Watery witnesses

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Low Sunday. 

 From the man who brought you “In the beginning was the Word” and “we shall see Him as He really is” comes “And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” St John is not the easiest of writers to understand. His gospel is radically different from the other three, though he is in complete agreement with their experience of Our Lord. He often makes very odd statements and they do need some unpacking before we can really understand what St John is saying.

 [PAUSE]

 St John is probably the only one of the Apostles to make it to a grand old age. His gospel is written late in the first century and probably so that he can record his thoughts before age overtakes him. At the time of his writing, a new group of people are beginning to gather and corrupt the Christian Faith with their teaching. These are the Gnostics. They essentially say that in order to be saved, you must hate your body and seek after special knowledge. Only those who know certain things will go to Heaven.

 St John is firmly against this and, following his example, so should we be. He has spent a long time with Our Lord Jesus who has preached to everyone that anyone who believes in Him will be saved. You don’t have to be a professor to be saved; you don’t even have to have an education whatsoever to go to Heaven. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” It’s an opportunity for everyone regardless of who they are. But then it’s okay for St John. He was there with Jesus from the beginning. What about us, 2000 years later?

 [PAUSE]

 St John’s faith has probably never wavered since he saw the Lord Jesus standing before him with his wounds still visible, physical and real, eating and drinking and probably laughing and rejoicing with His disciples. You can’t forget a thing like that. Jesus has very clearly come to us in the flesh, He has died in the flesh and He has risen in the flesh. He clearly does not want us to despise being human, which is something the Gnostics would want us to believe. St John is quite clear that Jesus came in the flesh, “This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.”

 Our Lord Jesus did not identify with us just by the water in which He was baptised, but also with the water and the blood which poured out from His side when the soldier stabbed His crucified corpse with a lance. It is the water and the blood and the Spirit which Jesus took back to form His resurrection body that we know that He was both human and Divine. “There are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”

 So we have these three things that tell us that Jesus was a human being, and we also have the word of the Holy Trinity that He was divine! “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” St John tells us that we can be sure that there are physical signs that point to Our Lord Jesus rising from the Dead in His physical form. Where can we experience this same Christ now?

 [PAUSE]

 Well, Our Lord has instituted the Holy Eucharist for a reason! This is a service of Communion. If we’re willing to believe then we come into contact with God the Son at every Mass. There are little things in the Mass which may pass you by. Watch when the priest prepares the chalice. He approaches the server who gives him first wine then water. The priest prays the prayer:

 “O God Who didst wonderfully create and yet more wonderfully restore the dignity of Man’s nature, grant that by the mystery of this water and wine we may be partakers in His Divinity who didst partake of our humanity, even Jesus Christ, Our Lord Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the Unity of the Holy Ghost, God throughout all ages, world without end. Amen”

 The water stands for our humanity and for all Christians living and departed, the wine the Divine nature, the substance of God Himself. These are mixed together and consecrated together becoming for us the Blood of Christ. Shortly after they are consecrated, the priest drops a little bit of the Body of Christ into the chalice so that we can see that the Body and Blood of Christ have become one with our humanity. This is what is really meant by communion.

 This is not a scientific inquiry. This is the place for things beyond the scope of science and indeed beyond our understanding. This is a matter of believing in our hearts! Our Mass is where we can strengthen our belief so that we can go out into the world bearing God in our hearts, and so that by our living we can help others to see God at work in the world and point to Him beyond the world. “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” What is our faith for, if not to be spread into the hearts of those around us?

The Feast of the Resurrection 2014

Early one morning in the garden...

Gardens feature frequently in the interaction between Man and God. In the Garden were we placed; from the Garden did our sin cast us; in the Garden did the Lord begin His Passion; in the Garden was He buried; from the Garden did He rise. It is clear that God intends us to be happy within some form of Garden.

Throughout His ministry, Our Lord Jesus has shown how in control He is of the natural and how much He respects the natural order. He will make sure that there is wine in abundance but He will not turn stone into bread, so that the stones themselves can cry out the praise and glory of God as the stones which God intended them to be. He feeds multitudes by stretching out a feast from the smallest crumbs and He will curse the fig tree that does not bear fruit to remind us that it is the will of God that mankind should bear good fruit. Our Blessed Lord seeks to bring the Creation of God into communion with God.

Everything points to the goodness of God's Creation. Fire burns, and so we are kept warm, yet at the expense of possibly burning to death, Water sustains life, and so we must drink to preserve our lives even at the expense of drowning. The natural order has its order, but only Mankind has the sin. Only Mankind can see Evil in the Created order because Mankind has knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet, for all its inherent goodness, the natural order brings death to human beings - volcanoes, typhoons, earthquakes. They are not evil in themselves, but they are an affront to the dignity of humanity to live, the cause of so much pain, suffering, misery and degradation. Sometimes we forget that we must die, and for most of us that will be in the natural order rather than in the hands of the evil which comes out of a human being.

It is outside the Garden that Our Lord meets Death even as we also must meet Death outside of Eden. His Death makes good the penalty for our sins, that penalty being eternal separation from God. That which is not-God, thus finite and susceptible to corruption and decay, cannot make that reconciliation eternally. Only that which is both human and divine can unify humanity in death to an eternity of living in the Creator.

And so we are face with this enormous fact. Christ has died, but Christ is risen. In His resurrection, we find ourselves brought back into the Garden. At the presence of the Risen Christ, the Cherub sheaths his sword of fire and permits re-entry into Eden for all who follow the Shepherd who laid down His life for the Sheep. Is this a breach of the natural order? No, for all God gives all creatures meat in due season. When He giveth it them they gather it : and when He openeth His hand they are filled with good. When He hideth His face they are troubled : when He taketh away their breath they die, and are turned again to their dust. When He letteth His breath go forth they shall be made : and He shalt renew the face of the earth. The glorious majesty of the Lord shall endure for ever : the Lord shall rejoice in his works. (cf Psalm civ.27-31)

So we shall rejoice with God. In Him is life, and this life is ours too. His son is raised and remains with us. We partake of that single sacrifice and gain our substance  from Him and thus our return to the Garden is assured through the love of God. This is no Garden of Earthly delights, but a Garden of delight in God which begins here and now.as we cultivate its growth in our hearts.

This is the day that the Lord hath made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia!

Holy Week 2014: Holy Saturday

The shepherd has been struck, the sheep are scattered. The Lord knew this would happen and this concern must have been there, gnawing at Him in his Agony in the Garden at the beginning of His passion. What was to happen to the faithful few who had stayed with Him to the end? The shepherd must lay down His life for the sheep.

"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father."

So, behind the stone, in the cold and darkness, a power is at work and its effect will be astonishing.

O Lord Jesu Christ, the Good Shepherd, preserve the righteous, justify sinners, have mercy upon all the faithful, and be gracious to me, a miserable and wretched sinner. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Good Friday

So here is Good Friday. Darkness falls on Calvary, in the hearts of men, over Creation itself, and darkness falls over the eyes of God Incarnate.

"If I say, Peradventure the darkness shall cover me : then shall my night be turned to day.Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day : the darkness and light to thee are both alike."

Darkness falls, yet in that darkness, a strong, loving hand reaches out.

I adore thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, rising again from the dead, and ascending into heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father: I beseech thee that I may be found worthy to follow thee thither, and dwell in thy presence. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Maundy Thursday

Our Lord's descent into Hell started on Maundy Thursday with His agony in the garden  of Gethsemane. Slowly but surely over the next few hours, this world will seek to abandon Him to suffer alone. His friends first, followed by justice, His security, His dignity, His health, and His life. He will end up in the place where all whom this world has forgotten, the mysterious prison of the spirits alluded to in I Peter iii.19. We cannot say for certain what place this is, lying as it does beyond the experience of mortal men.

Yet even this reminds us that we cannot be forgotten, left behind, forsaken, or passed over. We are numbered and accounted for: our names are recorded in Creation itself. We have only to cling on to the living Christ with a living, cultivated and growing faith in Him for our names to be recorded in the Book of Life.

I adore thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, descending into hell and sending forth thy prisoners: I beseech thee, suffer me not to enter there. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Wednesday

And so we see the Magi's gift finally put to its use. It is part of human nature to try and preserve the dead for as long as possible. It is an art of futility since dust we are and to the dust we shall return. Yet still we cling to the memories of those whom we love, keeping them alive in our hearts when we know we can see them no more. The memories are painful and yet we cannot be without them.

However, the Lord tells Mary Magdalene and, by extension, us that we must not cling on to Him. We have lost all physical contact with Our Lord. We have no image, no bodily remains, nothing by which we can say that He was this human being with this trait, or that trait. He was buried in the hope that He would be forgotten and that His inconvenient teaching would die with Him. Not content with destroying the man, they also sought to destroy His legacy too lest the Church could take root. The seed has died and is buried.

