Blogday 2020: Communication, Communion and Common Prayer

As usual, today I reflect on this little blogling which has now attained the age of fifteen. 2020 has not been a kind year to many of us, and it's rather been like a teenager spending his free hours walled up in his bedroom. An interesting biological fact is that puberty kills off a lot of connections in the brain which enable communication skills. This is why communicable eleven year olds turn into  monosyllabic teenagers.

This has not been a good year for communication. First, as is evidenced by the American Election in the US and Brexit in the UK, people are becoming ideologically divided, and this has ramifications on how we communicate with each other. Some communication is already being stifled in order to cease causing offence to others or inadvertently stray into "hate speech" - a term which still lacks a coherent objective definition. There is a risk that those who are offended by another's words may call on "hate speech" legislation. This is already taking place. We are also seeing increasing violence as people of different ideologies are beginning to clash, especially at political demonstrations.

Secondly, the restrictions in movement and COVID have pushed more communication online where anonymity creates a veil behind which "trolls" thrive. By "troll", I mean one who has the full intent to offend or upset. Here I think of the dreadful comments made about the Duchess of Sussex following her miscarriage. Rather than comfort a woman in mourning, words were used to harm.

A troll is not the same as someone with an intent to challenge another's worldview. If we publicly express an opinion then we must be prepared to allow others to challenge it fundamentally and even robustly.

We are indeed free to say what we wish to say, but all rights have responsibilities as the other side of the same coin. If we tell a joke then our intent should be to make people laugh and not to injure. Yet, many a true word is spoken in jest, and satire has a value in waking us from complacency to a hidden reality to our condition. We have to be careful what the object of our lampooning is. We also have to be careful to see any offence that we take for what it is. At all stages of humour, as I said earlier this year, there must be the unconditional love that thinks the best of another's motives until evidence presents itself to demonstrate their ill-intent. This is based on the fundamental principle of law of "innocent until proven guilty".

Mr Biden seeks to unify an America broken by ideological conflict. He will only do this if he has a principle that both sides of the ideological barrier can accept. Just appealing to "truth, justice and the American Way" is no longer possible if people are now questioning whose truth, whose justice and which American Way.

The Continuing Anglican world might also be similarly divided. Remember, not every Anglican Church can properly call itself "Continuing Anglican" unless it has been born from the Congress of St Louis for that is the moment of the term's definition. For example, the Orthodox Anglican Church doesn't really call itself "Continuing Anglican", even though it does continue what the Lambeth Communion has ceased to practise, because its origins predate St Louis. I will therefore be concentrating on the jurisdictions I know within the Continuing Anglican movement and assume that other extra-Lambeth Anglican Christians supply their own mutatis mutandis.

By the early 1980s divisions occurred within the emerging Continuing Church which resulted in three different jurisdictions and there were further divisions in the 1990s. Yet, by 2017, these jurisdictions are working towards a greater organic unity. It will still take time. That's okay. Good things take time to do well.

At the heart, there is a unifying principle in the Book of Common Prayer, and it is this that holds it together. Continuing Anglicans live out the "Common" part of the Book of Common Prayer and this means we have a good degree of affinity. 

Of course there are details that produce some diversity. Which BCP do we use? For the American Churches, this is easy. The book that was in use before ECUSA started going doctrinally wobbly was the 1928 BCP and did the job, replacing some of the elements that the 1789 BCP omitted, like the Athanasian Creed. Yet, for the movement to grow there needs to be an appreciation of local history, culture and custom. In the UK, we don't have the same history as the US and, as a result, the equivalent Prayer Book is the 1662 BCP which has a rather truncated canon of the Mass. That truncation is not enough in itself to invalidate the Mass but it is enough to produce confusion about the central aspect of Communion, namely the Real and Objective Presence of Christ in the Mass and therefore cause doubt and unease among Anglican Catholics who see as full communion as possible with Christ as central to the life of the Church. It leaves out too much to express adequately what the Catholic Church believes.

 For Protestants who prefer some ambiguity about the objectivity of the Holy Presence, this is fine, but for Anglo-Catholics who believe in the transformation of the Host and Wine in some form of transubstantiation, it is not, despite the design of the Prayer Book to hold different "wings" together. In trying to do away with Papal edict with the deliberate removal of references to the Real Presence and the insertion of the Black Rubric, the Reformers threw out the baby with the bath water. Of course, the fact that the Anglican Catholic Church seeks to replace that which the Reformers omitted is seen by some as Revisionism despite the fact that the Reformers were probably just as Revisionist of the Catholic Faith in the first place. If Anglo-Catholics are revisionist then they are merely revising reforming revisions. (There's a blog title I missed! Rabbits!)

