Month: February 2022

Collect: Thomas Bray Priest and Missionary, 1730 (Feb 15)

May we look with God’s compassion upon our world

Thomas Bray

We begin our prayer: “O God of compassion….” Thomas Bray looked into his world with the God of compassion and saw ways to teach and comfort and advocate for all God’s children. May we have the grace to do the same as we look with the God of compassion at our own world (home and family, neighborhood, workplace, city, state, nation, world, you get the idea). Today, in word and deed let us see and let us act with compassion.

The Collect for the Commemoration

O God of compassion, who opened the heart of your servant Thomas Bray to the needs of the Church in the New World, and to found societies to relieve them: Make the Church diligent at all times to propagate the Gospel, and to promote the spread of Christian knowledge; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Learn more

Thomas Bray was born at Marton, in Shropshire, England, in 1656. After graduating from Oxford and being ordained, he became a country parson in Warwickshire. In 1696 he was invited by the Bishop of London to be responsible for the oversight of Church work in the colony of Maryland. Three years later, as the Bishop’s Commissary, he sailed to America for his first, and only, visitation. Though he spent only two and a half months in Maryland, Bray was deeply concerned about the neglected state of the American churches, and the great need for the education of clergymen, lay people, and children.[…] His understanding of, and concern for, Native Americans and blacks were far ahead of his time. He founded thirty-nine lending libraries in America, as well as numerous schools. He raised money for missionary work and influenced young English priests to go to America.

[…] When the deplorable condition of English prisons was brought to Bray’s attention, he set to work to influence public opinion and to raise funds to alleviate the misery of the inmates. He organized Sunday “Beef and Beer” dinners in prisons, and advanced proposals for prison reform. It was Thomas Bray who first suggested to General Oglethorpe the idea of founding a humanitarian colony for the relief of honest debtors, but he died before the Georgia colony became a reality. Read more

from Holy Women, Holy Men

Be well. Do good. Pay attention. Keep learning.

Collect: Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop Missionaries to the Slavs, 869, 885 (Feb 14)

A timely prayer asking help to overcome strife by the love of Christ

Holy Trinity. Icon. Andrei Rublev.

The Collect for the Commemoration

Almighty and everlasting God, by the power of the Holy Spirit you moved your servant Cyril and his brother Methodius to bring the light of the Gospel to a hostile and divided people: Overcome all bitterness and strife among us by the love of Christ, and make us one united family under the banner of the Prince of Peace; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today’s Collect is well timed in a world where division, violence and the threat of more violence is a constant companion. Along the Way of Love taught us by Jesus (in word and deed) we ask our God to assist us to “overcome all bitterness and strife … by the love of Christ” and unite as one “under the banner of the Prince of Peace.” May it be so in our words and deeds this day.

Learn more about these brothers

Cyril (born about 828) and Methodius (born about 817), brothers born in Thessalonika, are honored as apostles to the southern Slavs and as the founders of Slavic literary culture. Cyril was a student of philosophy and a deacon, who eventually became a missionary monastic. Methodius was first the governor of a Slavic colony, then turned to the monastic life, and was later elected abbot of a monastery in Constantinople.

In 862, the King of Moravia asked for missionaries who would teach his people in their native language. Since both Cyril and Methodius knew Slavonic, and both were learned men—Cyril was known as “the Philosopher”—the Patriarch chose them to lead the mission. Read more

from Holy Women, Holy Men

Be well. Do good. Pay attention. Keep learning.

Epiphany +6 Year C

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. Jer 17:7

Glad you have come here to find the readings for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (Feb. 13 in 2022) in Year C of our Lectionary.

Trust in the Lord, trust in those who testify to God’s love and purposes, trust in those who have gone before you—these are among the themes this Sunday (and this week).

Check out, too, what our Church remembers about Absalom Jones and, through this week, others who trusted in the Lord and worked tirelessly for God’s glory in the name of Jesus.

Finally, check out what Frederick Buechner has to say about the Biblical revelation about resurrection and the notion of immortality. See that he accepts the Biblical revelation and trusts God. What about you?