I adore thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, laid in the sepulchre, embalmed with myrrh and spices: I beseech thee that thy death may be my life. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Tuesday

It seems hard to imagine being dead. You can probably imagine life going on without you, but where is the "you"? You can probably imagine dying, but not what happens when your eyes stop seeing, your ears hearing, your awareness of breathing and your brain processes - does that mean thoughts stop too? We weep for our dear loved ones when this happens to them, and we fear because, truth be told, we do not know absolutely what happens when we've passed away. It is only right that we mourn with those who mourn and pray for the departed.

Death was inevitable for Jesus too. God Incarnate had to die because that is what humans do and further He had to come to terms not only with mortality but with the nature of His mortality. How could Our Lord identify with us if he floated away after a predetermined time, or remained with us for centuries? This Crucifixion was the only death that Our Lord could expect if He wanted to do any justice to the misery of the human condition separated from its creator. We can be sure that God understands our condition first hand, not remote on a celestial throne, but bleeding, disgraced, the victim of injustice, in unimaginable pain - all for us!

I pray thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, by that bitterness of thy Passion, which thou suffered at the hour of thy death, and then above all when thy most holy Soul passed forth from thy blessed' body; pity my soul when it is departing out of my body and bring it to everlasting life. Amen.

Holy Week 2014: Monday

Would you refuse anaesthetic in an operation? It seems rather bizarre that, when offered something to numb the pain, Our Lord refuses. Gall, the colocynth, is an anti-inflammatory, and vinegar a disinfectant given to prevent the crucified from dying quickly through shock caused by the pain. For our Lord, numbness to the pain mean numbness to our sins. Sins exist, are real and cannot be ignored because they separate the soul from God. He knows that it His duty and will to die for those sins in their reality and not their theoretical existence.

All too often, we numb ourselves to our sin, putting them out of our minds so that we do not feel their bitterness, their sharp sting on the conscience. It is a brave soul who truly tries to open itself to the Passion of Our Lord, for it will feel the agony of mankind's curse before it can feel the healing of all harms. For those of us who cannot yet do so, we must pray for a greater appreciation of the crucifixion so that we can seek out the agony of those around us who suffer so much and bring the balm that Christ offers us in His agony.

I adore thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, wounded on the Cross, and having gall and vinegar given thee to drink: I beseech thee that thy wounds may be the healing of my soul. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Palm Sunday

A crown of thorns. One minute the crowd seek to place upon the head of Jesus a crown of gold as they welcome Him into Jerusalem upon the ass, the next they see Him standing in front of them wretched and beaten and bruised,crowned with the thorns cursed by many a vineyard worker.

Thorns in the Bible are symbols of aridity, lifelessness and pain. St Paul suffered from his thorn in the flesh which God wouldn't heal, but rather allow him to receive an abundance of Grace instead through that pain. Our Lord's head is surrounded by this dead, dried up wreath, scratching and puncturing His Holy scalp drinking deeply of the precious blood.

We too, being dried up dead things without Him, find ourselves revived by His blood which pours from His wounds which we by our unyielding aridity have caused. By His blood are we softened; our hearts become alive again with sap from the True Vine. By this mockery of His kingship, the thorns render that mockery meaningless, for the Blood of Christ redeems the world and thus reinforces the nature of His Kingdom within us.

I adore thee, O Lord Jesu Christ! hanging upon the Cross, and wearing on thy head the crown of thorns: I beseech thee that thy Cross may deliver me from the destroying angel. Amen

Holy Week 2014: Introduction

This year, I will be using the prayers of St Gregory on the Passion to help me reflect on the events of this sacred week. Holy Week is really what the individual makes of it since it is the culmination of the devotions of Lent. For many people, Holy Week will pass them by until we suddenly hit a couple of bank holidays and a festival of chocolate eating. Others will realise that there is something about Good Friday and Easter "Sunday". But there are those who will know that Holy Week in its stark realism of just how vile we can be to an innocent man culminates in a realisation of how truly merciful and loving God can be to even those who perpetrate such vile acts.

There are those who see the suffering in the world and stop there, sickened and depressed at how even the best of us can fall so hard. Forgiveness is difficult when the sins don't stop, when retribution is meted out somewhat arbitrarily and on a tit-for-tat basis, when there is no remorse, no visible justice. On this road to Calvary, we see the suffering of the innocent, the failure of authority to serve the society that it governs.

And yet, we see sins forgiven all the way along the route, right up until almost the last breath, words of forgiveness, of love, of paradise, of fulfilment. All along the way of the Cross, there is no brooding, seething retribution but a fundamental, impartial and innate desire for the salvation of the wicked regardless of crime. There is justice on the Cross, for this is the way that we pass through sin and into righteousness, purgation rather than punishment, restoration rather than rejection, unconditional love rather than conditioned hatred.

Thus, as I try feebly to meditate on the Passion of Our Lord, I do invite you to join in praying these prayers with me, even if you don't find my reflections in any way useful.

I beseech thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, that thy Passion may be unto me virtue whereby I may be fenced, protected and defended. Let thy wounds be to me meat and drink, by which I may be fed, inebriated, and delighted. Let the sprinkling of thy blood be to me the washing away of all my sins. Let thy death be to me everlasting glory. In these let me find my refreshment, exultation, health, longing, joy and desire, both of body and soul, now and for ever. Amen.

Reform of the reform of the reform of the....

Reformation is always a hot topic. I've made no secret of my great distress and distrust that originated therefrom. Doctrinally (as well as almost literally) babies got thrown out with the bathwater: lives were lost and martyrs made. The Reformations in the sixteenth century were born of genuine concern for the Faith, but tempered in the heat of mutual condemnation - a heat which has never truly gone out. I blogged below on the nature of schism and mentioned a wee bit about heresy.

Heresy always forces a walking apart and there is some form of schism extant if it is not always recognised or even deliberately glossed over to preserve some semblance of unity. If we cannot agree on what constitutes Lawful Christian Authority, then schism has already happened. The problem is that with heresy comes the temptation to demonise. We can see this with the literal demonisation of the Pope: the number of rather silly ways of proving that the Pope is the anti-Christ is large. However, so is the demonisation of the Reformers. Luther, Knox, Calvin, et al, have all received the same denunciation as anti-Christ as the Patriarch of the West and all with equally silly proofs. The Anti-Christ is cleverer than that and certainly lies at the heart of the demonisation rather than actually in one person or group here.

My learned colleague and friend, Fr Chadwick, has certainly blogged on the nature of Christian anarchy and one might say that there is Ecclesiastical Anarchy growing ubiquitously as traditional sources of authority are rejected. Every new group is a reform of something or other. Group B is the reformed Group A but rejects the doctrine of X because it is not in canon Y.

Reform is always a rejection of a form of authority whether that be a personal authority like a monarch or a pope, a textual authority like the Bible, or social authority like a congregation, or the authority from a milieu -"polite society". In the Sixteenth Century, the Reformation involved the rejection of the monarchy of the pope and of the material stranglehold that it was exerting over the Laity in the name of Salvation. Followers of Marx would certainly agree that this blind acceptance of authority should be questioned. As the Rev. Adam Smallbone demonstrates in the above clip in his caricature, power and priesthood together have a dark side.

It has often been said that the ACC is committed to undoing the English Reformations. That's not strictly true. The break with Rome had to happen because unnecessary dogmata had indeed been added to the Faith. The climate was certainly that of oppression rather than seeking to free the oppressed. There were many good things happening too. There were Godly priests who looked after their cures well. There were congregations who chose to make much of their church buildings because they valued it rather than feared the authorities. However, small good things seem only rarely remembered in the light of political turbulence.

The Reformations happened because people do not want to live with the fear of Damnation but rather to aspire to Salvation:  that is an orthodox and fundamentally Christian desire to be encouraged and assisted.  Damnation certainly does come from rejecting authority, namely the authority of God, but can a hierarchy that seeks to exact control over others through fear guarantee damnation for those who are disobedient to it? The major issue of the Protestant Reformation was indeed about the recovery of the Good News of Salvation, but at what cost given the slaughter of innocents? The economical attitude of Pilate was there in getting rid of a few noisy people in order to preserve the peace. There are ways and means, and perhaps the prevailing culture meant that the ways and means that we would use now were not open to them. But then are the ways and means we use now any better? One cannot really see that in places such as Syria and in Africa!

The corrupted view of the Papacy stated that Salvation only comes with obedience to the pope. The corrupted view of the Reformation stated that Salvation is a purely individual affair. While I can only agree with St Paul that one must indeed work out one's own salvation with fear and trembling and that I will one day stand before God to render an account of what He has given me, this salvation can only come from being part of the Body of Christ which is visible. We know that the Church is visible since St Paul compares it to a human body with parts and organic unity (I Cor xii.12) and organisation cannot occur in a community who doesn't know who its members are. Likewise, Our Lord Himself reminds us that we are to be like beacons, like a city on the top of a hill. (St Matthew v.14).

