Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning

I suspect that many Christians are looking at the current events in the world and thinking that perhaps (just perhaps) the Mayans are right and the world will end on 21/12/12. Let's look around.

Environmentally we see Global Warming, Earthquakes in Haiti, China and Chile, and now a volcano in Iceland knocking out a sizeable majority of air travel in Europe. There are struggles and conflicts in Thailand, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. And then of course there is the relentless battery against the Church.

It seems that every Christian body is under attack at the moment. We have governments trying to impose regulations on who we can marry, whom we can ordain and what actions we can regard as good. We have scientists not only preaching atheism in a most evangelical fashion but trying to use the weight of the law to force their views. We have a media which is more concerned with peddling distortions and muck-raking in order a) to earn more money and b) to silence the voices of moral authority. We have historians and authors trying to publish their own fantasies about the origins of the Church at odds with the Tradition we have received. We have infighting, division and schism.

The Lord says: And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled : for all these things must come to pass , but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended , and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise , and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound , the love of many shall wax cold .

The beginnings of sorrows - ah! the Church has suffered many of them since our Lord walked bodily among us. It's very tempting for us to think that the end is very near. We can turn to the Apocalypse with a sense of frightened justification and look for the true Millennium, seek out the one who bears the number 666 (or 616) and await the beast rising from the sea.

However, this is rather rash. It is very easy for us to get nervous and start interpreting the Scripture or Tradition in a way that will alleviate our fear. The Lord says we are always going to hear of disasters - natural, political, social and moral, but we should not take them as necessarily being the End of the World.

I think that the Maccabees had the right idea - within reason.

In the first Chapter of the first book of Maccabees, we read of the enforced apostasy on Israel. We read of the abomination being erected in the Holy of Holies, of the Israelites being told to conform to the worship of Zeus, of Jews forsaking the worship of God for the state religion.

And the Maccabees said "NO!"

Of course, they then take arms and a lot of bloodshed ensues (that's clearly how things were done back then), but in the ensuing war, the orthodox Jews were united.

We are in the same boat, with the world trying to enforce its morals on us by corrupting our leaders and vilifying those who stand against. Like the Maccabees we need to say "NO" and we need to fight, and fight hard.

Of course, the only weapons appropriate to the Christian are Faith, Hope and (most importantly) Love expressed through the Truth, Prayer, and Worship. We must discipline ourselves like good soldiers in living the Christian life well so that the love of God shines through us brightly to destroy the malignant spirits lurking within our societies and to win others by our sheer devotion to God.

And we must come together, unite despite our differences, to show the World that the Worship of the One True God will not be crushed.

The Ordinariate does offer such an opportunity. It is a start, the first wave of what should be the move to Church Unity. I doubt that it addresses all the problems, but it is a start and it is a chance for us to fight back against an antipathetic establishment.

We can only do this if we in one Christian community are prepared to trust each other, make ourselves vulnerable to the other Christian community. We can be defensive and be very scholarly in our defences, building up an impenetrable wall demonstrating that the other is utterly wrong, keeping ourselves utterly pure and isolated waiting for the other to move first; or we can accept that there are differences which may be mutually interpreted as error but the intention to worship, pray and study together is of greater importance and so make a move towards the other.

Let us look for ways to increase the spirit of the Ordinariate in finding ways to become a United Church even if we cannot agree to the details of the Apostolic Constitution. Let us pray for our leaders, especially Pope Benedict, so that further ecumenical dialogue can take place unhindered by hysterical and malignant reports by the media.

Mean, Mode and Median

I loathed Statistics at school. It put me in mind of the tedious double Geography lessons that I would always try to skive out of with a judiciously placed piano lesson. For me, Statistics represented the dirty side of mathematics, where the elegance edifice of pure mathematics met with murky reality. It's only since I've taught the subject that I realise how beautiful it can be.

Yet I've always been troubled by the notion of "average" - i.e. trying to find a single number which best represents a statistic of a population. School statistics gets you as far as learning about the mean, median and mode.

To refresh the memory of my readers who may not have touched upon this for some time, the mean is what we tend to call THE average - add up all the data and divide by the number of pieces of data you have. This is where you'll get your 2.5 children. The mode is the most frequently occurring value of the data, and the median is the middle number that you would find if you arranged all the data in numerical order.

What you may not have been taught in school is that two of these averages are biased!

By biased, I mean that the expected value of the average depends very significantly on the sample of the population that you choose, i.e. if you use a biased average you can't get an accurate value of the average height of the population by recording the average height of 200 people.

In fact, the median is biased and so is the mode. The mean is not. We can reasonably expect that value of the mean of any sample will be the mean of the population. Not so the median and mode.

But let me remind you about the mean: add up all the values and divide by the number of values you have. If you have 10 people and the total amount of money that they have in their pockets is £453.20, then the mean amount that one person has is £45.32. The mean is a rather Procrustean quantity: it levels the playing field by cutting off the bits that are too high and gluing them to the bits that are too low. The mean is a truly communist average.

And yet it is the mean that we think of most when we think of "average".

How willing are we to describe ourselves as average? Does that mean that we fit a Procrustean bed of qualia? If we mean "mean" when we say "average", then to describe ourselves or anyone else as average we are fitting them into a mould within our minds to "aid" understanding. Except we lose information and make our average humans less than human. The mean human being is not a human being.

Human beings are biased.

