Law Abiding Christians

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Lent

There are Christians who object to Lent. They say that we don't need to fast because we don't need to obey silly man-made rules that don't affect our Salvation. Indeed, some folk seem to think that those of us who hold to liturgical rules and practices aren't doing Christianity very well. And they will say that St Paul agrees with them.

But does he?

[PAUSE]

When St Paul talks of Law, he is usually talking about the Jewish Law with all its complexity. This will include the kosher laws and the sacrifice system. St Paul is clear that we are not saved by the Law of the Old Covenant but rather that it exists to hold God's people together until the Messiah comes. Those who try to enforce the Jewish Law on Christians are missing the point, says St Paul. Those who try to force the Law on Christians are shown to be foolish by the very Law that they profess. They are like Hagar: slaves to the Law, unable to be truly free. They lack the life of Sarah which is free and in command of itself. It is in the life of the free that we become the people that we are meant to be. We become free to be excellent in the eyes of God.

[PAUSE]

Those who seek to impress the Jewish Law on Christians do so in the sense of being masters and signalling virtue. This is empty and devoid of true virtue because it is virtue for the eyes of men and not God. True virtue is obtained by sincerity to God. We obey the rules of the Church not to be seen to be good but to be good. But why is this different from those who impose the Jewish Law? 

Actually the real and more important question is how do we become good in the first place? Where does this goodness come from? Surely we cannot do good of ourselves. We cannot make ourselves good by ourselves.

[PAUSE]

Well, this is what the sacraments are for. Baptism and Confirmation welcome the Holy Ghost into our lives to give His grace - His active presence in our lives - to cleanse us and regenerate us into to the life of Christ. And the life of Christ is good.

 Further, in the Holy Eucharist, we receive the substance of God into our own substance. And Christ is good, so we are restored in His goodness. So by God's grace we can choose to do good things. And, because we are free in Christ, we can choose to do good of our own free will because the Spirit of God dwells in us.

But what of the rules? Why is it important to get the liturgy right?

[PAUSE]

Rules don't just regulate, they measure too. They help us to see the progress we are making. They represent a standard that we should try to achieve and from which we benefit. In observing fasts and feasts, we exercise our souls to align to Christ in Whom we are truly free.

To want to say our liturgy well is to express the value that God has in our lives. It shows God's worth in our lives - it is worship and we are commanded to worship for our greatest good - life in God Himself.

To follow the rules of Liturgy is to exercise God's gift to us. It puts us in mind of Him. It helps us see the goodness in which we live our lives and which ought to burn brightly in us. This is not Law and yet we keep the Law by exercising our faith in God.

[PAUSE]

The Jewish ritual laws of the Old Tests have no binding on Christians. But the Jewish moral laws do because they are rooted in the worship of God. Moral Laws are about our relationship with God and do not change. This is why the Ten Commandments still apply but the law of Circumcision does not.

Whilst we love Jewish brothers and sisters dearly, we are not bound by their laws. By accepting His Grace, we are bound to Christ in His Incarnation. By accepting the burden of our cross, we are bound to Him in His suffering and death. By accepting the truth, we are bound to Him in His Resurrection. That is what being Law-abiding Christians is all about.

A conception of the Annunciation

 

Why the Annunciation deserves observation.

A truly appalling homily!

Sermon for the third Sunday in Lent

There is a scene in "The Magician's Nephew" in which Uncle Andrew, whose selfish experiments have caused so much trouble, dresses up in all his finery to impress the strikingly beautiful witch-queen Jadis. All this finery gets covered with mud and soaked in water by well-meaning but confused animals. Whatever we consider to be beautiful is vulnerable to being damaged or dirtied.

We can see that in Church music turning into entertainment. We can see that in deforestation for motorways and commerce. We can see that in the institution of marriage being cheapened to a legal process and watch as couples get divorced and remarry again and again for the pretence of legitimacy.

The same is true for our churches. There has been a spate of church vandalisms in the news. Statues have been defaced, crosses broken, churches set ablaze  Even in our little Diocese, we have not been immune when, some years ago, the boot of a vandal crushed a full ciborium. Even the Body of Christ is not immune from being sullied!

[PAUSE]

If this distresses us then we can take heart. 

Ask yourself this: why are you distressed by the damaging of beautiful things. Why does the desecration of a church bother you?

There are two answers and we need to learn the difference.

