The path of servanthood
Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 2:58PM 
The devil challenges Jesus to use his divine might for strictly personal benefit. In effect, the reference to bread is simply the bait that hides the hook. The temptation is not really about food but about turning Jesus away from the difficult road that the Father wills for his Son (26:39). Gospel of Matthew Curtis Mitch, Edward Sir
In our baptism we are given identity and vocation. We participate in his death and resurrection. We are instruments of the divine love.
There will be a particular shape of all this in each life. The common baptismal identity and vocation has a unique expression in each life. Personality and circumstances come into play. The particulars of family and friends, workplace and civic life, shape us and our action. The religious life of sisters and brothers will draw some. Others will connect to that as associates.
Embracing the way of the cross
When Jesus refused to go the way of the tempter he was embracing the way of the cross N.T. Wright
I read two commentaries before I say Morning Prayer—one with a Catholic orientation, Gospel of Matthew by Curtis Mitch and Edward Sir and one more evangelical, Matthew for Everyone by N.T. Wright. Then I make more coffee, light the candles, and begin. When I get to the intercessions and thanksgivings I follow a pattern: For the day and its 
tasks (an idea borrowed from Common Worship), for my brothers and sisters in the Order of the Ascension, for the Church, and for those I have written in my intercessions book. That little blue book as been with me for decades. I have it divided into 30 days with the names of people on a page, today included my niece. During the virus I often stop and send a message to someone on that page. Then there’s a section in which I note people who have asked for my prayers or whom I feel called to pray for.
That last section picks up people where there is a particular concern attached. Three have cancer, one an injured back, two just struggling with life at the moment, three bishops doing their best, a married couple I want to see get through these days, and all the workers serving to protect, heal and feed us. As St. Anselm put it, “I pray your mercy upon all men, yet there are many whom I hold more dear, Since your love has impressed them upon my heart with a closer and more intimate love, so that I desire their love more eagerly – I would pray more ardently for these.”
The prayer within the prayer is usually rather clear to me. Within and under the particular reason a person is in that book is an innate and greater reason. I want them to remain true. Whether ill or facing danger, doing a difficult work or living well and content, I hope they will be true. That whatever their circumstance they will not lose their identity and purpose. That they will be true.
The new life
Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Baptismal Rite, BCP
We’re in our own wilderness these days. In this time of the virus there will be many temptations—despair, self-serving, hostility, impatience, negligence in prayer, blindness to human need and suffering, uncharitable thoughts. It’s Ash Wednesday stuff during Easter.
Here’s what N.T. Wright wrote on Matthew 4: “The temptations we all face, day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives, may be very different from those of Jesus, but they have exactly the same point. They are not simply trying to entice us into committing this or that sin. They are trying to distract us, to turn us aside, from the path of servanthood to which our baptism has commissioned us. God has a costly but wonderfully glorious vocation for each one of us. The enemy will do everything possible to distract us and thwart God’s purpose.”
Our task is to remain in the identity and vocation that is ours in Jesus Christ. To remain true.
It’s not easy
Thomas Merton wrote, “Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny-to work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls 'working out salvation' is a labor which requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears.”
It also requires living in the Rule of the Church—Eucharist, Daily Office, Reflection/personal devotions. Our Lord’s response to the tempter was found in Scripture. Thousands of people have come to value the daily office in these days of digital worship. Small parishes that had been seeing 3 or 4 people at daily Evening Prayer (which is wonderful!) now find 40 joining on-line. The religious orders of the church, both gathered in monastic houses and scattered in apartments and houses, join and root the whole church in that daily prayer of the church. What better way to live these days than to pray the prayers and the Scriptures. Grounding ourselves in truth so we might remain true.
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