Ascension parishioner Janine Economides is blogging her reflections on the scripture lessons of the Daily Office, the daily devotional practice of Morning and/or Evening Prayer in the Episcopal Church (and other Anglican churches) for individuals and groups.

We've added a link to her blog on the navigation bar that appears everywhere else on this site (EXCEPT here on the blog; a technical limitation of the blog publishing tool) under "Links > Scripture > Daily Bible Study." Or you can bookmark it directly: http://dailyexegesis.blogspot.com/.

In the comments section, add your reflections to Janine's regarding the lesson chosen from that day's lectionary. Such online discussions can help each of us who pray the Daily Office connect with fellow pilgrims engaging in this same prayer discipline.

Labels: daily office, scripture

Sunday, March 8, April 5, May 3

A social network focused on career enhancement and career transition, through the exchange of information, ideas and contacts, among members and with occasional guest speakers. The group kicked off January 5 with guest speaker Brad Agry; the next meetings are scheduled Sundays at 12:45 p.m.: Feb 8, Mar 8, Apr 5 and May 3, in the ground floor conference room. All are welcome to attend. For more information, please contact Mary Kay Rafferty: 212-691-9018, or mkrafferty@yahoo.com

Labels: networking

Do you want to explore issues of faith, or a spiritual life, or relationship with God?

• I want to find out more about baptism.
• Although already baptized, I want to become a part of Ascension’s life.
• I have been baptized and confirmed in another tradition, but want to become an Episcopalian.
• I have always been an Episcopalian, but I want to deepen my understanding of what it means to be an Episcopalian.

The conversations about each evening's topic begin over a light supper, followed by a presentation by the clergy. Each evening ends with the prayers for the close of the day. The first four "Discovery Classes" are open to all. The final four "Initiation Classes" are intended for those seeking Baptism, Confirmation, Reception or Reaffirmation on Ascension Sunday, May 17th at the 11:00 a.m. Eucharist. Please sign up in the Parish Hall.


Classes:
March 24 - Where did the Episcopal Church come from, and how is it organized?

March 31 - How is the Bible the living word of God?

April 07 - What do Episcopalians do in Church?

April 14 - What do we have to believe in order to be a Christian?


Initiation Classes


April 21 - How did God become important in your life?

April 28 - Where does Ascension fit into the New York church scene?

May 5 - How do you make your spiritual life real?

May 12 -How do you get ready to join the Episcopal Church?

Labels: adult education

Ascension parishioner (and national Episcopal Church employee) Sarah Johnson started a blog a few months ago to generate a discussion among Episcopalians about the lessons they're going to hear the next Sunday in church. Take a look and give next Sunday's lessons a thought ahead of time. You may hear them very differently and with new-found apreciation after you've reflected on them and discussed on the Revised Common Lectionary Bible Study blog.

Please bear with us as we complete a redesign of the Ascension Web site. Some links don't yet work, others need to be added, and some pages are still in the process of being redesigned. But come back soon to see us once the dust settles!

Psalm 27 / Hebrews 4:1-16 / Romans 8:1-11

When without teares I looke on Christ, I see
only a story of some passion
Which any common eye may wonder on
butt if I look through tears Christ smiles on mee
yea there I see my selfe: and from that tree
he bendeth downe to my devotione
And from his side the blood doth spinn, whereon
My hart, my mouth, mine eyes, still sucking bee.
Like as in Optick workes,* one thing appears
In open gaze, in Closer otherwise:
Then since tears see the best I aske in teares
Lord either thaw mine eyes to tears, or freeze
my teares to eyes, or lett my hart tears bleede
or bringe, where eyes, nor tears, nor blood shall neede.

— William Alabaster (1568-1640)

*Optick workes: drawings or constructions designed according to theories of optics or perspective.

Psalm 22 / 1 Peter 1:10-20 / John 13:36-38

The Agonie

    Philosophers have measur'd mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, of kings,
Walk'd with a staffe to heav'n, and traced fountains:
    But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.

    Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
    His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice*, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev'ry vein.

    Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach;** then let him say
    If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.

— George Herbert (1593-1633)

*vice: vise, the tool.
**abroach: to pierce (a cask, etc.) so as to let a liquor flow out

Psalm 102 / 1 Corinthians 10:14-17, 11:27-32 / John 17:1-11

Hunger and thirst, O Christ, for sight of thee,
Came between me and all the feasts of earth.
Give thou thyself the Bread, thyself the Wine,
Thou, sole provision for the unknown way.
Long hunger wasted the world wanderer,
With sight of thee may he be satisfied.