Rather than rejecting the Reformation outright, I think it true to say that the ACC seeks a reform of the reform - a refining of the sharper edges in the light of the Church's existence before the schisms grew in earnest. This was already a work in progress in 1543 when the King's Book was published and thus represents a very Anglican response to what was happening on the Continent. The ACC rejects the authority of the pope as monarch, however, the ACC also rejects a doctrine of Salvation that seeks to fragment the body of Christ. In the words of Fr Matthew Kirby, the ACC cannot agree that "the word 'justification', and associated words in the New Testament, always have solely imputational meanings, and never any impartational or transformational connotations."

For the ACC, there is an authority to accept and that is the authority of Bishops on matters of Faith and Doctrine, as well as a healthy remembrance that humanity is fallen and (thanks be to God) our Bishops are human beings! It is this remembrance that should cause us to pull together in prayer and mutual humility in accepting an authority that comes from Christ Himself and that that authority is invested in the Episcopate which is made up of individuals as vulnerable and as prone to failure as anyone else. That pulling together must come through the equality of humanity in the eyes of God rather than with a dictatorial "I am the sole arbiter of Faith and Morals". Priests and Bishops are set apart by their calling by God on behalf of the people for the service of that people, yet their obedience to the Authority of Christ means that while their priesthood is shared with Christ and thus beyond the remit of the angels (Hebrews i.5), their humanity is grounded upon the Earth with its concomitant tendency to failure, sin and folly.

The only option is really the means of checks and balances, and that will mean reform of the reform of the reform... et c, so that the whole Church is in a state of flux rather than a monolithic institution. That's how it should be, it's a body, not a tomb, but it is a body with "Tradition as its DNA" as Ed Pacht once told me! We have the instruments to maintain reform by holding on to the Traditions of the Early Church. As someone commented on Fr Chadwick's blog, it may well be that schisms will last right up until the parousia.  I think, sadly, he's probably right. Perhaps, it is best just to keep praying for the integrity of Holy Church and working at bringing more charity into the world.

Schism and Continuum

One of the central tenets, it seems, of the Anglican Communion is that Heresy is preferable to Schism. James McCord (a Presbyterian) is famous for saying "If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy. As a schismatic, you have torn and divided the body of Christ. Choose heresy every time." This has been endorsed by many an Anglican or Episcopalian (notably the Bishop of Virginia in 2004, Washington Post 31/01/2004), and it is a stick that the Anglican Communion has often used to beat the Continuing Anglican movement. Continuing Anglicans are worse, in the eyes of the "mainstream" Anglican, because they have sought to tear the body of Christ in sunder rather than accept the heresies of some parts of the Communion.

Dr C.B. Moss explains that the Church has forbidden its members from taking part in Schismatic worship, "first, that those who join in such worship may easily be infected by false doctrine, in particular the notion that it does not matter what we believe or what denomination we belong to; second that even if they are not infected themselves, they may cause others to be so, especially the young and badly instructed; third, that our duty towards those outside is not to encourage them in their separation, but to persuade them to come back."( The Christian Faith pp284-5)

It always pays us to be as clear as possible, not that we can ever presume on the judgment of God, but rather that it helps us to see what the issues are and help us to reason with our poor little minds with fewer obstacles that we place in the way of the Divine light. We have to know what heresy is, and what schism is.

Heresy, as we know, has at its root the idea of choice and an exercise of the will. After the Maccabees and before Christianity, a Hebrew could have the choice of three "heresies" and become an Essene, a Sadducee, or a Pharisee. These were properly sects within Judaism as they were "cut" (hence sect) from each other. The whole idea of heresy is a consequence of God's gift of free-will to us; we are free to choose the ungodly as well as the godly, and heresy is the choice in which we decide not to follow the teaching of the Church.We are of course aware of the great heresies which were condemned at the first seven Oecumenical Councils and how this caused schisms, notably with the monophysite churches.

Schism, according to St Thomas Aquinas, is the wilful separation of the Unity of the Church. Yet, is this something that is understood by the Early Church? St Paul bids the Corinthians "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions (schismata) among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." (I Cor i.10) Yet Dr Moss and Dr Staley (The Catholic Faith) both talk of schism within the Church as well as from it. What could this mean?

 Dr Moss states that schism within the church is "a breach in communion between local churches, though neither side has changed the fundamental faith and order of the Church"(p 281 The Christian Faith). What does he mean by the "fundamental faith"? He says (p 282), "Queen Elizabeth claimed that she and her people were as good Catholics as anyone else. Both sides kept the same faith and order, the same creeds sacraments, and ministry as before the schism." Thus, by "fundamental faith", we understand the Creeds, the Sacraments, and the Faith of the Early Church.

Dr Moss then states that Schism from the Church as being "the revolt of a group of persons, large or small, who separate themselves from the Church by rejecting her faith and order: for instance the Reformation at Geneva." He cites Calvin here as rejecting the Church itself rather than just the accretions to the faith of Medieval Catholicism and thus he concludes from this that the Anglican Church has never been Calvinist in its essence since Anglicanism became distinct from Roman Catholicism as a schism within the Church and not from it. Since Anglicans, Romans and the Eastern Catholic Churches believe in the visibility of the Church, they can suffer schism. Other groups which do not believe in the visibility of the Church have no visible body from which to break, thus they can only separate.

Yet, we have another situation in that the Eastern Church and the Roman Church excommunicated each other in the great schism of the eleventh century. Now, is this a schism within the Church, or is it a schism from the church? The Anglican would say that it is schism within the Church, yet East and West would declare that it is schism from the Church. Again, the supremacy of the Pope is a sticking point and, while there were certain concessions on the filioque clause at the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century, this was not enough for the schism to end. The Anglican will call this schism within the Church since neither the Romans nor the Eastern Church have altered the basic Faith but merely added prescriptions, proscriptions and dogmata for their followers. In Roman, Eastern, Anglican, and indeed, the truly Old Catholic Churches, the Holy Scriptures are being read and interpreted through the Tradition of the Early Church, the Seven Oecumenical Councils with their creeds are held, and the Holy Sacraments distributed as they always have been.

The question I am now looking to understand is whether one can be schismatic but not heretical? Are there such things, as the Romans teach, as pure schism (without heresy) and mixed schism (with heresy)? The Romans, of course, cannot teach about schism within the Church, for at least one body involved in the schism would fail to be in communion with the Pope. In Roman eyes, one must be in communion with the Pope in order to hold the Catholic Faith, so a breach of communion would be impossible to hold without a breach from Roman Catholic Faith and Order.

However, like all continuing Anglicans, I fail to accept that the Roman definition of Catholicism is true. I may, and indeed gladly, hold to the Pope as the Patriarch of the West, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St Peter and the primus inter pares of bishops, but I cannot see him as a monarch, a bishop of bishops or as the sole Infallible arbiter of the Catholic Faith. The Modern Papacy does fail the Vincentian Canon. This belief makes me, in the eyes of Rome, a heretic and schismatic from the Church. That's the problem when one adds to the faith something that isn't actually there.

Now what about the hypothetical accusation from someone in the Anglican Communion that I, as a Continuing Anglican, am actually schismatic? Again, we have to go back to what it means to be schismatic and as whether I am schismatic within the Church or from the Church. Considering that, as a Continuing Anglican, I hold the same fundamental faith as Drs Moss and Staley, and belong to a church in which this fundamental faith is practiced just as it has been practiced before the Anglican church was forced to be continuing. Do I obey the Bishop of Rochester? No. So in the eyes of the Anglican Church, if  I am schismatic, then I am so within the Church and not from it.

Suppose, then, that a member of the Established Church were to call me schismatic. To do so necessarily presupposes that a schism exists. If that schism exists, then where is it? Well, first let us consider, was there ever the ordination of women in the Catholic Church? Answer: no, despite many attempts by modernists to prove the opposite. The only ordinations of women in the Early Church were made by Montanists who were not Catholic, but heretic. So to ordain women as priests is indeed a change in doctrine, since the Catholic doctrine is that the subject of ordination must be a baptised, confirmed, communicant male. This is a change to the Catholic Faith because it is a change to the definition of the sacraments. If the Continuing Anglicans have not accepted this change, then they cannot be in schism from anyone because they have not changed position. The schismatic body must be the Established Church and, further, because there is a change in faith, this seems very much like a Schism from the Church.

If there is a schism from the Church, then anyone in communion with the schismatic body, is of course endangering themselves in the way that Dr Moss describes. One might say that they cannot understand the importance of what they believe. Yet for many traditionalists within the Established Church, leaving the establishment would be a major life change as they reject stipend, home, living for what they believe. One cannot force them to do that and it must happen only on the strength of their conscience.