That's not something to be ashamed of. In fact it is something to rejoice in, provided that we recognise our bias when we make objective judgments. Our bias is the result of our upbringing/heritage/nature/interactions and without our bias we would cease to be the persons we are.

We can have a bias for pure mathematics, but pure mathematics can naturally lead us into contact with the filthiest mathematics going - statistics and theoretical physics. But it is knowing this bias that allows us to engage with the mathematics at its most necessary as a language of pure reason to make reasonable judgments about the universe. However, we should not focus on the mean values but try to see how our reality possesses bias away from what we expect and imprint upon our understanding.

The Feast of the Resurrection

Thomas autem unus ex duodecim qui dicitur Didymus non erat cum eis quando venit Iesus dixerunt. ergo ei alii discipuli vidimus Dominum, ille autem dixit eis nisi videro in manibus eius figuram clavorum et mittam digitum meum in locum clavorum et mittam manum meam in latus eius, non credam.

et post dies octo, iterum erant discipuli eius intus, et Thomas cum eis. venit Iesus ianuis clausis et stetit in medio, et dixit pax vobis. deinde dicit Thomae infer digitum tuum huc et vide manus meas et adfer manum tuam et mitte in latus meum et noli esse incredulus sed fidelis. respondit Thomas et dixit ei Dominus meus et Deus meus. dicit ei Iesus quia vidisti me credidisti beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt. multa quidem et alia signa fecit Iesus in conspectu discipulorum suorum quae non sunt scripta in libro hoc. haec autem scripta sunt ut credatis quia Iesus est Christus Filius Dei et ut credentes vitam habeatis in nomine eius

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said , Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: 31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

St John xxi.24-31

Uncertainty does seem to rule our lives. Philosophically, it is very difficult to be certain of anything since we are capable of questioning everything and anything we like. Our "understanding" of quantum physics remains based upon things that not only do we not know, they cannot be known. Mathematically there are things which may be true but for which there is no mathematically rigorous proof. Science, properly done, can only be agnostic with regard to religious faith.

With regard to the resurrection, we have a stark choice - either Jesus did, or He did not, rise from the dead. Again, it is impossible to prove one way or the other. If it happened, it is a unique event in history and cannot be subjected to scientific rigour. Knowing God, this was deliberate for the Resurrection was not an event to demonstrate that He exists once and for all, else the Incarnation would have taken place with entirely different agenda. No, this Resurrection was for a few little folk to complete their faith. Remembering the words of Iranaeus, evidence is not enough either to convince the unbeliever nor dissuade the believer.

Yet St Thomas is lucky. He doubts in the Resurrection, but He has not doubted the Lord, at least until His Crucifixion. Until that awful night in the garden, he has been prepared to die for Christ, to die for His teachings and to die for love. Clearly, St Thomas had faith in Jesus as a teacher, a rabbi, and as an extraordinary worker of miracles. His expectations, however, overruled his capacity to believe. That is why the Lord was able to convince him with empirical evidence of the gruesome practice of putting Thomas' fingers in His side.

Clearly, there is a type of doubt that is not an enemy of Faith, but rather strives to perfect our personal faith. Faith is indeed certain, but we are not perfect - our perfection comes with an encounter with the risen Christ. What must St Thomas have been like after this encounter? It certainly did not change his resolve to die for the Faith which Tradition tells us happened in India. However, would this have happened if he had not had his faith perfected with his fingers and hands in the wounds of Christ.

In doubting, we recognise the cracks and imperfections in our faith. When faced with the troubles and difficulties and sheer horrors of living, the cracks show and are evident. We have a choice: do we ignore those cracks and pretend that they do not exist only to fall through them later in our lives? Do we give up knowing that we are imperfect, unable to rectify the problems, and succumb, not to doubt, but to unbelief? Or do we recognise that our faith is tiny, almost insubstantial and fragile as Jesus often complained, accept that in humility, and use what we have to trust that the Lord will help us to heal those cracks by more and more experiences of the Resurrection.

Yes, blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. Again, as the Lord teaches us, even a little faith will help us to move mountains - indeed having the tiniest amount will be enough to approach the King of Heaven.

We bring ourselves to the Cross for our sins to be removed. We bring ourselves to the Tomb to remember our fragility even to death. We wait in the garden in hope (the hope which breeds faith which in turn breeds love) for the Risen Christ to work in us the miracle of healing.

I wish you a very happy and fulfilling Pasch.

The Seven Last Words: Into Thy Hands

Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum

Πάτερ, εἰς χεῖράς σου παρατίθεμαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου

Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit

St Luke xxiii.46

A bedtime prayer, taught to Him by His Mother as she tucked Him in to bed at night after a long day.

As the last of His strength fails, He thinks of His family, remembers his childhood, the comfort of a human embrace of love, of tenderness, of warmth that every human being should have. All He sees is the hatred being spewed forth at Him now, yet all He knows is Love.

And having said His prayers, He falls asleep.

And God dies.

The Seven Last Words: It is finished

Consummatum est

Τετέλεσται

It is finished

St John xix.30

Tetelestai! Surely the most glorious word in the Greek language. Here it is practically untranslatable!

Fulfilment, consummation, completion.

This is no cry of despair.

This is no horrid realisation that all the work has been for nothing.

This is triumph!

It is orgasmic in its outpouring of strength and life and blood and sheer, pure and uncorrupted personal love for so so many individual people.

The Anointed One has done exactly what He came to do and He has succeeded.

And He receives, in His last moments, confirmation from the Father that His faith is rewarded.