View or Download today’s handout

2022-0213 Epiphany +6C Hear & HikeDownload

Saint Haralampus

Curiosity and the internet leading to new companions along the Way.

From Religion News Service Photos of the Week 02/12/2022

The caption on this photo: “Priests read prayers in honour of St.Haralampus, as believers gather around candles stuck to jars of honey, arranged in a cross shape, during Mass for the ‘sanctification of honey’ at the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Church in the town of Blagoevgrad, south of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church marks the feast of St. Haralampus, the Orthodox patron saint of bee-keepers, by performing a ritual for health and rich harvest.” (AP Photo/Valentina Petrova)

One of the wonderful aspects of living in the Information Age and having internet access is learning (nearly instantly) that is unbounded by geography or culture. I had never heard of St. Haralampus until today. Reading that he is the patron saint of bee-keepers led me to look further into his story and who else might be considered a patron saint of bees, bee-keeping, or bee-keepers.

If you’re interested here is some more information about the Saint (who apparently suffered a brutal martyrdom for his faith) and about patron saints of bees and bee-keepers:

Frances Jane (Fanny) Van Alstyne Crosby, Hymnwriter, 1915

Annually on February 11th we remember Fanny Crosby. Read on.

Fanny Crosby was the most prolific writer of hymn texts and gospel songs in the American evangelical tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She wrote more than eight thousand sacred texts in addition to other poetry.

Frances Jane Crosby was born in Putnam County, New York, on March 24, 1820. Although not born blind, she lost her sight as an infant as a result of complications from a childhood illness. At the age of fifteen, she entered the New York Institute for the Blind where she would later teach for a number of years. In 1858, she married Alexander van Alstyne, a musician in New York who was also blind. Crosby was a lifelong Methodist.

Crosby’s texts were so popular that nearly every well-known composer of gospel music of the period came to her for words to accompany their melodies. In most hymn writing, the words come first and then a composer sets them to music, but for Crosby the words came so quickly and naturally that composers would often take her their tunes and she would immediately begin to shape words that fit the music.

Perhaps the best example of this process led to the creation of Crosby’s most well known hymn Blessed Assurance. On a visit to the home of a friend, the composer Phoebe Knapp, a newly composed tune was played for Crosby. After listening to the tune several times, the text began to take shape, and in a very short time one of the world’s most popular gospel hymns was born. The American gospel song is a unique genre of sacred music that combines words expressive of the personal faith and witness with tunes that are simple and easily learned. Fanny Crosby’s contribution to this genre is unequaled. Dozens of her hymns continue to find a place in the hymnals of Protestant evangelicalism around the world.

Fanny Crosby died on February 12, 1915, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she is buried.

Source: A Great Cloud of Witnesses, 2018

If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind … for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Saviour.

Fanny Crosby on Christ Centered Quotes

Even more about Fanny Crosby

Additional resources you may enjoy as you walk with Fanny Crosby in the communion of saints …

Another view on Judgment

God’s judgment is always that you need more love.

We live (as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed) in “the communion of saints.” In the communion of saints our teachers, our encouragers, our sources of inspiration are both unbound by time (i.e., they are the living and those who have died) and unbound by geography, culture, language, or any other boundary we may encounter in our earthly journey.

One of my teachers (a contemporary) is a retired Methodist minister living in Maine. Steve Garnaas-Holmes has a way with words shaped by his experiences of God’s unconditional love. I encourage you to check out his daily reflections on Unfolding Light. Here is a sample from his post today (February 10, 2022).

Before God judges you
       God loves you.

Before God sees your sin
       God sees your wound.

Before God sees how you thrashed in the world
       God sees what you are fighting off.

Before God sees you steal
       God sees your hunger.

Before God sees the awful things you do to survive
       God wants you to survive.

Before God punishes you
       God protects you from further hurt,
because God never punishes,
       but wraps gentle arms around you.

God’s judgment is always
       that you need more love.

“Judgment” on Unfolding Light, a daily reflection posted by Steve Garnaas-Holmes (dated 02/10/2022).