laudable Practice

...  thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree - Romans 11:24. On Monday coming, Holocaust Memorial Day, I will open my Book of Common Prayer to say Morning Prayer, as we recollect the deep horror and vile evil of the Shoah. After the first lesson, I will say the Benedicite, from the text in the Apocrypha now appropriately known as 'The Song of the Three Jews' - the praises uttered by Ananias, Azarias, and Misael in the fiery furnace: O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever ... O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever. It brings to mind those who repeated the Shema Yisrael and declared the praises of Adonai even in the face of the unspeakable evil of the death camps. The God of Abraham is to be ever praised, even when thick darkness gathers, when deep injustice appears to reign, when death approaches. To pray the Benedi...

From Cosin's 1653 Epiphany sermon , a beautiful description of the Christological significance of the daily saying/singing of the Nunc Dimittis at Evensong: For He had long since made a special promise to us all, that this star, by the name of a star, should arise upon us ; orietur stella ex Jacob [Numbers 24:17] . It will take up some time to look upon it well. But there came one from the mountains of the east, fifteen hundred years before, and saw in his prophecy there, (which God Himself had put into his mouth,) the same star that the wise men saw here, and the same light that Simeon saw after, saw it with his eyes; we say one of our hymns for it there every day, in memory that this promise of God was kept, and that this prophecy was fulfilled by it, the prophecy of orietur stella in Jacob ; which is all the light we have now or ever they had before us, to bring us all out of the kingdom of sin and darkness to the kingdom of grace and glory; grace here and glory hereafter. Cosin...