 The Anglican Catholic Church Constitution allows for local latitude in the use of the Prayer Book: the 1928 US Prayer Book is in (very) good keeping with the original BCP of 1549 from which the others sprang. Thus, with the 1549 as the basis and all understanding of the liturgy being read through the doctrine of the Primitive Church (i.e. through the doctrine of the Oecumenical Councils) the Continuing Anglican movement has a potential for global community which can work if people are willing to accept those principles.

I have made no secret of the fact that, in my private prayer, I use the Monastic Breviary  It is deliberately designed so that it translates the old Latin Breviary with the Psalms and collects from the BCP and uses Antiphons in conformity with the epistles and gospels from the BCP. Thus, I am saying the same words with the same intentions as everyone else using the Prayer Book, albeit in a different order. Anyone Prayer Book user who picks up my Breviary will see this conformity immediately and know that, as a Benedictine Oblate, I can follow the Benedictine Offices and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Prayer Book which, itself, is born of the Catholic Faith in England and desirous to remove the excesses of Roman politics on liturgy and doctrine. The same is true with the missals which the Anglican Catholic Church authorises to be used in conformity with the BCP

This is the genius of both the Prayer Book and the Canonical intention of the Anglican Catholic Church. I am allowed a diversity of practice and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation and Post Reformation and the spirit which unifies other Anglican Christians.

I would also like to give some comfort to those who worry about my lack of use of the Prayer Book. If, as and when I am required to say public Offices in a parish church, then I have no qualms about using the BCP for Mattins and Evensong. As a chorister who has sung in many a cathedral, I have a deep appreciation for the Prayer Book Offices. I also recognise that not everyone is Benedictine and thus I must minister to them in the "secular" Offices which are as laid down in the BCP. Were I to be part of a Benedictine community, then I would use the Breviary in that community.

Whether we like it or not, the Prayer Book is part of Continuing Anglican history - indeed part of the history of the Church of England. Whether it is a defining aspect of Anglicanism is debatable: I maintain that there is Anglicanism before the BCP and that the BCP is a product - a good product - of that Anglicanism and thus an expression not a definition of Anglicanism. It proceeds from Anglicanism.

I would also like to give comfort to those Catholics who worry about my love of the BCP. As I have said above, the Anglican Catholic Church reads the BCP through the Catholic Faith. There are many deficiencies in the intention of the Reformers to omit perfectly Catholic and Faithful practices and doctrine. The Sarum Office is the basis of much of the Prayer Book, but is fuller and more in line with the Catholic Faith. The Sarum Office requires the daily recitation of the Quicunque Vult which, in an age of rejecting tradition, can only be a good thing.

As an expression of Anglicanism, both Catholic and Protestant can assent to the spirit of the BCP and use it as they see fit, either by its direct usage or by texts that conform or which have grown up in conjunction with its spirit. If we can all agree that it is a godly book, then we have a unifying principle by which we have some community.

I would say that there is something else, something deeper within Anglicanism that unites Continuing Anglican communities. The Anglican Catholic Church is as Orthodox as Constantinople and as Catholic as Rome. What is perhaps different about us is that we have a higher regard for the laity and need to continue to have that higher regard. This comes from our Anglicanism side. Many of the architects of the ACC were laymen, including the canonist Fr Stahl (God rest him) who was only ordained after his work on our canons. Having been to the Provincial Synod and meeting some of those who were at the Congress made me appreciate that we are not a Church who seeks to make the laity obedient sheep but rather engages with them actively at all levels. We need to let that continue by developing a well-educated laity which doesn't see the need to be ordained in order to get involved in building parishes and preaching the Christian Faith and thus include women fundamentally in the work of the Church rather than just seeing them as nuns, wives and mothers. I have seen personally the activity of many intrepid, strong, intelligent and intimidating women at the Provincial Synod who have been instrumental in building parishes and developing spiritual ministries.

The Continuing Anglican way has this written into itself more than, perhaps, the Lambeth Communion which broke away from us. It is why I wrote my book Whom seek ye? at my bishop's behest in order to encourage the laity not only to be educated but to continue to educate themselves in full commitment to the Anglican Catholic cause. 

