06/11/2026
Thoughts on Biblical readings, and prayers for the week of June 14th - 20th
CAROA/NAECC Cycle of Prayer
Day 14
Worker Brothers of the Holy Spirit and Worker Sisters of the Holy Spirit
Day 15
Companions of St. Luke-Benedictine
Day 16
Order of St. Aidan & St. Hilda
Lindisfarne Community
Day 17
Northumbria Community
Community at the Crossing
Day 18
Society of St. John the Evangelist
Day 19
Community of Francis and Clare
Day 20
The Iona Community
St. Hildegard’s Community
The notes on readings may be part of your daily Bible reading.
Also included are thoughts for saints’ days and the Anglican Cycle of Prayer
Sunday June 14th: The Second Sunday after Trinity Proper 6 Week 11 Psalter Week 3
Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever
Matthew 9 v35 – 10 v8: Jesus had compassion for those who came out to hear him when he was on his journeys around the cities and villages and could see that they were like sheep without a shepherd to guide them, no doubt echoing Ezekiel’s comments about the leadership of Israel (Ezekiel 34). They were without proper leadership and were reaching out for good instruction, and healing for their sick. He used another farming analogy that the harvest was plentiful, but there were few labourers. It required more than him to extend his mission so he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority to heal those who were sick in mind or body. At this point in his ministry he told them only to go to Jewish people, not Samaritans or Gentiles, no doubt as his disciples were not yet equipped to cross such cultural boundaries. It is possible that Jesus saw his followers as being a remnant within Israel which would later be able to reach out to the nations, which is how it actually turned out to be.
Anglican and Porvoo Cycle of Prayer: Church of the Province of South East Asia: Abp. Titus Chung Khiam Boon, who is also the Bishop of Singapore. The Province consists of the four dioceses: Singapore, West Malaysia, Kuching (covering Sarawak and Brunei), and Saba (which covers the Malaysian state of the same name and mission stations in parts of Indonesia and Thailand). Lolland-Faister (Denmark): Bp. Marianne Gaarden. The diocese has 80 parishes, 108 church buildings with 57 clergy and about 77,640 members. Argyll and the Isles (Scottish Episcopal Church): Bp. David Railton. The diocese has 32 active congregations and 8 stipendiary clergy serving alongside local lay leaders and ministry teams. Connor (Church of Ireland): Bp. George Davison. The diocese had 75 parishes with 110 church buildings. 80 active clergy serve around 45,000 members.
Monday 15th: Evelyn Underhill. Born in 1875, she became interested in mysticism and contemplative prayer when in her thirties and the publication of her book ‘Mysticism’ in 1911 brought her to the attention of theologians and set her on the path of writing and lecturing on worship. She taught that the life of contemplative prayer was for any Christian, not just for monks and nuns. She became friends with the Roman Catholic theologian Baron Friedrich von Hugel, who greatly influenced her and became her spiritual director. She remained an Anglican and was in great demand as a retreat conductor. A number of her talks were published along with her letters. Her books included The Mystic Way; Man and the Supernatural; Worship; Light of Christ; Abba, and The Mystery of Sacrifice. She died on this day in 1941. As we give thanks for her insights and teaching, let us pray for all retreat conductors, especially those known to us.
Matthew 5 v 38-42: An eye for an eye? Jesus told his followers to avoid legal retribution by speaking with rhetorical overstatement, thereby challenging his hearers to think about their responses to those who were aggressive towards them. Such actions might present them with an opportunity to show that they had no honour or valuables worth fighting over compared with the opportunity to show their love of God and respect for everyone else. Two wrongs don’t make a right we might say when we are not the victim, although when we are one we want to cry out for justice! But the Sermon on the Mount isn’t just about us it is about Jesus. What we have in these verses is part of his way of life, and he asked nothing of his followers that he wouldn’t be facing himself. Matthew is inviting us through his account of Jesus’ life and teaching to discover the God who loves everybody through the loving and suffering Christ. What we have to do is to simply live with these verses in the context of Jesus’ ministry and that of our own and ponder upon them at great length to see how they might be taken into our own situations.
Anglican Cycle: Ahoada (Nigeria): Bp. Hanson Onyejiuwanaka Bernard.
