Christmas Eve at BC House - A Reflection

House of Bread 

Luke 2: 1-20 [ text » ]

“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem, and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

And so the shepherds came to Bethlehem, to the town whose Hebrew name, Beth-lechem, means “House of Bread.” There was no glorious sight for them to see, no mind-boggling spectacle. No. Hidden away in that House of Bread they saw a baby, a baby less than ordinary, cradled in a poor stable. But, with eyes of faith opened by the word of God made known to them, and with hearts trusting in the God who will redeem his people, they saw, in that baby less than ordinary, the Saviour of the world, come to dwell among them.

And now it us our turn to come to Bethlehem, to come to our Bethlehem, our House of Bread, here, at the Lord’s table. Here again is no glorious sight for us to see, no mind-boggling spectacle. Here is only bread, bread less than ordinary, cradled in our poor hands. But, with eyes of faith opened by the word of God made known to us, and with hearts trusting that God does indeed come and dwell with us, we see, in this bread less than ordinary, the Saviour of the world, come to dwell in us.

Such is God’s love, to give us “heaven in ordinarie,” God the Word-made-flesh made bread for us, to nourish our souls, to inebriate our spirits, to make us alive with God, to build his House of Bread in us, that, as he dwells in us, we might dwell in him. Let us then come to Bethlehem, to God’s House of Bread, and taste and see how gracious the Lord is.

- Fr. Bill Morrison

A Reflection on Christmas Eve, 2009

Still to this day the midnight Christmas Eve service holds a special magic for me. The service has a different feel to it than the earlier ones. Maybe it is because there are fewer people and there seems to be a silent hush over the church. Or that there it seems to be a cold chill in the air with perhaps a dusting of snow outside. Things seem to be clearer, shinier and more beautiful. This time of night seems to really embody that ancient antiphon, for while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, your all-powerful word leaped from heaven.

This is the night that the all powerful word leapt from heaven and came to live among us. Tonight is the night that Mary held that shiny and beautiful baby that came to turn the world upside down, to bring fourth a new way of being, a way of shinier, clearer and beautiful living.

To night is the night that reminds us of our common vocation, our vocation given to us by the birth of this child. To live each day with the awe and wonder that Mary must have felt when she held Jesus in her arms. To bring forth the love, warmth and joy that Joseph must have felt standing beside the Manger. To be willing to share, make room and welcome the stranger as the animals did in the stable. To be willing to follow our own stars and be able to see and hear with fresh eyes and hearts like the shepherds who followed the star and saw the greatest gift of all.

Sr. Amy, SSJD

A homily at the noon eucharist

Readings for this day

• Ephesians 4: 1-6 NRSV link »
• Psalm 122 NRSV link »
• John 17: 6a, 15-23 NRSV link »
• Bible Browser Readings at Oremus.org

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Between the words spoken and the words heard, may God’s Holy Spirit touch our hearts with love, hope and action. Amen.

Ephesians 4:1 I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

How many times have we heard these words? A passage read at ordinations, inductions, and Thursdays in the convent when the Sisters pray for Christian unity. It’s very moving to me that every week prayers go up from this chapel for the unity of all Christian people.

Paul and his followers write in powerfully poetic language about this urge, this prayer. Their words are probably drawn from early hymns and liturgies. This letter is a celebration of the community of disciples that is the church. Paul believes that the family of believers was established by God’s eternal purpose through Christ. We the members of Christ’s family are to live in unity with God, with one another, and within ourselves. We do this through the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. This direction toward unity is where things are tending – the telios – the full union in the life to come.

But Paul has a curious turn of phrase which bothers me: “the prisoner of the Lord”. I mention this because I’ve been thinking about that word off and on. I love the passage – but ‘prisoner’ – that’s too strong for me. What ‘prisoner’ means in Greek and for Paul is the subject of another homily.

