:29–35 Philippians 2:12–30Psalms 118 † 145Daily Chapter: Zechariah 2

Matthew 24:36–44 Philippians 3:1–16Psalms 31 † 35Daily Chapter: Zechariah 3

Matthew 24:45–51 Philippians 3:17—4:1Psalms 120—123 † 124—127Daily Chapter: Zechariah 4

Matthew 25:14–30 Philippians 4:2–9Psalms 119:145–176 † 128,129,130Daily Chapter: Zechariah 5

Matthew 21:33–46Philippians 4:10–23Psalms 131,132,133 † 140,142Daily Chapter: Zechariah 6

Matthew 23:37–39 Philippians 2:5–11Psalms 95,22 † 141,143Daily Chapter: Zechariah 7

John 11:1–44John 11:45—12:11Psalms 137,144 † 42,43Daily Chapter: Zechariah 8

Remember, O Jesus, the vinegar and the gall, that bitter cup which Thou didst taste for the ungodly; and let the bitterness which was Thy portion be to us a cause of everlasting sweetness. In Thy holy name we pray. Amen.

The Mozarabic Liturgy


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HOLY WEEK

PALM SUNDAYThe Triumphal Entry

April 14

John 12:12–19Matthew 21:1–11

Psalms 24,29 † 103 Daily Chapter: Zechariah 9

Further Suggested Readings: Genesis 37:12–34

Isaiah 42:1–9Romans 5

Hebrews 10:1–182 Samuel 15:13—16:14

Prayer For the Days of Holy Week

O Holy Jesus, eternal and immortal Son of God and yet partaker of our flesh and blood, become like unto us in all things except sin, merciful and faithful high priest and captain of our salvation, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, fill our hearts and minds with the constant remembrance of Your redeeming love, for we make this prayer in Your precious and most sacred name and by the boldness of Your Holy Spirit, with whom and the Father You live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


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MONDAYThe Cleansing of the Temple

April 15

Jesus returns to Jerusalem from Bethany, where he had spent the night. In fulfillment of prophecy (for example, Malachi 3:1–5), he purifies the Temple. There is mounting tension between Jesus and those who are plotting his death.

Matthew 21:12–27John 12:20–41Psalms 51 † 69

Daily Chapter: Zechariah 10

TUESDAYJesus & His Enemies

April 16

In the lectionary tradition of Eastern Christians, the evening services for Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week are called the Bridegroom Service, its name being derived from the following reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.

Matthew 25:1–13John 12:42–50

Psalms 6,12 † 94Daily Chapter: Habakkuk 1

SPY WEDNESDAYJesus at Bethany—The Betrayal of Judas

April 17

Because his enemies were watching Jesus, looking for an opportunity and pretext to seize him, this day is traditionally known in the West as Spy Wednesday (Holy and Great Wednesday in the East). It is marked by the great contrast between the betrayal of Judas and the devotion of Mary of Bethany.

Matthew 26:1–16Luke 20:9–19

Psalms 55 † 74Daily Chapter: Zechariah 11


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MAUNDY THURSDAYThe Last Supper & the Agony in the Garden

April 18

PrayerLord Jesus Christ, brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person, who, having purged our sins, entered once into the holy place and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high; mercifully bend our stiffened necks, we beseech You, and temper our rebellious hearts before the unspeakable mystery of Your compassion, for we ask this in Your holy name. Amen.

“Maundy,” the unusual adjective descriptive of this day, comes from the Latin mandatum, meaning “commandment,” because this is the day on which the Lord gave the “new commandment” that we are to love one another. On this day he exemplified this love by washing the disciples’ feet and also instituted the Lord’s Supper, in which all of us who share the one bread are made one body in Christ.

John 13:1–38Matthew 26:17–56

Psalms 102 † 142,143Daily Chapter: Zechariah 12

Further Suggested Readings:Isaiah 50

John 14–17

In many Christian bodies, following a tradition that apparently goes back to apostolic times, believers are disposed and inspired to spend at least an hour of this night, and in some cases the whole night, in prayer, remembering that Jesus himself did so and likewise encouraged his disciples to “watch” with him. In some monastic communities, this is a public liturgical service, and in some Roman Catholic and Anglican parishes the night is hourly divided among members in order to make sure that prayer is being offered in church all night long. Many other Christians keep such watch in their own homes.

Suggested Vigil Meditation:John 14–18


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GOOD FRIDAYThe Good Shepherd Is Slain—

The Bridegroom Is Taken Away April 19

PrayerAlmighty and Everlasting God, who willed that our Savior should take upon Him our flesh and should suffer death upon the cross, so that all mankind should follow the example of His great humility, mercifully grant that we may both imitate the model of His patience and become partakers of His Resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

—Saint Andrew’s Missal

This is the day commemorating annually the unique sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the true Paschal Lamb of our salvation, by whose blood we have been purchased unto God as his own consecrated people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. Christians today gather at the foot of the cross with Mary the Lord’s Mother, the beloved disciple John, the repentant Mary Magdalene and her several companions, the confessing Centurion and all others who have, down through the ages, foresworn all righteousness of their own in order to be justified and made holy by the redeeming act of the God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Matthew 26:57—27:61Habakkuk 2:1–20

Psalms 95,22 † 40,54Daily Chapter: Zechariah 13

Further Suggested Readings:Genesis 22:1–14Exodus 12:1–14

Isaiah 63:1–9Jeremiah 20:7–18

The Wisdom of Solomon 2:1—3:9John 18—19

Colossians 1:1–14Ephesians 2:11–22

Revelation 5


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HOLY SATURDAYThe Great Sabbath—

God Rests from His LaborsApril 20

PrayerO Christ, look with favor on our aspirations and prayers, and make prosperous to us this coming holy night of Easter, that in it we may rise from the dead and pass over unto life. Amen.

—Old Gallican Collect

Matthew 27:62–66Habakkuk 3:1–19

Psalms 16 † 17Daily Chapter: Zechariah 14

It has long been customary, since apostolic times, to observe a lengthy vigil during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, though in recent centuries this service has been shortened to just a few hours, whether in the evening or the early morning. The following suggested readings are selected from among those traditionally read during that vigil service. They are offered here for the benefit and use of those who, not having opportunity to participate in such a liturgical service, want nonetheless to meditate on those prophetic Scriptures by way of preparing their souls for the grace of Easter:

Genesis 1:1—2:2Genesis 6—9

Exodus 14:24—15:2Deuteronomy 31:22–30

Isaiah 4:1–6Isaiah 54:17—55:11

Ezekiel 37:1–14Daniel 3:1–24

Baruch 3:9–38

To these may be added:Colossians 3:1–17

1 Peter 2:1–10Revelation 1:1–20


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April 21 – 27, 2019

SMTWTFS

April 21 Easter Sunday (See p. 34)

April 22 Bribing the Soldiers

April 23 The Broken Bread

April 24 The Voice of the Beloved

April 25 A Meal on the Beach

April 26 John & First Peter (See p. 36)

April 27 The Chief Cornerstone

Mark 16:1–8 Mark 16:9–20 Psalms 148,149,150 † 118Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 1 (See p. 35)Matthew 28:1–10 Matthew 28:11–15 Psalms 93,98 † 66Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 2

Luke 24:1–12 Luke 24:13–35 Psalms 103 † 111,114Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 3

John 20:1–10 John 20:11–18 Psalms 97,99 † 115Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 4

John 21:1–14 John 21:15–25 Psalms 146,147 † 148,149Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 5

John 1:1–18 1 Peter 1:1–12 Psalms 136 † 118Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 6

John 1:19–34 1 Peter 2:1–12 Psalms 145 † 104Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 7

Pour into us, dear Father, the Spirit of Thy charity, that we whom Thou hast gathered and fed with the Sacred Mysteries of the New Passover may be made one in heart and mind. This, by Thy mercy we seek in the victorious name of Jesus Thy Son. Amen.