The first is that we are distressed because we like the beautiful things, the painting, the decorations, the finery. And we like them because we're in love with the things themselves. That way lies idolatry but we don't always get that far.

The second is that we are distressed because of the dishonour it shows God. The One Who truly loves us is having His gifts to us thrown back at him smeared in hatred and cheapness. We are offended on His behalf.

And yet, if the sight of the Body of Christ trodden under foot appalls us, then already we have begun to recognise the indignity Our Lord suffers on the way to the cross. What we must realise is that the reason why Our Lord suffers this indignity is precisely because you have been sullied by Sin. If you are appalled at how Man treats Our Lord then realise now that this is nowhere near how furious God is that His creation has been damaged. His wrath is so great that, to do something about it, He is made man in order to suffer and die and, in doing so, become the means to our restoration.

In Christ, we are beautiful again!

So how do we proceed?

[PAUSE]

St Paul tells us that we should stay away from those who live lives that seek to desecrate the dignity of being human. We must never lose that sense of being appalled at the way that the beauty of being human is treated at the hands of those who will not see it. We must recoil from the children of disobedience and walk as children of light behaving in a way that reflects the light of Christ into the darkness. That's not to hate them. We can walk apart from the children of disobedience but we can still pray for their good. If we are truly appalled then we must be appalled on their behalf and pray hard for their attainment of Heaven at our side.

[PAUSE]

If you are appalled at the treatment of  church property then rejoice, because it means you care about shining light into the world. It means you value God. It means that you are responding to His love.

Be appalled but rejoice at being appalled!

Binding St Patrick

 

To what should we be bound this day?

Back together again

Sermon for the second Sunday in Lent

Fornication is not something we like to talk about in church, is it? And with good reason.

For many of us, it's a dirty word and makes us feel uncomfortable. For others, it conjures up images of being made to feel guilty about our intimate relationships with other people.

But St Paul is clear and, no matter how embarrassing it is for a priest to preach about it from the pulpit, the subject must not be swept under the carpet because it does affect us - it affects us all, even the most chaste of us. 

[PAUSE]

What we have to remember is that fornication is not the only sin but it is a sin that can do us untold damage. St Paul tells us that we cannot expect to be sanctified - be made holy - if we cannot "possess our vessels" by which he means "control ourselves". But, as usual, it is the Devil who likes to focus on one thing without getting at the real issue. The endless debates about sexual activity that are raging in the Church are a smokescreen for one important fact that we are being encouraged to forget.

What do the people say to the Church when it tells them that fornication is a sin?

"It's my body. I can do what I like with it!"

Do you hear that? What is this person really saying?

[PAUSE]

People who say things like that see themselves as separate from their bodies. To them, the body is an instrument or a plaything, but an instrument or plaything of what? The soul? The mind? Something else? Who is the "my" if we take the body out of "my body"? Is there anything left if the body is removed?

Well, yes, there is the soul but it's incomplete. There's something wrong with souls without bodies. The soul is what makes a body alive. If there is no body then there is nothing to do the living. The soul needs the body in order to be a complete human being. A body without a soul is just a corpse; a soul without a body is like an ocean without water.

And this is the problem. We are being tempted to tear ourselves apart in order to destroy the image of God that we bear. As soon as we start thinking that our body is just a toy then we miss the very fact that any thing which affects the body also affects the soul. And whatever affects the soul affects the body. 

Fornication, along with greed, hatred, gluttony and sloth, distorts the natural way that our bodies work in order to obtain some temporal pleasure. Here is a grotesque irony. The more we think of the body as our plaything, the more the soul becomes a plaything of the body. The worst of this is that we don't even notice. We lose our soul by gaining the world! 

It gets worse. In seeing our body as a plaything, we also see the bodies of others as playthings and thus deny them their God-given humanity. Further, if we see the body as a plaything, then we can start seeing children as an inconvenience and an obstacle to gratifying fleshly lusts. Thus, the very act designed to bring a loving family into being becomes, by fornication, a means of hating the family.

[PAUSE]

Lent is about reuniting body and soul. The fast is a very simple way of doing so because the bodies desires become linked once more to the desires of the soul. Denying the body a little food means that we become aware of its true needs in God, and we become more attuned to what we need to stay together, body and soul. Fasting helps us to recognise our excesses and expose other ways in which we treat our bodies as separate from ourselves. It helps us learn respect for ourselves as things of body and soul inseparable.

