<![CDATA[St Paul's Episcopal Church, Cambria

<![CDATA[St Paul's Episcopal Church, Cambria - Daily Devotional 2017]]>Tue, 06 May 2025 00:29:02 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[3 March 2017 Reflection]]>Mon, 06 Mar 2017 05:05:52 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/3-march-2017-reflection

Isaiah 58:1-9A; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6AB, 18-19; Matthew 9:14-15

REFLECTION

One of my friends has a sticker on her computer that says “No Coffee, No Workee.” I couldn’t agree more. Whether made in my french press at home, or ordered from Uncommon Grounds, it’s hard for me to imagine starting the day without a cup (or two) of coffee.

Despite being raised going to church, I had never observed a Lenten fast until Georgetown. I wasn’t sure what to give up my first year, but I wanted to make it meaningful. With much fear and trembling I decided to give up coffee for these 40 days. Though I didn’t experienced headaches during my fast, I may have caused a few. Halfway through the fast my wife gently said to me, “You can’t fast coffee next year.” I was surprised and asked why not. She replied, “Giving up coffee isn’t just a sacrifice for you, it’s a sacrifice for me.” As I reflected on my general mood during those weeks, I realized I may have unintentionally let my piety overshadow my usually pleasant demeanor.

The people of Israel practiced piety through fasting, but they simultaneously mistreated people. Isaiah’s message in the passage we read today is that piety without caring for people completely misses the point. As important as this season is, God cares more about how we treat people than how pious we can be.

Together we’ve given up different things from food to social media. Many of these sacrifices will be difficult, especially during times of stress. As we begin this journey together, let’s hold each other accountable as my wife did for me. Let’s remember that God cares more about how we treat the people in our lives than He does the important sacrifices we make.

Rev. Jonathan Rice is Associate Director of Residential Ministry in the Office of Campus Ministry.

Loving God, please help me to be loving. As I commit my sacrifice to you during this Lenten season, help me to remember my larger commitment to your children. Help me to remember that no matter how big my sacrifice may be, my faith rests solely in the sacrifice Jesus made for me on the cross. Thank you for your overwhelming love; please help me, especially during this season, to share that love. Amen.

]]><![CDATA[5 March 2017 Reflection]]>Sun, 05 Mar 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/5-march-2017-reflection

Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

REFLECTION

At first reading we may find the stories of the temptation in the Garden and the Temptation of Jesus to be odd and unsettling. The childhood image of a cartoonish red devil tempting Jesus or the image of a talking snake may not sit well with our post-modern sensibilities. Yet, the tempter and its temptations are real and present in our lives. As displayed in today’s passages we are tempted most often in our most vulnerable state when we are tired, hungry, looking for meaning, value, and worth. We are tempted with the varied voices of the world around us and within us telling us to feed our empty selves with power, control, lust, and self-satisfaction. These voices present themselves not as being inherently evil but as good and well-intentioned desires. We too like Christ are faced with the temptations of cheap satisfaction by turning stones into bread, we are tempted by sensationalism to make ourselves larger than we ought to be, we are tempted to bow down and worship success believing its false promises of satisfaction. The temptations of the good found in our internships, jobs, grades, or relationships promise to satisfy but they will not leave us any happier or more whole than we were before. This Lenten season we attune our hearts to hear the true voice that speaks out over the lies of our temptations. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We live not through the means of this world. But by the love, mercy, and goodness that is to be found in God as made known in Jesus Christ.

Rev. Brandon Harris is Protestant Chaplain in the Office of Campus Ministry.

]]><![CDATA[4 March 2017 Reflection]]>Sat, 04 Mar 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/4-march-2017-reflection

Isaiah 58:9B-14; Psalm 86:1-2; 3-4, 5-6; Luke 5:27-32

REFLECTION

Some of my favorite passages from scripture are stories about Jesus’ encounters with the Pharisees. It’s amusing to hear Jesus put them in their place, but I have a tendency when I read about the Pharisees to also look at
others as sinners, and think about how I can be more merciful like Jesus. I think to myself, how can I reach out to our modern day tax collectors more? How can I, a righteous person, welcome the less righteous to the table? But looking at the reading from Isaiah and the psalm, I am humbled. I’m forced to reflect: how often do I actively remove “oppression, false accusation and malicious speech” from my life? Our passage says that only then, shall the light rise. Further, our psalmist prays, “answer me, for I am afflicted and poor.” He acknowledges his own shortcomings. So then, when I really think about it, what makes me believe I am not Levi in the story? For Levi did not just follow Jesus, but he then “gave a great banquet for him in his house.” I may be following Jesus, but am I bringing him into my life to guide me in the ways I fall short to live as God teaches? How can I even claim to be on Jesus’ level and wish to reach out to others, when I haven’t accepted that I need Jesus just as much? If I finished the Gospel thinking I was the healthy without need of a physician, I would be gravely mistaken. I am always in need of Jesus’ mercy; I am Levi awaiting the salvation that Easter brings.