IHowever, if a member of the Anglican Communion regards the Anglican Continuum as schismatic, then "He hath graven and digged up a pit : and is fallen on himself into the destruction that he made for other." (Psalm vii.16)

It is, of course, much more preferable to leave all these uncharitable declarations of schism and heresy to the annals of history. If we are to learn any lesson at all from this business of schism, then it is that we had better be convinced by God that we walk in The Way and then commit ourselves wholeheartedly to it. If we are sincere and honest in our dealings, loving in all our ways, and holding tight to the faith once delivered to the saints then schism and heresy will not affect us, neither will accusations of schism and heresy. We continuing Anglicans will continue to do what the Church of England always did.

Who's the Mummy?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis, Rochester on the Fourth Sunday in Lent

So, it’s Laetare Sunday, Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, the Fourth in Lent, Mothering Sunday, Mother’s Day. “Mother’s Day!”

It always causes a bit of a wince to those of us who were brought up on “Mothering Sunday.” However, just think about it. Perhaps it’s just an amazing coincidence that Mother’s Day falls on Mothering Sunday every year. We may indeed complain that today is not Mother’s Day but Mothering Sunday. In a sense, we are absolutely right to do so. There should be a clear distinction between Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is a day in which we take the time and energy to pay attention to honouring our mothers. This is a perfectly reasonable application of the 5th Commandment. While we should always honour our parents, a day set aside to remind us to do just that is fitting, hence Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. So what is Mothering Sunday about, if it’s not principally about honouring our mothers?

[PAUSE]

There is a big problem in Galatia because there are many folk out there who say that to be a good Christian, you have to be a good Jew first and follow the Jewish Law. These folk are going around saying that you had to eat only clean foods and circumcise your baby boys in order to be a Christian. The Galatians have been taken in by this and the consequence is that St Paul has to them a very hard letter telling them how foolish they are because they have chosen the wrong mother.

[PAUSE]

Chosen the wrong mother? How can you choose your mother, or your father for that matter? St Paul reminds us of the importance of history.

Agar and Sarah are both wives of the great patriarch Abraham. Agar is a slave; Sarah is free. For St Paul, Agar represents a life in slavery to laws which cannot free the soul. To choose the motherhood of Agar is to choose a life of slavery to rules and regulations that can neither free a person from sin nor bring them nearer to God. Sarah, on the other hand, represents a life which is free from arbitrary laws and free to love according to God’s way of living. To choose the motherhood of Sarah is to choose freedom from the law controlled by men and to choose a family relationship with God in Christ Jesus. To choose Sarah is to choose the Church.

In fact, St Paul goes on to say, ”Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” The trouble is, this doesn’t sound very mothering, does it? Should the Church cast out those who are enslaved by the Law?

[PAUSE]

The key to understanding St Paul here is that he is not advocating casting out those in need, but rather those who not only refuse to receive the help of the Church but want to change the way that the Church operates in order to satisfy their way of living. Our Lord tells us that we cannot be the servant of two masters; St Paul tells us that we cannot be the sons of two mothers. We have to choose, one or the other.

The one we choose we cannot change to suit our whims.

It is our mother who tells us how to live, not the other way round. “Honour thy father and thy mother.” If we choose the Law, then we choose to live and die by the Law. The Law will condemn us when we are wrong, but it cannot lift a finger to save us. If we choose the Church, then we choose to live and move in the community of Christians in the way of life given to us by Our Lord and Saviour who does have the power to save us when we go wrong. St Paul bids us to reject utterly the teaching of all who would want us subject to Law rather than the grace, love and worship of God the Holy Trinity. We can only help those who are enslaved by the Law by showing them how to live according to the Love of God. If they cannot see the difference, then we’re not doing it right! They still have the love of God, and they still should have the love of the Church, but they cannot be allowed to convince members of the Church to become slaves to the Law.

[PAUSE]

We honour our mother and father by Love, not by fulfilling legal obligation. We love our parents because God has given them to us and us to them, and families suffer so much when that bond of love is compromised. It is, however, in the nature of love to suffer.

That is how we should see the Church and how the Church should see herself. Not as a legalistic body, not as a monarchy, but as a mother of a family. Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day may coincide, but they are not the same. Father’s Day must have the same weight as Mother’s Day because fathers and mothers together bring forth families. How can the family work if there is no love? How can the Church work if it ceases to be the family of God?

An Eternity of Faith

What can an eternal viewpoint possibly look like?


It's a question that has struck me as I've been looking over St Paul's Missive to the Romans and it's a question that seems to be prevalent throughout the whole Bible. Everywhere we see God engaged in an activity or undergoing a process or setting something in motion. God has apparently predestined us before the world was made, and yet can be angry with us when we chose not to do His will. This doesn't sound like an Eternal Being for whom Time itself is, although not meaningless, certainly not a constraint.

Of course, we are temporal and temporary beings whose existence and understanding of our surroundings depend on process and development. We cannot go back in time and we can only go forward faster than one second a second if we are able to harness the powers of speed as predicted by the theory of Relativity. Even then, that is just a theory and thus subject to the limitations of the scientific method. It is quite clear that a God who wishes to communicate with us allows us some freedom of metaphor and language in order to communicate some very clear facts about Himself.

The great theologians, notably St Thomas Aquinas following Boethius, will say that the Wrath of God is a metaphor for the utter rejection of Sin that stems from the Eternal and Substantial goodness of God. God is good and where good is rejected, so is God. The Old Testament God of wrathful indignation is the same God of love because wrath is a metaphor and love is a substance. To read the Old Testament seeing God as a temporal being leads many a person to reject God as a "moral monster" precisely because they cannot understand that in God there is no process - at least not one that could ever be communicated to or understood by us.

Our temporality has coloured the language of our salvation and it does mean that we have to listen very carefully to what God is saying to us.

Of course, Our Lord Jesus Christ is God who subjected Himself to temporality. To be a human being means being limited by Time and Space. Thus Our Lord in being fully human could not live forever if he was to be like us. His Death and Resurrection, however opens the transcendence of Time to those who believe in Him. We will become like Him because we are promised that we shall see Him as he really is, and we can only see Him if we are like Him.

This really does pose some difficult questions of philosophy and physics and I do not pretend that I am anywhere near finding an understanding, primarily because I don't believe that the mere human brain can ever comprehend the working of God, though I'm not quite sure what "ever" means in this context.

Romans viii.30: "Moreover whom he did predestinate , them he also called : and whom he called , them he also justified : and whom he justified , them he also glorified ." We are indeed justified by faith, and glorified because we are justified. Thus in calling us, God gives us Faith in that call. The events we have presented here to us are meant to be understood that way. God has spoken through St Paul and this is what we are to understand. Predestination causes calling which causes justification which causes glorification. However, that is a very temporal way of looking at things. I've used the word "cause" here deliberately, and want to understand that word "cause" as St Thomas Aquinas would want, to wit "cause" means "reason why"

The Greek verbs (predestine, called, justified, glorified)  in the Aorist tense indicating a single action in its entirety, and St Paul shows us how each action of God depends on another and yet God doesn't have that dependence on Time. When does that predestination take place? Relativity tells us that it is possible for events to be simultaneous in one time-frame but one preceding the other in another. This lack of temporality doesn't affect the chain of "reason why",

So how are we to understand this? Well, we listen to St Paul, we are glorified because we are justified because we are called because we are predestined. Were we predestined in Time? No, because God predestined us "before the world began". As St Paul says to St Timothy:


We were given grace before the world began. Of course this is not entirely meaningful if by "world" we mean the Universe including Time. God created Time as well: we know that because God created all things visible and invisible. Thus, the causes of our salvation and glorification are not within Time, but are within God alone.


We know God because God presents Himself to us in our lifetimes by giving us the unwrapped present called Faith. We can choose to open it or not. If we do so, then we begin a journey of journeying in justification, glorification, redemption and salvation which we may abort at any time.

God sees our lives all at once from birth to death. He sees all our intentions and desires from birth to death, all our actions from birth to death. He does not control us, but knows us in the present tense of His Eternity, not in the chronologically causal network of Time. We are predestined in our entirety, chosen by God for salvation in our entirety, and that includes our free-will which is part of our substance as a human being. It is meaningless to say that the elect have already been chosen because that implies a temporal event and the choice is made by God from His Eternity. He wills all of us to be saved, but chooses those who choose to be saved, and chooses them from the present of Eternity. If we are predestined from eternity, then we are called from eternity, justified from eternity and glorified from eternity. The chain of causation is a chain from eternity.

This is a fascinating subject that I pray God will give me the time, inclination and understanding to explore. Even if we don't understand fully the mechanics of our salvation, we know that each of us can be saved by belief in God - actively holding, developing, and feeding the faith that God gives us to find Him. For then, we shall be called, justified, glorified, sanctified and caught up in His Eternity which we may only see darkly through the glass of our minds, but then face to face.

The Benedictine Verse

Today is the Solemnity of the passing of Holy Father St Benedict, the father of monks. It's one of the days in the year in which an Oblate reflects on the nature of St Benedict's legacy and spirituality.