How do we return that love?

The Seven Last Words: I Thirst

Sitio

Διψῶ

I thirst

St John xix.28

How can God be weak?

The great paradox of the Incarnation is revealed at the Crucifixion. A human body can only take so much. Yet, why desire something to drink if one knows that one is only moments from death? Why not tough it out to the end? Why show yourself to be even weaker and incur further laughter from the crowd?

Even here, Jesus shows that humility is a beautiful gift of God. Rather than show pride, the English stiff upper lip, He shows us that even God is weak and vulnerable. And He bids us recognise our own weakness, and to ask for what we need, even if all seems lost. There is no point in being proud or vain, in boasting in strength, because weakness is an inevitability.

We give Him vinegar to drink.

What does He give us to drink in return?

The Seven Last Words: My God, My God

Heli Heli lema sabacthani hoc est Deus meus Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me

Ηλι ηλι λεμα σαβαχθανι; τοῦτ' ἔστιν, Θεέ μου θεέ μου, ἱνατί με ἐγκατέλιπες;

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

St Matthew xxvii.46

His faith in His Father is shaken. The final Temptation. The last attempt at diabolical forces to claim victory over God and the world as a Satanic prize. Whither can a dying man go who is gripped by the fear that all he believed, taught and invested in is worthless, empty, black? Psalm xxi(i) is surely the only place.

It speaks the truth about Jesus' present situation: pierced hands and feet, mocking mouths agape, clothes gambled for. And how He knows the truth of these words written nearly a millennium earlier!

But in remembering this psalm, the Lord cannot lose heart for it does not end in dereliction as some psalms do.

I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him

Even on the cross, the Lord can find solace in the Scriptures, just as He did when tempted in the wilderness. The final temptations are just as futile.

As is Death.

The Seven Last Words: Behold Thy Son

Mulier ecce filius tuus, ecce mater tua

Γύναι, ἴδε ὁ υἱός σου, Ἴδε ἡ μήτηρ σου

Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy mother!

St John xix.26-27

Even amid His pain and suffering, even though He is scared, forsaken and so utterly alone, still He thinks of others' welfare. He sees His poor mother without husband or son to care for her now; a woman whose "yes" has threatened her reputation, caused her no end of worry, confusion, and upheaval and finally fulfilled that prophecy of the sword in her soul even as the lance in His side. Even now He cannot ignore that "yes". He turns and sees another "yes" in his disciple who has given up so much for Him, home, job and reputation, who is now without a guide, a leader, without hope - or so it seems.

Together for now as mutual support- a new family woven in grief.

Tomorrow, the Church- a new family woven in joy.

The Seven Last Words: With me in Paradise

Amen dico tibi hodie mecum eris in Paradiso

Ἀμήν σοι λέγω, σήμερον μετ' ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ

Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise

St Luke xxiii.43

But He wasn't in Paradise that day was He? We say in our creeds that Jesus descended into Hell before He rose again from the dead. Or is Paradise merely the same place as Hell, or rather Sheol - the place of the Dead.

Yes, there are ambiguities about what Paradise is, whether it is temporary or permanent, or Heaven or Hades or even a Persian Disney Land (Heaven forbid!). Whatever our interpretations of this saying of Our Lord, there are two key ideas that reassure the Penitent Thief at the Eleventh Hour and any one of us at our Eleventh hours. In the Vulgate, these are two words: Amen (Truly) and mecum (with me).

We do not know what death is like - we cannot know. Our Faith gives us a sufficient measure of certainty due precisely to this Amen and this Mecum.

Truly we are with Him. And He is faithful, even if we are not.

At the point of Death itself when we pour out our final breaths amid our final confessions of abject failure, our silent scream into the night that we fear, we shall hear those words meant for us - Amen mecum. Is there anywhere else that we would want to be?

The Seven Last Words: Father forgive them

Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt

Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς, οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do

St Luke xxiii.34

But surely, they knew exactly what they were doing? How can you not know exactly what you're doing when you're nailing someone's hands and feet to a block of wood? How can you not know what you're doing when you have been plotting to kill this man for ages because of the threat he poses to your stability? How can you not know what you're doing when you've acted out of anger for the disrespect he has shown you, criticising your way of life, calling you whitewashed sepulchres, foolish and perverse, men of little faith?

Far better, for the sake of the stability of the region that he die and let his teaching end there.

Ah.

But they didn't know.

They haven't been listening.

You see, their malice, their hatred, their blinkered self-interest, their delight in others' pain, is directly responsible for the salvation of the souls of men. If there hadn't been sin and evil in the world, then the world would not have needed saving. As it is, what they are doing is putting an end to the Eternal effects of evil, sin and death.

While they are killing an innocent man, they are crucifying God Himself, and they don't know it.

While they watch His blood flow from His back, His forehead, His hands and feet and eventually His side, they see the New Covenant ratified, that God offers Himself to be so very vulnerable so that we can be free from the powers of Darkness, Death and the Devil, and they don't know it.

While they hear His last words and mock and jeer and spit and laugh, they hear Him offer the same forgiveness, the same freedom from sin as everyone else, they hear Him act as advocate on their behalf as He always said He would and does and will, and they don;t know it.

They are forgiven.

But they don't know it.

Who is more wretched? The bleeding, naked and pained figure dying on the cross, or they?

Rocks and hard places.

