The Collect
O ALMIGHTY God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Readings: (Saint James i. 1; Saint John xiv. 1)
As in the case all of the faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, we see in James and Philip men who became foundation stones of the Church, and we are reminded that holiness and its consequent work of the spirit are entirely the gift of God, not a matter of human achieving. All power is God’s power, even the power of human freedom to accept his gifts. “You will be clothed with power from on high,” Jesus told Philip and the others. Their first commission had been to expel unclean spirits, heal diseases, announce the kingdom. They learned, gradually, that these externals were sacraments of an even greater miracle inside their persons -- the divine power to love like God.
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