Tuesday 12 October 2021
Tuesday of week 28 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Tuesday of week 28 in Ordinary Time
From the Instructions of St Columbanus, abbot
Perpetual light in the temple of the eternal High Priest
How happy, how lucky are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes! How blessed it is to be wakeful and watching for God, who created all things, who fills them with being and exceeds all of them in greatness!
I am a lowly creature but I am still his servant, and I hope that he will choose to wake me from slumber. I hope that he will set me on fire with the flame of his divine love, the flame that burns above the stars, so that I am filled with desire for his love and his fire burns always within me!
I hope that I may deserve this, that my little lamp should burn all night in the temple of the Lord and shine on all who enter the house of God! Lord, I beg you in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and my God, give me a love that cannot stumble so that my lamp can be lit but can never go out: let it burn in me and give light to others.
And you, Christ, our gentle saviour, in your kindness light our lamps so that they shine for ever in your temple and lighten our darkness and dispel the shadows of the world.
I beg you, my Jesus, fill my lamp with your light. By its light let me see the holiest of holy places, your own temple where you enter as the eternal High Priest of the eternal mysteries. Let me see you, watch you, desire you. Let me love you as I see you, and before you let my lamp always shine, always burn.
Beloved Saviour, show yourself to us who beg a glimpse of you. Let us know you, let us love you, let us love only you, let us desire you alone, let us spend our days and nights meditating on you alone, let us always be thinking of you. Fill us with love of you, let us love you with all the love that is your right as our God. Let that love fill us and possess us, let it overwhelm our senses until we can love nothing but you, for you are eternal. Give us that love that all the waters of the sea, the earth, the sky cannot extinguish: as it is written, love that no flood can quench, no torrents drown. What is said in the Song of Songs can become true in us (at least in part) if you, our Lord Jesus Christ, give us that grace. To you be glory for ever and for ever. Amen.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Wilfrid, Bishop and Missionary
From a sermon of St Wilfrid
Keep in mind and recall to the brethren those days of old, how we read in the Old Testament that God’s beloved patriarchs and his firstborn, Israel, “passed from nation to nation and from one kingdom to another”, awaiting the promise and not despairing. Moses too, and Aaron and all the prophets of God endured men’s persecution, for their trust was in the Lord. In the New Testament we read how the great Shepherd of the Sheep and Head of the whole church, Jesus Christ, was crucified by the Jews and his disciples scattered. Later dispersed throughout the entire world, they and their followers after various tribulations received the crown of martyrdom. They did not forget those words of comfort which are addressed to us too as His sons, in the epistle to the Hebrews: “My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord; neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him, for whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth and he scourged every son he receiveth,” so brethren and helpers in Christ, in the words of the same epistle “Let us also who have so great a cloud of witnesses over our head run with patience the race that is set before us.”
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.