Day 14

Scripture

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:17-24 (NRSV)

Prayer
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, you Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

“Second Sunday after Christmas Day,” The Book of Common Prayer (1979, USA)

Reflection

“And this certainly is the only way whereby it is possible for our hearts ever to be made pure; for though our human nature in general was purified by being united to the Divine Person, our human persons in particular can never be purified but by partaking of the Divine Nature; which we can never do any other way, but only by believing and trusting in that Divine Person to Which our nature is united, even Jesus Christ.”

Bishop William Beveridge (1637-1708)