First Light

Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise.

Not bread alone, but every word That comes from you, O living God. Feed the hunger we cannot name In this still hour before the work. Then send us, nourished, into day — Not full of ourselves, but of you. Let what we heard become our food When thinner comforts fail.

Original – Prayer on Fire

Jeremiah 17:5–10

Catholic Public Domain Version (public domain)

Thus says the Lord: “Cursed is a man who trusts in man, and who establishes what is flesh as his right arm, and whose heart withdraws from the Lord. For he will be like a saltcedar tree in the desert. And he will not perceive it, when what is good has arrived. Instead, he will live in dryness, in a desert, in a land of salt, which is uninhabitable. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, for the Lord will be his confidence. And he will be like a tree planted beside waters, which sends out its roots to moist soil. And it will not fear when the heat arrives. And its leaves will be green. And in the time of drought, it will not be anxious, nor will it cease at any time to bear fruit. The heart is depraved above all things, and it is unsearchable, who can know it? I am the Lord, who examines the heart and tests the temperament, who gives to each one according to his way and according to the fruit of his own decisions.

Send forth your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

From On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius

public domain

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw, too, how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them. He saw how all men were under penalty of death. Then He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery, lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in men be spent for nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied, or merely to appear. He took our body, and not only so, but He took it from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father — a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man.

Father, send us into the work of this day. Keep our hands honest and our speech kind. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.