As I end this dreadful 2020, I find myself very hopeful about Continuing Anglicanism and the possibility of its growth but then I am always the optimist. We now have mechanisms in place to grow and serve even from our state of smallness. I look forward to what the future brings for us, though the work is going to be very tough. I continue in prayer for this vision,  for God's will to be done and for the unifying presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the community.

The Truth of St John

Propers for St John's Day

Sermon for St John's Day

The world of Biblical Scholarship is sometimes a strange place to be for Christians. If you are a certain type of scholar, you don't talk about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you talk about the three Synoptic gospels and the Fourth gospel. Why?

[PAUSE]

You will hear some scholars say, "well, we don't really think John wrote that gospel." They give all kinds of reasons based on very scientific observations about how the texts were written and how the gospels were copied and translated through the centuries. There are some biblical scholars who say that the gospels have been tampered with to make it appear that Jesus is God. On what basis do they make this claim? All too often, their reasoning is that miracles don't happen and therefore all reports of miracles must be faked. They think that science shows that people can't rise from the dead. This colours all their views.

[PAUSE]

Of course, this makes it difficult for Christians to spread the gospel. If the Bible is shown not to be true, then we are fighting a losing battle. 

It's at this point we meet St John.

St John tells us categorically that he is telling the truth in his letters. We should believe him. St John is the only apostle to have lived into old age. Indeed he has his own disciples like St Polycarp and St Irenaeus who write and pass on his teaching. 

St John shows us that Christianity is more than the Bible alone. St John speaks of things that Jesus says and does that aren't written down. He shows us that the Bible is part of the Church and, the moment you take it out of the Church to take it to.bits, you lose the message it conveys. 

The message of the Church is found in the Bible, but that message is about seeking to be part of the Church and seeking to make God the most fundamental part of your life, not making detailed analysis as to whether the Bible is true based on the type of ink St Paul used.

St John tells us what he has seen and heard. He tells us that he is always close to Jesus, even leaning his head upon the Lord's breast. He is even embarrassed to name himself in his gospel as if it will make him seem more important than he is.

The gospel he writes points outside itself. Indeed, the whole Bible points outside itself. It cannot be of any value in the hands of those who do not believe. The Bible will convince them of nothing unless the Holy Ghost decree it. The only thing a good evangelist can do is tell the truth.

This is why we need to learn what the truth is. We have a faith that seeks understanding and it is as we search that we tell the truth as we find it. This is what St John does and his gospel leads our faith to a better sight of Our Lord.

And when He shall appear, we shall be like Him because shall see Him as He is.

Christmas Spirits

Propers for Christmas Day

Sermon for Christmas Day

Why do we tell ghost stories at Christmas?

There is a real tradition within English culture of sitting in front of a fire and speaking of ghosts. Charles Dickens uses the tradition to great effect to describe the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. The great biblical scholar Montague Rhodes James also entertains the fellows at King's College with a ghost story for Christmas. But why?

[PAUSE]

At Christmas, we reach the darkest point of the year. The sun sets in the early afternoon; it is cold, wet and windy. The Christmas lights twinkle somewhat ineffectively against the coming night. It is a time when we cannot see well and we still have the fear about what may be lurking in the darkness. 

We try to dispel that fear by raising it to entertainment. We acknowledge our fear and give it some fantastic reality as a tale of ghosts and spirits. What is interesting is that these tales are moral. Someone does something wrong and they pay for it at the withered hands of some spectre. It shows that human beings still live in fear of the consequences of our actions.

We may not know it. We may pooh-pooh the idea. But we are a people who still live in fear. We have to admit that we are afraid of the dark. The world is very dark at the moment.

[PAUSE]

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

We may be haunted by the ghosts of our actions but no ghost can abide standing in the light to be seen for what it is. Ghosts are insubstantial and, the moment the reality is seen, they dwindle and fade into a laughable nothingness. Shadows evaporate when the light shines. The imperfect vanishes away when the perfect comes.

Our tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas expresses Humanity's fear of the dark and the reality of the evil that stalks the shadows looking to devour us. In confessing this fear, we are able to turn to the Light which is appearing. Our antidote for the ghosts is a little baby lying in the manger. We realise our need for His tiny presence. We find comfort in His tiny limbs reaching out of that stall for a simple and unconditional cuddle. We see the hope shining out of His tiny eyes as they take their first blinking look out into the world He created.

