Combing out hard labour.

Propers for Septuagesima

Sermon for Septuagesima

We are now in an age in which we have major labour-saving devices: washing machines, microwaves, even self-cleaning glass in our windows. If our devices really do save labour, why are we still working so hard?

[PAUSE]

It doesn't really matter whether we are slugabeds or earlybirds, the work that faces each of us is hard and often we feel disheartened at facing our labours. Like the Red Queen on her run with Alice through the looking glass, we seem to put an enormous amount of energy into just staying still. If we don't, things just fall apart. Why?

[PAUSE]

When Humanity is cast out of the Garden of Eden, God tells us, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Notice God doesn't curse the ground. He tell us that it is cursed by us. Our hard work is as much a consequence of our disobedience as smashed china is a consequence of letting go of Grandma's favourite milk jug. God's creation is ordered and Humanity's free decision is to disorder it based on the Devil's lie. God tolerates this because He loves us enough to let us be free to choose.

It means that all of our lives follow paths like tangled hair. They knot and intertwine until our paths become hard and complicated. The more we look to do our own will apart from God, the more we knot and tangle not only our lives but the lives of everyone else! No wonder it hurts when we try to straighten things out. No wonder the prospect of God running a comb through our lives is frightening.

[PAUSE]

"It is but lost labour that ye haste to rise up early, and so late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness : for so he giveth his beloved sleep."

In our hard work, we often lose sight of ourselves and our relationship with God. We work in vain, our lives tangling and snagging on the result of our brothers and sisters trying to live their lives. We cannot escape hard labour.

But we can look beyond it.

God gives His beloved sleep.

[PAUSE]

We live our lives for God. While that doesn't excuse us from Life's hardship, it does allow us to see ourselves as part of God's Creation and in the light of His promise of rest with Him. God labours six days to create and rests when His labour is complete. We, too, have the promise of His rest from our labours.

[PAUSE]

Labouring for God is hard work indeed, whatever time we pick up our shovel. But it's end is God Himself waiting like the prize at the end of the race. We will weep, we will struggle, we will hurt and be in agony, but all things - absolutely all things - work for good for those who love God.

We just keep calm, carry on and keep praying. It's all we can do, but God will do the rest.

When Controversy calls

 

A reflection on controversial saints and controversial decisions.

A bevy of bishops

A reflection on the nature of episcopacy.

Angrily Unable

Propers for the third Sunday after Epiphany

Sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany

The first few weeks of 2021 tell us a good deal about the state of our political health. It's not looking good. There's a lot of noise, a lot of recriminations, a lack of respect for those in political office. There is much anger.

Much of that anger comes from the fact that our politicians won't do as we tell them to do. Surely, we elect them on the basis that they represent us at the level of government. But often, we don't feel as if we are being represented. When the opposing party gains power, we become angry. Why?

[PAUSE]

Much of our anger comes from the fact that we feel powerless, that no-one is listening to us, that things we know to be wrong are happening but we can't stop them. The Twentieth Century has seen many dreadful instances of inhumanity committed against God's children that we cry, "no more!" We have learned to stand up and shout. We have learned to resist. We have learned that we can stand up to bullies.

This is all well and good, but is everyone we oppose really a bully? Is everyone whose politics we oppose really like Hitler?

[PAUSE]

Often we can see parallels with history and surmise that, if we do nothing, atrocities will happen again. "Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it," we say. This would be true if the conditions now are precisely the same as they were back then. But, no matter how proficient in history we think ourselves to be, our knowledge of the world is imperfect and we don't know all the facts. The future is not always going to be a complete repetition of the past. The temptation is to cling to our knowledge of history and be angry with those who don't see things the way we do. We are angry because we are powerless to make people know what we know.

[PAUSE]

We know how God wants us to be moral creatures, how we should revere life, how we should not tolerate the destruction of the innocent. Yet, the people in power seem utterly oblivious to the innocent and seek to put the rights of others above the needs of those who cannot speak for themselves. But they are in power and we are not. We become angry because we are powerless.

[PAUSE]

Our society is angry because we do not have the power to make things right. We can't heal the sick or let the oppressed go free. We can't admonish sinners or counsel the doubtful. We see Christian businesses suffer for holding Christian beliefs. We see Churches attacked for promoting good moral values and the worship of God. We see people who have nothing but distain for Christ come to power and influence and utter blasphemy upon blasphemy upon blasphemy.

