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dailyofficereadings · 4 years

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Daily Office Readings April 29, 2020

Psalm 38

A Penitent Sufferer’s Plea for Healing

A Psalm of David, for the memorial offering.

1 O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath. 2 For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me.

3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. 4 For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

5 My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness; 6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all day long I go around mourning. 7 For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. 8 I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

9 O Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you. 10 My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me. 11 My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction, and my neighbors stand far off.

12 Those who seek my life lay their snares; those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin, and meditate treachery all day long.

13 But I am like the deaf, I do not hear; like the mute, who cannot speak. 14 Truly, I am like one who does not hear, and in whose mouth is no retort.

15 But it is for you, O Lord, that I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer. 16 For I pray, “Only do not let them rejoice over me, those who boast against me when my foot slips.”

17 For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. 18 I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin. 19 Those who are my foes without cause[a] are mighty, and many are those who hate me wrongfully. 20 Those who render me evil for good are my adversaries because I follow after good.

21 Do not forsake me, O Lord; O my God, do not be far from me; 22 make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.

Footnotes:

Psalm 38:19 Q Ms: MT my living foes

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Psalm 119:25-48

25 My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word. 26 When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes. 27 Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works. 28 My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. 29 Put false ways far from me; and graciously teach me your law. 30 I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your ordinances before me. 31 I cling to your decrees, O Lord; let me not be put to shame. 32 I run the way of your commandments, for you enlarge my understanding.

33 Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will observe it to the end. 34 Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. 35 Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. 36 Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain. 37 Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways. 38 Confirm to your servant your promise, which is for those who fear you. 39 Turn away the disgrace that I dread, for your ordinances are good. 40 See, I have longed for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life.

41 Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. 42 Then I shall have an answer for those who taunt me, for I trust in your word. 43 Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances. 44 I will keep your law continually, forever and ever. 45 I shall walk at liberty, for I have sought your precepts. 46 I will also speak of your decrees before kings, and shall not be put to shame; 47 I find my delight in your commandments, because I love them. 48 I revere your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

Exodus 19:16-25

16 On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. 19 As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. 20 When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. 21 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people not to break through to the Lord to look; otherwise many of them will perish. 22 Even the priests who approach the Lord must consecrate themselves or the Lord will break out against them.” 23 Moses said to the Lord, “The people are not permitted to come up to Mount Sinai; for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and keep it holy.’” 24 The Lord said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you; but do not let either the priests or the people break through to come up to the Lord; otherwise he will break out against them.” 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

Colossians 1:15-23

The Supremacy of Christ

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in[a] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in[b] him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled[c] in his fleshly body[d] through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— 23 provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.

Footnotes:

Colossians 1:16 Or by

Colossians 1:17 Or by

Colossians 1:22 Other ancient authorities read you have now been reconciled

Colossians 1:22 Gk in the body of his flesh

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

Matthew 3:13-17

The Baptism of Jesus

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[a] with whom I am well pleased.”

Footnotes:

Matthew 3:17 Or my beloved Son

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)

#April 29 #2020

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karlamazov-blog · 7 years

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An Argument Against Capital Punishment (and, Oddly, for Torture)

The fact that branches of the United States justice system still cling to practice of the death penalty is a disgrace which shames us as a nation. By holding onto the barbarism that is capital punishment, we are keeping ourselves on the same clickbait polls as China, North Korea and Iran. Now while each of our fellow institutionally-murdering countries surely has some admirable traits as well, this is one category where we can and should distance ourselves from them. Proponents of the death penalty will argue that, first, there is a difference between murder and execution, and, second, that there are some cases, crimes so heinous, where the only possible punishment for a convicted felon commensurate with their crime is execution. That latter situation is one of so many mires and pitfalls that I’m going to put it aside for the moment, but the first conceit, the idea of their being a fundamental difference between state-sanctioned execution and garden-variety murder is asinine. Murder is the premeditated killing of one human being by another. A person who grabs a knife in a fit of rage and buries it in another person’s chest could hardly be argued to be guilty of more premeditation than the justice system which sentences them to death. The judge, the governor, the prison warden, the executioners, any number of people, all of them are culpable and all of them exercised an unnerving level of premeditation. They’ve been planning to kill this stab-happy schmuck for months or years before all is said and done. They’ve had far more ample time to decide whether or not to kill this theoretical murderer than the murderer surely took. I’m not suggesting that murderers be excused for committing murder on impulse, what I am suggesting is that the individuals who took their time, deliberated, thought about killing this murderer are murderers as well. They are government-sanctioned murderers, standing behind a riot-shield of law and order, or more accurately, statute and precedent.