What I want to focus on is not the word itself, but my reaction to it. I don’t like it. It’s one of the tensions in my own life – perhaps in yours as well. I understand my loyalty to God in response to God’s love and grace in Christ, but also I want my own freedom. I think my freedom is a gift of God. So I want to belong – I want to be part of it – but describing myself as a prisoner is going too far. I can see myself as yoked – loyal – a disciple – a learner – a member of the body - those words all work, but not prisoner.

As I think about it, there is a tension between my need to belong and my need to be free. We see this tension in ordained and professed life; in married and family life; even in our employment. I want to belong but I don’t want to be chained down. ‘May the circle be unbroken’ but ‘Don’t fence me in’.

As part of my vocational work I use an instrument called the Birkman Method and there are two scores that refer to this tension. One is the ‘acceptance’ score, which is how much I need to belong to other people. The other is the ‘freedom’ score which is how much do I need my own freedom. In my case they’re both very high.

That’s why, as I reflect on it, parish ministry as a priest worked very well for me. On the one hand, I belonged to a bishop and a diocese, and to a community, but I was free to set my own schedule, be my own boss and express my individuality. As I look back now, in many ways I was free to be myself. My current work as a vocational consultant also gives me this freedom. But I also need to belong, and this community is one that gives me that opportunity.

You probably know a thing or two about this. I know people – perhaps you do too - who have not entered into marriage or ordained ministry – I suspect religious life as well – because they thought they would lose themselves instead of finding themselves. Their need for freedom was too great to allow them to belong to a community.

And it seems to me that it is to this tension of opposites that God calls us – to belonging – and yet to individual personhood, worthily magnifying God’s holy name. A phrase from the collect for peace at Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer captures it – ‘whose service is perfect freedom’.

I remember a neighbouring minister in the middle of a conflict in his church telling his board, “I am your servant but you are not my master”.

And so that is the unity Paul is writing about – the unity of this tension – I therefore a prisoner of the Lord – beg you from my own person to live out your own life and vocation worthy of your calling together. Be yourself but take responsibility for the community.

And this is the unity that Jesus prayers for, not that we’re to be taken out of the world but that we’re protected from the evil one. We’re here to share in the glory – the ortho – doxa - of the relationship of personhood in the community of the divine Trinity of love and purpose and energy. From the chains of love comes the invitation to join with Christ and be yoked easily and to lightly carry the burden because that is what it means to be learning to live with Christ and what it means to be me and what it means to belong. There is freedom with responsibility. Personhood and purpose.

I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

The prisoner of the Lord from the chains of love begs us to take the invitation seriously. Amen.

Notes for a homily preached at the noon Eucharist of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine - 30 July 2009 by the Rev. Canon Tim Elliott. Tim is an Associate of SSJD. Tim's Website here »

The Rev'd Canon Tim Elliott
July 30, 2009

Homily for “Q & Pew” at St. John’s York Mills, Toronto

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was born in Kingston upon Hull in England in 1759. He was the only son of a wealthy merchant and his wife. He wasn’t always in the best of health and was considered to be fairly sickly as a youth. As a young man at age 17, when his grandfather and an uncle died, he became independently wealthy.

He went up to Cambridge University but because of his wealth, he was little given to study nor apply himself except to the social pursuits of student life. He was seen as witty and generous among the other students with a wonderful speaking and singing voice. He was a popular figure and made many friends including the far more studious William Pitt who was to become the future Prime Minister of England. These two friends used to go to the House of Commons to watch the debates. At the time Pitt was already wanting to pursue a career in politics and convinced Wilberforce to do the same.

Wilberforce won a seat in his home borough of Kingston upon Hull at the age of 21 while still a student at university, in 1780. He sat as an independent, determined not to join either the Whigs or the Tories. but voted according to his conscience. This lead some to believe that he was wishy washy because he would not commit to one party or the other and kept voting with whichever party seemed to present legislation that came closest to his own values. The unifying thread was his conscience and later his strong Christian convictions.