Celtic Collect


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April 28 — May 4, 2019

SMTWTFS

April 28 St. Thomas Sunday

April 29 The Book of Exodus (See p. 36)

April 30 Flight to Midian

May 1 The Burning Bush

May 2 Aaron the Spokesman (See p. 37)

May 3 Moses & Pharaoh

May 4 God’s Promise

John 20:24–29 1 Peter 2:13–25 Psalms 146,147 † 111,112,113Daily Chapter: Song of Solomon 8

John 1:35–51 1 Peter 3:1–12 Psalms 1,2,3 † 4,7Daily Chapter: Exodus 1

John 3:1–21 Acts 7:17–29 Psalms 5,6 † 10,11Daily Chapter: Exodus 2

John 3:22–36 Acts 7:30–36 Psalms 119:1–24 † 12,13,14Daily Chapter: Exodus 3

John 4:1–15 1 Peter 3:12–22 Psalms 18:1–20 † 18:21–50Daily Chapter: Exodus 4

John 4:15–26 1 Peter 4:1–11 Psalms 16,17 † 134,135Daily Chapter: Exodus 5

John 4:27–45 1 Peter 4:12–19 Psalms 20,21 † 110,116,117Daily Chapter: Exodus 6

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for the day is far spent and the evening is at hand; be our companion in the way. Enkindle our hearts and awaken hope, that we may know Thee as Thou art revealed in the Scriptures, and in the Breaking of the Bread. Grant this for the sake of Thy love. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer


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May 5 – 11, 2019

SMTWTFS

May 5 Third Paschal Sunday

May 6 First Corinthians (See p. 39)

May 7 Plagues Five Through Seven (See p. 39)

May 8 Plagues Eight & Nine

May 9 A Dire Prediction

May 10 The Seder

May 11 The Law of the Firstborn

John 4:46–54 1 Peter 5:1–14 Psalms 148,149,150 † 114,115Daily Chapter: Exodus 7 (See p. 37)

John 5:1–16 1 Corinthians 1:1–17 Psalms 25 † 9,15Daily Chapter: Exodus 8

John 5:16–24 1 Corinthians 1:18–31 Psalms 26,28 † 36,39Daily Chapter: Exodus 9

John 5:25–30 Revelation 16:1–10 Psalms 38 † 119:25–48Daily Chapter: Exodus 10

John 5:31–47 1 Corinthians 5:1–13 Psalms 37:1–18 † 37:19–42Daily Chapter: Exodus 11

John 14:1–11 1 Peter 1:13–25 Psalms 105:1–22 † 105:23–45Daily Chapter: Exodus 12

Luke 2:21–24 1 Corinthians 2:1–16 Psalms 30,32 † 42,43Daily Chapter: Exodus 13

O God, Who makest the minds of Thy faithful people to be of one will, grant us so to love what Thou commandest and to desire what Thou dost promise, that among the changing things of this world our hearts may be set where true joys are found. All which we seek in the name of Jesus Thy Son.

Saint Andrew’s Missal


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May 12 – 18, 2019

SMTWTFS

May 12 Fourth Paschal Sunday

May 13 Songs by the Sea

May 14 Bread in the Wilderness

May 15 The Living Water

May 16 The Living Bread

May 17 Sinai & Sion (See p. 45)

May 18 The Decalogue

John 14:12–24 Hebrews 11:23–39 Psalms 63,98 † 103Daily Chapter: Exodus 14 (See p. 43)

John 14:25–31 Revelation 15:1–8 Psalms 41,52 † 44Daily Chapter: Exodus 15


John 6:15–21 1 Corinthians 10:1–12 Psalms 119:49–72 † 49,53Daily Chapter: Exodus 17


John 6:30–41 Hebrews 12:18–29 Psalms 40,54 † 51Daily Chapter: Exodus 19

John 6:41–50 1 Corinthians 3:18—4:5 Psalms 55 † 138,139Daily Chapter: Exodus 20

Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may indeed have our portion, for in His holy name we pray. Amen.



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May 19 – 25, 2019

SMTWTFS

May 19 Fifth Paschal Sunday

May 20 Moral Principles

May 21 Three Festivals

May 22 Affirming the Covenant

May 23 The Ark of the Covenant (See p. 45)

May 24 The Tabernacle

May 25 Altar & Courtyard

John 6:51–59 Joshua 5:1–12 Psalms 24,29 † 8,84Daily Chapter: Exodus 21

John 6:60–71 1 Corinthians 4:6–13 Psalms 56,57,58 † 64,65Daily Chapter: Exodus 22

John 7:1–13 1 Corinthians 4:14–21 Psalms 61,62 † 68Daily Chapter: Exodus 23

John 7:14–24 1 Corinthians 6:1–11 Psalms 72 † 119:73–96Daily Chapter: Exodus 24


John 7:37—8:1 1 Corinthians 7:1–9 Psalms 106:1–18 † 106:19–48Daily Chapter: Exodus 26

John 8:2–11 1 Corinthians 7:10–16 Psalms 75,76 † 23,27Daily Chapter: Exodus 27

We beseech Thee, O Lord, mercifully to correct our wanderings, and by the guiding radiance of Thy compassion to bring us to the salutary vision of Thy truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Gothic Missal


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May 26 — June 1, 2019

SMTWTFS

May 26 Sixth Paschal Sunday

May 27 Aaron & His Sons

May 28 Appointments of the Tabernacle

May 29 The Law of the Sabbath

May 30 Ascension Thursday (See p. 46)

May 31 The Presence of God

June 1 New Tablets of the Torah



John 8:31–42 1 Corinthians 8:1–13 Psalms 78:1–39 † 78:40–72Daily Chapter: Exodus 30

John 8:43–59 1 Corinthians 9:1–18 Psalms 119:97–120 † 68Daily Chapter: Exodus 31

Luke 24:36–53 Acts 1:1–14 Psalms 8,47 † 24,96Daily Chapter: Exodus 32

John 9:1–12 1 Corinthians 9:19–27 Psalms 85,86 † 91,92 Daily Chapter: Exodus 33

John 9:13–23 1 Corinthians 10:13–22 Psalms 87,90 † 136 Daily Chapter: Exodus 34

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who believe Thine only begotten Son, our Redeemer, to have ascended into heaven, may ourselves dwell in spirit amid heavenly things; through that same Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saint Andrew’s Missal


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Prayers for SpringPrayers in a season of renewalThese intercessions can be used for general prayer and meditation or aug-mented with more specific and personal petitions.

Heavenly Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ’s death and resurrec-tion, grace has been obtained for all mankind. With confidence in your mercy and love, we pray for the needs of all and especially for your holy Church, that all may respond to your grace; and so we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For those in need—the poor, the sick, the hungry, the elderly, the disabled, and the jobless—that the grace of God might be for them a source of hope and relief, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For those who have not yet received Christ into their lives, and those who are troubled in their faith, that they may respond to the grace of God, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For the nations of the world, that peace may prevail and war be avert-ed, and especially that the Gospel may not be hindered, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For the preservation of our land, for our leaders and those who govern, that they may be guided by wisdom for the good of all, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For all Christians throughout the world, that we may all be faithful witnesses to the saving power and life of Jesus Christ, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

For each one of us, that we may manifest Christ in every area of our lives, we pray: Lord, hear our prayer.

A Shorter PetitionIt is suggested that besides offering up such intercessions at one point in the day (whether morning or evening), it is good to pray correspondingly at the other time of day a prayer like the following:

Heavenly Father, through the power of your Holy Spirit, strengthen and stir up your people to proclaim the good news of salvation. Grant mercy and peace to the nations that they might hear and obey your Son. Bless our nation and deliver her from evil and falsehood. And help us to reach out to those in need with the love of Christ, through whom we pray. Amen.


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Closing PrayersThe Lord’s PrayerAnd now, O Lord, give us the grace to pray confidently in the words our Savior taught us, saying:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Concluding PrayerO Lord, watch over us and grant us Your grace that we may grow in the knowledge of Your only Son, and may one day behold Him in the glory of the heavenly kingdom, full of grace and truth, in whose name we pray. Amen.