[PAUSE]

Fornication is a deadly sin against the self, let us be clear on that. It is, however, utterly forgivable for those who seek forgiveness. One day, God will transform us into who we are meant to be - body and soul, neither one without the other. Until then, we should try to stop ourselves from coming apart.

Does suffering mean anything?

 

Where is God for Ukraine?

Lying in the easy way

Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent

When you've just had a nasty fall, there is confusion, pain and indignation as you sit there rubbing your knees, wondering how this fall happened, and scolding yourself for falling in the first place.

One thing you don't feel is strong? How on earth can you feel strong after this?

[PAUSE]

The big problem that human beings struggle with most is Misfortune. Misfortune makes us distrust our senses, our beliefs, even our trust in God. How many people walk away from God because of the great calamities that they have suffered. The one thing you don't feel in the face of Misfortune, Calamity and Tragedy is strong. You feel powerless and unable to cope. And just where is God in this?

Where is God in the Pandemic?

Where is God in Ukraine?

Where is God in the face of Climate Change?

These are all important questions and ones that we have a right to ask. God has given us minds to ask that question and to make choices in the face of insurmountable odds.

But what we cannot do is expect to know the mind of God. Either we believe that He has a supremely good reason for allowing us to suffer, or we believe that He has not.

St Paul believes that his sufferings mean something. He believes that when we are weak, God uses his strength to bring good. Just look! All the terrible things that have happened to the Apostles have brought more people to Christ. They have seen their own suffering in the faces of the persecuted Church and they see that salvation is not only possible but guaranteed through Jesus Christ. This is because the suffering of the Apostles has exposed a lie. The strength of the Devil is lies and lies vanish when there is truth.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord is hungry and the Devil tempts Him with the easy way out: turn stones to bread.

Our Lord is away from home and the Devil tempts Him with the easy way to prove that the Father still loves Him: jump off the temple and the angels will come.

Our Lord is uncomfortable in the wilderness and the Devil tempts Him with the easy way back to comfort: worship him and have all the riches of the Earth.

The lie is always the easy way out. The Devil says to you, "if God loved you, He wouldn't let you suffer! So give up on God and you won't have to struggle with this problem any more!" Indeed, to blame God or to call Him out for our misfortunes is the easy way out. If we take it then we find some fleeting comfort, but we cannot grow. Lose God and any meaning or reason for our suffering is lost. Lose God and there will be no answer for our pain. Lose God and gain numbness - feel nothing ever again - and the warmth of love is extinguished.

[PAUSE]

We have to remember that the Devil deceived us into falling away from God in the first place. We have to take responsibility for being deceived and for turning away from God but it is the Devil's continued lies that we are struggling to get away from, and that hurts. It hurts because we are too comfortable with the lie to receive the truth after our Fall from God. But getting back to the truth is precisely what is good for us.

[PAUSE]

Lent is about picking ourselves up after our Fall and continuing our journey back to God. It is a long journey of repentance, full of hardship and struggle to separate ourselves from deception and ignorance but, whether we see Him or not, God is faithful and our growth to maturity in Him will help others to find God in the joy of His Resurrection.

Walking a Lenten Path

 What is the point of Lent, really?

Willing perfection

Sermon for Quinquagesima

You know that Love is not a feeling. It's not an emotion that feels nice and warm. A man may crave a chocolate biscuit but, if he's diabetic, giving him the thing that he wants might hurt him badly. We can kill with kindness, after all. Love rejoices in the truth.

Love is not about making someone happy. If someone rejoices in lies, then loving them will hurt them for love rejoices in the truth. 

And you know this because God is Love and God is not an emotion. And God does not want to make us happy. If He does, then all the pain, sorrow and suffering would disappear. If God wanted us to be happy then there would be no sadness.

What sort of Love is this? Who would want Love like this?

[PAUSE]

We are always tempted to see things in the small without any regard for the wider context. Our lives are limited to about eighty years and to the places we occupy in those eighty years. We cannot know why God permits Evil - at least not fully - but we can trust Him to love us.

For God wants nothing less than our perfection. We are made to be perfect even as He is perfect. The fact that God wants us to be perfect means that there is a meaning for our lives. God intends you to become the perfect you. 

But Love does not insist on its own way. You are free not to become the perfect you if you want to, or even to have your own idea of what the perfect you is. But your idea of the perfect you may not be God's idea. We have taken that choice for ourselves when we took the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that we can say what Good and Evil are  for ourselves independently from God.

