Readings for Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus:
Reading: Luke 2:15-21
January 1, 2008
The Rev. Karen Faye Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino, CA
Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. In Jewish tradition, a male child was circumcised on the eighth day, marking that child as a member of the Jewish covenantal community. It was a time of naming and great celebration for the family. As you might remember, the name Jesus means God saves, a very appropriate name given Jesus’ vocational calling.
Today we also celebrate the new year of 2008. It is a day on which many folks relax and ponder their goals for the following year. It has been my tradition to celebrate this day by giving God thanks at the Eucharistic celebration and sharing words of wisdom that I have received during the previous year. Each time I read or hear a saying that touches my soul, I write it down in my journal. What follows is a sampling of 2007.
- “The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.” (Sara Breathnach)
- “A pile of rocks ceases to be rocks when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” (Antoine de St. Exupery)
- “I notice that when I pray coincidences happen. When I stop praying, coincidences stop happening.” (William Temple)
- “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” (T.S. Eliot)
- “Society always rewards those who support its values. But there is a higher authority than the one immediately in charge of us and all of us answer to it in the end.” (FDBD)
- “The gospel does not reside in one person but in all who gather in Jesus’ name.” (FDBD)
- “Reconciliation and return are the sweet fruit of returning from the land of self-centered grief.” (FDBD)
- “Those who wait until they can understand Jesus are going to miss a lot of grace.” (FDBD)
- “A heart cannot be full of resentment and full of love at the same time. If you cease to feel resentment you can begin to feel love.” (FDBD)
- “Doctrinal orthodoxy without the active manifestation of love is not the faith of which St. Paul speaks.” (NIB)
- “The righteous do not always succeed and the wicked are not always overthrown, but evil is eventually self-destructive. And in the end, God will triumph over the worst that we can do.” (NIBC)
- “Those who belong to Christ will oppose violence not by counter-violence (that would be to succumb to the deception of the flesh), but by manifesting the fruit of the Spirit even in the face of murderous opposition.” (NIBC)
- “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” (Albert Einstein)
- “Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” (Emerson)
- “Happiness is when ‘what you think, what you say, and what you do,’ are in harmony.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
- “Women who behave, rarely make history.” (? Bumpersticker)
- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” (George Eliot)
- “One in 25 Americans is a sociopath, the chief symptom of which is the complete absence of conscience. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely not guild, shame or remorse.” (Dr. Martha Stout)
- “A ship is safe in a harbor but that is not what ships are for.” (William Shedd)
- “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” (Plato)
- “As the deer longs for the water brooks, so long my soul for you, O God.” (Psalm 42)
- “The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever&#É;that word is the good news which was preached to you.”(1 Peter 1:24-25)
- “You must remember that pain and suffering are inevitable. We’re all going to experience it. But misery is optional.” (Charlie Wedemeyer on ALS)
- “Most people are brought to faith in Christ, not by argument for it, but by exposure to it.” (Sam Shoemaker)
- “Faith makes things possible, not easy.” (source unknown)
- “Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is dark.”
- “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered and lo, no one was there.”
- “Faith is not a matter of mustering a heroic capacity to believe the odd or the miraculous. It is simply a matter of receiving gratefully a gift that God has chosen to give us, completely without regard to our deserving. It is a matter of reliance on the Word of God as the one truth upon which we state our lives.” (NIBC)
- Pray in my name, heal in my name, and expect folks to be walking, leaping, and praising God.” (FDBD)
| Updated January 7, 2008 |
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