[PAUSE]

It is so simple to exorcise a ghost: we just show it the Baby but we have to let the Baby in first! We only reach Christmas Day in our lives by flinging wide the stable doors to let the light stream in.

O Virgo Virginum

O Virgo Virginum

O Virgin of virgins! how shall this be? for neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That thing which ye behold, is a divine mystery.

 From some quarters, a certain murmur arises that to turn our focus from the Lord to Mary borders of the Mariolatrous. The undisputed fact is that, until the Baby is born, we can only gaze upon the Mother. If the unborn St John the Baptist recognises the unborn Messiah despite a double barrier of flesh then we, too, gazing upon the Lowly Maiden may enjoy the presence of Christ yet veiled in His Mother's flesh.

Far from worshipping the Mother, our concerns are directed to the One who will enter into this world and spend His first years tightly embraced in her loving arms. Only she gets this honour with all its pain and sorrow. 

The Lord will not return to us like this: He has already acquired His humanity through Mary's flesh and there is no need for Him to be born again. Yet when He comes again, we shall find that His Mother is there in the place where royal mothers are to be honoured. As we look upon her, our eyes will be drawn through her to her Son.

Until He is born, all we will see is Mary the ever-Virgin. We take her hand, make her comfortable and support her as she allows the Great and Mighty Wonder to occur. 

We look to her precisely so that we may worship Jesus Christ Our God.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations and their salvation: come and save us, O Lord our God.

God is with us and yet we have only been able to encounter Him physically, save in the Blessed Sacrament, for not even forty years some two millennia ago. 

God is with us and still we say, "How long wilt Thou forget us, O Lord. Forever?" God is with us and still we live as if He were a nice idea or an afterthought or a genie. God is with us and yet still we sin. If we believe that God is with us how can we still lie, cheat, steal, lust and kill?

Humility is the only true way that we can cope with our sinfulness. It becomes necessary to tolerate the fact that each one of us is fallen and broken, and it also becomes necessary by the same token to refuse point blank to accept that brokenness and sinfulness are the masters of our lives. We simply cannot repair ourselves but must rather turn to our Maker for repair and even then we must live with the consequences of our sin. That is how we can embrace Death as the means to ending our constant fall and constant need to repent. 

God is with us, walking unseen beside us, calling us to repentance and loving us even as we sin. It is through His Death that we die to destroy our sins, and through His Birth that we are born anew into Eternity.

O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their Desire; the chief Corner-stone, who makest two both one: come and save mankind whom Thou formedst of clay.

With our excellent gift of self-deception, we project that for which we long most onto that which is more readily available. We complicate our lives, masking our true happiness with something that we can understand better and  see more clearly until the illusion becomes more ingrained as reality in our lives than the truth. 

Our Chief End is God Himself and it is for His Transcendent life that we truly long: eternal light, eternal love, eternal peace, eternal joy...

Thus God is the desire of all people albeit confused with the love of created things. God is not of confusion but of truth and our existence is built on His. God becomes Man to make immanent that which is transcendent: transcendence becomes immanent, human nature and divine nature unite in one person to give some tangibility to the Desire of Humanity and make credible the promise of the fulfillment of that Desire in Him which cannot be completed until the Day of days. 

Light becomes Clay so that Clay may become Light. 

Virtual Nine Lessons and Carols 2020

I thought, given the circumstances, it might be good to try again an experiment that I made a few years ago and blog a virtual celebration of Nine Lessons and Carols.

Please do click on the links in sequence to get the full intended affect. You might also like to listen by candlelight as well and, if you like, sing along with the carols. If you do find this in any way complementary to your experience of the season, please have a mince pie and a cup of mulled wine on my behalf after the benediction.

Organ Prelude: Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Johannes Brahms)

Carol: Once in Royal David's City

Introduction

First Lesson

Anthem: The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came

Second Lesson

Carol: It came upon a Midnight Clear

Anthem: Ding Dong Merrily on High (Charles Wood)

Third Lesson

Carol: While Shepherds watched their Flocks

Fourth Lesson

Carol: In the Bleak Midwinter

Fifth Lesson

Anthem: A Spotless Rose (Herbert Howells)

Sixth Lesson

Anthem: The Coventry Carol

Seventh Lesson

Carol: Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Eighth Lesson

Anthem: In Dulci Jubilo (Michael Praetorius)

Ninth Lesson

Carol: O Come All Ye Faithful

Closing prayers and Benediction

Carol: O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Organ Postlude: Von Himmel Hoch (J. S. Bach)

The Crowded Wilderness

Propers for the fourth Sunday in Advent

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent

A voice cries in the wilderness. How on earth is it expected to be heard? It's like the tree falling in the forest when there is no-one to hear it. Does it make a sound?