[PAUSE]

God's love for us makes us sad because it confronts us with the truth that we don't want to hear. God's love for us makes us sad because it confronts us with the consequences of our decisions. We live in the tension between our good and God's good; we live in the tension of our love and God's Love; and we live in the tension between what we want for us and what God wants for us. 

Humanity is an orchestra which has God's music in front of it. Each of us can play what's written or we can choose to "improve" on it because we think we know better. That's why there is so much noise, so much out of tune and so much distress.

[PAUSE]

Lent is about confronting this tension and embracing the sadness of our lives. We are not perfect - yet! But repentance puts us back into God's plan of perfection. Lent is our chance, not for happiness, but for joy. We withhold from ourselves what we like in order to find what we truly desire. We stop looking at the smallness of our lives but rather embrace the vastness of lives lived with the Holy Ghost dwelling in us at the fullest. We stop looking at ourselves in Adam and we start looking at ourselves in Christ.

God bless your Lent and may it bring you closer to your perfection in Him!

Succeeding Matthias

 

How the Catholic Church understands the Apostolic Succession.

The foolishness of wisdom

Sermon for Sexagesima

Which fools do you suffer gladly?

Do you even know? 

Holy Scripture has a lot to say about fools, and also cautions calling someone a fool. What characterises a fool is someone without knowledge acting as if he does have that knowledge. The fool suffers from a surfeit of pride and too little sense of the truth. He often suffers much as a result. We hear that the fool and his money are soon parted: the fool invests his money in a project circumnavigating Switzerland, but he doesn't know that he is giving his money to thieves and crooks. Of course, this could happen innocently to any one of us, but the fool pridefully insists that he knows best and loses his money as a result.

Knowledge makes a difference between fool and wise, but which knowledge is best? Science has much to tell us about the physical world but it cannot tell us about the world that is not physical. If we rule out the existence of God to begin with then we will never find Him no matter how hard we look. Humility is a prerequisite here.

Fools are the object of ridicule. They are laughed at and mocked. The compassionate feel sorry for them and seek to help. But then the compassionate risk becoming fools themselves.

[PAUSE]

The Christian is supposed to become a fool for Christ. We are to be prepared to be mocked and hated for our Faith. We are to be seen as ignorant because we believe in God. Look at how daily we are laughed at because people think God doesn't really exist! These people think that we are fools because we don't know and they do. They judge us fools because they have superior knowledge.

The danger for the Christian is to look for truth apart from God. The world says that Love is an emotion, but we know that God is Love. If we accept the world's understanding of Love then belief in God is reduced to simply feeling nice. As a result, to love someone is to make them feel nice. The moment you make them sad, or offend them, or make them feel guilty, then the world says you are not living them. If we believe that this is what God wants, then we have to conclude that St Paul hates the Corinthians by making them sorry when he rebukes them for tolerating someone living an immoral life.

The moment a church allows the world to tell it what Good and Evil are, it becomes foolish. It is blind to its ignorance and insists on preaching ignorance.

We know that to love someone is to desire their perfection in God and to hate someone is to will their eternal imperfection and separation from God. It is because we love someone that we do not want them to be foolish. Foolishness is an imperfection - it is taking comfort in a truth that is not God. Our duty as Christians is never to be satisfied with our ignorance of God and to let our neighbour share in our search for the Truth that God is. If the world thinks we're foolish for seeking knowledge of God, let it! Let the world deride or pity! We will glory in the Truth of Christ.

Valour and Valentine

 

The noble challenge of developing virtue.

For the Templar Knights Albion, please make a Facebook search of "Templar Knights Albion Information" or look in the latest edition of ACC-UK magazine available from anglicancatholic.org.uk for contact details.

Disengaging from ideological warfare

I have to admit, with the situation in Ukraine deteriorating, there seem to be dark times ahead. I suspect that, like all issues, one element of the situation is the entrenched rationalisation of views to the exclusion of the alternative.

I notice the same entrenched rationalisation in discussions about Anglicanism which rapidly become quite toxic. Over the past months, I have seen some ridiculously unpleasant arguments - and by that, I mean, arguments that would be laughable were they not so steeped in underlying disrespect and even approximating hatred. One individual I refuse to engage because, behind his apparent affability, lies a sneering self-aggrandizing attitude that seeks to belittle anyone who would dare challenge his questionable views. 