One of the most important biblical verses for a Benedictine is Psalm cxix.116, "O stablish me according to Thy word, that I may live: and let me not be disappointed of my hope." It is in the rite of profession and the rite of oblation alike. The Benedictine way of life centres around stability, obedience and conversion of "mores" and this verse very clearly epitomises all three of these centres.

First we pray: this is part of our conversion. St Benedict reminds us that before we even begin to think about doing a task, we address God personally. The verse is addressed to God, just as the Benedictine life should be addressed to God and to God alone. Conversatio mores has at its heart the turning of the face to God regardless of its state, its fallenness and the marring of the image of God in us. Like Camus, we have to face reality head on. Unlike Camus, we see that reality directly in the face of Our Lord Jesus: the face of the Crucified Jesus, the face of the Risen Jesus, the face of the Ascended and Royal Jesus. In the Tenebrae readings from the Lamentations, we hear repeatedly - convertere ad Dominum, Deum Tuum.

Second, we pray for the gift of stability. We ask God to ground us, root us firmly in His existence and in the awareness of His existence. Our lives flit from one idea to the next, one fashion to another. We fall off one bandwagon and ascend another. St Benedict says "No!" and calls us all to commit ourselves to the choices that we make. The Benedictine sacrifices much of his freedom choice when he makes his commitment. Of course this is more relaxed for the Oblate whose life is influenced by factors other than the monastic cell. Yet, the Oblate too commits, and knows that, in making a commitment, his Oblation (i.e. self-offering and sacrifice) of his will directs him to see that commitment through to the end. This is why the conversatio is so important. All works must be begun continued and ended in God for them to bear the fruit which nourishes the world and brings Joy to the Eternal Godhead.

Third, we pray for the gift of stability in the word of God. The Benedictine recognises his superior and is obedient to that superior. The Abbot is so called because he stands as the representative of God's authority in the monastery, and yet more is written in the Rule about the need for Abbot to be unswervingly obedient to God than about the brethren. The Abbot carries the can for ALL the brethren under his authority and the authority he possesses must be completely compliant with the word of God. For the Oblate, obedience is no less important. Obedience must be directed to one's spiritual superior, namely the parish priest and especially the bishop even if these are not Benedictine themselves. Yet even if they are not Benedictine, the parish priest and bishop are under exactly the same commandment as any abbot as they have souls in their charge. A priest, bishop and abbot will fail - they are human after all - but their duty is to recognise that failure and ensure that their congregation is not scandalised or driven away by their failure. This responsibilty to be obedient to his laity is certainly drummed into an Oblate-priest, just as much as an Abbot is responsible to be obedient to his community.

These are the three aspects of Benedictinism and are central in the profession and oblation, yet the verse goes on to demonstrate that this is a two-sided deal, a covenant with God. God has an input here. The Oblate asks not to be disappointed in his hope. He offers his sacrifice to God, his conversation, his obedience, his stability and commitment and looks to God to uphold him in his new life. The Oblate offers himself for no less a reward than God Himself! This is the relationship of Created with Creator which draws the Oblate to make his oblation in order to find that satisfaction, happiness and fulfilment in God. His part of the covenant is to hold that Oblate dear in His heart, to supply the needs of the Oblate and to transfigure the life of that Oblate. And God is Faithful.

One verse really does say it all, though in ways that are deeper and more profound than we can ever explore. St Benedict recognised it, and God used the oblation of that man to show us that we will not be disappointed of our hope.

Springing into the English Lent or Lenting into the English Spring?

It's quite interesting to note that Spring starts in Lent, though I suspect for some folk, that's hardly a surprise since they regard Easter only as a glorified pagan festival of New Life. The word "Easter" could be seen as rather embarrassing really to the Christian as Eostre (after whom "Easter" is named) was a Saxon goddess of the spring. There is some debate, though, as to whether this is true or whether Eostre existed only in the writings of St Bede. Yet, the fact of the matter is, this was indeed the time of year when Christ's sacrifice for us took place whatever other festivals may have been taking place at the time. That sacrifice took place for Pagan and for Hebrew alike, indeed the sacrifice was for all people, and it happened in the Spring which was a prominent time also for both Pagan and Hebrew.



Spring in the U.K. is rather a strange affair, usually punctuated with bouts of meteorological instability. In an English Spring ( I haven't the experience to talk about the Welsh, Scots or Irish Spring) it's quite typical for the heavens to throw anything they like at you. I've known heatwaves in February and Snow in May. Yet, despite this, there is something fundamentally beautiful about the Spring. For the Pagans, this was the centre of their world. They saw the new life growing, budding and blossoming into action.



And Lent falls right at the beginning of Spring. The season of spiritual austerity comes at the time of this turbulence as the bitterness of winter thaws and yet the land has not become jaded by the summer heat. Of course, there is a big cultural difference between the Britain and the Israel of the first Century, yet both have a reliance on the Natural World around them. Whether English or Israeli, the opening chapters of Genesis hold true: forces beyond our understanding have shaped the world around us; seasons turn and turn again each with a colour and an air that is unique and proper to them. Spring in Israel was not like Spring in England.



Of course, the English Church has put aside false Pagan beliefs, yet there are glimmers of how the two religions correlate still within the English soul. Pagans and Christians mean different things by the word "God". For the Pagan, gods can be plural, for the Christian there is only one God because there can only be one source of what it means to be. However, Celtic Christians kept up the Pagan high doctrine of Creation which is a perfectly orthodox Christian belief, that the World created by God is a beautiful place despite the evil that happens in it. This is something that beats still in the heart of the English Church, that the Church herself is organic, living, growing, budding and shooting.



As I've said before, the word "Anglican" simply means "English". It's a word that predates the Reformation by 300 years. However, words do indeed change their meaning, organically so. The word "resent" once meant to have strong feelings about. King Charles the First is on record on having "resented" the loyalty of his troops. However one interprets the word, "Anglican" possesses that sense of "Englishness", and for me takes me back to wandering around the outside of a Kent church in the spring and soaking the atmosphere of the ages. There will often be an ancient yew tree inside the church yard which brings back memories of Yggdrasil or the Tree of Life, and this tree itself is a metaphor of the Church, a particularly English metaphor perhaps.



So, for an Englishman as myself, the coincidence of Lent and Spring has a unique flavour. Lent smells of wet grass or tree blossom and sounds like the buzz of an early bee or the scuffles of the March Hares. Yes, this is a bit of a romantic idyll and you'll have to forgive me for waxing lyrical, but the English Lent is not about austerity or aridity. It's more about what could be if we stripped away the artificial things we have tacked on to life and remembered our roots. The English Lent is borne of meteorological turbulence, just as our lives are set in the maelstrom of society. Our cares and anxieties are the turbulence that shroud our lives,like the February rain clouds scudding along on the high March winds, and yet we, like the Yew Tree and like the Church have roots that go deep into God Himself.



Our Lord said that Lent has absolutely nothing to do with appearances. It is to do with realities and seeing what those realities truly are. Take away the artificial artifacts, and one has the Natural world in which we have our being. That's not to say that the work of our hands is inherently evil, but rather that it more often than not obscures our vision of God. Nor am I saying that it's necessary to turn into Tom and Barbara Good, but rather that we remember that we are the Creation of God albeit fallen from Him. The cross of Christ is our way back to God. It is as organic as the yew tree and as the Church should be. Of course, the wood of the cross was broken and nailed by man to form the instrument of torture on which Our Lord was broken and hung in order to save man.



Other Christian cultures have their own views of Lent of course, each equally valid and yet none that can be communicated easily across cultures. The Church is organic and no machine that can be broken into parts, nor is it artificial. One has to live the English Lent just as one has to live the Greek Lent, Roman Lent, Russian Lent, et c and to appreciate that the others resonate just as naturally and musically throughout all of Holy Christendom.

Dust thou art

Dust thou art.
From body part,
to cell,
to nucleus,
to chromosome,
to atom, proton, quark and string,
all reduced to proposition,
dust thou art.


Dust thou art.
All that Man can comprehend
is fragmentary,
broken,
partly veiled
beneath the dust,
by dust observed.
No humanity, just dust.
Dust thou art.


Dust thou art.
And to the realm of fragments,
thou must return.
From all asset strip't,
all mien and might,
wealth, wisdom, work
- all wrought for nothing
by nothing.
Dust thou art.


Dust thou art.
All pain that wracks,
each anguish suff'ring,
each cry into the dark,
unheard,
unheeded
by the unforgiving dust that circles,
weaving in the air,
blown by wind itself fragmentary
and with borrowed force
fights its own battle
to be where no real being is.
Dust thou art.


Dust thou art,
save in the eye of one
to Whom
that dust shows form
and thought
and feeling
and promise,
One from Whom
dust takes its very being,
its soul, expression,
One Irreducible
whose integrity of essence
passes essence on to the inessential
substance to the insubstantial
glory to the inglorious.
That the insubstantial, inessential, inglorious dust
transcends its own paucity in Him
and taking on His mantle
loves
and rejoices with the greatest joy
knowing that the thumb upon the brow
with ashen grittiness
brings faith, hope and love
with the holy and divine proclamation,
"Dust thou art."