[PAUSE]

We speak in order to be heard. We speak because we seek to communicate with those around us. But if there is no-one around, is there a point? St John the Baptist says that he is the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. If he is not calling out to God, then who does he expect to hear him? Who goes out to the wilderness?

Certainly not the rich folk of the city. They are comfortable with their circumstances. Certainly not the merchants, the captains of industry, or the chief executives: they need to stay near people in order to make a profit. Certainly not the revellers, the party-goers or thosr who enjoy the noise: they are satisfied with each others' company and all the booze.

Who goes out to the wilderness?

[PAUSE]

We recognise the noise of the city. All day and every day there are things fighting for our attention. On social media there are voices demanding our acceptance of their opinion and who scream at us if we differ or hold to Godly moral values. In our day and age we are surrounded by a cacophony of voices crying out to us. We can barely hear ourselves think.

The people who come out to the wilderness are those who know that there is a din in their lives. They shut themselves away, unplug the phone, turn off the laptop, disable the apps. And they sit, and they listen for the voice crying in the wilderness.

It's there to be heard. And that's the point. Without St John calling in the waste land, there would be nothing to hear, no call to repentance, no promise of salvation, no expression of God's love.

[PAUSE]

In the beginning, there was the uttermost wilderness. There was nothing but God. He calls in the wilderness of nothing and, lo! there is light. If He had not called in the wilderness, we would not be.

St John cries in the wilderness for those who will hear. 

And what of our calling?

[PAUSE]

As Christians, we have a duty to preach the Gospel by living lives that display the love of God. But we preach in an age of noise. Won't our message get lost in the hustle and bustle of news, opinion, and demands to share the latest meme on Facebook?

[PAUSE]

Ironically, in all this noise, we are calling out in the wilderness. It looks as if our message will not be heard above the crowds of people shouting their own messages. But the lie that Satan feeds us is that there is no point in talking because we will not be heard. We won't be heard if we don't preach and that's what Satan is counting on.

All we have to do is open our mouths and tell the truth. There is a God. There is a God Who loves us. There is a God Who dies for us and rises for us. There is a God Who brings us into true Eternal happiness. There is a God Who is coming soon. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

O Oriens

O Oriens

O Dayspring, Brightness of Light Everlasting and Sun of Righteousness: come and enlighten him that sitteth in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Before light can shine there has to be a source. When a mass of gases collapses under gravity, the intense heat causes a nuclear reaction to ignite and a star is born. Light is the first matter of Creation - a product of the Wisdom of God. Light is the first thing that is not God but rather reflects His being. Further, in order for Darkness to exist, there has to be somewhere for light to be absent, something upon which light is not shining.

 In separating Light from Darkness, God is creating things that emit and things that absorb light. All this is determined in the beginning. 

As our modern science observes Light itself in ever finer detail and sees individual quanta of light and their counterintuitive effects, so the mathematical reality of our universe is revealed to be elegant and beautiful. Mathematics sheds light on science, making sense of our observations and enabling predictions. 

And yet, that a non-material mathematics might reveal the intricacies of a material universe is itself a marvellous wonder. Our universe becomes a reality of the material mixed with the non-material - aspects of reality invisible to the physical sciences. In denying the uncreated light, materialist minds are in a primordial darkness and will remain there until their eyes are opened to the Truth. Just as a few first century Jews have the Light shine upon the words of the Old Testament to reveal Salvation, so the first century Gentiles have the Light shine upon their philosophies to reveal Christ there. And forth these folk go to shine light and proclaim the message.

This is the message of the Church: sleepers wake and the light of Christ will shine on you!

O Clavis David

O Clavis David

O Key of David and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openest and no man shutteth, who shuttest and no man openeth: come and bring the prisoner out of the prisonhouse and him that sitteth in darkness and in the shadow of death.

A door exists to provide a temporary entrance and a temporary barrier. Our Lord calls Himself the door of the sheepfold and we can therefore expect that He will provide access to the fold for some and deny access to others. A sheepfold keeps the sheep safe, gives them comfortable surroundings and allows them the freedom to be sheep.