Apart from the very concept of government-sanctioned murder being fraught with moral quandaries and, frankly, plain sick, it is also ineffective as a method of punishing criminals and deterring future crimes. Rather than throw statistics and dissertation excerpts at you, I’ll posit this simple argument: If the death penalty were an effective deterrent against murder, people would have surely stopped murdering each other by now. We’ve had centuries for this experiment to present results. And it has. The threat of the death penalty hasn’t made potential murderers do a doubletake and amend their intents out of fear. Those with the intent to kill carry on killing, regardless of their awareness of potential consequence, and the rest of us go on not killing people, not because we’re afraid of retribution, but because we don’t want to kill people.

To satisfy the more sadistic, schadenfreudean pockets of our society, perhaps we could do away with the institutionalized executions in favor of instituting government ratified practices of torture. Of course, torture is a controversial subject, and there would certainly need to be guidelines, clear rules on approved methods of torture and the extent to which they may be implemented, depending on a community’s particular level of desire for draconian sadism. Now, hold your horses, before you get up in arms, shouting from the rooftops to the chagrin of your neighbors that I am endorsing torture, hear me out. I am not suggesting that convicts be waterboarded, beaten with truncheons, shoved into iron maidens, have pointy strips of bamboo shoved under their fingernails, be tied down while drops of water plunk metronomically onto their forehead, or sit in a pit full of cat feces while being aurally assaulted with Kiss ballads at high volume. We need to be careful to steer clear of marching into ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ territory. Or rather, we need to acknowledge that there is a great degree of variance in the phrase, “cruel and unusual.” Such a subjective term can offer a wealth of different meanings depending on individual perception and interpretation. To one person, they may perceive it to be a cruel and unusual punishment that they have to wait in line for three hours in an emergency room to have one part of their body stitched back onto another while they’re bleeding through the paper towel they taped around their wound as an ersatz bandage, and the TV hanging from the ceiling in the shitty Roxborough Hospital’s dingy little waiting room is stuck on a channel which apparently only plays judge shows and the controls are covered by a shield of plexiglass so you can’t turn it off, change the channel or even turn down the volume, nor can you do anything about the other impatient patients wailing, swearing, crying or shouting into their cell phones, all while knowing that this visit will not be covered by my insurance!

...

And then there are people whose opinion of what qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment could fall anywhere on the spectrum between riding public transportation and being blasted with the paint-stripping pressure and scalding hot water of a gas-fueled power washer. What I am suggesting is a middle-ground method of torture which falls closer to the former on the torture-scale. Acts of violent abuse against inmates (practices which, to varying degrees, are already inflicted upon inmates by correctional officers) should under no circumstance be permitted. There are far more humane and less obvious ways to torture a person and effectively crush their spirit. Those convicted felons deemed to be the ‘worst of the worst,’ the people whom the justice system has decided are so irredeemably evil, their actions those of the worst imaginable criminals, they, instead of being barbarically executed, could (should) instead have mild methods of torture inflicted upon them. For example, the temperature in their cells could be keep at a changing, but consistently uncomfortable temperature. I am not talking bitter cold and sweltering heat here. Anything that could cause them true bodily harm shall be forbidden, but never will they enjoy a temperate seventy degree temperature again. Instead, the temperature of their cell shall always either be around either forty-five and ninety-five degrees fahrenheit. No bodily harm will be done to them, but gosh, will they be uncomfortable. Imagine being always just a little too chilly or a little too warm. It’d be maddening. Next, while blasting people with stereos is clearly abusive, you can still drive them mad with music played at a moderate volume. We could have the Jack and Jill ice cream truck jingle, played ad infinitum. I would certainly feel tortured to the point of penitent in that situation. I would feel sufficiently punished. And while it may be cruel and unusual, it’s about as mild as we’re going to get. There’s also food. I’m going to be clear up front: do not poison, poop or pee in inmates’ food. Just give them really bland and unsatisfying food. Eliminate variety and flavor, keep nutritional value to a minimum. From what I understand of prisons as they currently function, this form of torture has already been implemented. Our country is long past due on making meaningful and effective prison reform. Electric chairs and lethal injections, apart from being violently torturous themselves, have proven passe. We can continue to be a vindictive and petty society, but we can finally start being sensible about it.

#capital punishment #torture #death penalty #america #barbarism

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