— Radbod, Bishop of Utrecht (d. 917)

(tr. Helen Waddell, from Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Penguin, 1968)

Psalm 55 / Philippians 4:1-13 / John 12:27-36

Look on thy God, Christ hidden in our flesh,
A bitter word, the cross, and bitter sight:
Hard rind without, to hold the heart of heaven.
Yet sweet it is; for God upon that tree
Did offer up his life: upon that rood
My Life hung, that my life might stand in God.
Christ, what am I to give Thee for my life?
Unless take from Thy hands the cup they hold,
To cleanse me with the precious draught of death.
What shall I do? My body to be burned?
Make myself vile? The debt's not paid out yet.
What'er I do, it is but I and Thou,
And still do come short, still must Thou pay
My debts, O Christ; for debts Thyself hadst none.
What love may balance Thine? My Lord was found
In fashion like a slave, so that His slave
Might find himself in fashion like his Lord.
Think you the bargain's hard, to have exchanged
The transient for the eternal, to have sold
Earth to buy Heaven? More dearly God bought me.

— Paulinus, Bishop of Nola (353-431)

(tr. Helen Waddell, from Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, Penguin, 1968)

Psalm 6 / Philippians 3:15-21 / John 12:20-26

Grief

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death —
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet.
If it could weep, it would arise and go.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Psalm 51:1-18 / Philippians 3:1-4 / John 12:9-19

I wake and feel the fell* of dark, not day,
    What hours, O what black hours we have spent
    This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
    Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
    Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
    Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
    As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884-1889)

*fell: pelt, an animal's skin; also gall, bitterness.

Psalm 144 / Romans 11:25-36 / John 11:28-44

Sonnet of Black Beauty

Black beauty, which above that common light,
    Whose power can no colors here renew
    But those which darkness can again subdue,
Dost still remain unvaried to the sight,
And like an object equal to the view
    Art neither changed with day nor hid with night;
    When all those colors which the world calls bright,
And which old poetry doth so pursue,
Are with the night so perishèd and gone
    That of their being there remains no mark,
Thou still abidest so entirely one.
    That we may know thy blackness is a spark
Of light inaccessible, and alone
    Our darkness which can make us think it dark.

— Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648)

Psalm 143 / Romans 11:13-24 / John 11:1-27

Unprofitableness

How rich, O Lord! How fresh thy visits are!
'Twas but just now my bleak leaves hopeles hung
    Sullyed with dust and mud;
Each snarling blast shot through me, and did share*
Their Youth, and beauty, Cold showres nipt, and wrung
    Their spiciness, and bloud;
But since thou didst in one sweet glance survey
Their sad decays, I flourish, and once more
    Breath all perfumes, and spice;
I smell a dew like myrrh, and all the day
Wear in my bosome a full Sun; such store
    Hath one beame from thy Eys.
But, ah, my God! What fruit hast thou of this?
What one poor leaf did ever I yet fall
    To wait upon thy wreath?
Thus thou all day a thankless weed doest dress,
And when th'hast done, a stench, or fog is all
    The odour I bequeath.

— Henry Vaughan (1621?-1695)

*shear

Psalm 142 / Romans 11:1-12 / John 10:19-42

The mystery of God, of the Divine Redemption and of his infinite mercy is generally nebulous and unreal even to men of faith. Hence we do not have the courage or strength to respond to our vocation in its depth. We unconsciously falsify it, distort its true perspectives, and reduce our Christian life to a kind of genteel and social propriety. In such an event Christian perfection no longer consists in the arduous and strange fidelity of the spirit in the darkness of the night of faith. It becomes, in practice, a respectable conformity to what is commonly accepted as good in the society in which we live. The stress is then placed on exterior signs of respectability.

— Thomas Merton, "Life and Holiness." Image, August, 1969.

(contributed by Janine Economides; see March 16)

Psalm 130 / Romans 10:14-21 / John 10:1-18

"Out of the depths... ." We have all been there. From the depths of our being we cry out in the depth of suffering — whether caused by health, finances, human relations, intellectual, psychological or spiritual crisis, or some vague and indefinable angst, we cry out. And often we feel that God does not hear us, or, if He does, He does not choose to answer. And, to make things worse, we have all received bad advice about suffering. We have been told not to be selfish, to stiffen the upper lip, to think of others. "Why do you complain? Think of poor so-and-so, who... ." And, worst of all, we have been told that suffering is punishment for our sins.

But the Psalmist reassures us. Although no one can stand in the face of divine judgment, God forgives us. Having noted that, the poet turns to his anticipation of divine presence, waiting more eagerly for God than "those who watch for the morning." We expect a very special encounter, even from the very depths.

Our Lord states that he has come to give us life "more abundantly." The Greek term "perisson" denotes more than a cornucopia. It means "extraordinarily," "remarkably," "uncommonly," "in a far superior manner." It is more about "how" than "much." Perhaps our suffering is a part of this "abundant" life. And so we "wait" for the Lord.

— Liz Hill