Today is a Red-letter day--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all,

Today is a special day in the liturgical calendar, what's known as a holy day or red-letter day.

It's the day the church remembers St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.

Though I was baptized Russian Orthodox, because I didn't know Russian I never knew what was going on. I never had much use for liturgy, spending most of my adult Christian life in the Baptist church. For the past three years, I have been attending an Anglican Catholic church, part of the Traditional Anglican Communion and learning to love the liturgical year and the Book of Common Prayer.

What the liturgical year does is help you live in the Gospel story through out the year so that every day has readings that keep you in mind of the communion of the saints, all the Christians and prophets and patriarchs and great women of faith who have ever lived. If you love the Scripture readings associated with Easter and Good Friday, or Advent and Christmas, imagine the same thing for the whole year, where we enter into the Transfiguration, Pentecost, and other days, like today where we remember the Apostles, or great martyrs of the faith.

The beauty of the Book of Common Prayer is that the lectionary chooses passages from the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms that resonate together, that group parts that are related historically. It's the best way I've ever come across of a comprehensive, yearly program to read the Old Testament in full once a year, the New Testament twice a year and the Psalms once a month.

If anyone wants to see what it would be like to enter into the church calendar for a day and see what a nun might be reading on a day like today, I've posted them on my blog thedailyoffices.blogspot.com

(the Roman Catholic lectionary used to be the same as ours, but they and the Canterbury Anglicans adopted a more modern version so while they would celebrate the Saint's day, their readings might be different)

The readings for a holy day start on the eve of the previous day, so you might want to read last night's evening prayer readings if you want the complete message for today.

If you want to see the liturgy for morning prayer, click on the link which will take you to the Prayer Book Society's web page and the prayers for that day. We would start when the priest says, "O Lord open thou our lips" . . . .

Then, Psalm 95 (this is beautiful when sung)

Then the Psalms (I have links to the Psalms for today at the daily offices)

Then the first lesson (see link at the daily offices)

Then back to the prayer book for the Te Deum

Then the second lesson and so on.

Today we also would recite the Athanasian Creed if I were to attend "Mattins" or Morning Prayer at our little cathedral.

Anyone struggling with the concept of the Trinity or the Incarnation would do well to familiarize himself with the Athanasian Creed. Someone told me of a Sunday School teacher in an Evangelical church teaching the children that Jesus was created. If that doesn't make you wince, then please read it.

The readings for today (starting last night) are beautiful. They touch on Elijah dropping his mantle on Elisha, the rich young man, the eye of the needle, godliness with contentment is great gain, Jesus calling Matthew, forsaking covetous desires.

I know so many modern churches think this stuff is old and tired and to be thrown out in favor of the latest new thing, but I can't tell you how precious it is to be able to re-discover this tradition, and how sad it makes me to see it being consigned to the dust bin.

I still drop in on the Baptist church where most of my close Christian friends still go, and I love this church, but there may be one reading of Scripture, perhaps from the Message, a paraphrase, in the whole service.

Today, I invite you to enter into the liturgical calendar to remember St. Matthew, to ponder what it means to give up covetous desires and follow Christ, to imagine what it would be like to live out your days like a nun or a monk with hours for prayer, with a pattern of reading that includes the whole of Scripture and not just the bits you always gravitate to, the ones that make you comfortable, and a year where the life, death and resurrection of our Lord is marked daily in some way.