Now, what right have I to say that? Aside from the evidence of my own eyes and the corroboration of others, not much else. But, I must confess that there is a problem with this. Already, there is division into two camps based on how they are perceived. My antagonist will have his own tribe who may call me an intellectual coward for refusing to engage, or for being undignified in not arguing the desired manner. What is beginning here is another form of war - a battle of ideologies - and the casually of this war is simple basic charity. So I stop it at the onset.

I make no apology for removing comments that don't actually contribute anything except contribute to this warfare of ideas. The number of comments that begin with something like, "You're an invalid heretic!" I find, is astounding. What purpose do they serve other than an attempt to discredit me in my own house, as it were? I could engage, and the resulting exchange would degenerate and neither of us would budge an inch nor learn anything.

And that's the problem. Arguments don't change anything save only to entrench positions.

For some people that's not so bad. We Christians have to have a reason for the hope that is in us. To reason our faith through, to explore and discount possibilities is healthy and draws us to a surer framework of understanding God's Creation with God's grace. Yes, we are now being countered by atheists producing arguments designed to take down the Christian Faith by showing that it is unreasonable, unhealthy and untrue.  The intent is to dissuade people from becoming Christian and to become atheists like them. They are as proselyting as the door-to-door evangelical. 

If the Christian is living his faith properly, the need for combative argumentation is small. If we live a godly life, then the existence of God becomes tangible in us. We present our case, others are free to accept or reject. There will be those who stand against us, of course. The Bible is full of antagonists to Christianity. Yet, despite this, the Christian Faith perseveres, proof that it is not the quality of argumentation that matters but the Grace of God growing within a sincere heart.

What I see on the web are certain kinds of Catholics and Protestants ready to call each other heretic without realising that since before 1054, we have not just been talking past each other, we have been thinking past each other as well. Certainly, if we disagree as to what the Eucharist is then we cannot share it. Heresy may induce schism from the Church, but even the one ostensibly outside the Church who preaches salvation in Christ crucified is not against the Church. Oecumenical dialogue may not necessarily lead to intercommunion but it may end the warfare of ideas.

What we have to avoid are things like YouTube videos with titles such as "Oppy destroys Craig" or "Feser annihilates Hart". This is clickbait that incites the Christian soul to a warfare that separates the individual from living out the Christian life in the face of their personal battle to be holy. It transfers the war within us to turn to Christ in the fullness of heart outside to where the image of the enemy is transferred to human faces. That is true heresy, for the human face may only authentically bear the image of its Creator. Clickbait gives us the reason to transfer our interior battle to the outside where the Devil thinks he can win.

I remember my antagonists daily in my prayers and do so unreservedly and willingly. They are not my enemy: my enemy stalks within me whispering in my ear to take the forbidden fruit. I believe that this is the way that I can ensure that I am doing something to forgive them and love them even if God judges it ultimately to be insufficient. 

Likewise, I recognise in myself the temptation to engage in ideological warfare and I know I've mentioned it before. It's a besetting temptation that leads to sin. I therefore refuse to be drawn in debate. Of course, I seek to do my best in learning and teaching the Catholic Faith - that will involve honest and searching dialogue. I will answer honest questions as best I can but I will shut down any line of dialogue that will result in the warfare of ideologies. It doesn't edify anyone.

The value of labour

Sermon for Septuagesima

How much is your labour worth? It seems quite reasonable to be paid for what you do in your job. You cannot expect a plumber to do two hours of work for an hour's pay. And why are plumbers expensive? Well, some might be less reputable than others, but the majority have spent much on their training to become good plumbers: their pay is their recompense for that. 

Bill and Bob are plumbers. They graduated in the same class at Plumber School with the same grades: they are both equally skilled and experienced, and so have the same hourly charge of labour. Suppose you hire Bill and set him to work for eight hours, and then you employ Bob for one hour. You pay Bill the rate that he's due, and then you pay Bob exactly the same amount. Bill gets eight hours' pay for eight hours' work. Bob gets eight hours' pay for one hours' work. So what's wrong. Why does this feel wrong, or unfair on Bill?

[PAUSE]

It does look as if you value Bob's labour more than Bill's. You may have paid Bill what he expects but, in paying Bob eight times what he is expecting, it just seems as if you like Bob more than Bill.

In one way, it's completely fair: Bill and Bob get what they are owed. In another way, it's completely unfair: Bob is preferred to Bill.

Is this how God works? Well, Jesus says it is. Does God show favouritism?