A prison is in many respects the opposite of a sheepfold. It is designed to keep prisoners shut away in undesirable circumstances, control their movements, and prevent the prisoner from exercising their own will for their lives. 

Our sin shuts us away from God. It prevents us from living lives of freedom and denies us from being in control of our lives. Our desires are clouded by the darkness of Sin and its effects pervading the cosmos like the smoke of Hell itself.

Jesus is a door, but he is also the Key of David. He opens doors. He opens the doors of those minds used to the Old Testament to behold Him as the One Who fulfills the Old Testament fully. In so doing, He opens the doors of the prison of our sin by reconciling us to God. In rising again, He breaks down the gates of Hades and our inevitable departure from this life.

No man has control of this door save Christ. He chooses those for whom to open or to close based on their desire for Him and their rejection of sin. To enter in by Christ is to choose to leave the prisonhouse of sin. To take control of one's life by giving that control back to Christ is the means of our salvation.

O Radix Jesse

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: come and deliver us, and tarry not.

The Root of Jesse springs into life for the purpose of hanging on the Tree for all to see only to rise again in equal exhibition to confound the rulers of this world and their desire to hold earthly power. 

Right at the beginning, the Tree of Life is present with fruit to eat which we may not consume on account of our broken nature and our fall into sin, for, were we to eat this most excellent fruit in a fallen state, our brokenness and sinfulness would be eternal and thus irredeemable. 

And yet Jesus is the Life and the Root of Jesse. He is the True Vine stretching backwards and forwards in Time and Space from His birth in Bethlehem so that we might all be redeemed and all have available to us the fruit of the Tree of Life once more. 

Our Eucharistic sacrifice is the means by which we take the Root of Jesse into ourselves in order to draw living water and gain the substance of God Himself to repair that which we have broken by sin and gain Eternity enjoying the fruits of pure Love.

O Adonaï

O Adonaï

O Adonaï, and Leader of the House of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law in Sinai: Come and deliver us with an outstretched arm..

Adonaï is the Hebrew name that stands for the Holy Name of God which our Jewish brethren may not pronounce on grounds of their reverence for Him. Christianity, on the other hand, has a name for Him - Jesus - at which our knees bow willingly and with much love. As Jesus is the image of the invisible God, so is His Name the image of the Divine Name by which we, in our humility, are permitted to address Him even as we are permitted to touch Him, embrace Him and consume Him. 

Jesus is the arm of God stretched out to pull us from the mire of Sin and Death which we only know to exist by the gift of the Law given by God to Moses. Although that arm burns brightly with Divine Light, it does not consume us. We have consumed Christ and He burns within us to make us like Him. As we shine with His Light, by that Light we shall see the New Jerusalem in which we may dwell for Eternity with Him.

O Sapientia

As befits the Old English usage, I begin a series of reflections on the Advent Antiphons beginning today on the 16th of December.

O Sapientia

O Wisdom, who from the mouth of the Most High proceedest, spanning from one end as far as the other, firmly and sweetly setting forth all things: come for to teach us the way of prudence.

The relationship between Wisdom and the Holy Trinity is imperfectly reflected in the way that we speak. 

The Church Fathers, especially St John Damascene, see the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity being like the spoken Word. When we speak our words proceed from us born of our minds and borne on our breath.

We see this reflected in God: the Father speaks the Word and it is borne on the Holy Ghost. But God is simple which means that the spoken Word and the Divine Breath have the same substance and are God. Their emanations of Word and Breath from Father are different but are the same God. 

This is the Wisdom we are given, for the Word is the Truth: He is what really is and we exist only because He is. This Wisdom is in Eternity with God but is not God: she only has existence because Creation exists and Creation requires knowledge of its Creator. Without Creation, God is complete in Himself and requires no Wisdom to communicate the Truth. The Word is the means of communicating the Truth to us and He conveys Wisdom to us.

We need to be taught about Our Creator, first because we are created and therefore different from our Creator, and secondly because we are capable of falling from Him and have fallen from Him. This is the prudence we need to be taught: The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us for pure love of us and our salvation.

Virgin on Eternity

A reflection on how virginity provides its own spiritual strength.

Art Thou He?

The Propers for Advent III

Sermon for the third Sunday in Advent

Is the Jesus that you worship the same Jesus that the Church worships?