Tuesday 16th: St. Richard of Chichester: Most of us have at some time, used the prayer ascribed to him:
Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
For all the benefits thou hast given me,
for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen
Richard de Wych was born at Droitwich in 1197, the son of a yeoman farmer. As a boy and teenager, he helped on the farm, as well as completing the education necessary to get him into Oxford and then Bologna universities, eventually specialising as a canon lawyer. When thirty-eight he was appointed Chancellor of Oxford University. His former tutor, Edmund of Abingdon, became Archbishop of Canterbury and invited Richard to be his Chancellor. The Archbishop became involved in disputes with both the Pope and King Henry III and eventually went into voluntary exile in France, accompanied by Richard, who was with him when he died. Richard actively supported Edmund’s canonisation, which happened six years later. Richard had by then recognised a vocation to the priesthood and went to Orleans to study with the Dominicans and was there ordained. He returned to England and served in the parishes of Charing and Deal, in Kent, The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface of Savoy, invited him to be his Chancellor, and when the Bishop of Chichester died the archbishop appointed Richard against the wishes of the Cathedral Chapter and King Henry III. The Pope supported Richard and consecrated him at Orleans. However, the King wouldn’t restore the episcopal estates, and Richard became penniless, staying with a priest called Simon, on the outskirts of Worthing. During the following two years Richard walked around the areas of Sussex visiting parishes which were under the patronage of the archbishop. When able to fully take up his office he was a vegetarian and lived frugally. He reformed the behaviour of his clergy, which didn’t go down well in some quarters (!) and overruled the King who had supported some of them. His Cathedral was in a poor condition following a couple of fires, and he set about restoring it. He insisted that people should receive the sacrament without payment; that clergy should wear clerical dress, and that services should be conducted in a dignified manner. In 1253 the Pope asked Richard to go on a preaching tour to strum up support for the Crusades. He was unhappy about this, but felt he had to do it because of the support the pope had given him. His health had been deteriorating and he collapsed and died in Dover on April 3rd of that year. His remains were taken to Chichester Cathedral and interred there on this day in the Chapel he had dedicated to St. Edmund, his former archbishop and friend. As we remember him today let us say the prayer he is so well known for, and pray for the present bishop, diocese and cathedral of Chichester.
Matthew 5 v 43-48: Love your enemies: Loving your neighbour as yourself is found in Leviticus 19 v18 and implied throughout the Pentateuch with the Ten Commandments demanding good relations between you and your neighbours’ household animals and property. This love is about having care and respect for others that is usually reserved for one’s best friends. There has been much thought about the expression Jesus used “You have heard it said ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy,’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is difficult to pin down the ‘…hate your enemy,’ as a quotation from Hebrew scripture or law, although there is a suggestion that to hate is sometimes used as a Semitic expression for to love less or to consider a person or object to be of less value. Although equally it could simply have been common usage with people using it as an expression of extreme dislike – much as people may use it today! Jesus’ attitude is grounded in God’s concern for all people, both good and bad. Hatred easily escalates into violence, only love can ultimately defuse hatred. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect means walking in the footsteps of Jesus who demonstrated for us the path of righteousness. We can’t remove all the hatred in the world or our society, but we can dent it!
Anglican Cycle: Aipo Rongo (Papua New Guinea): Bp. Nathan Ingen, who is also serving as the acting archbishop.
Wednesday 17th: St. Botolph: Botolph and his brother Adolph were young Saxon nobles living in the 7th century and were sent for their education to a Benedictine Abbey in France. Adolph rose to be a Dutch Bishop, whilst Botolph returned to his native East Anglia. He was given, by King Anna, a grant of land on which to build a monastery. This land was at Icanhoh, a site that some claim to be the present Boston (Botolph’s Town) in Lincolnshire but is more likely to have been Iken, near Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Certainly, Icanhoh was in a marshland area, for Botolph was said to have expelled the swamps of their “Devils” – in fact, he probably had the marshes drained and eliminated the “marsh gas” with its night glow. St. Botolph died in 680 after a long life of Christian endeavour and teaching. The monastery lived on for two centuries more but in 870 was destroyed by Danish invaders. King Edgar (963-967) ordered that the remains of the saint be taken from the monastery ruins and be divided into three parts: the head to be taken to Ely, the middle to be taken to Thorney, and the remainder to be taken to Westminster Abbey. The relics were brought to London through various towns and eventually through the four City gates of Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and Billingsgate. The churches at the entrances to these gates were named after him. The first three remain, but the one at Billingsgate was destroyed in the Great Fire (1666) and never rebuilt. It seems that as his relics were conveyed from place to place, his name became associated with wayfarers and travellers.
Matthew 6 v 1-6, 16-18: Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them. The main argument in this section is against hypocritical behaviour. ‘Hypocrite’ in Greek means actor, someone giving a convincing performance as someone else. Thus, in the eyes of Jesus someone who parades false piety by making a show of donating alms, which might actually be a small amount considering his wealth, and by making an exaggerated show of how generous he is, will get praise from the crowd and that earthly recognition will be his reward, as there will be none in heaven. Similarly, one’s own prayers should be in private, from the heart, and with an economy of words, for God already knows our needs. Verses 16-18 may refer to the days of fasting in Jewish communities which used to take place on Mondays and Thursdays with some people showing how virtuous they were by their appearance. We don’t know for certain who these verses, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, were aimed at although in a non-canonical manual called The Didache which was fairly widely circulated in the Early Church, and contained instructions on fasting told its readers to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays to avoid being thought to be like those who fasted on the other days.
