Friday, March 16, 2018


Friday, March 16, 2018
Reading: Psalm 51:1-12

"Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me."   (Psalm 51:10)

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,” we sing as the season of Lent begins. “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” we sing in the liturgy at the Great Entrance of the Eucharist. A clean heart. The heart, as has been said before, is where the whole person comes together – body, spirit, mind. What is intended by the mind takes up residence in the body and spirit. What is done with the body takes residence in the spirit and the mind. All are interwoven. In the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke over and over again about intention. How crucial are the intentions of the heart! Other people see our actions which may seem just, but God sees the motivations, the intentions, the energy behind our acts. In T.S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket struggles with the possibility of martyrdom, and whether he might actually be desiring the glory that comes with it:

“Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me. Amen

  • •       Write a letter to someone you have not spoken to in a long time.


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