How deep is your love? (without the Bee Gees)

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Quinquagesima 2014.

St. Valentine’s Day has come and gone.

Heart shaped balloons lie
deflating in the rubbish bin.

The gym is full of people
frantic to work off the extra pounds
that a thoughtful box of chocolates
has added to the waistline.

The teddy bear
with “I wuv you” written on its chest
has fallen irretrievably under the bed.

Does love really last for ever,
because whatever St. Valentine’s Day stands for
doesn’t seem to!

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity,
these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.”

Modern translations of course say “faith, hope, love… but the greatest of these is love.”

Is love really the same as charity,
or are we being misled?

[PAUSE]

C.S. Lewis points out
that we can easily confuse different meanings
of the word “love”.

“I love Paris in the spring”,

“I love my cat.”

“I love my wife.”

“God so loved the world”.

The first three ideas make sense to us,
but does the fourth?

Do we know what it means
when we hear about the love of God?

Is it at all like human love?

St John tells us that God is Love.

This same word is also used in the commandments
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,”
and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”.

Clearly we are meant to love each other in the same way.
That poses a bit of a problem for us.

God is love,
and we know that God is beyond anything
we human beings can even begin to understand.

How on earth are we meant to love
in the same way that God does?

[PAUSE]

Since God is Eternal,
 His love for us cannot have
any conditions attached.

He loves us for who we really are,
regardless of what we do.

That love has been there
since before we were born,
or even thought of.

 Our existence has been planned by God
from outside our understanding of Time or Space.

The things that we do
simply do not affect
the love that God has for us.

St Paul tells us that it doesn’t matter
whether we can communicate great ideas,
it doesn’t matter whether we are wise,
 it doesn’t matter whether we are able
to make sacrifices of our possessions
or our very self.

These things are not Eternal,
they will all pass away,
rot or be forgotten about.

Our best deeds,
our greatest achievements,
our wealth and acquisitions
– all will die with our bodies.

They do not possess the character of Eternity.

If what we have means anything at all,
it has to have love
– unconditional love,
 the love that comes from Eternity.

[PAUSE]

Human beings don’t do unconditional love very well.

“I love Paris in the spring!”
But what about the winter?

“I love my cat!”
But what if that cat then kills your pet budgie?

“I love my wife”
But many marriages end in divorce these days.

There always seem to be conditions.

Fortunately,
St Paul knows that this unconditional love
 is both very near us,
but always just out of our capability.

So he tells us what this love, this charity, is like.

“Charity suffereth long, and is kind;

charity envieth not;

charity vaunteth not itself,
is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not her own,
is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things,
believeth all things,
hopeth all things,
endureth all things.

Charity never faileth:”

Notice that we can replace
the word “charity”
with the word “God”
and the whole thing still makes sense.

We know that an action is godly because
it is patient, kind,
without envy,
without pride and arrogance and lewdness.

An action is filled with that unconditional love
if it is selfless, tolerant,
 thinks the best of people
but doesn’t give wickedness the time of day.

It is honest,
faithful,
hopes for the best and puts up
with whatever is thrown at it.

This is the love that God is,
but are we completely incapable of showing this love?

[PAUSE]

God has made us in His own image
and He commands us to love.

 This means that Love is part of our existence,
part of our being,
part of our creation.

We haven’t just been created because God loves us,
we have been created to be love
and to extend that love into the world.

We may indeed have marred the image of God in us
through our sins,
but it is not obliterated.

God is part of our existence
and so love is still there
beneath the scratches and darkness of the glass.

We can indeed love
and love well if we follow St Paul’s advice.

We may not get it perfectly,
but we can make a big difference
 if we learn to marry our actions
with the love which is in us by our creation.

Lent should be our time for taking stock.
Perhaps it might pay us
 to learn those qualities of love off by heart
so that we can measure our actions against them,
more easily.

If we say that we are human,
but have no love,
then we are truly nothing at all.

Summons to celebrate

Well, it's official! Bishop Damien has issued his writ of summons to all the Diocesan Clergy to the Diocesan Synod on 3rd May at Central Hall Westminster. There will be a Pontifical High Mass at 11am followed by synodical business n the afternoon.

It seems strange that I have received a summons rather than an invitation. The Synod may have a lot of technical business, but ultimately we have much to be thankful for and the whole Synod does have the air of celebration about it.

So am I being forced to celebrate? I am summoned certainly and this is because I am a priest and thus a servant of the laity. My bishop requires my assistance to help the laity rejoice in the fact that God has blessed each member through the gift of the Church and, simultaneously, has blessed the Church with the gift of each member of the laity. Delegates are summoned too, but they have a duty to represent the laity of their parish to whom the actions of their priest is accountable.

All laity are indeed invited to the Synod and not summoned. Does this mean that their presence is not necessary? Are they unimportant?

Certainly not!! Far from it. The business of the Church requires those who will do that business - the Delegates and the Clergy who serve their parishes. The laity who are neither clergy nor delegate are welcome to be there to see how things are indeed running. Their presence at the Synod Mass will edify them as well as any Mass, but further, their presence will edify everyone, for these are the people for whom it all matters.

For the Christian, our praise of God is both a duty and a joy. We must worship God, and it is to our joy that we worship God. It is to our health that we worship, not because God in any way needs out worship. Worship can be such hard work: it must involve sacrifice - the willing offering of that which is most dear to the One to Whom all things are dear. Learning the Mass has been hard work for me and I have made so many mistakes, but that's not the point. I am still offering the sacrifice of the Mass to God on behalf of my beloved parish, and it is Christ's priesthood that I participate in that ensures that our sacrifice is perfected before God despite my many, obvious and not-so-obvious shortcomings. However, I find such great joy in doing so. I really enjoy saying Mass and saying it for the faithful few in my parish whose presence is so dear. I have improved and I hope still to improve so that my laity are not hindered in seeing Christ present with us through my failing.

This summons, then, is a duty that I must observe. The laity of the Diocese need me, not because I am important, but because I am called by God to bring them the hope that He promises His Church. This is true for all the priests of the Diocese and, most of all, to the Bishop - the servant of the whole Diocese.

It would be a great joy to me to see the Central Hall pews in Westminster full at 11am on 3rd May so that I can see the laity being nourished with the most perfect joy that comes down from Heaven. This is an invitation to you, dear reader, and it comes with the love of the Church and with the love of the Most Holy Trinity.

Defragging the Anglican Church

I've recently added Bishop Chandler Jones' blog to my blogroll. To have not done so until now is quite an appalling oversight on my part as I've often enjoyed his blogging. Recently, he has reported on the Working group to reconcile the APA and the ACA. This is certainly very very needed and if it takes place then, at last, we can see visible signs that the genius of Anglicanism is clambering out from beneath the ruins caused by unnecessary and heretical revisionism to take its place among legitimate Orthodox Christianity.

I am minded of the many hours I have spent watching my former PC "defragging". This seemed to take the form of an incredibly long list of coloured squares scrambled about, representing (somehow) the state of the computer's memory. The coloured squares would somehow be grouped together and this would somehow make the computer more efficient. Of course, not being an expert in computing this is the very limit of my understanding in the matter. Whatever it really did, defragmentation was certainly a desirable thing for the computer.

It seems that the dust is beginning to settle now after the Episcopal Church broke away from the Catholic Faith, sadly followed by the CofE. 2017 will see the fortieth anniversary of the Congress of St Louis, and this is a minuscule amount of time in the life of God's Church. Thus, any bridging of the gaps that have led to the fracture of Anglicanism will be of enormous value.

The genius of Anglicanism does mean that there is absolutely no need for the different Anglican jurisdictions to merge formally. There does not need to be one primate metropolitan overseeing the entirety of Anglican jurisdictions provided that there is both a general and particular commitment by each bishop to this Orthodox Anglican Communion which is not new but continues from where the rest of the Anglican Communion broke away.

Once the legal instruments are put in place, we will then find ourselves with a process by which we can begin to gather up the fragments.and put them in a place where they will not only flourish, but preach the gospel with a more harmonious voice. Such mechanisms have the potential to be self-replicating and self-repairing if looked after properly. This very much does mirror the defrag of a computer. One does have to be very careful with all computer systems as the possibility of chaotic behaviour can result. My hope is that the actual chaos is over and, like Langton's Ant, the bridge-building can begin and a highway through the desert can be built.

Of course, this is all the vision of an idealist. We still have to combat human nature and the strange vicissitudes of politics and passion. There is much hope out there which the first continuing Anglicans saw. May we follow that hope more carefully!