[or]O God, may we manifest Jesus Christ in all that we do. Guide us and protect us that we may come at last into the glory of Your presence, being found well-pleasing in Your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen.

BenedictionTo end Morning Prayer:

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort our hearts and establish them in every good work and word; to whom be glory for ever.To end Evening Prayer:

May the God of peace sanctify us wholly; and may our spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


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Notes—Spring 2019

March 3. The Ways of Wisdom & Folly

Chapter 9 of Proverbs illustrates a contrast between two vastly dif-ferent meals. From the “highest places of the city” (verses 3,14), both

wisdom and folly invite “whoever is simple,” the man who “lacks under-standing,” to “turn in here” (verses 4,16), which is to say, to their respec-tive “houses” (verses 1,14). Their respective meals are quite different; the meat and wine of wisdom (verse 2) are contrasted with the bread and wa-ter of folly (verse 17). The former meal brings nourishment, whereas the latter is lethal (verse 18). (The contrast between the two women, Wisdom and Folly, in this chapter may be compared with the contrast between the two women, Babylon and Jerusalem, the Whore and the Bride, in the clos-ing chapters of the Book of Revelation.)

If the young man thus admonished is a “scorner,” wisdom’s warning will go unheeded (verses 6–7), because wisdom is wasted on a fool (cf. Matthew 7:6). Once again, the beginning of wisdom is reverence (verse 10).

The “seven pillars” of the house of wisdom (verse 1) became the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, ge-ometry, astronomy) of the medieval university. Seven, as the number of fullness, was important to the very concept of a university, or house of universal knowledge.

March 6. Ash Wednesday

The earliest references to the observance of Lent all claim that the apostles themselves taught the Church to maintain a period of fasting

in preparation for the Lord’s Resurrection, the most normal day for doing baptisms.

In the Eastern Church the forty days of Lent extend from a Monday all the way to the Friday of the sixth week, making a neat total of 40 days. In the West, however, the Lenten fast does not include Sundays. Hence, there are six weeks with only six days of fasting in each week, making a total of 36 days. Thus, 4 extra days were added to the beginning, bringing the first day of the fast to a Wednesday. The day before Ash Wednesday is called Shrove Tuesday because of the custom of making one’s confes-sion of sins before the beginning of the Lenten fast. (To “shrive” means to cleanse.)


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Among the less devout, however, Shrove Tuesday became an occa-sion of feasting sumptuously, partying, and general whoop-di-doo. It is irreverently called “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras in French. Numerous indi-viduals who have not the slightest intention of maintaining a Lenten fast nonetheless observe Mardi Gras with a celebration called “carnival,” a word derived from the Latin expression carni vale, meaning “good-bye to meat!”

Lent, now associated exclusively with the observance of the liturgical year, was simply the Anglo-Saxon for “spring” and had no directly reli-gious significance. In English usage, however, its reference was gradually limited to mean the season of preparation for Easter that does, in fact, occur in spring.

In many other languages of Western Christianity the word for Lent is some variant of “forty,” derived from the Latin quadragesimale. Russians call it simply The Great Fast—Veliki Post. Traditionally this is a period of 40 days of fasting in imitation of the Lord himself, who observed exactly that length of time in fasting prior to the beginning of his earthly minis-try. It was also associated with the 40-day fast of Moses on Mount Sinai and of Elijah as he journeyed to that same mountain.

As early as the second century we already find Easter being the pre-ferred time for the baptism of new Christians. The reasons are rather obvious. It is in the sacrament of baptism, after all, that Christians are mystically buried and rise with Christ (cf. Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12).

It was important to earlier believers that some period of prayer and fasting, by way of preparation, should precede the ritual of baptism. Even the Apostle Paul prayed and fasted for three days prior to being baptized (Acts 9:9,11,18). In The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (Didache), a work from Syria before a.d. 100, there is the prescription that says: “Prior to Baptism, both he who is baptizing and he who is being baptized should fast, along with any others who can. And be sure that the one who is to be baptized fasts for one or two days beforehand” (7.4). One notes in this context that this fasting is a community effort, involving more than the personal devotion of the one being baptized.

That communal aspect of the pre-baptismal fasting is even clearer in a text some half-century or so later. Writing a defense of the Christians to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, the Christian apologist Justin described how newcomers to the faith went about getting themselves baptized: “As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their past sins, while we pray and fast with them. Then they are brought by us to where there is water, and they are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regen-


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erated” (First Apology 61). Written in Rome, this text also shows that the pre-baptismal fast was not a practice limited to Syria.

Indeed, within the next half-century we find that discipline referred to in North Africa. In chapter 20 of his treatise On Baptism, the Chris-tian apologist Tertullian remarks: “They who are about to be baptized ought to pray with repeated prayers, fasts, and bending of the knee, and vigils all the night through, along with the confession of all their prior sins.” Tertullian does not explicitly say that the fasting period should last 40 days, but he does link it to the 40-day fast of Jesus recorded in the Gospels.

Gradually the Christians did settle on a period of 40 days, and the custom was so firmly in place by the year 325 that the Council of Nicaea, the same council that definitively fixed the canon of the New Testament, also determined that the 40 days preceding Easter should be a special time of prayer and fasting in preparation for the baptisms to be done on that day. Such were the origins of the season of Lent, which Christians from the fourth century onwards were very convinced were rooted in the time and teaching of the apostles themselves.

March 10. Proverbs 16

Proverbs deals with more than human effort. This book shares, rather, the larger conviction of the Bible’s historians and prophets (including

the author of Job) that God reigns over human history and has plans of his own with respect to human destiny (verses 1–4,9,25,33). Man is not in charge of history. The “big picture” is not man’s responsibility. Conse-quently, God does not generally let him see the big picture.

God’s governance of history is unfathomable. Even those prophets to whom the Lord gives a panoramic view of history are often unable to see even one step ahead in matters of their own lives. Jeremiah is an example.

This is not to say, of course, that human choices count for nothing in the course of events. It means only that man should restrict his con-cerns to those aspects of life that he can actually do something about, and these are determined largely by the circumstances in which Divine Provi-dence places him. Each man must do his duty, as determined by those responsibilities, leaving to God the ultimate outcome of events. Man must be content to do right “as God gives us to see the right” (Abraham Lincoln).

At the same time, God’s loyal and obedient servant takes strength from the remembrance that God holds governance over the whole histori-cal process. Even as men struggle to remain faithful, while not seeing the


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larger picture of which their own efforts are but a part, faith in a ruling God offers the proper basis for a sane, holy, and rational hope. This truth has special pertinence for those charged with the rule of nations (verses 10,12–15).

March 16. The Epistle to Titus

It seems to have been in late 56 that Paul took Titus to Crete, where he left him to oversee the new missions there (Titus 1:5–9). He himself

went back to Macedonia and Illyricum (Romans 15:19). From somewhere in that region, Paul wrote an epistle to Titus, instructing him with re-spect to the ministries on Crete. He asked Titus to return to him, how-ever, whenever Artemas or Tychicus should arrive in Crete to take his place in the mission. Paul mentioned that he planned to spend that win-ter of 56–57 at Nicopolis, a city of Epirus, south of Dalmatia (3:12). One suspects that Titus did return, because it would appear that Titus joined Paul and was still with him even during some of his time in Rome (61–62). When we last hear of Titus, Paul had sent him from Rome back to Dalma-tia (2 Timothy 4:10). Titus was clearly a loyal man on whom the apostle could rely, a minister who would not abuse his position (2 Corinthians 12:17–18).

March 19. The Epistle to the Galatians

When St. Paul wrote to rebuke the Galatians, it was not for grievous moral offenses. He did not accuse them of murder, fornication, blas-

phemy, or theft. Nor did he reprimand them for slipping back to the ways of the world. Paul’s indictment of the churches of Galatia was quite simply that they had replaced the gospel with another teaching, which he identi-fied as kata anthropon, “according to man.” They had substituted some-thing else for the gospel.