In 1783 his friend Pitt became Prime Minister. Wilberforce was not offered a seat in cabinet by his friend – partly because of his determination to remain an independent, partly because his eyesight wasn’t all that great so he couldn’t read, and partly because he was often late; not prime material for a cabinet position.

In 1784 Wilberforce went on a tour of Europe which changed both his life and his future career in parliament. He began a spiritual journey while there – getting up early to read his bible and to keep a journal – two good solid spiritual practices. Reading the bible and then reflecting on you’ve read is a good way to grow in the spiritual life. Wilberforce had a real conversion experience in his life while in Europe. He resolved to commit his future life and work to the service of God in Jesus Christ. He returned to England and struggled to decide if he should remain in politics as he wasn’t sure that it was in keeping with his new convictions. He sought guidance from an Anglican clergyman, John Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing Grace, who convinced Wilberforce that his gifts and talents could be best used by God in the public sector by remaining in politics. The 2006 movie titled Amazing Grace, told the story of Wilberforce’s fight for the emancipation of the slaves.

Wilberforce began meeting people who were concerned with the slave trade that England had become involved with during the 16th century. They had a triangular route, first taking British made good to Africa to sell and then purchase slaves. The second leg of the journey was to transport the slaves to the West Indies. They were sold for goods in the West Indies which had been produced by slave labour – tobacco, cotton, sugar – which were then transported back to England in the third leg of the journey. The conditions for slaves were horrific on the boats. Out of 11 million Africans transported into slavery, about 1.4 million died during that second leg of the voyage.

British anti-slavery movements started in England in the 1780's. Wilberforce was actively cultivated by a group called the Testonites, because they realized that they needed a voice in parliament. In 1787 he was formally asked by the group to bring forward the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament and Wilberforce agreed.

He was motivated to be involved in the abolition movement by his desire to put his Christian principles and faith into action and to serve God in his public life. It suited the abolitionists well because Wilberforce was a man of conviction who eloquently in the Parliament. Wilberforce began to introduce legislation into Parliament year by year for the abolition of the slave trade. It was thought that by abolishing the slave trade, that is, the transport of slaves, that slavery itself would gradually disappear. It was felt that this would be more palatable to the many British landowners in the West Indies who relied on slave labour for their profits.

Session after session, after more research, more testimonials from former slaves, from clergymen who had seen the conditions and reported, Wilberforce reintroduced his bill into Parliament and pleaded for its passage with persistence and eloquence, only to see it defeated time after time by the tactics of other parliamentarians who were being subsidized by wealthy British West Indian landowners. His persistence finally paid off when his bill was passed in Parliament in 1807 – twenty years after he had started his fight.

Slavery did not diminish with the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Wilberforce now immersed himself in work towards the emancipation of slaves. Through the years of steady work towards emancipation his health began to decline and he withdrew from parliament in 1824. He still made speeches for the abolitionists. His final speech at a public meeting on anti-slavery was saluted by the House of Commons when they introduced a Bill for the Abolition of Slavery. Wilberforce died several days after the introduction of the bill. One month later the bill was passed in the House of Lords which formally abolished slavery in the British Empire as of August 1834.

Wilberforce had been married to Barbara Ann Spooner in 1797 and they had a wonderful happy life together with six children. His family life was very happy and proved to be a good balance for his hard work. Among other things, he was one of the founding members of the Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty of Animals, the world’s first animal welfare organization! Upon his death, he was buried beside his friend William Pitt in Westminster Abbey.

Wilberforce followed his Christian convictions in his life and work. He lived congruently with the passage from Matthew we heard read.

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,* you did it to me.” (Matthew 25. 31-40)

We too are called to be people of faith like William Wilberforce to redeem the needy from oppression and to work to maintain the cause of those who have no helper. May we so live our lives congruently that what we profess with our lips we take action and persevere as we care for the least in our Lord’s family. Then we too will be welcomed into the kingdom of God.

