O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.
This Sunday’s Collect, or opening prayer, was originally prayed during the Easter Season and dates to the seventh century Gelasian Sacramentary, an early copy of which is preserved in the Vatican Library.
Teach us, it begins, that you abide in hearts that are just and true. Abides. It reminds me of that old hymn:
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
The man who wrote that hymn was dying of tuberculosis while he worked on it. He finished it on a Sunday, the same day he gave his final sermon as a Lutheran pastor. Three weeks later he died.
You’ve probably heard the hymn before. It’s very popular. They sang it at Mother Theresa’s funeral and at Queen Elizabeth’s wedding.
t uses the same curious word as today’s Collect: abide. The same curious word that’s used by Saint Luke when he tells us about the Lord walking along the Road to Emmaus in his resurrected body. You recall they did not recognize him at first, as he told them all about the prophecies concerning the Christ and the meaning of his Paschal death and rising. And they arrives at the place they were heading for, he made as if he were going on. But they insisted the stay with them, saying, “Abide with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” (Lk 24: 29 ) So he did abide with them, and broke bread, just like we do at Mass, and they recognized him.
Teach us, the prayer says, that you abode with hearts that are just and true.
How much we need to learn that lesson! How hard it is to trust in God’s presence deep within our hearts: the God who cares for us whether we have tuberculosis, or have just lost our job, and are suffering from a broken heart. God is always there in the hearts of those who seek him. All they need do is look for him with the eyes of faith.
And then there’s a second step for those who recognize God’s presence in their hearts: to let him fashion us with his grace that the Lord we carry deep within us might find our hearts a good place to live!
Remember when the Lord told us that whenever we eat his body and drink his blood he would live in us and we would live in him? Well, when we celebrate the Eucharist at Mass this weekend, when we receive the Lord in Holy Communion, he comes to live in us, just as we come to live in him.
We are like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, entreating the Lord to abide with us, stay with us, for our hearts are burning inside of us for love of you. And in the breaking of the bread, we come to know him, to love him, and to serve the God who reigns in our hearts!
O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.