The gospel Paul had preached in Galatia was God’s revelation in his Son and the Holy Spirit. It was not, in the first instance, a declaration of man’s duty, but of God’s bounty in the fullness of time. Paul wrote, “when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a wom-an, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (4:4–6).

This message was the evangel, the Good News: the incarnation of God


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and the divinization of man. Any message replacing this one, Paul wrote, was “another gospel.”

In the Epistle to the Galatians, the “other gospel” was justification by the works of the Mosaic Law. That is to say, those who preached this other gospel were not teaching something bad but something good.

Indeed, the really serious rivals of the gospel will rarely be bad. It is easy to recognize evil things as inimical to the gospel—like murder, urban violence, theft, sexual immorality, economic collapse, and the dis-solution of marriage. Such matters, while they are certainly opposed to the gospel, are less likely to replace the gospel.

Only good things normally suggest themselves as proper substitutes for the gospel. It is rare that the gospel is distorted by evil; it is much more likely to be corrupted by some lesser good. In the case of the Galatians, that lesser good was the Mosaic Law!

Thus, even in Paul’s own day, Christians had already begun to replace the gospel with some other message “according to man.” That is to say, God’s work was already being superseded by some human project.

Substitutions for the gospel are a persistent temptation for Chris-tians. These substitutions are not usually bad things. Commonly they are good things, such as world peace, family values, economic stability, the sanctity of human life, patriotism, ecological concern, or political activ-ism for social justice. These are not bad, obviously. They are good and desirable things. Some of these concerns, moreover, have arguably taken their rise in the human conscience as a result of the gospel. But they are not the gospel and should not become substitutes for—or rivals of—the gospel.

March 24. Luke 18:18–27 & Galatians 3:15–25

It was in the context of the Galatian controversy, apparently, that Paul began to reflect on the moral structure of historical experience. For the

apostle, the arrival of the Messiah—the Incarnation— marked “the ful-ness of time” (to pleroma tou chronou). In this event, the definitive and defining event called “Jesus Christ,” the structure of salvation history ar-rived at a level of completion in which it was proper to regard all earlier history as preparatory.

For Paul, this was not a theory. In the crisis of his own conversion, his encounter with Christ caused him to perceive that all that had gone be-fore, especially his vaunted zeal for the Mosaic Law, was not only worth-less in God’s sight; it had provided the means for him to offend God even more. Consequently, those things that he had counted as gain in his prior


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life he now counted as loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:7). He could never again seek righteousness from the observance of the Law, “but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God” (Philippians 3:9).

What, then, was to be said of the Torah? Until the coming of Christ, after all, the Law was the finest thing that God had ever revealed on the earth. What was the historical significance of the Law? What function had it served, both in Israel’s history and in Paul’s own life?

During the Galatian crisis in the early 50s, when the Judaizers insisted that Christians themselves were obliged to observe the Mosaic Law, Paul reacted forcefully against their teaching. Theirs was, he believed, a “dif-ferent gospel” (Galatians 1:6–8). The era of the Torah was over. Yet, the function of the Law itself had been positive, he admitted. It had served its purpose in history as “our tutor (paidagogos) unto Christ.” Until Christ, we had been “kept under guard by the Law” (3:23–24). This truth Paul knew from within.

It is in support of this apologetic claim, then, that Paul turns to au-tobiography, reminding his readers how he started as a seriously obser-vant Jew—even to the level of persecuting Christians. However, this all stopped, says Paul, “when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me.”

Luke’s story of the young ruler illustrates Paul’s description of the To-rah as our “tutor unto Christ.” Whereas Mark and Matthew portray him as a “young man,” there is no hint of youth in Luke’s version of the story. On the contrary, this “ruler” (archon) speaks as one who looks back on the time of his youth (Luke 18:21).

From Jesus he seeks moral guidance: “What must I do?” he asks, and, by way of response Jesus sends him to the Torah: “You know the com-mandments,” he says. The man responds, “All these things I have kept since my youth.” In other words, the Torah served as this man’s “tutor (paidagogos) unto Christ.” His observance of the Torah brought him to the historical maturity—the fulness of time—when he approaches Jesus.

March 25. The Feast of the Annunciation

Exactly nine months before the birth of Jesus, his disciples celebrate the Angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary, that event in which the Word

was made flesh and dwelt among us. This feast day is, in short, that of the Incarnation, that divine mystery in which the man Jesus Christ is made the one Mediator between God and man. This theme is developed in to-day’s reading from Hebrews 2.


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March 25. Proverbs 31

Destined someday to be the king of Massa, a small realm in northern Arabia (cf. Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30), Lemuel was grateful to a

wise mother for several verses of practical instruction that would serve him well in the years ahead. That instruction, being brief, could be in-scribed on a single small sheet of vellum or papyrus, and Lemuel probably had a number of copies made for his friends. As gifts, those copies he also shared with other kings in the region, so that his mother’s instructions made the rounds of various royal courts, carried by emissaries otherwise dispatched to attend to the diplomatic and mercantile concerns of Massa.

In due course, one of those emissaries came to Jerusalem to arrange some commercial treaty or other with King Solomon. Lemuel, well ac-quainted with Solomon’s universal reputation for wisdom (cf. 1 Kings 4:31), had sent along a copy of his mother’s instructions as a personal gift.

Now it happened that Solomon was in the process, just then, of edit-ing a collection of traditional wisdom proverbs. Gladly receiving Lemuel’s little scroll, therefore, he read it promptly and was so impressed that he incorporated the maternal instructions verbatim into his collection.

Thus now, three thousand years later, we read those brief instruc-tions of Lemuel’s mother in Proverbs 31:1–9. Perhaps significant also is the context in which Solomon placed the instructions of Lemuel’s mother in the Book of Proverbs. Namely, immediately in front of the famous de-scription of the ideal wise woman (31:10–31).

Some of the material here resembles that in other ancient collections of teaching intended for future rulers. For example, “The Instruction of King Meri-Kare,” an Egyptian manuscript preserved (as Papyrus Lenin-grad 1116A) in St. Petersburg, contains a collection of such teaching from near the end of the third millennium before Christ.

Lemuel’s royal mother obviously embodied a traditional form of wis-dom, heavily accented with good sense and moral responsibility. In this respect her instruction is of whole cloth with the rest of the Book of Prov-erbs.

The most ancient form of the wisdom tradition, of which Lemuel’s mother and the Book of Proverbs are good representatives, was not much concerned with the kinds of thorny speculative questions that preoccu-pied Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job. It did not normally raise theoretical reflections about the meaning and purpose of life. It contained nothing suggestive of the “cutting edge” of new ideas that might distract from the serious business of getting on with a good and useful life.

The inherited wisdom tended to ask “how” a person should live in a difficult world rather than “why” he should go on living in a difficult


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world. Instead of inquiring “Why do the innocent suffer?” it suggested ways of avoiding those sufferings that a man might bring upon himself by not living wisely.

The wisdom of Proverbs and Lemuel’s mother may be called conser-vative and traditional, a wisdom proved repeatedly in the experience of previous generations. It would certainly discourage a young man from “marching to a different drummer” or “doing his own thing.” It empha-sized such themes as fidelity to inherited standards of responsibility, respect for the teachings of parents and elders, hard work, fiscal conser-vatism, sobriety, virtue, principled judgment, prudence in one’s business affairs and matters of state, personal discipline in the use of time, money, and other resources, strict marital fidelity, and the consequent joys of home and family.

March 26. The Book of Ecclesiastes

This book, which we commence reading today, is easily contrasted with the Book of Proverbs, finished yesterday. Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth

in Hebrew) addresses the darker side of Wisdom, the perception of life as problematic and, frankly, discouraging. In this respect, it is at one with the Book of Job and some of the Psalms (73 and 88, for instance). The best approach to this book, I submit, is to see it against the background of Genesis 3; that is to say, with the actual world as “fallen.”