Collect commemorating William Wilberforce

Let your continual mercy, O Lord,
kindle in your Church the never-failing gift of love,
that, following the example of your servant William Wilberforce,
we may have grace to defend the poor,
and maintain the cause of those who have no helper;
for the sake of him who gave his life for us,
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Sources

 

For All the Saints: Prayers and Readings for Saints' Days, Revised by Stephen Reynolds (Compiler) Item No: 9781551265025 Augsburg Fortress Press

Hochschild, Adam (2005), Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery, London: Macmillan, ISBN 978-0330485814, OCLC 60458010

NRSV Bible (New Revised Standard Version) ISBN code: 9780888345646 

Wikipedia: William Wilberforce, and  John Newton

Homily given by Sr. Elizabeth Ann Eckert, SSJD for the “Q & Pew” at St. John’s York Mills, Toronto [ website »] , on Wednesday 29 July, 2009

Lenten Musings: The Fourth Sunday in Lent, 2009

Readings of the day

• Numbers 21.4-9 - text »
• Ephesians 2.4-10 - text »
• John 3.14-21 - text »

Today’s gospel contains perhaps the most famous of all verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (v. 16). In the Methodist Sunday school in which I grew up, we used to memorize scripture verses, and I’m sure that this was the very first one I learned.

In my young adulthood I left the church and went on pilgrimage looking for God. During that time, John 3.16 was the one verse I always remembered and could quote exactly. It crept in and out of my conscious mind during those somewhat arid years when my intellectual life was blossoming and my spiritual life was languishing.

During that time, I also remember vividly the musical setting of “God so loved the world” from Stainer’s Crucifixion, which our Methodist choir sang every year on Good Friday. I could remember almost exactly the style in which we were taught to sing it. I knew all the crescendos and decrescendos, the changes in tempo, the attention to the words. I could sing the whole thing for you right now, even though I haven’t heard Stainer’s music in years. It haunted me, it pulled at my heartstrings. God so loved the world – God loved the world so much – it was like an unconscious mantra that kept me connected at some subliminal level, to the Good News I had grown up with.

But I didn’t understand it. Why would God’s love for us cause God to send his son to die?

I found an answer to that question not through studying theology but through reading poetry – especially that of George Herbert, the 17th century Angican priest and poet. In poems like “Love bade me welcome,” Herbert’s passionate love for God touched me deeply, and I began to grasp the depth of that divine love – a love which would go so far as to die for the world.

Another experience affected me deeply while I was still a seeker. As a young woman living in Minneapolis, I joined the choir of St. Mark’s Cathedral, where the choirmaster believed passionately that the function of music and liturgy was to lead people to God. It was hard not to get hooked. And one Sunday, I heard something quite remarkable in a sermon. The preacher said that seekers of God outside the church were like people who try to appreciate stained glass art from the back side. One can see the beauty of stained glass, he said, only from inside the church, when the light is streaming through it. Likewise, one can understand the church only by being welcomed into the fellowship of the body of Christ.

That was the point of conversion for me – conversion in terms of turning around. I started looking for the stained glass from inside. And I began to see that the central message of the Christian faith is about love and passion – the love of God and the passion of Christ, yes – but it is also about the love and passion of our response to that good news.

All through scripture we see examples of this generosity of God, in response to human sin. Time after time, human beings wander away from God, and God intervenes. One example is mentioned at the beginning of the gospel for the fourth Sunday in Lent:

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The reference is to the incident from the book of Numbers when the Israelites get sick of eating manna in the desert, and are ready to go back to Egypt. God sends poisonous snakes to punish them for their complaining, and then instructs Moses to make an antidote to the poison – a bronze snake on a pole. When the Israelites look on the bronze snake, they are healed. Now this practice is condemned elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures as idolatry. Here, however, it can be seen as a kind of homeopathic medicine, where the disease is cured by the very thing that caused the illness. With a difference, however. The serpents, who crawled on the ground, were the punishment, the result of Israel’s turning away from God. The cure was to look up rather than down to the ground, to see the bronze serpent as a sign of God’s healing – and so they found life in the very source of death.