I have to admit that crunch time is coming and I will have to weigh up my options shortly as my Parish enters an interregnum, not that I am particularly active within it. I am practically excommunicate from my own parish. My opponents (and there are many) will claim that this is my choice. Indeed it is: I choose to worship Christ at Mass, not have my ego massaged by dumbed-down liturgies, meaningless songs and platitudinous preaching which appears to be the staple of many services [sic] held by the CofE. If our intention is to attend Mass to feed a habit, then that is not a healthy intention for receiving the Blessed Sacrament.

If our intention is to seek the living God honestly and earnestly, in reverence humility, awe and wonder, then we stand a better chance of receiving something far more nourishing when we approach the Altar rail. It doesn't have to be Tridentine High Mass (would be nice though), but it does have to be honest and true to what the Church is. I get more and more infuriated by these folk who try to interpret the Church with their modern "scientific" mindset which they claim to be superior to Scripture and Tradition because it is so "reasonable". Balderdash!

Science is subject to fashion just as much as the High Street. Mathematics is subject to fashion. Worldviews are subject to fashion. Scripture and Tradition are not. They do not change because human beings do not fundamentally change - any glance through the minor prophets would demonstrate that. Of course Traditions grows, but growth isn't change - the roots always remain intact. The old is still there alongside the new, indeed feeding the new, neither rejected as being old-fashioned or newfangled but organically the same substance, indeed inseparable. Not so our Science. Quaternions yesterday, vectors tomorrow. Steady State on Monday, Big Bang on Thursday, D-Branes a week next Thursday. Surplices and tippets the first Sunday in Lent, chasubles and maniples Easter Saturday, but Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. What is reasonable one day will not be so tomorrow.

I limit my ministry to Offices now, mainly from the Anglican Breviary, not that I despise the Book of Common Prayer. I suspect that with my more monastic bent, the Breviary suits me better. The Book of Common Prayer does not contain little hours, or prayers during the day (except, I believe, for the rejected 1928 prayer book). It just seems so incomplete to me, though ask me what needs to complete it and I cannot find an answer for you (other than 6 monastic hours).

When I was turned down for ordination, I was told that the Church to which I was most loyal no longer existed and that I was chasing the past. I wonder how many would-be ordinands were told the same thing. I am suspicious of a form of social engineering taking place within the various boards of ministry. I suppose being rejected from ordination turned out to be the best for me, given the turmoil that exists in the CofE.

Am I waking up to the fact that I have been rather Quixotic in my ideals of trying to salvage what I can from the wreckage of the Church? Elmore is passing away. There are a few good priests, though even of them the majority accept the "priesthood" of women, but I remember that so did Fr Dearmer and so did Dom Gregory Dix - even the greatest minds can be fooled (c.f. Solomon)!

The old buildings still stand but are filled with clutter and emptiness. The CofE is just a pile of rubble which is being robbed like a Roman Villa to build lesser buildings of insipidity and politically correct niceness. In America I hear of Traditionals being forced out of their parish by the Liberal tyranny, their building sold to the Moslems and their projects for the homeless thwarted, but then the smell of brimstone permeates the hierarchy of "E"CUSA.

And the RCC aren't much better - Thiberville as just one instance! Indeed the efforts of a thoroughly traditional (and Anglican) Pope are being stymied by liberals trying to squeeze out the Traditionals. All around the Western World, in Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, Traditionals are being told "You are not wanted" forcing them between rocks (over which they stumble) and hard places (on which they land, nose first). This is another thing that I worry about Anglicanorum Cœtibus - yes we have the love and admiration of the Holy Father, but do we have the love and admiration of the Liberal Bishops when we are more traditional than they?

Is the Continuum the place? It's too divided. Certainly some American Jurisdictions are just so unpleasant and self-satisfied with their own definitions of what it means to be Anglican without the slightest idea of how we English do it (or rather did it). They shout, decry, call themselves prophets, and are so unbelievably rude that I honestly wonder whether any love actually resides in them for all their intellectual puffedness. Besides, I am too papal for most of them anyway.

So to stay CofE albeit nominally, or not? There are just a few embers that need to be extinguished before I decide where to go. However, my decision will have to come soon - rock or hard place. Either will do as long as the rock or hard place is the Rock. I expect to make that decision before Christmass (yes I have put three Ss in Christmass- it's deliberate). Like so many other Traditionals, as it were a monster I have become unto many, but God is my strong helper.

Elmore: two passings

I've been rather saddened to hear two sad things, not that either was particularly unexpected.

The first is that Br Hugh Kelly, the gloriously eccentric internal oblate at Elmore Abbey passed away on March 8th at the age of 81 after a battle with cancer. There are several stories about him which I'm only just hearing, but I remember him entering the Oratory, the wheels of his walking frame squeaking like a monastic choir of church mice, assuming his place in choir and then, emulating Corporal Jones in Dad's Army, always managing to be a beat behind everyone in the chants. I pray that his soul may be raised to the intimate community of God for Eternity.

Second, it has now been formally announced about the closure of Elmore and the movement of the monks to Salisbury, necessitated by the size of the Abbey and the scarcity of monks. It's a sad decision to have made, yet it is the right one, I am sure. I can imagine though that the Doms are going to find this inordinately stressful and destabilising. My prayers are certainly with them.

It seems that the secular age in which we live will deprive us of places of holiness if we let it. It's not that the places of holiness ever really go away, but if we refuse to see them, then we are deprived of them. I look at my parish church and see a beautiful 13th building attached to a pre-conquest tower. It ought to be an holy place, but the clutter, the various not really religious knick-knacks placed hither and thither (especially on the Lady Chapel altar!), the Clavinova instead of an organ demonstrate that there is little reverence or appreciation for what goes on therein. I do not think that my parish is unusual in that. Many parish churches in the CofE are becoming "functional" as opposed to being places of worship.