In this fallen world, discipline and hard work (the steady recom-mendations of Proverbs) are not universally successful; there are sim-ply too many misfortunes, troubles, anxieties, vexations, and tragedies in life. These come under the heading of what Ecclesiastes calls “van-ity,” in the sense of emptiness, discouragement, depression, and futil-ity. Even, indeed, to the point of despair. If a wise man is unable to deal with these experiences, the author seems to ask, what is the value of Wisdom?

The Hebrew noun hebel, normally translated as “vanity,” is found 38 times in this book. Although it does not have exactly the same meaning in all cases, it usually carries some sense of futility and frustration. Hebel is the term covering everything implied in the curse God laid on the life of fallen man.

No amount of faith can eliminate hebel from the earth. Indeed, it rep-resents an aspect of God’s will—the aspect we call “judgment.” Hebel rep-resents life in this world until the final perfection of all things in God. The thesis of Ecclesiastes is perfectly compatible with the thought of the Apostle Paul, who wrote,


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For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but be-cause of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation it-self also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. (Romans 8:20–22)

It is the conviction of Ecclesiastes that God is not absent from this experience of futility and groaning. In this experience, as in all things hu-man, the beginning of Wisdom remains ever the same: faith and the fear of the Lord.

April 2. The Epistle to the Philippians

This epistle, probably written during Paul’s imprisonment at Ephesus, should be dated in the early 50s, near the same time as the Epistle to

the Galatians. In spite of their very different tones (Contrast “O foolish Galatians” with his address to the Philippians as “brethren beloved and longed-for”!) there is a wisdom in reading the two letters in sequence. In both epistles, Paul colorfully contrasts his former life with his new life in Christ.

April 6. The Prophecy of Zechariah

Because his oracles are cited in Gospel scenes of Holy Week, we read the Prophet Zechariah during this time of preparation for the Lord’s

Passion. As for the man himself, we know that Zechariah’s was one of the voices (along with Haggai) urging the construction of the Second Temple in the late sixth century b.c. Having witnessed the downfall of Babylon in 539 and having accompanied his father (or grandfather), Iddo, in the return to Jerusalem the following year, Zechariah was convinced that the grace of the Lord of History would provide ample resources for this fur-ther restoration.

The vison and oracles in the first eight chapters of this book (some of them specifically dated) testify to their origin in the years following that return. Indeed, chapter 1 of Zechariah overlaps the last chapter of Haggai by about a month. The combined ministries of these two prophets lasted a bit over two years.

The origins of chapters 9 to 12 are much less clear, inasmuch as this material makes no overt references to people or events of the time. More-


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over, the flavor and content of these chapters readily put the reader in mind of Malachi, generally understood to be the last prophet of the He-brew Scriptures. It is possible that the material in these chapters comes from as late as the rise of Alexander the Great.

That said, there is a unifying theme of the entire book: the proc-lamation of deliverance with the Lord’s return to Jerusalem, there to make his dwelling to inaugurate a reign of universal and everlasting peace.

April 21. Easter Sunday

The revelation of God’s purpose and power in the Resurrection of his Son was accomplished, not only through the event itself, but also in

the altered awareness of those to whom it was revealed. Moreover, our own knowledge and understanding of the Resurrection is determined by the historically affected consciousness of its original witnesses. For this reason, it seems important to reflect on the manner in which the Resur-rection was revealed to them.

It is important to observe that none of those witnesses actually saw the Resurrection. They did not watch it happening; the significance of their witness did not consist in their objective observation of it. Although we Christians hold the Resurrection of Christ to be an objective historical fact, Holy Scripture does not present its plain and unadorned objectivity as the form of its revelation. Not one of those original “saints,” to whom the faith was once delivered, was permitted to view the Resurrection as one might view a waterfall or the flight of a bird.

The truth of Christ’s Resurrection was conveyed, not by the factual observance of an “it,” but through the personal encounter with a “thou.” The fact of the Resurrection was conveyed to the saints in a completely interpersonal context. Believers learned the objective fact of it through their encounters with the risen Christ. The fact of the Resurrection was subsumed into a personal presence.

The consciousness of the chosen witnesses, then, was altered, not by the observance of an event external to themselves, but by seeing, hearing, and touching the beloved Savior, who called them by name and forcefully intruded his person into their conscious experience. The rev-elation of the Resurrection was inseparable from this transpersonal intrusion, in which the risen Lord, whose overpowering presence was brought to bear on their attention, effected a new and non-negotiable awareness.


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April 21. The Song of Solomon

Following the tradition of the Synagogue, this Daily Devotional Guide reads the Song of Solomon in Paschal season. This is the season when

the biblical God addresses his People:

My beloved spoke and said to me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!” (2:10–13)

The damp winter weather has departed, and the spring of deliver-ance has arrived, says the voice of God, who now speaks tenderly to Isra-el, taking his espoused people by the hand to leave the bondage of Egypt: “Rise up, and come away!” Truly, “the time of singing has come.”

In its deepest meaning, this is a book about the divine espousals of the Exodus, in which God says of his bride: “Therefore, behold, I will al-lure her, will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope. She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:14–15). Here are the grapes, the song, and the intimacy of divine love.

When God led his people forth from bondage, he did so in a cloud, and the cloud of the Exodus is spoken of in this book (Song 3:6). Israel the bride is portrayed as walking majestically in the wilderness (6:10; 8:5). The Song of Solomon is proclaimed at Passover because it celebrates the Exodus nuptials of God with Israel. Accordingly, we will follow our read-ing of the Song of Solomon by reading the Book of Exodus.

The Song of Solomon is appropriately proclaimed by Christians dur-ing Paschal season, because this season celebrates Christ’s espousal of the Church to himself. This is the marriage season of the Lamb and his bride, proclaimed in the closing chapters of Revelation. We read the Song of Solomon at this season because it is a book about marriage, and mar-riage, by its very nature and structure, is an image and type of the union of Christ and his Church. This is not a level of meaning artificially im-posed upon the Sacred Text. It is based on the doctrinal meaning of mar-riage (Ephesians 5:22–33). The Church is the New Eve drawn from the pierced side of the New Adam as he hung in sleep upon the Cross.


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April 26. John’s Gospel & First Peter

The material in these two books is especially appropriate to the Pas-chal season. Peter’s First Epistle seems to have been written as a sort

of catechetical discourse for the newly baptized, and the most ancient li-turgical lectionaries (East and West) testify that John’s Gospel was not shared with new believers until after their baptism. (Even today, both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches assign this Gospel to be read during the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.)

Peter’s name, which is the first word in this epistle, is immediately qualified by the noun “apostle.” The absence of the definite article with this noun prompts most English translations to insert the indefinite ar-ticle, “an apostle,” indicating that Peter was one of a group.

While this is grammatically correct—nor, given the difficulty of translating from one idiom to another, can I think of an obvious alter-native—this rendering can be misleading. Although it is true that Peter was one of a group, the absence of the definite article in that first verse implies something more and a tad subtle: The noun “apostle” here, used without the article, points to the quality of Peter’s testimony, the proper note of the authority with which he writes; it modifies Peter, much like an adjective, making his apostleship the foundation of the pastoral concern he expresses in this letter. Thus, as he begins to dictate the words to Sil-vanus (cf. 5:12), Peter formally and explicitly puts on his apostle-hat, as it were, and he wears it throughout the ensuing message. He is not send-ing his readers his good advice; he is speaking on behalf of, and with the authority of, God’s Son.

April 29. The Book of Exodus

This second book of Holy Scripture continues the narrative of salvation begun in Genesis. It commences with the story of the Chosen People,

now in Egypt where Genesis had left them, and ends with them receiv-ing the Law at Mount Sinai. The book’s defining event, the deliverance from slavery, also provides its (Greek) title, which means “going out” or “departure.”