[PAUSE]

God is not fair in human terms: He is generous. Even Jesus has best friends among His disciples: it's always Peter, James and John and never Thaddeus, Simon and Philip. God is King and kings have courts, lords and ladies.

Even then, this is not what God is saying to us. The true labour of Man is not buying and selling. The true labour of Man is not working to make ends meet. Man's true labour is to return to God.

[PAUSE]

Adam and Eve disobey God and the result is that they have chosen to fend for themselves. God puts them out of Eden to do just that. Man must labour and toil in order to live. But Man's true life is with God. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Our labour is the labour of repentance - of struggling to turn to God. God is our reward. God is what we are owed. God is the true payment of our labour. It doesn't matter, then, what we do in our labour of repentance. It doesn't matter even when we start our repentance. The fact is that, in knowing God, in receiving His grace to live, in keeping our eyes on the prize of Eternity with God, we each gain true and full Life in Him. We gain that life together.

The point is that we are not valued for our labour, we are valued for who we are. Bill and Bob get the same wages, not because of what they do, but because of who they are. The fact that they have laboured means they deserve payment.

Likewise, the fact that we labour to return to God is enough. It is because we exist that God wants us to be with Him - not because of what we do, but because of who He has created us to be. We are the end product of our labour.

But we must be careful. We cannot work our way to Heaven. In order to repent, we need God's grace to direct us, strengthen us and motivate us. We labour with God for our salvation.

[PAUSE]

God gives what He gives as He pleases. There are those to whom He has given the privilege of sitting on His right hand. There are those whom He has not. It is His choice to give just as much it is for you to pay your plumbers over what you owe them.

Ultimately, generosity is better than fairness. With God, we haven't seen anywhere near the limits of His love for us.

Choosing the Chosen

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Epiphany

If you are lucky enough to live in a democratic country then you might be looking forward to the next election. That way you get some say in how things are run. Or else you might enjoy the drama of the build-up to the vote. On election night there's always a lot of celebration by the winning candidate. Why? What's to celebrate? 

[PAUSE]

We elect someone for some purpose. If we elect a politician then we usually do so because we agree in some way with their vision of how things should be run and trust them to have your interests at heart. There is some appeal that they have which influences our decision. Of course, some people vote at random and others don't vote at all. Still others are undecided but will put a big cross in the box against the name of someone they really don't like, just to let the counters know. There is always a reason why someone is elected and there is also a purpose too.

We aren't the only ones who vote in elections. Our Lord says to His disciples they did not choose Him but He chose them and they will bear fruit that shall last. What does this mean? Does God choose the people who will enjoy eternity? Does He choose the people who will go to Heaven? Does He choose the people who will not?

[PAUSE]

Yes. As far as salvation is concerned, God is the only one registered to vote. He has that right because He is our Creator. We do know that He wants everyone to be saved as St Paul tells St Timothy. Not everyone will be saved as Our Lord makes clear to those goats who depart on His left. St Paul tells the Ephesians that God's choice is made before the world begins. What he means is that, as far as God is concerned, our life is present to Him all at once. He sees all the choices that we make. He sees us live our lives all at once, where we succeed, where we fail, where we sin. And He chooses us based on how we receive His grace and live with it in lives of repentance and worship - how we respond in faith to the love He first shows us.

St Paul tells us that we are elected to show to the world in our lives how to be merciful, kind, humble, meek, patient, forgiving and loving. In short, we have been chosen in order to reflect God to a world that is separated from Him. We do not get to choose our salvation; we get to choose to be someone whom God can save.

[PAUSE]

Elections can be very traumatic processes as the candidates present themselves and their ideas to the voters. There is usually much argument and, these days, a great deal of unpleasantness, especially when people don't get the outcome they expect.

With God, we can trust His judgement completely and know that He will always make the right choice. Since He has created you and given you His Grace to know Him, you have been chosen to reflect Him in your life. Do so, with your hand in His, and you will have His vote into eternity.

Lords and ladies in Heaven

 Why restoring deference and humility matters.

Powers that be

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Be subject to the higher powers? Can St Paul mean that? We have just remembered the dreadful events of the Holocaust and honoured those who suffered at the hands of a government committed to evil purposes. Surely, we need to stand up to evil rulers when they seek to hurt and destroy people? 

Does this mean that God gives power to evil governments?

[PAUSE]

This is a very difficult question. You might as well ask why God allows bad things to happen to good people. 