How I (fail to) understand Protestantism

I must confess that I have come to Continuing Anglicanism rather late. Having spent my life prior in the Church of England, one of the big problems that worried me about the Continuing Anglican Churches was its fragmentation. To my mind (especially during my more Ultramontane season) fragmentation is very much the hallmark of Protestantism which I have always been seeking to avoid. I have always sought the unity of the Church which produced the phrase “I believe one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” within its Creed. The phrase “we are the One True Church” is clearly designed to strike fear into anyone who is not part of that “One True Church”.

I suppose I must ask myself, “what is this Protestantism that I seek to avoid?” After all, there are so many definitions and nuances that are associated with the word that clarification is somewhat necessary if I am to make any head or tail of things and thus communicate with other Christians. If I say, “I am not a Protestant” then I do want to be able to mean what I say.

As I say, the hallmark of Protestantism seems to be fragmentation. My basis for this observation is first and foremost the Reformation where the word became more prevalent following the protests against the Diet of Speyer. The first Protestant movements were clearly Calvinism, Lutheranism, Anabaptism (among others) as each group tried to work out its faith away from the authority of Rome.

Yet we have fragmentation in the 11th Century as the Roman Church separates from the Eastern Church which is why the Eastern Church regards the Roman Church and her fragments as being just as “Protestant”, so we have to be very careful in what we mean. The Eastern Church herself seems to consist of groups that revel in autocephaly than perhaps is good. Fragmentation is clearly not the sole province of the Protestant, nor is it often carefully considered. It is not really true to say that “Protestant” means “not Roman Catholic” since the Eastern Church regards both Roman and “former Roman” (for want of a better phrase) equally Protestant. Does “Protestant” mean “outside the One True Church”? Given that the Eastern and Roman Churches both claim the title, one is rather bound to think so. Yet this does not seem to tally with the idea that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans x.13). The trouble is that we cannot know absolutely the salvation of others, nor do we know absolutely our own salvation. One has to have faith in the mercy of God for that to work. If “Protestant” means “outside the One True Church” then it must also mean “heretic,” “apostate” or “non-Christian”. That is manifestly against what all the Protestant Reformers were trying to do.

So why do I object to being called “Protestant”. First of all, when the word is levelled at me it’s usually meant pejoratively, in the sense of “not being a proper Christian” or “not being a proper catholic”. Being Catholic is important to me because it is one of the marks of the Church and I desperately want to belong to the Church. However, “Protestant” has overtones of not being “proper”. I also really do not want people to see me like another Ian Paisley whose views I simply cannot accept as being charitable. Clearly “Protestant” is a big brush with which to paint someone.

I hope that it’s fair to say that the marks of the Protestant seem to be rather more a via negativa. I base this on the observation that the Protestant, in genuinely seeking to strip away from the faith all kinds of medieval accretions which have built up since East and West split, has also stripped away that which has been affirmed from the first Seven Councils – this often includes the notion of Conciliar authority as well. I do agree wholeheartedly with the rejection of many medieval ideas, namely Limbo, the selling of indulgences, purgatory as a place of punishment, a hierarchy with more political power and monarchy than the gentle love of souls for starters.

However, I do accept the Seven Oecumenical Councils and the Vincentian Canon as the defining principle of what it means to be Catholic. However, that is my principle and a principle that comes from accepting the authority of the “Undivided Church” but that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily very good at following it! I am after all responsible for my study and I am kept in line by my brother priests and my Bishop of course, but also my brothers and sisters in the laity who always raise good but searching questions. The Lord says that it is my duty to serve them all, so serve them I must.

One may say then that I am using my private judgement to pick and choose my faith as so many do these days. The fact of the matter is that we are all making a private judgement in our Christian profession. We, each of us, work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. It means that we accept a principle of authority and we stick to it. For Roman Catholics, the principle is the Magisterium of the Church which includes accepting the Pope as Infallible. For some Protestants, the principle is sola scriptura and thus further fragmentation follows here when one application of sola sciptura diverts from another. For me and for my Church, the principles of authority are found in Scripture, the Creeds, the Church Fathers and the Oecumenical Councils, which puts us more in line with the Orthodox Church.

Further, the rejection of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Mass is again something that marks out a Protestant. The Church Fathers and the Councils do teach it definitively, but the Roman Catholics rely too heavily on a particular philosophy (namely that of Transubstantiation), likewise the Lutherans (Consubstantiation), and others deny it outright. I, myself, accept transubstantiation as it makes sense to me (in the loosest possible sense of the word “sense”), but I don’t insist upon it primarily because while I hold to a largely scholastic philosophy, Our Lord’s Holy Presence with us goes beyond any form of philosophy or philosophical enquiry. However, I manifestly do not reject the Real Presence at all and find the whole argument of “Our Lord’s body is in Heaven so He can’t be present in the Sacrament” a bit of a category mistake to say the least. This attitude, of course, contradicts the famous black rubric putting me firmly outside the Eucharistic theology of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer and its subsequent editions.

So what do I make of Protestants if I don’t count myself as one of them? Are they heretical? Should I shun them? The trouble with a personal faith is that it is indeed personal. As I’ve said above, there is no absolute knowledge save that absolute knowledge exists. Like Elizabeth I, I do not have windows into men’s souls, nor do I wish it. We are all on pilgrimage and we all walk to the destination which we believe most strongly is the true Way. However, in the darkness of our existence some of us walk in groups, some of us walk alone, others change groups and all seem to be calling the others that they’ve found the Way.

  I believe strongly that I have found the right way, but then I believe that the Church is bigger than just the motley crew with which I find myself walking.  If a Protestant denies the sacraments, then the Sacraments I have will do him no good. The Way the Truth and the Life does shine in the enlightened and humble mind, a mind that is filled with faith, hope and love. I simply cannot reject anyone Protestant or non-Protestant if they are seeking the Truth. Protestants or non-Protestants who are not seeking the Truth in their hearts have already ejected themselves from the Church. For these, my prayers go out most earnestly.

Telling our worth?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Septuagesima 2014.
Text: St Matthew xx.1-16



If it takes nine men four days to dig a ditch which is three chains long, how long will it take six men to dig a ditch that is four chains long?



Exam questions like this are rather puzzling to many of us. You’ve probably worked out that the mathematical answer is eight days, but that’s just that – a mathematical answer. In reality, we would say, “a fortnight due to the inclement weather,” or, “three weeks if you take into account the tea breaks,” or, “six months if the men work for Rochester City Council”. The mathematical answer is very seldom the real answer.

That brings us to a problem. If we pay each man a hundred pounds for a day’s labour, then we need to ensure that the work is being done. It is surely unfair that one man who digs more than his fair share of the ditch should earn the same amount of money as the chap who leans on his spade for three days drinking tea, and barely digs a yard of the ditch.

This is just common sense, surely? So what then do we make of Our Lord’s words about the labourers in the vineyard. Those who work a full day are paid exactly the same as those who only work an hour. They complain, but the chap in charge says, “Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?” Isn’t that just diddling these first folk out of their earnings, hiding behind the law of contract? It’s just not fair!

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is categorically saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is like this chap in charge. The one who comes to work last earns as much as the one who comes to work first. The amount that is paid them, the penny, is actually a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour, so all these workers are receiving enough to live on. There’s no question about slave labour here. The main point Our Lord is making is that God does not discriminate between the faithful Jews – the people of the Old Covenant who came first – and the Christians – the people of the new covenant who came later.

However, this doesn’t take into account the fact that the one who came to work first has clearly done twelve times more work than the one who has come last. But what is this work? Just how much is an hour of this work worth? Is this work even worth doing, anyway?”

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is challenging our sense of worth. In a materialist society, everything is given a numerical value and money is paid in proportion to that value.  This is why this parable is hard for us to understand in the present age. The work that He bids us do is simply not like the work we do now; it certainly does not pay the way we expect.

 If we expect more because we do more, then we’re clearly looking at this type of work in the wrong way.  Everyone receives exactly what they need but the first people want more, and that renders both their reward and their work ultimately worthless. They don’t see where the true value lies. Further, those who complain about it are sent away. How may we understand this?

[PAUSE]

Remember, that Our Lord Jesus is the true vine and working in the vineyard becomes the community of God’s chosen people. The labour is cultivating a relationship with God. It is what we get when we complete a task, or run a race.

St Paul; tells us:
” KNOW ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.”

The reward is everything we need to live life well. If we believe God for purely material gain, then we gain nothing and our labour is a sham – there is no room for grasping for more. God is not a wish-granting genie who rewards us when we please Him. In so thinking, we actually lose our reward. God has offered us a wonderful opportunity to work to get to know Him. We can choose to take that opportunity or refuse it in favour of what we think is better, but is actually worth much less. What is clear is that those who get to return to the vineyard are only those who receive what they are given with gratitude. Many are indeed called but few are chosen. Those who are not chosen rule themselves out by their attitude and intention.

