Thursday 17 June 2021
Thursday of week 11 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Thursday of week 11 in Ordinary Time
St Cyprian's treatise on the Lord's Prayer
After the support of bread, we ask for the forgiveness of sins
As the prayer continues, we ask Give us this day our daily bread. This can be understood both spiritually and literally, because either way of understanding is rich in divine usefulness to our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life, and this bread does not belong to anyone at all, but to us. And so, just as we say Our Father, because he is the father of those who understand and believe, so also we call it our bread, because Christ is the bread of us who come into contact with his body.
We ask that this bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ and daily receive the Eucharist as the food of salvation may not be prevented, by the interposition of some heinous sin, from partaking of the heavenly bread and be separated from Christ’s body, for as he says: I am the bread of life which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of my bread, he will live for ever; and the bread I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.
So when he says that whoever eats of his bread will live for ever; and as it is clear that those are indeed living who partake of his body and, having the right of communion, receive the Eucharist, so, on the other hand, we must fear and pray lest anyone should be kept at a distance from salvation who, being withheld from communion, remains separate from Christ’s body. For he has given us this warning: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no life in you. And therefore we ask that our bread – that is, Christ – may be given to us daily, so that we who live in Christ may not depart from his sanctification and his body.
After this we entreat for our sins, saying Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. After the supply of food, pardon of sin is also asked for.
How necessary, how provident, how salutary are we reminded that we are sinners, since we have to beg for forgiveness, and while we ask for God’s pardon, we are reminded of our own consciousness of guilt! Just in case anyone should think himself innocent and, by thus exalting himself, should more utterly perish, he is taught and instructed that he sins every day, since he is commanded to pray daily for forgiveness.
This is what John warns us in his epistle: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and just and will forgive us. In his epistle he combines two things, both that we ought to beg for mercy because of our sins and that we will receive forgiveness when we ask for it. This is why he says that the Lord is faithful to forgive sins, keeping faith with what he promised; because he who taught us to pray for our debts and sins has promised that his fatherly mercy and pardon will follow.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Botolph, Abbot
From the sermons of St Augustine
Concerning the universal call to holiness
‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ The Lord’s command that if any wishes to follow him he must deny himself, seems hard and difficult. But after all, it is not hard and difficult seeing that it is the command of him who himself aids in the carrying out of what he commands.
For what is said to him in the psalm is true, ‘Because of your command I have followed the hard road.’ True, too, are his own words, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ In a word, whatsoever in the precept is hard is made easy by love.
What is the meaning of ‘Let him take up his cross’ ? It means, let him bear whatever is vexatious: on that understanding, let him follow me. For when he begins to follow me in my character and my teaching, he will have many to contradict him, many to forbid him, many to dissuade him — and that takes place actually among those who are the companions of Christ. The people who wished to deter the blind man from calling out were at that time walking with Christ. Whether therefore it is a matter of threats or flatteries or any kinds of prohibitions, if you wish to follow, turn to the cross, endure, bear up, and refuse to surrender.
And so in this world, which is holy, good, reconciled, saved, — or rather in the process of being saved, but at present saved by hope, — ‘for in this hope we were saved’ — in this world, that is the Church which follows Christ in her totality, he has said to all men at once, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself.’
This is not a case where virgins ought to hear the exhortation and married women not, where widows ought to hear and young wives not, where monks ought to hear and married men not, or clerics ought to hear but not the laity, but rather let the universal Church, the universal body, all her members divided and distributed in their several offices, let them all follow Christ.
Let her follow in her unique unity, let her follow as the dove, let her follow as the bride, let her follow, ransomed and endowed by the blood of her spouse. There the innocence of virgins has its place, there the chastity of widows has its place, there the purity of marriage has its place.
Let all those members which have their place there, each in their natural kind, each in their own place, each in their own way, follow Christ; let them deny themselves, that is, let them not be presumptuous; let them take up their cross, that is, endure in the world for Christ whatever the world has brought on them. Let them love him who alone does not deceive, who alone is not cheated, who alone does not cheat. Let them love him because his promise is true. But because he does not give immediately, faith is shaken. Endure, persevere, bear, put up with delay, and then you have borne the cross.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.