It is in Exodus that the Chosen People is formally constituted and given its proper structure. Just as the deliverance from slavery was the setting for the Law, it provided also much of the context for the prophets. Thus, in the ninth century, the prophet Elijah, who likewise was miracu-lously fed with bread and meat in the wilderness, was careful to return to the very mountain where Moses had received the Law, and at the end


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of his life, he went back eastward over the Jordan, to where Moses had died, in order to hand over the prophetic ministry to Elisha, who thereby became a sort of new Joshua. Similarly, in the eighth century, the prophet Hosea constantly appealed to motifs from Exodus to recall a sinful people to repentance and renewal. Likewise, the second part of the Book of Isa-iah repeatedly appeals to the Exodus as a promise of a greater salvation yet to come.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the early Christians, as reflected in the New Testament, were forever going to the Book of Exodus for the ap-propriate symbols of redemption purchased by Jesus: the covenant blood, the paschal lamb, the darkening of the earth just prior to the slaying of the firstborn, freedom from slavery, baptism in the Red Sea, water from the rock, manna in the desert, and so forth. For this reason, the Gospel and Epistle readings during this season will often be chosen because of their specific relevance to the assigned reading from Exodus.

May 2. Aaron the Spokesman

Moses needs an interpreter. What he sees and hears is transcendent beyond his ability to express. In his life and experience, we detect

the gap that lies between silent contemplation of mystery and the intel-ligible burden of prophecy. Aaron is introduced to translate the mystery into the message.

But Aaron, if he is to remain faithful, must stay very close to Moses. Otherwise, his message may start to take on a life of its own, having no relationship to the mystery. Later in the story, when Moses remains too long on the mountain, Aaron gets into trouble; he loses his close contact with Moses’ contemplation. At the hand of Aaron, the transcendent mys-tery degenerates into a Golden Calf.

May 5. Exodus 7

When the Book of Exodus began, the Israelites in Egypt were living an idyllic existence: “But the children of Israel were fruitful (paru)

and increased abundantly, multiplied (vayirbu), and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled (vatimmle’ ha’arets) with them” (1:7).

The vocabulary of this description makes it clear that the Israelites were following the initial Law God gave the human race: “Be fruitful and multiply (p-ru vurbu) fill the earth (v-mil’u ’eth ha’arets) and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28; cf. 9:1,7).


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This resemblance of the Israelites to our first parents is more than a literary parallel. The narrative structure of Exodus, based on the gift of the Torah, continues the account of God’s endeavor to restore human-ity to its original state, in which Adam and Eve, prior to the Fall, enjoyed great prosperity, including intimacy and friendship with the Creator. As though to foreshadow that blessing, the Israelites in Egypt are described as living in the grace of God’s first command, the injunction to prosper, multiply, and fill the earth.

These references back to the early chapters of Genesis set the context for the account of the plagues of Egypt and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. What the reader witnesses, in the unfolding of those plagues, is a step-by-step undoing of the created order.

Thus, the Nile River, identified by Josephus as the Gihon, one of the four rivers of Paradise, is turned into blood. First to die are the aquatic animals (fish and frogs) created on the fourth day. In Tuesday’s reading, the beasts of the field perish, those animals and livestock created on the same day as man.

Subsequent plagues destroy the land’s vegetation. The penultimate plague is a return to the primeval darkness, the nothingness before the creation of light. Last of all comes the death of the Egyptian first-born sons. The Eden of the opening chapter is deconstructed, plague-by-plague.

The systematic destruction of Egypt is related to the hardening heart of Pharaoh, who boasts that he does not know the true God (Exodus 5:2). But how does he not know? The purpose of the plagues was revelatory: “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand on Egypt” (7:5); “I will send all my plagues on you and your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth” (9:14). Even Pharaoh’s sorcerers, stymied at the third plague, de-clared, “This is the finger of God” (8:19).

The whole point of this hardness of heart is that Pharaoh had to know. This is explained in the Epistle to the Romans, which speaks of God’s wrath as

revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteous-ness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, . . . , so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor did they give thanks, but be-came futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were dark-ened. (1:18–21)

Pharaoh had to know, but he stubbornly refused to know, and his resistance to God’s self-revelation brings about the undoing of the


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created order. Egypt, portrayed as a paradise at the book’s beginning, is now degraded to a land—an ’erets—of chaos, corruption, and confu-sion. The king’s resistance to the light becomes the occasion for God to demonstrate what he thinks of those “who suppress the truth in unrigh-teousness.” The Lord makes of Pharaoh what St. Paul calls a “vessel of wrath.”

Such was this man who obliged the Almighty to reveal his anger against idolatrous Egypt. “With this intent,” God tells him, “I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be de-clared in all the earth” (9:16). Paul quotes this very verse (Romans 9:17), by way of demonstrating what he means by “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (9:22).

May 6. The First Epistle to the Corinthians

This letter of the Apostle Paul was written from Ephesus in the spring. Indeed, it contains an unmistakable indication that, at the very time

of its composition, Christians were already observing this new Christian Passover feast: “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast” (5:7f.). The next feast, Pentecost (50 days after Passover), would soon be upon them, and Paul planned to stay at Ephesus until then (16:8). If the reader keeps this seasonal timetable in mind, Paul’s special emphasis on the Resurrection in chapter 15 will seem perfectly conso-nant with a specific historical setting. From other chronological consid-erations derived from the New Testament, it further seems that the year was probably 55. If so, this Epistle was written near the end of the three years that Paul spent at Ephesus (Acts 20:31).

Much of the imagery of this letter is drawn from the Book of Exodus, and an entire chapter (the fifteenth) is devoted to the Resurrection.

May 7. Plagues Five Through Seven

Egypt’s livestock perish in the fifth plague. The matter of the livestock had been introduced in connection with the previous plague, as well

as the Lord’s protection of the Israelites from all the plagues. This latter is particularly important. God is already beginning to separate Israel from Egypt, and this separate treatment will continue till its culmination on the night of Pascha.

As the Hebrew word ’aba‘bu‘oth (Exodus 9:8–12) appears nowhere else in the Bible, the exact nature of the sores in the sixth plague is


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obscure. The Greek word in the Septuagint text, helkos, means any sort of wound, abscess, or ulcer. We observe that at last the magicians retire, no longer able even to put in an appearance in Pharaoh’s court.

There are new features in the sixth plague. For instance, it is intro-duced with an explicit ritual, containing elements symbolic of Egypt’s spiritual plight. God says to Moses and Aaron, “Take for yourselves hand-fuls of ashes from a kiln, and let Moses scatter it heavenward at the eyes of Pharaoh.”

These ashes come from a “kiln,” a kibshan. This is an industrial fur-nace, used either to smelt metallic ore or to bake bricks. The important thing to observe is that this kibshan represented the economic and cul-tural life of Egypt.

When the Book of Exodus earlier spoke of the hardships the Egyp-tians imposed on the Israelites, it spoke in particular of the baking of bricks for the Pharaoh’s building projects (1:14; 5:7–19). In this respect, the construction technology in Egypt resembled that of ancient Babel (Genesis 11:3). There was an even deeper, more spiritual affinity in the two cases; the ambitions of Babel and of Egypt displayed the same politi-cal idolatry, the identical rebellion against the true God.

Thus, when Moses throws ashes from this kiln “heavenward” (hasha-maimah), the action symbolized Egypt’s pride and rebellion against God. The text says that Moses did this “at the eyes (le‘eine) of Pharaoh.” That is to say, the ashes are thrown toward heaven, but they are also thrown toward Pharaoh’s eyes; scattered in the latter direction they symbolize the spiritual blindness the king displays through the entire course of the plagues. None of this is explained to Pharaoh. Indeed, like the third plague, the sixth plague is given without warning or explanation.

The fine dust spread by Moses’ ritual action produces an inflamma-tion on the skin. This inflammation is accompanied by pustules. Although the previous plagues, particularly the mosquitoes and the dog-flies, cer-tainly caused severe physical distress on the bodies of those who were bitten, the earlier accounts of them did not describe that distress. In the present case, however, the symptoms are explicitly described.