And we become angry. And what does God do about it?

"Vengeance is mine," says the Lord.

And, to exact that vengeance, He gets Himself crucified.

[PAUSE]

St Paul says, "give place into wrath." That place is the cross. Our wrath comes from a lack of control. But God is in control.

If we berate our politicians for tolerating, or even promoting, the suffering of the innocent then we must remember that God tolerates the suffering of the innocent out of respect for all humanity. That does not mean that He actively wants the innocent to suffer but rather He, and only He, has the power to make that suffering more than worthwhile. His methods are far beyond our understanding and His love for every human being is beyond anything we can give.

We are utterly powerless to make this world a better place to live but that's a good thing because what we think is "better" is highly imperfect. If we want to make the world a better place then we need to start with oursrlves. If we want the world to be perfect then we need to be perfect first. 

Be angry and sin not.

[PAUSE]

The only way we can deal with the departure of politics from God's law is to recognise our limitations and do what we can. Once we have reached out limit, we must pray with tears and sorrow and let our impotence run its course. 

God's weakness is stronger than our strength. God's crucifixion is more glorious than our greatest achievement. In Him, the suffering of the innocent becomes their glory and the shame of those who caused it.

[PAUSE]

Be angry and sin not. Trust God to exact His vengeance in His way and know that justice will be done. Let us rejoice in our powerlessness rather than allow the Devil to use it to control us.

The value of Martyrdom

A reflection on Martyrdom in standing up to Sin.
 

Taking a cup of wine.

Propers for the second Sunday after Epiphany

Sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany

The Lord offers you a cup of wine. Do you take it? 

If He turns water into wine for us then we have proof that God does not demand us to be teetotal. Why else would He use wine to be transformed into His blood at the Mass?

Of course, being teetotal is not a bad thing at all, but it's not something we should expect of everyone. True, it means that, if you're teetotal, you don't get drunk and thus fall into a multitude of sins. But there are other sins of excess - self-righteousness for example. 

[PAUSE]

There are some people who use their personal discipline in abstaining from drink to take great pleasure in putting people down who enjoy a mug of beer or glass of wine. 

This is true of other forms of abstinence: there are vegans who will turn their abstinence from all animal produce into a show of greater moral character which they lord over others. While it is indeed a true and good thing to find better ways to treat animals and have a greater urgency to look after Nature, using it as a reason not to love your hamburger-munching neighbour shows that you worship a different god. 

We have to take care that, if we refuse the cup the Lord gives us, that we are not dashing it out of His hand.

Yet the cup the Lord offers is not always of wine.

[PAUSE]

St James and St John say that they can drink of the same cup that Our Lord drinks. They drink the cup of suffering for Christ. This is something that we often forget in the comfort of our lives. Sometimes the wine that the Lord gives us is bitter or sharp, or pains us.  

Do we refuse that cup? Do we dash the cup of suffering for Christ from His hand?

[PAUSE]

We Christians love Our Jesus. We would not willingly dash any cup from His hands. Instead, we run to Him begging Him to turn our water into wine. We  want to receive anything that He gives us gratefully because it is He that gives it to us. But often we do not recognise the wine we are given to come from Him.

We live in a depressing time where all seems dark and people seem sad and unkind. Some of us live in fear of coming darkness. Some of us fear the collapse of all that we love and hold dear. There are violence and harsh words. 

The cup we have to drink is to live in this world. The cup the Lord gives us is to tolerate living in a broken society and not turn our backs on it. The cup we are presented with is the harsh reality of being human beings separated from God by sin. This is what's in the cup and it looks horrible.

But this is just water. 

Watch as the water Jesus gives us becomes wine.

[PAUSE]

The wine that Jesus gives us means that we can have joy despite all the troubles in this world. Even in the darkest pit, even in the deepest fear, even in the sharpest pain, there can be joy. Jesus shows us this by His death. The holy martyrs show us by the way they willingly embrace their suffering. It can be done. We, too, can have joy and laughter and love and peace and see the glory of God even in persecution if we receive fully the cup of wine God gives us. The wine is His Spirit - it is His very self! And it means we can laugh at the Devil in his very face in amidst all the sufferings that He would use to wrest us from Christ. The wine that we receive gives us the power and strength to laugh in the faces of irritation, annoyance, fury, grief and despair, and all we need to do is drink deeply of Christ's cup. We need to drain it, not taste it, spit it out and return to comfortable despair.