Please do pray for all monks and nuns and ask God to call more so that the U.K., and indeed all the world may have places of holiness, quietness and peace where one can occasionally be permitted to pass one's finger through the veil to touch the cheek of God.

The Narrow Gate and Hyperbolic Geometry

Playfair's axiom: Given a line l and a point P not on that line, there is a unique line that passes through P that does not meet l.

Those of you of a certain age may well have been taught Euclid's five axioms of geometry. You may even be aware of the controversy of the fifth axiom, the famous "Parallel Postulate" which John Playfair expressed (in my eyes) more succinctly and elegantly than Euclid originally did.



The first four axioms were certainly reasonable enough. They remarked on things we might find quite obvious about our reality, e.g. given two points in space, there is a unique line that joins them, or that one right-angle is the same size as another right-angle. The fifth seems less so: why should it be obvious in our reality that there is only one line through P that is parallel to l?


If one considers a straight line to be the path which joins two points with the shortest distance, then the straight lines on the Earth's surface are arcs of circles with the same centre as the Planet. These are different from Euclid's straight lines, but we don't notice the difference when we are crossing the road as the crow flies to get to Tesco's. In the small scales in which we inhabit, these vast arcs of circles (Great Circles as we mathematicians- failed or otherwise- call them) appear to be no different from what Euclid described as a straight line.


The trouble is, on the Earth's surface, Playfair's (and thus Euclid's) axiom is blatantly false.

In the geometry of the Earth, the Parallel postulate is false. There are no such things as parallel lines on the Earth. Admittedly, the geometry of the Earth also breaks others of Euclid's axioms, in fact any geometry in which there are no parallel will break at least one other of the axioms.

That's not the only way that Playfair's axiom could fail: there could be more than one line through P that doesn't meet L. Here Bolyai and Lobachevsky showed that there are geometries which meet all of Euclid's axioms but not the fifth. (If the lines appear curved, that's because you're looking at them with the wrong eyes.)The most useful of these is the hyperbolic geometry which has a constant curvature, like the sphere or the plane. It's a bit tricky to describe; I suppose that the easiest way to describe it is that everywhere you look, it looks like the surface of a saddle. We usually try to flatten it out, but the lines will then look like arcs of circles which meet a boundary circle at right-angles. The boundary circle isn't really there - it's the hyperbolic version of an horizon. It's called the Poincaré disc.

So why am I going through all this mathematics? What's my point?

It's this business of "One True Church" again, the attitude of "this is the only way to God - the Way." It is clear that the way is narrow, the Lord tells us this much. Yet, I invite you to look carefully at the Poincaré disc. All those lines are straight in the reality of this disc and yet there are groups of lines (mathematically called a pencil of lines) which meet at the horizon. However, hyperbolic lines meet more truly at the horizon than lines in Euclidean space; by that I mean, the distance between those parallel lines, which are straight in this geometry, decreases the nearer they get to a common point on the horizon.

I am still trying to fathom in what way Church Unity can be achieved. If the Christian reality is hyperbolic like the Poincaré disc, then maybe we have got to make sure that if we cannot walk together as Christians, then at least we are travelling in parallel directions on an ever narrowing course to the One True Christ Who lies on the horizon of our vision. If our constant intellectualising (mea culpa) seeks to keep us apart, then let us at least have the charity to allow other Christians the opportunity to travel parallel to us in the hope that together we reach the promised land of the Love of Christ.

Oremus

Homily preached at Eltham College on 1st and 2nd March 2010 based on St Luke xi.1-11.

Let us pray.

[PAUSE for shuffling]

Interesting!

Why did you do that?

All that shuffling and shifting in your seat,
making the benches creak and groan
like an oak tree during
the elephant nesting season.


It’s an automatic response,
a ceremony, that when someone says
“Let us pray”, everyone slumps forward
in their seat.

Does that mean that
you’ve all been hypnotised
so that when the phrase “let us pray” is uttered,
you are to believe that your spines
have turned to rice pudding?

Of course not.

That’s the way you’ve been taught to pray
– bowing your head,
putting your hands together
and perhaps closing your eyes.

And what is it that you do when you pray?

[PAUSE]

It must be difficult
if you don’t believe in God.

What do you do when others are praying?

Sit there and think,
“Oh do come on, you’re boring me silly?”
or does your mind wander
to what you have to do today:
beat year 10 to
the Krispy Kreme Doughnut sale,
create foul and pungent aromas in Chemistry
that will strip the paint off of the walls
as far as D/T
or find 100 different chat-up lines
to entice Pixie Lott out on a date with you.

Perhaps actually, you do pray.

“Please God,
let me launch a nuke tonight in COD.”

“Please God,
let there be a chocolate-covered doughnut left.”

“Please God,
don’t let the test on the subjunctive
be today.”

“Please God,
make Pixie Lott drive by in the limo,
get a puncture have to stop by the school,
just as I am there.

Please help me to lift the car up by one hand
whilst changing the wheel with my teeth,
so that she’ll think I’m hench
and thus want to go on a date with me.”

And what do you suppose
God’s reactions to these prayers are?


[PAUSE]

Perhaps you pray the prayer
that’s being prayed out loud.

