Mount Sinai |
Sinai view |
Night Office Readings, as we are mid-Lent, the OT words resounded the words of the FORTY DAY AND FORTY NIGHTS, reminding of Moses' being with the Lord forty days and forty nights, not to eat or drink water.
Monastic Lectionary for the Divine Office
Edited by
Friends of Henry Ashworth
Exordium Books 1982
The Covenant Renewed 34:10-2834:28 So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
THIRD WEEK OF LENT - Thursday Year II
First Reading
Year
II
From the book of Exodus (34:10-29)
From the book of Exodus (34:10-29)
Responsory
Hebrews
5:8.9.7
Though
he was the Son of God.
Christ
learned obedience through what he suffered; + and now, for all who obey him,
he
has become the source of eternal life.
In
the days of his earthly life he prayed, crying aloud. and
he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard. + And now, for ...
Second
Reading
From
the treatise On Prayer by Tertullian (De oratione,
28-29: CCL 1, 273-274)
In this extract
from a work addressed to catechumens between 198 and 220 A.D., Tertullian
speaks of the interior and exterior discipline of liturgical prayer, which is a
spiritual sacrifice of great power and efficacy.
Prayer
is the spiritual offering that has replaced the ancient sacrifices. What
good do I receive from the multiplicity of your sacrifices? asks God. I
have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs
and the blood of bulls and goats. Who has asked for these from your hands? What
God has asked for we learn from the gospel. The hour will come, it says,
when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
God is spirit, and so he looks for worshipers who are like himself.
We
are the true worshipers and the true priests. Praying in spirit we offer prayer
to God as a sacrifice. Prayer is an appropriate and an acceptable sacrifice to
God. It is the offering he has asked for and the offering he expects.
We
must make this offering with our whole heart. We must fatten it on faith. prepare
it by truth. keep it unblemished by innocence, spotless by chastity, and we
must crown it with love. We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession
of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it wiU gain for us all
that we ask of God. What can God refuse to prayer offered in spirit
and in truth, when he himself asks for such prayer? How many proofs of its
efficacy we read about, hear of, and believe!