This Daily Devotion is to help our members and others reflect on the understanding of Christian service to our Lord.
Devotion for Wednesday, December 27, 2023
The Rt. Rev. Archimandrite, Msgr. George Appleyard
Saturday before Ash Wednesday
An Invitation to Prayer
Atavis et armis!
By our forebears and our weapons!
—By the prayers of all our predecessors in this Order,
and by the arms provided for spiritual combat,
give us victory, O God!
The Canticle of Jonah 2:7b-10
Still you restored my tortured life,
O Lord my God.
When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered the Lord
and my plea reached you in your Holy Temple.
Those who embrace dumb idols
turn their back on mercy.
I will sacrifice to you with gratitude
and with a joyful voice,
and I will do what I have vowed,
for the Lord rescues!
From Basil’s Letter #46, to a fallen nun
While we can, let us lift ourselves from the fall. Let us never despair of ourselves, if only we depart from evil. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. O come, let us worship and bow down; let us weep before him. The Word who invited us to repentance calls aloud, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matt. 11:28 There is, then, a way to salvation, if we want it. Death in his might may have swallowed us up, but the Lord wipes away every tear from all the faces of those that repent. The Lord is faithful in all he says. He does not lie when he says, “Though your sins be scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Though they be as red as crimson they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18
A Prayer
The first light of a new spiritual day begins to show, and shortly we will be mustered for combat. Grant us, O God, not simply a burning desire to make the best of the opportunity, but also the steely determination to see it through to the end. Amen.