All this darkness will pass. All pain and suffering will pass. The wine of God gladdens our hearts and draws us to Him. Our Lord offers you His cup? Will you take it?

On Ideolatry and Protestantism

A few strands have been coming together in my head recently. First, I have spent much of my social media time over the last couple of days arguing the foundations of the Catholic Faith with an out-and-out Protestant. Everything I wrote, he countered in a way that did not make any sense to me. Clearly, I was not making sense to him. That's not his fault nor really is it my fault but one question came to my mind, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

Similarly, as I suspect happens to every Catholic priest of all stripes, just as I was genuflecting before elevating the host, I heard that voice say, "why are you kneeling to a little white circle?" Again, that question arises, "what if I have actually got it all wrong?"

In reading the Roman Martyrology at Prime, I find myself wincing at the phrase "worship of holy images" because that seems to justify the Protestant accusations of idolatry and is not what Ikonography is. With holy images we venerate the saints depicted, "hyper-venerate" the Blessed Virgin depicted and worship the Lord Jesus Christ Whose Holy Incarnation allows us to depict Him. That's what the phrase "worship of holy images" means but it isn't what it says.

The more I think of these instances the more I have become convinced that people are becoming so entrenched in their ideological framework that they are beginning to worship that by defending it unreasonably - especially through cancelling the debate. More and more of us are committing Ideolatry: putting our worldview above God. This means, as I have suggested before, that we are shoehorning God into our worldview rather than letting our worldview expand to receive God.

You might say that it's a bit rich of an entrenched conservative Anglican Catholic to talk of open-mindedness when my worldview is closed to Liberalism. I take the point but I do remember at University having some truly terrible theology shoved down my throat because if I "needed to experience other traditions". To be honest, I try a live and let live approach. If people want to do liturgical dance that's their business. My opinion is that it has no place at Mass or Office but I appreciate that this is what people feel called by the Spirit to do. They might be wrong or I might be wrong but if we are both seeking to be true to the same Holy Ghost then our mistakes are going to be put right.

This is the point. The most ardent Catholic of any stripe and the most ardent Protestant of any stripe will agree on one simple fact that Jesus Christ is a historical figure who actually died and actually rose again from the dead to save humanity from Sin and Death.

I say this but there are those who call themselves Christians who deny even the reality of God Himself. And this is where we really do lose all common language and all I can do is hope and pray that we may find some method of communication. 

The main trouble with holding an ideology is that we often defend its slogans without really taking them to their logical or communal consequences. We sit comfortably within the bounds of our worldview without exploring the horizon.

I do try to practise what I preach but I know that I am far from perfect. One conclusion, though, that I have drawn somewhat reluctantly is that the Church of England to which I once belonged is ideologically Protestant and that the Nineteenth Century Anglo-Catholics with the best will in the world tried to read history as if Cranmer, Parker, Elizabeth I et c didn't intend to build a Protestant Anglicanism. The facts of history say otherwise. The Homilies that the XXXIX Articles requires read are Protestant as is the plain reading of those Articles in that the embrace a soteriology and sacramental theology different from the Primitive Church. Thus from the intention of the Establishment and those who govern that Establishment, the CofE was certainly Protestant from 1559 onwards. 

The painful reality for me is that I spent much of my life as a Protestant. 

Why painful? Is being a Protestant so bad? To my mind, Protestantism is incomplete. In removing the excesses of Papal authority, it threw out that which has been cherished from the beginning of the Church. In crying "Sola!", Protestant ideology misses that some things like Scripture and Faith are never alone nor can be separated from other aspects of Catholic belief. The one thing that has revealed to me the extent of the Protestantism of the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries has been the Calvinist ikonoclasm which robbed the faithful of the looking glass into the presence of the Divine. In choosing to remain in the CofE I was accepting the inherent Protestantism despite, like many others, dissenting from it. As long as I remained in the CofE, however nominal, I was accepting the ikonoclasm, the stripping of the altars, and latterly the Liberal Modernism which has changed even what little access to the Catholic Faith the Protestants had.