[PAUSE]

As we begin that walk into Lent, now is the time for us to challenge the materialistic elements in our lives. Do we rely on God’s goodness or do we seek to make a profit from our attempt to buy God’s favour? Do we see everything with a price tag or do we cultivate the things in our life that are truly priceless? How do we live in a materialist age without compromising our commitment to loving our God first and our neighbour as ourselves?

We can only reassess our views by stepping back from our lives through prayer, meditation and considering our actions. If we allow it, Lent will help us to do just that and our vision of Our Risen Lord will be all the clearer for it. Is that worth doing, or do we have the wrong sense of worth?

Absurdity, Sisyphus, Chaos and the Church

I am very grateful to a learned colleague at school (who knows much more philosophy than I do) for introducing me to the ideas contained in Camus' Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Like high level theology, I leave languages and their translations to Fr Chadwick and his peers. I am quite interested here in the ideas that Camus puts forward because it does have a bearing on how people live a life without purpose. For Camus, so I'm told, the non-existence of God and the afterlife were self-evident.

Quite how he reaches these conclusions, I know not. Personally, I find it self-evident that I have an immortal soul that will outlast this body. That is my experience of living. Likewise, I find it impossible to imagine a world where either everything is contingent or there is no such thing as causality. That rather offends my scientific sensibility as well as contradicting my awareness of the Divine Consciousness which has its origins beyond me. However, I freely admit that I have no proof that my self-evident truths are indeed true. Indeed, I am more likely to admit that they are completely unprovable.

Camus finds life pointless and absurd. For him there is no meaning of life whatsoever. One may then inquire what prevents the individual from simply committing suicide. Camus' answer is that Man is a rational being in an irrational world, and that it is this absurdity that should be the cause of Man's desire to live and embrace the contradiction of a rational life. This is the basis of his work describing the myth of Sisyphus who is doomed to roll a rock slowly, painfully and laboriously uphill only for it to roll back down again. For Camus, "The struggle itself... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."  For this reason, Camus regards Hope as the worst plague of the lot, trouncing all the unpleasantness that flies out of Pandora's box because it is utterly false. The rock inevitably rolls back to the bottom of the hill to be picked up and carried again. This is fulfillment for Sisyphus! As the rock rolls back, he can pour scorn on his labour. He transcends his own labour.

I'm afraid I can't quite see why suicide doesn't transcend labour, nor why it doesn't pour scorn on the whole act of toiling at life through that last ditch act of free-will. Is suicide surely not an absurd response to Camus' absurd?

For the mathematician in me, I do see something that perhaps Camus was not able to see, and that is the influence of chaos in physical systems. Life indeed may appear absurd or contradictory but this absurdity comes about not only through competing systems but with the system itself introducing feedback. Perturb the system slightly and it oscillates unpredictably from one state to another. The system may be unpredictable but it may not necessarily be irrational. Within Chaos, there is order and from Chaos some order may indeed arise.

This seems to suggest that Hope is now less of an evil but some assurance that there is some underlying order in the Cosmos. For me who sees nothing but contingent producing contingent and finds contradiction in the notion that only contingent things exist, I have enough evidence to convince me of the existence of God.

Yet I do have an appreciation for Camus' ideas here. Daily, I watch society do some remarkably ridiculous things that actually it can't help doing. Law, morality and ethics naturally clash precisely because humanity is a fallen genus and unable to deal with its own existence on a larger scale. I see a Church (or even a Church within a Church) abandon its principles in favour of attracting more members so it can teach them the religious principles that it no longer adheres to. I see those who reject the existence of moral absolutes become the first to take up arms when something appears to be unfair to them.

Many of my colleagues are tired with the uphill struggle and might be forgiven for thinking that their situation is absurd. Like Camus, I believe that Man can indeed rise above his labour, transcend beyond that Sisyphean task of trying to do the impossible. St Benedict reminds us that sometimes the Abbess may ask impossible things of the nun, yet the nun  keeps her vow of obedience and attains greater perfection by attempting the impossible. If she fails, she attributes it to her own fragility. If she succeeds, she attributes her success to God.

For many, that's "bad thinking" a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The trouble is, it is indistinguishable from  if it were true, but then, the nun isn't producing an argument for the existence of God, she's finding her fulfilment in Him.

Man's transcendence is ontological, for God gives Man his worth beyond his works. If belief in God is absurd as many will say, then St Paul, Kirkegaard and Camus all say that we should embrace absurdity without flinching. Of course, Camus would accuse Kirkegaard and St Paul of flinching in their embrace of God rather than staring hopelessness in the face. But then I don't really regard hopelessness as being self-evident. Quite the opposite in fact. I am hopeful about the future. I think it's rather brighter than Sisyphus would give it credit. Our rocks may indeed roll down the hill, but there's always the opportunity to look over the hill at the other side before one trudges down to pick up the rock once more.

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth."

Purely about purity

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the feast of the Purification 2014

In the Tate Gallery,
there are two paintings
by Barnett Newman.

The painting called “Adam”
consists solely of a dark red background
upon which are two vertical brighter red stripes
on the left of the canvass.

The other painting, “Eve”,
 is that same brighter red as the canvass background
but with a single vertical dark red stripe
on the right.

And that’s it.

There are no other features!

Of course in each painting,
your eye is drawn away from the background colour
to the different colour stripes.

That’s why Barnett Newman put them there
– to draw your eye to what is different.

Your eye is meant to seek out
that which is different.
 It is a master of finding the impurity.

A blank page is useless
until there’s something written on it,
or drawn on it.

Writing only works
because it shows up
against the purity of the white page.

It has probably not escaped your notice
 that purity is also regarded
as a virtue for Christians.

Purity is something that God wants for us,
but what exactly does this mean?

Today, Candlemas,
we remember the purification of Our Lady.
It is the custom of Hebrew women
to come to the temple to be purified
 after childbirth.

The twelfth chapter of Leviticus tells us,
 that after childbearing a woman shall offer
a year old lamb and a pigeon or a turtledove
(or two pigeons if she is poor)
for a sin offering to the priest
“Who shall offer it before the LORD,
and make an atonement for her;
and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood.
This is the law for her that hath born a male or a female.”

This is something
that passes us Christians by
and sounds odd, obsessive
and even downright oppressive.

Why should a woman be regarded as unclean
 just because she has performed
the miracle of giving birth to a child?

Can that really be a sin?

[PAUSE]

Of course, the dangers of infection
without proper medical attention
are quite substantial.

Many women have died
and still do die in poorer countries
due to post natal infections.

Despite the fact that Our Lady is a pure virgin,
she is still very much
in danger from infection.

The rite of purification
is supposed to be a safeguard
given to the Hebrew women to prevent them
from infection.

Of course, it gets hijacked
by the more unscrupulous Pharisees and Priests
to enforce their leadership.

Our Lord Himself does away
with the whole notion of being ritually unclean
when He says,
“those things which proceed
out of the mouth come forth from the heart;
 and they defile the man.
For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
These are the things which defile a man:
but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.”

The Blessed Virgin submits to the purification ritual:
her Son perfects it upon the cross
whereby all may be purified and wash their robes
in the blood of the Lamb of God.

But what is this purity that God demands of us?

If you think about it,
pure gold is gold and nothing else.

Pure water is water alone
without anything contaminating it.

So a pure life is a life that is precisely that,
life without contamination.

Our Lord Jesus tells us that He is the true life.

His purity is without question
because although He is both human and Divine,
His humanity is not an obstacle
to being very God of very God.
 Our Lord Jesus is pure God,
 and His humanity radiates with it.

There is nothing in our humanity
that prevents us from having His life.
We too, could more obviously reflect the nature of God
 if our humanity were pure enough.

 It is what contaminates our life
from within that causes our impurity,
 and why people struggle to see God in us.

Our lives and our happiness
are contaminated by our own tendency
to let impurities grow within ourselves.

In fact, we know that there impurities in our life,
precisely because we know what it is to be pure.

Each day,
we battle resentment, bitterness, anger, lust,
hatred, envy, dishonesty
and lack of charity.
 Each of these is like a seed
and each grows within us like an infection.

They attack our happiness;
they attack our relationships with people;
they attack our relationship with God.

When we recognise these infections in ourselves,
it’s easy for us to become disheartened.

There is no reason to be.

We are not wholly depraved,
and if we seek purity,
and work at being pure,
then we recognise more easily
when we are infected with impurity
and can do something about it.

If we are honest with ourselves
and honest with God,
He will purify us.

“For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”

Refining is not a pleasant process
 because it brings the impurities to the top.

They are revealed to us
in all their horrid “glory”,
but it has to happen for us to get better.

It is very easy for impurity
which has risen to the top
to be skimmed off
by a skilled hand.

Purification is not an easy thing and,
 indeed we may run from it.

 God, however,
is patient and won’t let us get away
with a single impurity
 until we shine like pure gold in Heaven.

Like Our Lady,
we must submit to the process.

If it hurts, then it can only mean
we are getting better!

That’s better than carrying those impurities
around for Eternity, isn’t it?