The Greek word translated “lifted up” means both to physically raise, and also to exalt, reminding us that Jesus’ crucifixion is also the climax of his earthly kingship. The passage from Ephesians underlines this double meaning when it refers to us being raised with Jesus.

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him.

In comparing Jesus to this image of a bronze serpent, John also underlines his absolute conviction that Jesus is in fact God, whose self-giving love led to the crucifixion and beyond it to the resurrection and ascension – the final “lifting up.” As in the homeopathic principle, Jesus’ death destroyed death forever.

So the reason for Jesus’ passion and death is to bring us to life and to health. And what is the motive? Why does God go to all this pain and trouble? The motive is, of course, love: “God so loved the world . . .” It is pure grace, pure gift, as Paul tells us. God created the world in love; the risen Christ among us calls each of us into a relationship of love, with each other and especially with God; and in that love Christ sends us into the world as his body, to minister to his brothers and sisters – our brothers and sisters.

But the tragedy is that Christ’s body, his church, sometimes acts as if God sent the son to the church and not to the world. And then we, the church, forget that we are saved by the pure grace of God, the pure gift of God’s self-giving love in the passion of Christ. When that happens, the church (that is, we) can undermine the pure gift of God’s love.

We try to set boundaries, to judge, and to insist that people fulfill our expectations and agree with our theology and our standards in order to be welcomed into the body of Christ. And we expend a lot more energy on dealing with our internal conflicts than we do on the mission which God calls us to on behalf of the world.

But Paul says, “by grace you are saved.” Not by meeting the standards of a particular church or group within the church, but by accepting the saving love of Christ.

And how do we accept it? By experiencing, it of course, and for most people, the strongest experience of Christ’s love is mediated through those people he calls his body. If people in the world do not find the love of God in the friendship and acceptance and affirmation and support of those in the church, where are they going to experience that love? I found it in a choir, and in people doing liturgy together in a way that said to me, we know the love of God and want to share it. Others find it in other ways in the church.

And once we have found it, we accept our baptismal mission: to be the body of Christ, to be Christ in the world.

So instead of succumbing to the temptation to think that God sent his only son for the sake of the church, we might paraphrase John 3.16-17 this way: “God so loved the world that he sent the church into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through his body, might be saved.” God loved the world so much that he sent you and you and you and me to be Christ’s body, to bring that amazing grace of God’s free love to the world God created.
May God bless each of you as you journey through Lent toward Easter. May God give you the grace to share the suffering of his world that you might also be an instrument of resurrection life in his world

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 22 March, 2009
Sr. Constance Joanna, SSJD

Sisterhood of St. John the Divine
A religious community within the Anglican Church of Canada
www.ssjd.ca

Lenten Musings: The First Sunday in Lent, 2009

In the name of God who created us, who redeemed us, and who sanctifies us. Amen.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. A time when we recall those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and prayer. After those 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Tempter, the Evil One. In his weakened state, Jesus still overcomes temptation and show us his tremendous focus on his mission in the world, which was and still is, to show us just how very much God loves us.

Nothing could come between Jesus and his sense of mission. This would become a habitual way of Jesus’ living. Jesus would not be put off his mission to show us God’s love even for consideration of his own personal safety or even for other practical reasons.

After his 40 day fast, the gospel tells us that Jesus was famished. I imagine that he was terribly weak as well. His first temptation is to turn stones into bread, to take something which God had created just to be and turn it into something totally different just to satisfy a need. This would have been going against God’s will who created the stones in the first place, just to be stones. So Jesus replies to the Evil One, that the “word” of God is the chief nourishment. We live the way God created us and know God’s love for us there, in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves, in weakness or strength.

