small, day 4

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
Lord, give me the ability to persist through tedium, to survive without the oxygen of recognition, praise, and stroking, and to do some good things every day which are seen only by You. (Sacred Space: the Prayer Book 2010 by Jesuit Communication Centre)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 131

Scripture for the Day: Luke 22:24-32

Reading for Reflection:

Humility and Moderation—the graces of the self-forgetful soul—we might almost expect that if we grasped all that the Incarnation really means—God and His love, manifest not in some peculiar and supernatural spiritual manner, but in ordinary human nature.  Christ, first-born of many brethren, content to be one of us, living the family life, and from within His Church inviting the souls of men to share His family life.  In the family circle there is room for the childish and the imperfect and the naughty, but the uppish is always out of place.

     We have got down to the bottom of the stairs now and are fairly sitting on the mat.  But the proof that it is the right flight and leads up to the Divine Charity, is the radiance that pours down from the upper storey: the joy and peace in which the whole is bathed and which floods our whole being here in the lowest place.  How right St. Paul was to put these two fruits at the end of his list, for as a rule they are the very last we acquire.  But the saints have always seen it.  When Angela of Foligno was dying, her disciples asked for a last message and she, who had been called a Mistress in Theology and whose Visions of the Being of God are among the greatest the medieval mystics have left us, had only one thing to say to them as her farewell: “Make yourselves small!  Make yourselves very small.” (Fruits of the Spirit by Evelyn Underhill)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Winter Snow

Could've come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane
You could've come like a forest fire
With the power of heaven in Your flame

But You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

You could've swept in like a tidal wave
Or an ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things we've scarred

But You came like a winter snow
You were quiet You were soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

Oh, no, Your voice wasn't in a bush burning
No, Your voice wasn't in a rushing wind
It was still
It was small
It was hidden

You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

Falling
To the earth below
You came falling From the sky in the night

Closing Prayer:

Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,

Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live

in the depths but see thee in the heights; hemmed in

by mountains of sin I behold thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox

that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high,

that the broken heart is the healed heart,

that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit

that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,

that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive,

that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest

wells. And the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars

shine;

Let me find thy light in my darkness,

thy life in my death,

thy joy in my sorrow,

thy grace in my sin,

thy riches in my poverty,

thy glory in my valley.

(The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions ed. by Arthur Bennett)