This affliction may have been accompanied by fever. The Hebrew text calls the inflammation shechin, a noun derived from the root shachan, meaning “to be hot.” (This fact has prompted some commentators to sus-pect this is an outbreak of smallpox. Such a diagnosis, however, seems improbable; although some animals can carry the smallpox virus, they do not suffer from its symptoms.)

This sudden, dramatic attack on human flesh is reminiscent of the trial of Job. After Job did not succumb to impatience or rebellion at the loss of his goods and even his children, Satan asked for more; he chal-


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lenged God, “But stretch out your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse you to your face!” Satan, given leave to do so, “struck Job with an inflammation (shechin) from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:5–7).

In the Book of Revelation, this plague returns with the emptying of the first bowl of the divine wrath: “So the first [angel] went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore (helkos) came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image” (Revelation 16:2). The Greek word for this sore is helkos, the very noun the LXX uses to translate shechin in the sixth plague of Egypt. In the Book of Revelation, as well, this plague is the punishment for the sin of idolatry; it falls on “the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.”

A modern reader of Exodus can hardly fail to observe in this story an ecological dimension; the sixth plague involved a measure of air pol-lution, when Moses took ashes from the industrial furnace and scattered them into the air. That is to say, the severe skin rash on the flesh of the Egyptians came from industrial waste, particularly air pollution.

Does this reading of the text represent a warranted interpretation? I believe it does, in the sense that industrial pursuit sometimes involves economic and social idolatry. William Blake wrote of “the dark satanic mills” of the industrial revolution. This idolatrous impulse was already present in the industrial furnaces of ancient Babel.

The seventh plague has an introduction nearly the length of the plague’s description. It is noteworthy in two ways:

First, it is marked by a certain solemnity of presentation, a feature in contrast to the simpler format of the sixth plague. It begins when the Lord instructs Moses, “Rise early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews: “Let my peo-ple go, that they may serve me”’” (9:13). Moses is instructed to do three things: Rise, Stand, and Say.

Second, the message Moses is to give elaborates the theology of the plagues themselves. He is instructed to tell Pharaoh, “[A]t this time I will send all my plagues to your very heart, and on your servants and on your people, that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth” (9:14).

All these plagues are aimed to arrive at Pharaoh’s heart, ’el-libbeka. As elsewhere in Holy Scripture, the heart, the leb, is man’s faculty of re-flection and resolve. It is Pharaoh’s “heart,” his intentional and volitional soul, that must come to grips with these plagues. God sends them to Pha-raoh, Moses declares, “that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.”


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The plagues are the Lord’s method of instructing the king of Egypt: “that you may know”—teda‘, the unicity of God. He-Who-Is has no like upon the earth. There has never been such a God; there have never been such plagues!

In the song that follows the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, Moses proclaims,

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?Who is like you, glorious in holiness,Fearful in praises, doing wonders? (15:11)

It is to Pharaoh’s heart, then, that Israel’s God reveals his utter unic-ity and uniqueness. Thus, when the Bible says that Pharaoh’s heart was “hardened” (chazaq), the description refers particularly to his response to this revelation. Because he refuses the manifestation and message con-veyed in the plagues, the plagues themselves serve an adverse purpose with respect to his heart. Indeed, by sending these plagues on Egypt, God himself can say, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” (7:3).

Pharaoh is not a blind, unwitting instrument of the divine election. It is an essential message of the story that the king of Egypt—and only he—is responsible for his willful rebellion and recalcitrance to the self-manifestation of Israel’s God. God tells him why he has been permitted to live and to carry on his rebellion:

Now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a running sore (deber), and you would have been cut off from the earth. But, indeed, for this have I caused you to stand, to manifest my power in you, so that my name may be de-clared in all the earth. (9:15–16)

What is happening in Egypt, the Lord declares, is not just about Egypt. Its message is universally significant and instructive; it is a lesson for ev-erybody, for kol ha’arets: “that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth” (9:14); “that my name may be declared in all the earth (9:16).

The expression, “all the earth,” has a temporal, as well as a geograph-ical, dimension. Down through the ages, in every country and climate, what the Lord did to Pharaoh was done in order to exemplify, for the ev-erlasting instruction of the human race, the cost of resistance to the re-demptive will of God.

The Apostle Paul cites this text from Exodus by way of interpreting Israel’s recent failure to recognize the Messiah: “For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show


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my power in you, so that my name may be declared in all the earth’” (Ro-mans 9:17). Israel’s recent falling-away, says Paul, served to promote the universal spread of the gospel. It caused the whole world to take notice.

Moreover, Pharaoh is not left in the dark about God’s plan. He is told exactly the meaning of the plagues that afflict Egypt. This, says the Book of Exodus, is what hardness of heart looks like: the obstinate abandon-ment of one’s own self-interest, solely as an extreme exercise in self-will, a radical willfulness simply for the sake of rebelling. Saint Augustine called it a “stubbornness very much like madness”—pervicacia simillima insa-niae (The City of God 20.1).

May 12. Exodus 14

In the previous chapter we learned that God had a plan. Now it will be enacted. Pharaoh is being “set up.” As though the destruction of the

firstborn sons had not been enough, Pharaoh is coming back for more punishment.

On the other hand, God intends this encounter, as he knows what Pharaoh is thinking. If Pharaoh is rash enough to do battle with the Lord once again, he will simply have to take his chances. Meanwhile, God’s plan remains a secret, even to Moses.

Pharaoh does not know that his own plan has already been subsumed into God’s larger plan. Thus, his very strategy against Israel becomes a component of his own destruction.

The command to “stand” (verse 13) is more than a matter of posture. It is a summons to steadfast faith (cf. Psalm 5:3 — “In the morning I will stand before you, and I will see”).

The Lord portrays himself as a warrior for Israel (verse 14), some-thing to which the Egyptians themselves will testify in 14:25. The image of God as a “fighter” for Israel will appear again in Deuteronomy 1:30; 3:22; 20:4, and it will be taken up again in the narratives of the conquest (cf. Joshua 10:14,25; 23:3).

The people must, therefore, “be silent.” When God is in the act of sav-ing, it is best that man refrain from making comments about it, which will inevitably be distracting or even worse.

Although by now Moses is aware that God has a plan, he does not yet know what that plan is. God does not explain himself; he simply gives an order that must be obeyed in faith. Indeed, God rather often does this (cf. John 2:8; 6:10; 9:7; 11:39). Few things are more arrogant in a religious person than refusal to obey orders that one does not understand; we are dealing with God, after all, whom we shall never “understand.”


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God has told Moses what to do; now God provides his own part in the plan. The text is clear that the mysterious quality of the cloud comes from an angelic presence (cf. Exodus 23:20; 32:34; Numbers 20:16).

The traditional liturgical texts of the Church identify the angel here as Michael, who battles for God’s people (cf. Daniel 10:13,21; 12:1; Revela-tion 12:7). The cloud follows the people right into the sea, shrouding them in darkness (cf. Joshua 24:6–7). St. Paul explains for Christians the mean-ing of this double experience of the cloud and the sea (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1–2).