Thus I find that my current exploration of Anglican Catholicism is a great comfort for, together with the other G4 Churches, the Anglican Catholic Church is continuing the Oxford Movement to its logical conclusion. That conclusion is NOT Rome, at least not the Roman Church which claims ownership of Catholicism and demands inappropriate obeisance to an earthly monarch who, however venerable, holy and true, cannot possess the authority and attributes claimed. In holding the Primitive Faith of the First Millennium and using that as the basis of theology, I can read my Anglican heritage through that, discarding that which does not fit, such as Cranmer's overtly Protestant theology, and supplying what the faith teaches.

Thus I do not have to deny history, nor revise it or half-tell the story, but rather reform the reform and re-place the theological authority which has been removed.

However Protestant the CofE may be, it intended to continue the Apostolic Succession and, if there has been a breach anywhere along the line, it had been made up for by our relationship with other Catholics. But I do not believe there has been a breach - saepius officio has shown that, until 1992, the CofE had valid orders. 

Even then, the Anglican Catholic Church and her communion partners have the express intent of continuing Catholic and Apostolic Orders and thus either we are still Catholic or we have recovered the remnants of Catholicism from the Anglican Communion. Thus, whether we were Protestant or not, we are not now: we have supplied all that Protestantism lacks.

But is this not a form of Ideolatry? Do I worship the Catholic Faith that I promote or do I actually worship Christ? Now that is a good question and, to answer it, I have to look at my intentions: why do I pursue, promote and peddle the Catholic Faith. And the answer to me is clear: it is all about Jesus Christ. It is about seeing Him in the world around, of being sensible to His presence in my life and keeping Him in view. I read about Him in my Bible and I hear His words but, more, I see Him in my ikons, I see Him, touch Him and consume Him in the Mass and thus I take Him into my heart - the core of my being. He is not a theological construct but a person of History as well as Eternity. He is real and not just words in a book. The Holy Ghost convinces me of this and shows me that I can trust what the Lord says: if His body is meat indeed, then that little white circle is truly Him as He is - not through theory, but through what He tells me Himself, and I trust Him. Thus, for me, the Catholic Faith is just the room in which I meet the object of my desire, my life and my happiness. He is not my ideology but my ideology is based entirely on Him. Of course, that's not to say that there are no cracks in the walls in the room in which I meet my God. Perhaps some of those cracks become doors to other rooms.

If we hold to an ideology, then we have to recognise that it is sonething that we only allow ourselves to inhabit under the condition that we need to explore it fully so that we can function and communicate with other human beings with whom we share existence. To do otherwise would be selfish and lead to an ideology of solipsism. I do not believe the Catholic Faith would allow this on the grounds that the Saviour became incarnate to unite Christians in Him.

Tabloids, Truth and the Unknown Saviour

Propers for the Sunday after the Epiphany

Sermon for the Sunday after the Epiphany

We hear of the events of the Lord's birth.

We see the angels and shepherds and Magi.

We see the glitter of gold, smell the frankincense and bitter myrrh.

We see the baby in the manger.

And then we see nothing.

We have nothing about the life of Our Lord until He is twelve years old and talking to the Rabbis in the temple except that we see Him fly into Egypt and return after the death of Herod. We know nothing of the early life of Our Lord: just the circumstances of His Birth, an incident in the temple, and then silence until we hear Him begin His ministry with the word, "Repent!"

Why do we know so little?

[PAUSE]

There are some rumours, stories in old books such as the Infancy Gospel of St Thomas which do not have the greatest reputation. If the Gospels are top quality journalism, then the Infancy Gospel is a sensationalist tabloid. Here we have tales of the Lord making birds out of mud and striking dead bullies and irascible teachers. All very lurid. All very fanciful.

Why don't we know more about Jesus' life?

[PAUSE]

Our question is met with another question: why do we want to know more about Jesus' life? We have a fascination with biographies and autobiographies in which we look for all the lurid details which the authors have taken great delight to publish. 

Perhaps, just perhaps, we have this love of biographies because we want our lives to correspond with those we admire, or scoff at those we do not. We seek validation for our own lives in the reports of others'. Our sins don't seem so bad if we compare them with another's. 

The problem is that a biography is not a person. It's an impression, just a mere footprint in the sand of life and eroded by the tides of time. If we seek some comfort in being ourselves in the ghosts of others'lives then we aren't being true to ourselves. We know only about ourselves if we're willing to interact with other people.

