This Daily Devotion is to help our members and others reflect on the understanding of Christian service to our Lord.
Devotion for Wednesday, February 9, 2022
The Rt. Rev. Archimandrite, Msgr. George Appleyard
An Invitation to Prayer
Allow me to approach you, O God,
to see your face in my heart
and hear your voice in my mind.
—And then fill us with the joy of your presence
and the security of your guiding hand.
Psalm 15/16:7-11
I will bless the Lord for guiding me—
for my conscience guiding me at night.
I was always aware of the Lord’s presence;
he is at my right hand to keep me from faltering.
And so my heart was glad and my tongue joyful;
and more, my body will shelter in hope
because you will not confine my soul in the Underworld,
and neither will you hand over your devoted one to corruption.
Your face will fill me with joy,
as your right hand is full of delights.
From Basil’s “Lakizois” Homily
“The one who looks on kindly will be treated nicely.” Prov. 12:13b This obscure adage is intended to train our thinking. Have you grasped its meaning on your own? Or, like a diligent pupil, do you seek to learn in what way a person who looks around kindly merits good treatment? Now we humans do not see qualities as we wish, but we see qualities as they exist. If something is rough on the surface it will be seen exactly as it exists in nature. But if we gaze on things in a kindly way (leia: smooth, polished), why does that merit praise?… Interpret the text in the higher sense. The differences that exist among the brethren are obvious to you: one is poor, another is rich, one is a foreigner, another a relative. Either they are judged by you when you sit on a jury, or they need you to share your goods with them. If you sit in judgment, do not look in an unfriendly way, seeing the rich as high class, or the pauper as low class. If someone is standing at your door in need, not even then should you look on him harshly. When you size up things that way, you will not be treated kindly. All (people) have the same nature, both this one and that one are human beings.
A Prayer
Guide me, O God our Father, and teach me how to look with a kind and gentle eye on everything around me, even on those things which might be reprehensible, not to whitewash them with moral cowardice, but to see those circumstances which may have brought a person to act in that way. Let me always hate sin but love the sinner, as Jesus did. And then, let me turn that same searching eye on myself! Amen!