Try this one for size,
and this time focus on the prayer itself.

Let us pray.

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings
with thy most gracious favour,
and further us with thy continual help;
that in all our works,
begun,
continued,
and ended in thee,
we may glorify thy holy Name,
and finally by thy mercy
obtain everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Of course you realise that

the original meaning of "prevent"

was "go before".

How did you cope with praying that?

Oh dear, back to Miss Lott again were we?

If your mind was wandering during that,
don’t worry,
it even happens to the professionals!

St Augustine even moans about
his mind wandering.

But he uses the words
to focus his mind back to prayer.

If, however, all your prayer consists of is
“Please God let me able to do such and such”
and
“Please God make whosits to do blank”
then you are missing the point of prayer.

Yes, prayer is about communicating with God.

How is presenting God
with a shopping list of your requirements
communication?

Are our prayers reducing God
to the level of the Genie of the Lamp,
a being whose only purpose
is to do what we want?

[PAUSE]

So just how should we pray?

One of the disciples asks Jesus the very same question.

He replies with the Lord’s Prayer.

Now that's a homily on it's own!

While some of us know this prayer off by heart,
others of us don’t.

It’s worth looking at it carefully by yourself,
because in it we find that prayer
isn’t just about asking for help
with the problems in our lives, small or great.

It’s about asking for help to live life
with God
in a very personal and intimate relationship
despite the problems that life throws at us.


The Lord Jesus goes on to say that
God does actually know
both what we want
and what we really need
before we even ask Him.

The point is that we recognise His existence
as a figure who cares.

By asking Him for things in prayer,
we recognise that we need Him.


You might think of this as grovelling.

As Monty Python would say

O Lord, please don't burn us,
Don't grill or toast your flock,
Don't put us on a barbecue,
Or simmer us in stock,
Don't braise us or bake or boil us,
Or stir-fry us in a wok.

Oh please don't lightly poach us,
Or baste us with hot fat,
Don't fricassee or roast us,
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don't stick thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.

Do we pray like this?

[PAUSE]

The Lord Jesus tells us
that we can be bold in our prayer.

We are allowed to ask.

However, that does not automatically
mean that the answer to the prayer will be “yes”.

Sometimes the answer will be “no”
and other times it will be silence.

God is not an ogre
– He is very much concerned with that
which is really good for us,
though we can’t always see
what is really good for us.

Perhaps our prayers would be better suited
to getting to know Him


A reporter asks Mother Theresa of Calcutta
-now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta-
“what do you say to God when you pray?”

She replies “Nothing. I listen”

“And what does He say to you?”

“Nothing,” says the aged nun, “He listens.”

Yes, this does sound like
one of those useless and unfathomable pieces
of Christian mysticism,
but how do we expect to communicate wih anyone,
let alone God without actually listening
to them.

[PAUSE]

When you pray, are you always asking for something?

Or sometimes, just sometimes, do you listen?

Friends of the Ordinariate

This site has been launched as a base for Anglicans in the U.K. to connect with each other with regard to the Apostolic Constitution, regardless of whether they intend to take it up.

Since I am very cautious about the Ordinariate and the way it may separate Anglo-Catholics in the UK at a time when the full CofE is debating how to keep dissenters within the same jurisdiction, I am rather glad of this sort of site.

I am of course rather disappointed to see that the Church of Wales is seeking to follow the same litigious route as the CEO of ECUSA. I am also disappointed by certain groups within the Continuum who are behaving like the Roman Catholic Church (yet are fully opposed to the Roman Catholic Church) and claiming that they have the sole definition of being Anglican (ironic because they are all as English as a Big Mac in every way) and thus refuse the adjective Anglican or Anglo-Catholic to anyone who wants to accept the Ordinariate. As I said below, let them pontificate like that. Adjectives mean nothing in Eternity: the desparate search for unity of spirit does.

The next few years are really going to be remarkable in the history of the Church as jurisdictions push and pull and jostle for the souls of the world. The one(s) that come through will be the one(s) that have the true message of charity and affection for God's fallen creatures. Oremus.

"Both and" and "either or"

Last night, I sat listening to Monteverdi's Vespers of Our Lady written in 1610. It's a piece of music that I've grown up with and I find that what pass for compositions from my mind has been influenced largely from the Renaissance Italian genre. You can always tell this sort of piece as they make great use of space and, given the spacious nature of places like San Marco in Venice and St Peter's Basilica in Rome, you can understand that the architecture influenced the music. Italian Renaissance choral pieces are polyphonic, usually polychoral, and seem to make much use of brass instruments - the famous sagbutts and cornetts.

Having sung in many a choir at Evensong, I've also grown up with the English Renaissance music which is usually on a much smaller scale, more intimate and rather reserved. Even an eight-part piece such as Purcell's "Hear my Prayer" has an intimacy and quiet expression of faith that is no less moving than "Ecce Beatam Lucem" by Striggio. The cultures haven't changed much over the centuries, it is still an English virtue to be somewhat reserved in one's emotive expressions, while the Italians are still passionate and expressive. I know that there are those who tend to bristle when an English countertenor, such as Robin Blaze, sings arias meant for a castrato. Granted that the countertenor voice is not a substitute for the castrato in projection, articulation and range, still there is something objectionable about a man singing notes in the register reserved (these days) for women. It just isn't English.


