7th Week of Holy Cross Readings Friday

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Matthew 21:28-32
“What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ He said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, ‘Yes, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did his father’s will?” They answered, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.

Prayer of the Faithful, vol. III
MORNING PRAYER – FIRST PRAYER
Lord, have mercy on us and save us.
Hope of the living and Harbor of safety,
where all who are weary and troubled by the surging waves
and misfortunes of this world find rest,
grant that we may safely reach your port,
the place of eternal rest,
with all who have been pleasing to you.
Glory to you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forever.
Amen.

Saint of the Day: Saints Mariam Barwadi (born 1843 in Galilee) and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas (born 1847 in Jerusalem).
Barwadi was born to a Greek-Catholic family in the village of Ibilin in the Galilee but orphaned aged just two years old. She eventually entered the Carmelite monastery in Pau, in south-western France, and subsequently established two Carmelite monasteries in Mangalore, south-western India, and in Bethlehem, where she died in 1878.
Ghattas is renowned for her work with the poor of the region during her lifetime and for establishing the Roasry Sisters order of nuns in Jerusalem.

Meditation:
The Church: Ascetical and Eucharistic
The pagan world into which the Church was born, which the Church challenged and overcame, that pagan society accused the early Christians of not being religious – they were wrong and they were right. How so? They were wrong in the sense that they found it odd that a religion did not have “sacred stuff”. Why did Christians not have sacred groves and forests, magic, sacred animals, secrets and all they “stuff” of paganism. In the famous dialogue (Contra Celsum) between the Church Father, Origen and the pagan philosopher Celsius, he attacks Christians for being kidnappers of children, masquerading as a religion. Therefore in the eyes of pagans they were not a religion for they were not like the religions the world was use to. They were correct although they did not know it, in the sense that Christianity is not a religion, it is the end of religion.
The Christian faith is not a religion in the sense of a remedy for the trials and tribulations of living in the natural world. It does not make us rich in the eyes of the world, it makes us rich in grace, it does not keep us from natural death, it destroys eternal death, it will not alleviate all earthly suffering, it will unite us to the salvific sufferings of the Cross of Jesus. The Church is by its nature ascetical, always poor, always simple, always striving to grow in faith, hope, and love, always in prayer to grow to full stature in Christ. In the early Church, when one asked what is it Christians believed, the answer was lex orandi lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief), by experiencing Christians at prayer, there was the revealing of the truths of the Christian faith.
In the Church we existentially encounter the freedom of being the sons and daughters of God. It is not the freedom that the world offers, the freedom of choice or movement, the freedom of exercising my individualism and my individual freedom. No, the freedom given to us by the Christ is the freedom of our being, freedom from the constrictions of the natural world of birth and death, it is the freedom of eternal communion with one another and with the Holy Trinity. Jesus reveals to us in his Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection that true freedom is the communion/relationship; and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit by whose power Jesus rose from the dead, we too are brought into the eternal communion of love, a love that never ends. This is why the Church is Eucharistic, it is the living vision of the new heaven and the new earth, the Eucharist is never about the individual, is never a private devotion, it is the Body of Christ gathered together, professing the same faith and receiving the same Lord’s unifying sacramental presence in his body and blood.
Conclusion
The Church is a living organism, where sinners are called to be saints, to be holy and find new life in Christ. Life in the Church is a challenge to let go, of the false notions of freedom, of the false understandings of individualism, of what the world judges as success, letting go of attempts to rule what we cant rule, which is the natural world and all its pitfalls. In the Church, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist, we discover the other as brother and sister, not as threat or enemy. In the celebration of the Eucharist we discover that the natural must give way to the divine, the created to the uncreated, death to eternal life.
God calls each of us to be ecclesial beings, to find in our communion as the Body of Christ, communion with the Holy Trinity. We are called not be perfect, wise, rich, important, or successful as the world judges these, for they lead nowhere. We are called to be holy, like the Divine Master, to lay down our lives for our friends, to be the last so that we will be first, to be of love – for only those who love shall see clearly what we now only see dimly, a new heaven and a new earth.
– (Rev.) David A. Fisher