Anglican Cycle: Ajayi Crowther (Nigeria): Bp. Collins Olufemi Babaloia.
Thursday 18th: Bernard Mizeki: Born around 1861 in Mozambique (then Portuguese East Africa), he migrated to South Africa to look for work when he was twelve. He lived in the slums of Cape Town and worked as a labourer, while attending evening classes run by SSJE brothers. When they opened a boarding house, they offered Bernard a room and pocket money for helping with the cleaning. He became interested in religious studies and was baptised. He moved from the evening classes to Zonnebloem College, where he proved to be an enthusiastic scholar with a gift for languages. He mastered English, French Dutch and at least eight African languages. In 1891 Bernard volunteered to assist Bishop Knight Bruce with his mission in Mashonaland as a catechist and teacher. The bishop asked him to establish a mission for a Mashona tribe on Mount Mahopo, near Marandellas. He built a hut and fed himself by hunting and growing vegetables. He said the Anglican daily offices, learned the Shona language and taught adults and children. The Mashona people loved music and Bernard led them in singing. After a time, he married one of the chief’s many granddaughters. Disaster struck with the Matabele rising in which many white settlers and their African workers were massacred. Some of the chief’s sons were jealous of Bernard’s influence upon their father and arranged for the witch doctors to denounce him as a sorcerer, and on this day in 1896 three of chief’s sons went to his hut at night and attacked him with spears. His pregnant wife escaped and went for help, but when she and they returned to the hut he had disappeared. It is thought that those who attacked him removed his body and disposed of it. His shrine at Theydon, near Marandellas is a place of annual pilgrimage and a college bears his name. He was only about thirty-six when he was murdered. As we remember Bernard Mizeki today with thanksgiving, let us also pray for all men and women who teach the faith in Africa today, and the St. Bernard Mizeki Men’s Guild, which promotes Christian leadership across Southern Africa
Matthew 6 v 7-15: The Lord’s Prayer: True private prayer does not require a complicated ritual but a conversation from the heart within an assured relationship with God. This is the community prayer of those who know their dependence upon God for their daily needs; who need their wrongdoings or debts forgiven and seek his protection from all that tests them each day. It is not the prayer of the self-assured and complacent, but of the humble and meek who will inherit the earth. Although God was referred to as the Father of Israel by rabbis and appears thus in 3 Maccabees 5 v7, 6 v8 and 7 v6 (a Deuterocanonical book), he was rarely called that in personal prayers. However, Jesus wanted his disciples to recognise God as the loving and caring Father of humankind and to recognise their intimate relationship and their dependence upon him. The prayer moves on by recognising God as the Holy One, whose glory would be fully seen in the future kingdom if valued in the present time by doing his will. Although Jesus taught his disciples and followers to head towards the kingdom of the future, they also needed bread to keep them going in the present. If they wished God to forgive them their debts, then they too should forgive others who owed them. While debts include money, from other writings of the day it was also a term for sins against God or for hurting someone else. ‘And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one,’ is how the NRSV translates the ending of the prayer. It was commonly held in the first century that the world was immanently coming to an end, an expectation not only by the Jews. Furthermore, there would be a great testing when that would happen according to some branches of Judaism, and continued by Christ, that the good people would be resurrected and the bad go to, or remain in, Sheol the place of the evil one. The issue was not so much whether there would be a testing, but that God would bring one safely through it. The prayer was a communal one because of the plural pronouns, and although it looked to the future kingdom it would also be a personal prayer for people who should be gentle and compassionate and face the things that tested their beliefs and actions each day.
Anglican Cycle: Akobo (South Sudan): Bp. Joseph Yual Yoi. The diocese is based in the conflict affected border town of Akobo, where the church plays a vital role in providing humanitarian support, fostering tribal reconciliation, and advocating for peace in the region.