Next Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple which overlooks the Kidron Valley - the highest point of the temple. The Evil One tells Jesus to demonstrate to all that Jesus is God’s Son by throwing himself off the temple for all to see, trusting in God’s protection. Every one would have seen this demonstration and know Jesus’ divine nature.

But Jesus refuses to test God’s protection and to unnecessarily risk his life which would then make a mockery of his real martyrdom, of his sacrifice on the cross which was to come which was the real demonstration of trust in God’s love for us and of Jesus own love for us.

Finally the Evil One, the Devil, invites Jesus to prefer personal wealth and power, to choose strength over what the world regards as weakness when we are poor and needy, weak and powerless. Jesus again demonstrates how focused he is on his own sense of mission to show us how much God loves us, and how God’s power is shown in our weakness, when he says in reply . . .

Worship the Lord your God
and serve only him.

Our worship is our response to God’s tremendous love for us. God’s love has come to us first, not because we are good, not because we are sinless, not because we are powerful, but God loves us just as we are.

Jesus refusal to let anything come ahead of his sense of mission, of his sense of the love of God for us, of his own love for us, was to become a habitual way of life for Jesus. This habitual way of living, of demonstrating that God's power is shown in our weakness, had its ultimate fulfillment in his death on the cross leading to his resurrection and ascension into glory. Jesus has given us a model to live our lives within the ordinary circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves, and to let God’s power and love manifest itself through our weakness. Amen.

A reflection by Sr. Elizabeth Ann, SSJD
Lenten Musings: March 1, 2009 - First Sunday in Lent

Lenten Musings

In the name of God who created us, who redeemed us, and who sanctifies us. Amen.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. A time when we recall those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and prayer. After those 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Tempter, the Evil One. In his weakened state, Jesus still overcomes temptation and show us his tremendous focus on his mission in the world, which was and still is, to show us just how very much God loves us.

Nothing could come between Jesus and his sense of mission. This would become a habitual way of Jesus’ living. Jesus would not be put off his mission to show us God’s love even for consideration of his own personal safety or even for other practical reasons.

After his 40 day fast, the gospel tells us that Jesus was famished. I imagine that he was terribly weak as well. His first temptation is to turn stones into bread, to take something which God had created just to be and turn it into something totally different just to satisfy a need. This would have been going against God’s will who created the stones in the first place, just to be stones. So Jesus replies to the Evil One, that the “word” of God is the chief nourishment. We live the way God created us and know God’s love for us there, in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves, in weakness or strength.
Next Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple which overlooks the Kidron Valley - the highest point of the temple. The Evil One tells Jesus to demonstrate to all that Jesus is God’s Son by throwing himself off the temple for all to see, trusting in God’s protection. Every one would have seen this demonstration and know Jesus’ divine nature.

But Jesus refuses to test God’s protection and to unnecessarily risk his life which would then make a mockery of his real martyrdom, of his sacrifice on the cross which was to come which was the real demonstration of trust in God’s love for us and of Jesus own love for us.

Finally the Evil One, the Devil, invites Jesus to prefer personal wealth and power, to choose strength over what the world regards as weakness when we are poor and needy, weak and powerless. Jesus again demonstrates how focused he is on his own sense of mission to show us how much God loves us, and how God’s power is shown in our weakness, when he says in reply . . . “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

Our worship is our response to God’s tremendous love for us. God’s love has come to us first, not because we are good, not because we are sinless, not because we are powerful, but God loves us just as we are.

Jesus refusal to let anything come ahead of his sense of mission, of his sense of the love of God for us, of his own love for us, was to become a habitual way of life for Jesus. This habitual way of living, of demonstrating that God’s power is shown in our weakness, had its ultimate fulfillment in his death on the cross leading to his resurrection and ascension into glory. Jesus has given us a model to live our lives within the ordinary circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves, and to let God’s power and love manifest itself through our weakness. Amen.

Sr. Elizabeth Ann SSJD
Lenten Musings at http://www.ssjd.ca
1 March 2009