Wednesday, May 7, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Memorizing 1 Peter 2
But you are a chosen people,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation,
God’s special possession,
that you may declare the praises of him
who called you out of darkness
into his wonderful light.
Once you were
not a people,
but now you are the people of God;
once you had
not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
Dear friends,
I urge you,
as foreigners and exiles,
to abstain from sinful desires,
which wage war against your soul.
These verses from 1 Peter are poetry, as well as guidance, encouragement and warning. They are written by the poet, whom we might better call the Holy Spirit, and by the mentor, whom we know as the Son, and by the leader, that is to say, our Father. Who art in heaven.
He has changed the sea into dry land, through the river they passed on foot. Therefore let us rejoice in him.
I was reading what UC Berkeley Composition professor Carmen Acevedo Butcher has to say about St. Benedict and his monastic life.
A communal rhythm of prayer focused on the Psalms permeated the lives of Benedict and his monastic brothers:
Focused daily on doing the ordinary, Benedict’s life was a series of risings in the dark. Most Italians, even bakers, were sound asleep when lights fired up in his monasteries before 2 a.m. in winter, as Benedict’s community woke and walked to chapel for Vigils. They sang Psalm 51:17: “Domine, labia mea aperies, et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam” / “Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”…
During the course of all 52 weeks each year, Benedictine monks, as well as Trappists and Cistercians in monasteries around the world, sing and chant every one of the 150 psalms. At Saint Meinrad’s Abbey west of Louisville, they sing and chant them all. At the Abbey of Gethsemane just south of Louisville, they sing and chant them all.
But this is only part of their “lectio divina.” Solitary study follows the group service, going over and over passages that matter more than any newspaper ever could. Thus over not such a long time these monks have memorized all the psalms and much more. Desert elder Athanasius in the 4th century said of his own experience, “The psalms become my own songs.”
Cyril Simkins, a missionary in Ghana and Zimbabwe before becoming a central Illinois pioneer in Bible-based university study, also sang the songs of his faith, over and over, day by day by day. His son Ron continues to preach out of his retirement at New Covenant Church in Champaign, Illinois. I remember Ron, sharing with several of us, how he sat with his dad as he lay dying. On his bed Cyril sang himself to sleep, and eventually he sang himself into death. The beauty of the lilies could never be outdone by what Ron and his brother Jim watched as their father sang.
Steve Guthrie recalls an ancient Jewish tradition that “scattered somewhere among the eight billion or so humans inhabiting our planet are thirty-six righteous individuals, upon whom the very continued existence of the world depends. These are the Tzadikim Nisarim, or ‘hidden righteous ones.’ “There’s a lot to like about this story.”
For awhile now I’ve been done looking at much more than headlines from the power centers of the world. What happens in the quiet faithful lives of those “thirty-six” matters more to me. What matters more to all of us are, as Guthrie says, those “secret and unseen ways expanding the kingdom of God, like a pinch of yeast extending its leavening through three full measures of flour.”
I could be hiding my head in that pile of flour. But I don’t think so … chosen people, royal priesthood, God’s special possession … we set out as pilgrims and continue declaring praises and singing psalms of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. Memorizing the words to live for, and to die by.
Jesus said to the crowds,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
But I told you that although you have seen me,
you do not believe.
Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,
and I will not reject anyone who comes to me.”
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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