Yet the English Countertenor sounds glorious when singing Gibbons' "Behold thou hast made my days" or "See, see the Word is incarnate" which tend to be almost academic statements of fact. Of course the Reformations in England did make their mark on music in the Church. Certainly, Tallis and Byrd had to forego the art of melismata (more than one note to a syllable) in order to have their music sung in the Parishes. Yet even so, their Latin work was still tolerated (and possibly encouraged) by Queen Elizabeth. Despite their Catholicism, Tallis and Byrd wrote English music for the English Church and whether in Latin or the vernacular, it was very much a la mode.

Yet, however reserved the exterior of an Englishman, his heart still beats passionately. I am told that Hugh Grant and Colin Firth make the hearts of women flutter despite the fact that they do not race around saving the world from Armageddon.

I listen to these subtly different styles of Renaissance music (the German, French and Flemish schools are just as distinctive) and I wonder about how they might be married. After all, it is quite reasonable to hear Palestrina's Sicut Cervus at an Anglican Mass these days. However, it is less certain to hear Wesley's Hear my prayer or "Sumsion in G" in San Marco and this seems to summarise the attitudes of Anglicanorum Coetibus.

I have said earlier that I applaud the offer shown to Anglo-Catholics by the Holy See, and I still do. I am grateful to them for listening and for thinking how Anglicans can be incorporated into Communion with the Holy Father. However, from what little I understand about the Apostolic Constitution, it seems to me very much an "either or". You can be Anglican, or Roman Catholic - not both.

It seems to me (and I am willing to be corrected) that Anglicanorum Coetibus is to be seen as reclaiming an errant family member who has fallen on hard times and has returned for help. The errant is welcomed back but under conditions for reconciliation given by the richer relatives. It is Rome that is issuing all the conditions, not the Anglicans.

This is not what Traditional Anglicanism is; rather it has a richness of which Rome seems utterly ignorant. Anglicanism is only the poorer relation to Rome in that our communion is suffering from fracture and division by those who are using the tolerant nature of Anglicanism to force their own agenda and fashionable philosophies into her Parishes and others, who have their own definitions of Anglicanism, preventing a meaningful unity to occur. As Christians we have need for Rome, sacramentally so. And Rome, for all her strength, needs us, sacramentally. It is by working, praying and consecrating together that we can go against a spirit in society which cheapens the dignity of the human condition and seeks to numb its members to the suffering of its children.

I am convinced that the "either or" options with which we are being presented do not do justice to the Truth that is yet to be revealed. Our Lord Jesus Christ was one who showed us that "either or" is too restrictive of the Truth but rather incorporates a "both and". He is both Human and Divine. The Christian is (usually) both a saint and a sinner. The "either or"s belong to the Divine Judgment of the Father and demonstrate His Will in the running of the Catholic Church.

I would suggest that, if there is a future for Anglican Papalism now, it is found in the search to become both Anglican and Papal and being true to both natures, even when they conflict. My hope is that those who take up the Constitution will not see themselves as different from the rock from which they are hewn but continue to look for communion with those who choose not to take up the offer. I also hope that those who choose not to take up the offer will look for ways to take up the spirit of that offer.

What we should not be looking for is to make things so complicated as to distinguish between being both "either or" and "both and" and either "either or" or "both and". Let's just be "both and" Catholics, plain and simple. We may not sing the same vocal line, but we are singing from the same hymn-sheet. Surely that makes for a richer, more expressive harmony.

The Passing of the Innocent.

When a light goes out, we find ourselves in a new unspeakable darkness, haunted by the confusing after-images of the light that once shone and now shines no more. Our eyes try to adjust, but the light that illumines us is not the light that once was and grew used to: the world seems darker and different and alien.

Yes, there are other lights in the world which burn as brightly in the darkness but it is not the same. We have to live in the darker world. It may still be possible to discern the world's beauty in this dimmer light. It takes time and patient suffering to deal with the plethora of repetitions of the after-images which will fade in time, but thankfully never really go away.

Couperin

Since I've been referring to the little sentence by sentence way he broke up the Gloria, here is his Organ setting of the hymn from the Messe pour les Paroisses.

Part one:



Part two:

A la Couperin: Quoniam tu solus Sanctus...

Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Domi-nus, tu solus altissimus Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen

Ὅτι σὺ εἶ μόνος Ἅγιος, σὺ εἶ μόνος Κύριος, Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, εἰς δόξαν Θεοῦ Πατρός. Ἀμήν.

For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

The final phrases of the Western Gloria have this sense of separation between us and God. "Only...holy" and "Only...Most High" seem to depict a very old idea of a remote God so very far removed from His Creation. Yet they are applied to Our Lord Christ which produces quite a fascinating paradox, for Christ is the Person of the Holy Trinity with Whom we have had Human to Human interaction. How can this Human Christ who chose, together with the Father and the Paraclete, to be with us be simultaneously so remote from us?


Let us think a little more deeply because we can find ourselves being rather equivocal in the way we treat the words "remote" and "separation". In what way is God remote from us? The hymn says it all: He is remote in Glory. We return to the beginning of the hymn talking about the impact that God has on Creation. No other being has this impact, and this demonstrate God as being utterly unique in the whole of Existence, so unique that we can only really describe Him with analogies that sometimes we stretch and twist too far to prove a point (mea maxima culpa). This immediately sets Him him apart from all that there is, but this is not an isolation.