[PAUSE]

"Of course He is!" you say heartily and you will recite the Nicene creed by heart, quote Holy Scripture and bless the Holy Name. Is that enough?

There are many people who would do the same thing and then say that their Jesus loves them so much that He accepts their lifestyle no matter what they do, just so long as they are true to themselves.

This is a Jesus who approves of their rich and luxuriant life and understands why they can't support the poor. This is a Jesus who condones a divorce because, well, the marriage just isn't really working out. This is a Jesus Who just wants you to be happy with a series of partners just as long as you're nice to them. This is a Jesus who wants you to be a revolutionary so that you can tear down governments that won't let you be free to do what you want because that's what He stands for.

Is that Jesus? How do you know?

[PAUSE]

Our Blessed Lord challenges everyone because everyone is broken and in need of His salvation. Even in prison, St John the Baptist is surprised by the reports of what Our Lord is doing. He has to send messengers to check.

And the Lord says,

"Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me."

[PAUSE]

The Lord makes Himself quite clear: He has come to repair humanity, not to indulge our brokenness. The deaf hear, the blind see and the lame walk.

And the poor are made rich?

No.

Not with money or power or possessions. 

Our Lord is clear: true poverty is not knowing Him. True poverty is being without the promise of eternal life bathing in the light of God's smile in Heaven. Material riches are nothing. Material relationships are nothing. Material power is nothing. What matters is God. What matters is our neighbour.

[PAUSE]

There is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. God accepts us as His children but tolerates our sinfulness only as far as is necessary for us to repent and accept Him for Who He is. 

Those who want God to accept them for who they are often don't want to accept Him for Who He is. They never return the favour. God goes to great lengths to show us that we are loved and in need of that love to the extent that He is made Man. By showing us Who He is, He gives us the opportunity to be made like Him. 

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"If ye love me," says the real Jesus, "keep my commandments." 

Our salvation isn't something that goes one way. God saves us through His Incarnation, yes, but we have to play a part - we have to accept the salvation that we are given. 

It won't be the salvation we want. It will be better than that because we will be better in the real Jesus. 

Unity in Community

 A few thoughts on how unity might be achieved in a disunited world.

From the old to the new

Listen to Propers Advent II

Sermon for the second Sunday in Advent

You will have noticed that many people see how God appears in the Old Testament as being profoundly different from how He appears in the New Testament. People see Him as being wrathful and smiting in the Old Testament and a nice, kind daddy in the New. If they do then they miss the character of God completely: they have not read the Holy Scriptures correctly.

Do we?

[PAUSE]

If everyone was open to the Holy Spirit, we would not need the Bible: we could rely on His influence to show us the Truth in all things. Human beings, however, have a bit of a gift for going astray. We die because we sin and we sin because we die.

The Bible is there for us to tell us about God and that's how we need to read it. It tells us the Truth about God and that means we need to treat it with respect. The World treats the Bible like any other book and applies modern forms of criticism often to try and show that it is just another book. But we also look at Our Lord Jesus Christ and we see how He quotes from the Old Testament readily and interprets it so that we see how to behave.

In the Old Testament, God tells us not to kill and, in the New, God shows us how we can kill a person just by hating them. In the Old Testament, God tells us to be faithful to our spouses and, in the New, God shows us how we can be unfaithful just by thinking wicked thoughts. Jesus is the lens through which we read the Old Testament and His Life is the way we encounter God.

The Old Testament is the hope of those who live before the birth of Jesus. The New Testament is the hope of those who await His return. The moment we start seeing them as different or not being as God-breathed then we lose the coherence of God's message to us.

[PAUSE]

The Church has been given the Scriptures as a gift by which it can present what she has always believed in every place and by all who seek to worship Our Lord in His Truth. 

The Bible is hard to understand at times but so is life itself. The sheer complexity of comedy and tragedy that makes up our fallen condition is mirrored in the holy texts. The temptation is to see the Bible as a book of answers, or as a compendium of solutions to our difficulties. Yes, it does show us the Truth but we can only see that Truth if we are surrounded by people on whom God has imprinted His image rather than in the pages of a book.

We are not to worship the Bible as we do God but we are to respect it and allow its words to reveal God's word. In the end, it will be utterly unnecessary because the Word will return and we shall see Him as He really is as we all stand before His throne together as one Church.

The Advent Prose

 Rough and ready as always, but I hope this will be of use to some.

Listen to The Advent Prose