[PAUSE]

All that is written in the Gospels about Our Lord's life is all wee need to know for our own good and our own salvation. The Lord's infancy is not relevant to us and, if we have any respect for the privacy of others, it is best left alone. Surely it is better to learn about someone's life from their own lips as friends than reading about them in the tabloids!

If we're seeking to feel better about ourselves then we need to address our own brokenness rather than look for it in others. We can only deal with our own brokenness by opening ourselves up to Our Lord and admitting that we need healing. We must present to Him every aspect of our lives by which we are  crippled by self-loathing, doubt and shame because it is in Him that these vast chasms of imperfection within us can be cleansed and healed by His Grace. 

[PAUSE]

The Lord is reading our autobiographies as we write them in the fabric of reality. Ours is the highest quality journalism because we cannot but reveal the truth to God because He knows us more than we know ourselves. He doesn't seek our embarrassment nor to feel good about Himself from our mistakes. On the contrary, rather than read our autobiographies, He wants us to share our lives with Him so that He can share His life with that. This is not something that can be written in any book, but rather in the depths of our heart.

What is the Anglican Catholic Church?

 A brief description of what the Anglican Catholic Church is.

Revelation in the Darkness

 

As the darkness of another lockdown falls, a reflection on the Lord's Epiphany.

The Family Name

Propers for the Feast of the Holy Name

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name

It certainly used to be the case that some countries would only allow babies to be called certain names from an approved list. In France, your name-day was apparently regarded with more importance than your birthday. It is still the case that members of the Church will wish you "Buon Onomastico!" on the feast of the Saint who shares his or her name with you. If your name is not that of a saint then you seem to miss out.

These days, people want control of their identity and there has been something of a backlash against the idea of your parents being the ones to give you your name. 

There are good reasons: some parents are irresponsible and give babies inappropriate names which will damage their relationships with others and undermine their sense of self. Yet there are many of us who will change a perfectly respectable name purely on the basis that they did not choose it themselves. "It's my name so I get to choose it!"

Today, there are even parents who will not even name a baby to prevent a forcing of an identity upon them. After all, getting your name changed by deed poll is a bit of a palaver. But what effect does that have on the baby? How would you feel at not having a name until you got to pick it? 

Naming a baby is more than just putting something down on the birth certificate. It is affecting that child's identity for the rest of her life.

We do have to remember that there are parents who are so abusive that is quite reasonable for a child to leave and change her identity in order to escape from the abuse. The change of name is the sign of ending the relationship with the toxic family. But then, this is a family in name only. 

[PAUSE]

Jesus is not a name in St Joseph's family, nor is it in Mary's. His Name is given to Mary from God by the Angel. This is a clear statement that the Lord's parentage is not of human origin. 

Giving a baby a name is a statement of family, but that baby deserves to be part of a family in more than name only. Giving a baby a name needs to be an assurance of unconditional love. Giving a baby a name needs to be considerate of how that child will fit in to world. Yet, often, we fail at supplying their needs. Our failures as parents damage our children. That damage contributes to our children's failures to be parents. That's how Sin works and propagates.

[PAUSE]

Jesus' Name comes from God Himself. It is a clear indication of His desire to save us from sin throughout History. Just as Sin propagates through Time, so does His one single perfect Sacrifice on the Cross in which we participate in the Mass. 

In the Mass, we come together as a dysfunctional family to receive Christ in order to be reconciled with Him and with each other. We know we are not perfect. We know that abuses have happened in our Church family even at the hands of priests and bishops who are supposed to serve the Church. We loathe that so much! But the Christian family is a family in more than name only, for that name is Jesus!

We bow in worship at His Holy Name because we recognise His identity as God Incarnate Who chooses to be given a name that we can pronounce so that we can call upon Him and know that He will hear us. In His Name, the abuses with the Church Family will be exposed and stopped. Wounds will be healed. Tears will be wiped away. There will be a family celebration!

[PAUSE]

St John reminds us that if we are God's family on Earth then we are His family in Heaven. If He is the Father then He will give us our new name along with our white robes of Heaven. We will be renamed so that we might know that we are part of His family for Eternity. That name will tell us who we are - who we really are.