God could have chosen to be isolated from Creation, but He hasn't. For whatever reason, He chose to create us; He has chosen to share it with us all the way; His isolation is in His uniqueness, but not in His intention. In this way we see a humble God, fully aware of Who He is, yet not wishing to revel in that Being as the only thing that mattered, but rather to share it respectful of our wishes and will. This seems to me to be why we were created -as visible expressions of God's humility. God shows us an intense desire to share beauty, love, and warmth with everything which is not-Him. He demonstrates that sharing is a two-way activity, though the nature of that activity is clearly different. What God shares with us is vastly different from from what we can share with Him.


Perhaps this is also why Evil exists: God shares with us the problem of what things are without Him in order that we can see Him more clearly, though this is a terribly trite and pitiful statement in the light of the recent sufferings in Haiti. This too demonstrates the unknowable nature of God. The knowing of God's mind will not help those suffering, but actions of love do speak louder than theodicies and philosophies in this matter.


The Gloria brings us full circle into the Mystery of a God who is unknowable and yet demonstrates His own revelation, presenting us with the unfathomable made visible, showing us realities beyond observability and always pointing to what is greater.

In the East, things don't end there.

Καθ' ἑκάστην ἡμέραν εὐλογήσω σε, καὶ αἰνέσω τὸ ὄνομά σου εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος.

Day by Day shall I bless Thee and praise Thy name now and into
the Age of Ages.

Again, I've already spoken about that wonderful phrase "Age of Ages", an the Eastern Church rejoices in having this phrase as continuing their reading of the Gloria. They then incorporate ten more verses from the psalms, a trisagion and a Gloria Patri.

However, thus ends a hymn with which we begin or end our Mass, depending on whether we are using a Missal or a strict observance of the format of the BCP Communion. From what I understand, it belongs at the beginning, because it points to the inadequacy of words to describe our relationship with God and leads us into the rites and ceremonies of the sacrament where we meet with God Himself. It lifts our hearts to Him, and we are called upon several times in the Mass to reflect back to this hymn ("Glory be to Thee, O Christ" "Lift up your hearts", "Lamb of God...").

And this hymn resounds with that final and ubiquitous "Amen", a word often forgotten because it is said so frequently and yet punctuates the Christian life so frequently and penetrates it so fully. We should never despise our "Amen".

Glory be to God on High? Amen - YES! So Be It.

A la Couperin: Domine Fili ... miserere nobis.

I notice that there are one or two differences in the translation in the Greek which have confused me today. Oh that I had the learning of genuine scholars such as Fr Hunwicke! I've put in an addendum to last week's offering.

Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, qui tollis peccata mundi suscipe deprecationem nostram, qui sedes ad dexteram Patris miserere nobis.

O Lord, the only begotten Son Jesu Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

Κύριε ὁ Θεός, ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὁ Υἱός τοῦ Πατρός, ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς, ὁ αἴρων τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ κόσμου. Πρόσδεξαι τὴν δέησιν ἡμῶν, ὁ καθήμενος ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ Πατρός, καὶ ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς.

The Greek is almost the same, though the phrase "O Lord, the only begotten Son Jesu Christ", together with the Holy Spirit, is associated with those formulæ for our worship that we discovered last time and thus is not included in what amounts to the Agnus Dei.

The word that struck me today is the word Πρόσδεξαι. The δεξαι on its own means "receive", so the sense of the whole word is stronger "receive to Thyself" or perhaps more naturally "take to heart".

One of the things that seems to cause the Atheists offence is what they perceive to be grovelling in the Presence of God. They would look upon this passage in the Gloria and its repetition as the Agnus Dei and then quote Monty Python at us:

O Lord, please don't burn us,
Don't grill us or toast your flock,
Don't put us on a barbecue,
Or simmer us in stock,
Don't braise us or bake or boil us,
Or stir-fry us in a wok.
Oh please don't lightly poach us,
Or baste us with hot fat,
Don't fricassee or roast us,
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don't stick thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.

The beauty of Monty Python's parody is that of course it makes us think about what we are doing and what we are saying. Lack of humility goes both ways, we can think too much of ourselves and we can think too little of ourselves. Both attitudes deny the Creative power of God. In thinking too much of ourselves, we try to usurp God's authority over us, His Creation, to the extent that we deny ourselves to be His Creation. In thinking too little of ourselves, we deny the fact that we are temples of God's Holy Spirit and therefore have some dignity before God. Thus we frighten ourselves into Quietism and complete passivity.

We have, then, this threefold petition to God, twice for mercy and, in the Gloria, the request that God takes our petitions to heart. In the Agnus Dei, the third petition is for Peace. These are not the petitions of grovellers who seek to deny themselves the dignity of humanity, but a recognition that we need mercy, freedom from sin, the assistance of God to live and the peace to cope with a chaotic world.

In referring to the Lamb of God, in Whose sacrifice we partake, we refer to that most intimate of relationships -more intimate than any relationship between humans - namely, receiving Our Lord in the Sacrament. We take God into ourselves - "and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple". We may make ourselves unworthy by our manifold sins and wickedness, but this is a prayer of those who possess worth as the Creation of God to fulfil their potential as temples of God. We pray that God would take our petitions to heart and that we should take Him to heart too in the Sacrament.

While this may be a prayer of submission, it is not a prayer of grovelling. We Christians can be bold to approach the Throne. We may do so only with fear and trembling, but the Presence of God does not cause us to lapse into a completely passive being. We pray God to have mercy on us, to hear our prayers and give us peace, so that all our faithful actions may be perfected in Him and that we may find rest with Him in Eternity. He does actually promise us that, you know.