As in creation God had separated water from water (Genesis 1:6), he does so here (verses 21–22) in a symbol of the new creation. The imagery of the opening verses of Genesis all return now: light/darkness, water/dry land, and especially Spirit-wind. On the relationship of creation to the Exodus:

But as to the wicked, even to the end there came upon them wrath without mercy. For he knew before also what they would do: For when they had given them leave to depart, and had sent them away with great care, they repented, and pursued after them. For whilst they were yet mourning, and lamenting at the graves of the dead, they took up another foolish device: and pursued them as fugitives whom they had pressed to be gone: For a necessity, of which they were worthy, brought them to this end: and they lost the remembrance of those things which had happened, that their punishment might fill up what was wanting to their torments: And that thy people might wonderfully pass through, but they might find a new death. For every creature according to its kind was fashioned again as from the beginning, obeying thy com-mandments, that thy children might be kept without hurt. For a cloud overshadowed their camp, and where water was before, dry land appeared, and in the Red Sea a way without hindrance, and out of the great deep a springing field: Through which all the nation passed which was protected with thy hand, seeing thy miracles and wonders. (Wisdom 19:1–8)

Since the destruction of the Egyptian forces is the major type of the destruction of demonic powers in the waters of baptism, it is not surprising that the biblical poets loved to rhapsodize over the scene of the Egyptian forces lying dead on the shore (cf., for example, Habakkuk 3:8–15; Wisdom 10:18–20, and many places in the Book of Psalms). This was a sight that Israel was commanded never to forget (cf. Deuteronomy 11:1–4).


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May 17. Sinai & Sion

The terrifying scene on Mount Sinai is to be contrasted with the invi-tation to Christians to “draw near” to God. The author of Hebrews

draws the contrast. First, he describes the experience of the Israelites standing at the base of Mount Sinai. Then, he draws the contrast to an-other mountain, the place where Christians worship:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church (qahal, ekklesia) of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spir-its of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new cov-enant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22–24)

May 23. The Ark of the Covenant

The ark’s dimensions are about 45 inches long, and 27 inches in height and depth. The permanent poles indicate that it must always be ready

to travel, and it did move around quite a bit even after the Israelites set-tled in the Promised Land. Eventually it came to rest in Jerusalem, where Solomon pretty much built his temple around it. The ark was lost when the temple was destroyed.

Originally it contained the tables of the Decalogue, but it seems to have been the receptacle of other sacred objects at certain periods:

Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was pre-pared: the first part, in which was the lampstand, the table, and the showbread, which is called the sanctuary; and behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of All, which had the golden censer and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant, and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadow-ing the hylasterion. (cf. Hebrews 9:1–5)

The hylasterion (translated variously as “propitiatory” or “mercy seat”) in verses 16–17 will be the place where the high priest sprinkles the expiatory blood on Yom Kippur, thus symbolizing the reconciliation


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between God and man. Hylasterion, then, is the place of reconciliation, the place of atonement. As the meeting place of God and humanity, it is a symbol of the Incarnation, where God and humanity are radically recon-ciled—bound together—forever. Jesus himself is called the hylasterion:

[A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justi-fied freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a hylasterion by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbear-ance God had passed over the sins that were previously commit-ted, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (cf. Romans 3:23–26)

May 30. Ascension Thursday

The Apostle Paul told the Colossians, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the

right hand of God. Savor the things above, not the things on the earth. You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1–4).

The Christian’s new state, his being already raised with Christ, is the basis for his striving to be likewise ascended with Christ, seeking and savoring the things above.

These two verbs, seeking (zeteite) and savoring (phroneite), indicate the two aspects of our possession of God, the “not yet” (seeking) and the “already” (savoring). As long as we are on this earth, the life in Christ involves both.

Most of the time, I suppose, we are seeking, which involves the delib-erate intention of the will and the discipline of the mind, imagination, and memory. The ratio of seeking to savoring will vary a good bit according to each believer, but generally speaking, most of us do more seeking than savoring.

Another way of expressing this truth is “quest and rest.” Many of us, I suppose, would prefer rest to quest, but let us not suppose that either must necessarily be onerous. Questing takes the form of deliberate at-tention, as when we pay attention to the words of the Psalms we recite. Resting may not use any words at all.

The important thing is to be praying. If we are unable to pray as saints, let us content ourselves with praying as sinners, mindful that a bruised and broken heart God will not despise.


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Our resting in God, however, must never be mistaken for the end of the journey. The Christian can never permit himself, in this world, to imagine that he has arrived.

And just where, while all this is going on, is Christ to be found? “Sit-ting at the right hand of God,” says Paul. The Christian sense of the pres-ence of Christ does not bring Christ to the earth again. Rather, it raises the believer up to the throne room of God. The real life of the believer remains, therefore, “hidden.” “You died,” says St. Paul, “and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Our present state, containing both the already and the not yet, both the seeking and the savoring, the questing and the resting, is not our final state. Indeed, our final state is not even the entrance of our souls into heaven at death. Our final state arrives, rather, when “Christ who is our life appears,” for then we, too, “will appear with him in glory.”

In either case—whether seeking or savoring—the believer is not to be preoccupied with the things of earth. His real life is Christ inside him. It is a hidden life, which this world can only guess at.


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Sunday Lectionary—Spring 2019Date

3/3

3/10

3/17

3/24

3/31

4/7

4/14

4/21

4/28

5/5

5/12

5/19

5/26

Lutheran

Deut. 34:1–122 Cor. 4:3–6Luke 9:28–36

Deut. 26:5–10Rom. 10:8b–13Luke 4:1–13

Jer. 26:8–15Phil. 3:17—4:1Luke 13:31–35

Ex. 3:1–8b,10–151 Cor. 10:1–13Luke 13:1–9

Is. 12:1–61 Cor. 1:18–31Luke 15:1–3,11–32

Is. 43:16–21Phil. 3:8–14Luke 20:9–19

Deut. 32:36–39Phil. 2:5–11Luke 22:1—23:56

Ex. 15:1–111 Cor. 15:1–11Luke 24:1–11

Acts 5:12,17–32Rev. 1:4–18John 20:19–31

Acts 9:1–20Rev. 5:11–14John 21:1–14

Acts 13:15–16a,26–33Rev. 7:9–17John 10:22–30

Acts 13:44–52Rev. 21:1–5John 13:31–35

Acts 14:8–18Rev. 21:10–14,22–23John 14:23–29

Anglican

Ex. 34:29–351 Cor. 12:27—13:13Luke 9:28–36

Deut. 26:1–11Rom. 10:5–13Luke 4:1–13

Gen. 15:1–12, 17–18Phil. 3:17—4:1Luke 13:22–35

Ex. 3:1–151 Cor. 10:1–13Luke 13:1–9

Josh. 5:9–122 Cor. 5:17–21Luke 15:11–32

Is. 43:16–21Phil. 3:8–14Luke 20:9–19

Is. 45:21–25Phil. 2:5–11Luke 22:39—23:56

Acts 10:34–43Col. 3:1–4Luke 24:1–10

Acts 5:12a,17–22,25–29Rev. 1:1–19John 20:19–31

Acts 9:1–19aRev. 5:6–14John 21:1–14

Acts 13:15–16,26–39Rev. 7:9–17John 10:22–30

Acts 13:44–52Rev. 19:1,4–9John 13:31–35

Acts 14:8–18Rev. 21:22—22:5John 14:23–29

Roman Catholic

Sir. 27:4–71 Cor. 15:54–58Luke 6:39–45

Deut. 26:4–10Rom. 10:8–13Luke 4:1–13

Gen. 15:5–12,17–18Phil. 3:17—4:1Luke 9:28–36

Ex. 3:1–8,13–151 Cor. 10:1–6,10–12Luke 13:1–9

Josh. 5:9–122 Cor. 5:17–21Luke 15:1–3,11–32

Is. 43:16–21Phil. 3:8–14John 8:1–11

Is. 50:4–7Phil. 2:6–11Luke 22:14—23:56

Acts. 10:34,37–43Col. 3:1–4John 20:1–9

Acts 5:12–16Rev. 1:9–13,17–19John 20:19–31

Acts 5:27–32,40–41Rev. 5:11–14John 21:1–19

Acts 13:14,43–52Rev. 7:9,14–17John 10:27–30

Acts 14:21–27Rev. 21:1–5John 13:31–35

Acts 15:1–2,22–29Rev. 21:10–14,22–23John 14:23–29


Documents

Daily Devotional Guide - fsj.org · Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year Spring 2019 March 3rd — June 1st Volume 23, Number 2 The Fellowship of St. James Chicago, Illinois