Friday 19th: Sundar Singh was born in 1889 the youngest son of a Sikh landowning family in the state of Patiala. He was sent to an American Presbyterian School, but greatly disliked their Christian religious instruction. He was even known to belong to a group of fellow students who burnt pages of the Bible as a protest against the school’s attempts at evangelism. However, when aged sixteen he had a conversion experience after reading the words ‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest.’ When this became known in his home village, the people and some members of his own family became very angry with him and the school, to the point that the school had to close as the local shops refused to sell them items including food. His parents agreed to send him to a similar school in Ludhiana in order to finish his studies, probably hoping he was just going through an adolescent phase and would return to their Sikh religion. This, however, only served to strengthen his new beliefs, and upon his return home he had to face the wrath of his family and neighbours, especially when he cut his hair. His father disowned him and he left home with only the clothes he was wearing and enough money for travelling to Patiala. On the journey he stopped at Ropur to visit an Indian pastor. He arrived feeling very ill. The local doctor examined him and declared that he had been poisoned. It became clear that his family felt he had shamed them and didn’t want him to reach Patiala. His family even went there to the American Mission to try to persuade him to return home with them, and on one occasion tried to kidnap him. The missionaries sent him to Simla where he could be at peace to read his Bible and pray. On 3rd September 1905 he was baptised by an Anglican priest. Sundar wanted there to be an authentic Indian Christianity without the trappings of the West. He donned the saffron robes of a holy man and went bare footed to spread the gospel among people of the Punjab and Afghanistan, often being run out of villages and having to sleep wherever he could find a cave or jungle clearing. In 1907 he worked in a L***r Asylum at Sabathu, and in a plague camp in Lahore. The following year he travelled to Tibet and upon his return to Lahore upon the advice of friends he signed up for a two-year course in theology at St. John’s College. Upon passing his final examinations he was recommended for ordination, but after much thought decided against becoming an Anglican priest. He wanted to be free to cross religious boundaries and speak directly to people of other faiths. Once he was so long in the jungle that his friends in Simla thought he must have been killed by wild animals, and so they held a memorial service, only to have him visit them at a later date. He suffered from capture and torture in Nepal and was thrown into a well and given up for dead in Tibet yet rescued three days later. In 1918 he made a long tour of South India and Ceylon, and the following year he was invited to Burma, Malaya, China and Japan. In 1923, Singh made the last of his regular summer visits to Tibet and came back exhausted. His preaching days were apparently over and, in the following years, in his own home or those of his friends in the Simla hills, he gave himself to meditation, fellowship and writing some of the things he had lived to preach. In 1929, against all his friends' advice, Singh wished to make one last journey to Tibet. He was last seen on 18 April 1929 setting off on this journey. Later that month he was seen in Kalka, a small town below Simla. He was a prematurely aged figure in his yellow robe among pilgrims and holy men who were beginning their own trek to one of Hinduism's holy places some miles away. Where he went after that is unknown. Whether he died of exhaustion or reached the mountains remains a mystery. A remarkable man!
Matthew 6 v 19-23: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth: While you can’t take it with you and we all know that we shall ultimately be judged upon our relationships, compassion and generosity, who of us hasn’t bought a lottery ticket and in our minds thought how we could spend the millions a winning ticket would bring? The love of money may be the root of evil, but it may also be the means for great philanthropy. What Jesus seems to be saying is that a life totally devoted to acquiring wealth for the sake of personal aggrandisement is a life lost, for the possessions may own the person who has them. This Petertide I shall have been in ordained ministry for 53 years, and during that time have met and shared a dram with several people who were very wealthy and, although they had holidays in very exotic places and owned thousands of acres, they were not particularly happy people as they found it necessary to use all their energy in maintaining their wealth and status. Strangely enough I shouldn’t have wanted to swap places with any of them because their possessions possessed them! I have heard some American evangelists suggest that if you love God and give money to their organisation God will bring you riches. How unlike Jesus’ teaching that seems to me! What Jesus tells his followers in this passage is that the place to store up their treasure is in heaven, not on earth, and ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ To store up treasures there would be to care for the poor and downtrodden and to live in the pure light of the Good News as a generous member of the community rather than a miser of one’s own house. Wealth isn’t a bad thing of itself – it all depends upon how it is used.
Anglican Cycle: Akoko (Nigeria): Bp. Jacob Bada
Saturday 20th:
Matthew 6 v 24-34: No one can serve two masters….you cannot serve God and wealth: This follows on from yesterday’s thoughts on wealth and how it can possess its owner. We have probably all seen people who have been so bound up in their own business or profession that they have had no time for anyone else. This can also happen with relationships when a couple are so enthralled with each other that nobody else gets a look-in with their affections. I have ministered to a few people who have been terribly lonely in old age when on their own they have no friends and have never had a faith, belonged to a church, or any other organisation. The Scrooge situation? At least he in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ learned his lesson. Our challenge by the Gospel is to build up our wealth in heaven by our deeds and relationships with God and our community, so that we can experience the joys of fellowship and faith and have great hope for the future.
Anglican Cycle: Akoko Edo (Nigeria): Bp. Ebenezer Omeiza Saki.
For Monastic and Religious Orders and Vocations
O Lord Jesus Christ, you became poor for our sake, that we might be made rich through your poverty: Guide and sanctify, we pray, those whom you call to follow you under the vows of religious life and community, that by their prayer and service they may enrich your Church, and by their life and worship may glorify your Name; for you reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