Certainly, when St Paul is talking about submitting to these powers and rulers, he has Jesus' words in mind. He hears "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." St Paul also hears that, if you are compelled to carry a burden one mile, carry it to. He hears Jesus tell us that if someone wants to take our tunic then to let him have our cloak as well. We are to turn the other cheek. 

This is how we are to approach powers that try to control us: we submit to them but in a way that shows that we do so out of love for God.

But what about the Holocaust? That's not an easy question to answer but what lies behind it is where we see true power to lie. 

We trust God.

We trust God to bring good out of evil and he does.

One who embodies this attitude is St Maximilian Kolbe. He goes the first mile by submitting himself to being placed into Auschwitz. He goes the second mile by deliberately taking a condemned man's place in the gas chamber. He takes control back from the unjust power of the Nazis by choosing the same death that Our Lord chooses Himself. He chooses to trust God in the face of Evil and loses his life knowing full well that he will receive it again in the hands of God.

[PAUSE]

While we are fortunate enough not to live in times of obvious evil power, St Paul would bid us pay our taxes, follow the law, and respect our leaders. But rather than see their power over us as an enslavement, we should see it as an opportunity to draw closer to God Who makes the same choice as He walks with us on Earth. An evil government will fall never to rise, but God's authority is supreme and will triumph.

Why does God allow evil governments to arise? That may be unanswerable. If we trust God fully to bring good out of evil then maybe that question doesn't need an answer.

Happy birthday Diocese!

 

The Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom is thirty today!

Arguing Ikonography

Sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany

Social media is filled with arguments. They can be as trivial as "which was the best Doctor Who?" They can be as serious as "who do I vote for?" The internet is filled with comments and debates that get heated and, sometimes, quite nasty. Christians aren't exempt from this. Sometimes, Christians can be the worst at arguing. Indeed, it's not a new phenomenon, either. Some of the great Oecumenical Councils had periods of Christians throwing insults at each other. The story of St Nicholas punching the heretic Arius may not be completely accurate but there is probably a grain of truth present. 

Why do we get into arguments? Is it sheer competition that we like to win? Do we see ourselves as knights in shining armour ready to defend the truth from the infidel?

[PAUSE]

St Paul warns us not to become wise in our own conceits, nor to recompense evil for evil. This is something that gets easily forgotten in debates on social media. The reason is clear: in a social media argument, it doesn't look like you're arguing with a person. It looks like you are arguing with a machine. 

Even if this is true, we do have to think about why we are arguing in the first place, especially when passions begin to run high. For the Christian, presenting the Christian Faith and giving our testimony is vitally important. People need to hear the Gospel. There will always be those who do not want to hear the Gospel. There will always be those who want to stop the Gospel from being heard. One nasty little trick of the Devil is to make the argument seem more important than the person we are arguing with. There might come a point when, all of a sudden, we become the only one who can save the Faith. This might be true of someone like St Athanasius, but the one who is truly faithful to God will still see Christ in his opponent. 

The screen can rob us of seeing the face of Christ in the person we disagree with most. This is another trick of the Devil to take away our humanity and rob us of the image of Christ.

[PAUSE]

Ikons are so very important and sometimes we forget their significance. With an ikon, we see the Holy look back at us. We glimpse into Heaven itself and all its realities. They say a picture paints a thousand words but an ikon reflects what is true. And we must remember that we are ikons too. We reflect God's humanity because God partakes of it so that we might partake of His divinity. We must therefore always learn to see the face of Christ in our opponent. 

We need to stop wanting to win arguments and rather tell the truth without taking away the humanity of the one we're arguing with. Sometimes, it is best to step back and stop the argument before it begins to become heated, allowing our opponent the last word if necessary. Other times, it is better to imagine the face of our opponent. Better still is to have an ikon of Christ on or near your screen so that His eyes can see you and you can gaze back at His humanity and remember the humanity of the one you're arguing with. 

[PAUSE]

Producing an irrefutable argument is nothing in comparison with working the love and mercy of Our Lord in the world. The Gospel is found on the lips, in the hands and in the heart of those who love God. At all times, those outside the Church must be able to say of us, "see how these Christians love each other!"

Sometimes, in a argument, to lose is to win and he who wins shall lose. We cannot lose Christ if we see Him in the face of everyone we meet, even online.

St Agnes and our Children

 

How to reclaim purity and innocence once more.