We pray for the Church,
where all too often, like Cain,
we have made the worship offered by our brother a cause for hostility and division.
We pray that our Lord may bind us together,
teaching us to value the richness of our diversity
and to rejoice in every fresh glimpse of God’s glory
seen through traditions other than our own.
Almighty Father, you give us life
as you give life to all people.
You call us into the Church
that with men and women
of different races, colors, and languages,
different experiences and different traditions,
we may be one body
to the glory of Christ on earth.
Crucified and risen Lord, we pray for the Church.
Save us from dawdling by an empty tomb.
Save us from bondage to the past.
Save us from the hypnotic fascination of decay and death
and make your Church to know your resurrection life.
May we follow where you lead and live for you in today’s world.
The Lord is risen.
He is risen indeed.
Let me define what I mean by famine. Famine is the reigning myth. It is king and queen, emperor and president. As the kids would say, “It rules.” Myth one is that there is not enough. You will barely get through an hour anywhere in the first-world without the subtext of “there is not enough” coming up. “I would love to come but I am so busy.”
The shape and the content of Matthew’s gospel suggest that the author himself is a scribe like the one that Jesus names. The scribes of the first century were all teachers. The “training” of the scribe that is mentioned is the Greek verb matheteuo—“to teach, to learn.”
This is what they did for the sick. They were not ashamed to carry the bucket of waste matter and take it to the sea; they washed out the bucket and brought it back into the sickroom. Then I thought that they were doing what the Bishop had told us in school, that we should love one another and look after each other with love, without despising anyone; we should help the weak. All this they did to those who were sick.
Because both of them [Archbishop Theodore and his assistant Abbot Hadrian] were extremely learned in sacred and secular literature, they attracted a crowd of students into whose hearts they daily poured the streams of wholesome knowledge.
Good Jesu, too late have I loved thee, nor ever yet have I wholly followed thee; make me now at last wholly to love thee, and out of the fullness of thine infinite love give me all the love I might have had, had I always loved thee.
Jesus Christ, the love that gives love,
You are higher than the highest star;
You are deeper than the deepest sea;
O eternal God,
Turn us into the arms and hands,
The legs and feet
Of your beloved Son, Jesus.