Alexis Larios, Class of 2018, is a Government and English major in the College.

]]><![CDATA[March 2, 2017 - Reflection]]>Thu, 02 Mar 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/march-05th-2017

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; Luke 9:22-25

REFLECTION

Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

Hope is something that is not always in great supply when it is needed most. It’s often the thing we lose touch with first, when times get tough or the outlook on the future dims. Hope can be elusive, tenuous, and sometimes seem to just “slip” through our fingers.
Today’s readings, however, give us the opportunity to look at hope differently. The refrain of the Psalm reminds us that those who hope in the Lord are blessed and that the Lord will watch over their way in life. But what does it mean to hope in the Lord as the psalmist urges?
To me, true hope is found in following the life-giving, self-denying love of Jesus. The journey of Lent is a pilgrimage into this kind of love. As today’s Gospel reminds us, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected…be killed and on the third day be raised.” (Luke 9: 22) How great is the love of Christ to willingly walk the way toward his own death? How incredible is the renewed hope that each of us has because Jesus gave himself in this way? And, how amazing is the opportunity to make this journey with Christ over and over?
As we take our first steps into the Lenten Season, standing today on the “porch of Lent,” may this be the hope that guides us. Over the next six weeks, let us not follow our usual ways of responding to what life puts in front of us, but let us each turn in new hope to find new ways to live everyday in the love and mercy of God.
James Wickman is Director of Music, Liturgy, and Catholic Life.

]]><![CDATA[March 1, 2017 - Reflection]]>Wed, 01 Mar 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/march-1-2017-reflection

Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6AB, 12-13, 14, 17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2;

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

REFLECTION

At the threshold of our Lenten pilgrimage we expect asceticism, but we encounter poetry. Joel confronts us with “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” Then II Corinthians proclaims, “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” And, finally, in today’s gospel Jesus exhorts us to find that “inner room” where we can pray in secret. These readings invite us to look at Lent in a little different way. Maybe, just maybe, Lent is less a season of “giving up,” of mortification and self-denial but more a season of “taking in,” of pausing to discover that the prose of our life can become poetry.

Lent calls us to pause, to reflect on what it means to proclaim “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Lent shatters categories as we try to get our minds around assertions like, “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). We have to feel the chill of unanticipated fulfillment when Jesus assures his partner in death, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). For Lent is a season of poetic reversals and symbolic tensions—all revolving around a God unafraid to die that we might embrace life. But to enter into that graced paradox means taking time for Lenten wonder in the confines of that inner room, my heart.

Rev. Howard Gray, S.J., is Interim Vice President for Mission and Ministry.

]]><![CDATA[Welcome-Georgetown University's Lent Devotional]]>Tue, 28 Feb 2017 08:00:00 GMThttps://stpaulscambria.org/daily-devotional-2017/welcome-georgetown-universitys-lent-devotionalLent can be guided by super-ego and/or guilt. We feel a need to repent and to reform, to undo the selfishness and waywardness that can characterize human history. And there is a place for such moral and spiritual reconstruction. And when that reconstruction is guided by grace, the gift of God’s self-communication, it is a consolation; that is, a blessed impulse towards life and love.

Lent can also be guided by two other realities. First, that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). Second, that “I no longer call you servants...I have called you friends, for everything I have learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:5). In other words, Lent is also about the gift of divine love that shows forth in Jesus Christ and the gift of friendship that Christ offers his disciples and us on the eve of his Passion and Death.

The reflections that our sisters and brothers offer us in this Lenten devotional come to us as reflections of God’s love for this entire Georgetown community but also as gifts of self-revelation, one of the signs of genuine friendship. We are blessed in this collection from “friends in the Lord,” to appeal to a treasured Ignatian phrase. We are grateful to those who have inspired, labored over, and produced this testimony of friendship.

Prayer is shared but always lodged too in the sanctuary of our own hearts. Consequently, these prayers will be read from each of our own hearts too. We may discover, each in her or his Lenten journey, those places where we need love and friendship, forgiveness and reconciliation, to feel the touch of mercy and to give the touch of mercy.

Our Lenten experience embraces all this community and reaches out beyond this community. For Lent challenges us to empty ourselves of whatever separates us from others, from whatever prompts us to characterize another as “the stranger,” from whatever fans our suspicions into fear. Lent calls us to remember that there is no Lent unless it is crowned by the friendship of the Resurrection.

Rev. Howard Gray, S.J.
Interim Vice President for Mission and Ministry]]>