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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Blogday 2021: Seen and not heard

It's rather a novelty actually writing something down for this blogling, at the moment, that is neither a sermon nor a video. Making short videos is somewhat easier now because they take less time to do and, with my workload increasing, perhaps I am taking the easy option.

Here it is, nonetheless, the sixteenth birthday of this blog. It's a significant year because it marks ten years since I left the CofE and found the ACC in which I think I have flourished ever since. In those ten years, both I and the CofE have changed markedly. I have been able to study properly now, not just get a pat on the head from the established training programmes for being inclusive of diverse "traditions" within the established church. My conclusion has been that the G3 - i.e. the Continuing Anglican bodies that are pursuing organic unity - are true and rightful inheritors of the Oxford Movement and that they form true and orthodox Catholicism in the Anglican heritage which the Tractarians rediscovered and which the modern CofE has sold for a mess of pottage. I am grateful to Presiding Bishop Chandler Jones of the ACA for reminding me that Fr Alfred Patten foresaw the need for the Continuing Anglican Church.

That need has been proved correct. The CofE has shown itself to be a Congregational body in all but name. Now, I am not saying that Congregational churches are necessarily wrong but rather they demonstrate a lack of Catholic cohesion and a marked temptation to believe what they want. It's healthy that no two parishes are the same but it's when they are doctrinally different that problems arise. As Prof Craig Paterson reminded me, if everyone says they are eating different things, can anyone be eating the same meal. Sometimes I wonder if they are eating in the same restaurant. Certainly if "Christian" atheism is tolerated in the CofE then anything goes, but at what cost?

 My problem is that there is an institutional disingenuity within the CofE in trying to hold different orthodoxies to be true. One might be minded of the famous Orthodox Phronema in which continuity with the mindset of the Apostolic Church trumps the use of Reason, but the Orthodox Phronema has, at its heart, the doctrine of the Nicene Creed. The CofE has lost that because it has given liberty to its members to attribute their own meanings to the words of the Creed. Ten years ago, I remember Anglicans telling me that they weren't going to allow the Creed to tell them what to believe. The evidence of that is bearing fruit.

As numbers decline, the CofE is now putting plans together for parishes to be run by groups of lay volunteers. There is a pretence at consulting the congregation, but this is often a lip-service. The forms are filled in and filed, but the decisions have already been made by the Deans, Archdeacons and Bishops before the congregation is consulted. It gives the illusion that the congregation is consulted. The congregation is to be seen and not heard. While I was a member of the CofE, I raised objections which were seen and not heard. I was faced with the duplicity of archdeacons and deans. I am not alone: a good friend actually called out the bare-faced lies of an archdeacon at a PCC meeting. That was over a decade ago. Looking at the Thinking Anglicans site, I am led to believe things have not improved. 

I am somewhat concerned for the fate of Forward in Faith. Recent pictures of the movements of the Bishop of Fulham seem to show the constant, chimere-clad presence of Dame Sarah Mullally, CEO of the Diocese of London. I get the impression that the Bishop of Fulham has been given a short leash from his superior. The impression I also get is that this is what "mutual flourishing" means and that FiF need constant supervision to ensure that their presence in the CofE is mitigated to preserve the "inclusive" and "diverse" nature of the CofE. I get that impression because that toleration-by-limitation-and-supervision was what I personally faced ten years ago when presented with working agreements deliberately designed to restrict my adherence to the Catholic Faith. I said, "satis est!" and found peace.

I found peace by ending the Quixotic idea of holding together two contradictories. Ironically, in letting go of the CofE, I also let go of the Papacy which I had seen as supplying the consistency the CofE was lacking. Once you see Orthodoxy and Catholicism enshrined in the preamble of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and know that the BCP is to be interpreted through the Early Church then you begin to appreciate that Anglican Catholicism has existed since the Roman roads were first trod in these shores. Too long, Anglican Catholicism has been seen and not heard in the UK.

We tend to get shouted down. Every so often, I get a comment by a zealous Roman Catholic telling me that my church and I are not valid. The only reason that they post such things is to publicly denounce me out of hatred or a need to be seen to be right. It can't be love or they would remember to admonish me privately first, or even just to pass over this blog. This is typical of what is happening to anyone trying to promote orthodoxy: we are to be seen and not heard. That has certainly been the view of more than one Bishop of Dover.

The trouble is that, in being seen, the light has been taken out from under a bushel. The moment we are seen, there are questions. The moment there are questions, attempts to suppress those questions become difficult - social changes show us that. The Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom celebrates its thirtieth birthday in less than a month. We are still here and we stand with all Orthodox and Catholic Christians in proclaiming the Ancient Faith that will not be politically spun or suppressed. I rather think that this is why this little blogling still exists after sixteen years. 

All this seems to be a CofE-bashing post. That isn't my intention but, given that this is the church that claims the spiritual health of the Nation despite fewer than a tenth of the population asserting their membership, a spiritually unhealthy church based on confusion and wilful obfuscation to achieve political rather than spiritual ends. That said, vast credit and blessings must go to those simple parish priests and lay-folk who simply try, week in, week out, to live out their Christian faith sincerely; those who keep their heads out of politics in favour of meeting the needs of their immediate neighbours; those whose preaching of the Gospel is seen and not heard. There are plenty of those who call themselves Church of England, and I am inclined to believe their testimony over the hierarchy of the CofE. 

As for me? I, too, must keep studying in order to preach, teach and administer the Catholic Faith once delivered to the saints for I have still so much to learn. This will be another busy year of research and writing and I pray, through the merits of St Anselm, St Odile, St Benedict and St Thomas Aquinas, to the Almighty One True God that my work may bear His fruit.

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Martyrdom at Christmas

 


A reflection on the martyrs that surround the Feast of the Nativity.

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Generating the Messiah

Sermon for the Feast of the Nativity

When did you last see a robin at Christmas? Only on a card or a decoration?

When did you last build a snowman on Christmas Day?

Come to think of it, how many White Christmasses have there been in recent years in the UK?

[PAUSE]

Whatever the reason may be, the traditional Christmas scenes are few and far between. We have to rely on spray-on snow, plastic holly wreaths and other ornaments. We don't have Christmasses like Bob Cratchit might have known. No longer is the boar's head brought out on a platter for the lord of the manor.

We cling to a romantic image of what Christmas should be like and become crestfallen when the world seems to move further away from that image. Things don't seem the same with robins replaced with sparrows, nor snow-bound country scenes with a rain-soaked council estate.

Some of us work so very hard to make Christmas a happy time of year. We try to make things joyful with lights and trees and thoughtful gifts. And yet, all of our efforts can be thwarted by one simple virus.

It's good to work hard to make Christmas special. We are Christians after all and preparing our homes and families to spread some of our joy at the birth of God Incarnate is valuable. We can be reassured that anything that we do in the Name of Christ will bear fruit. We must not necessarily expect this fruit to be ripe every December 25th.

[PAUSE]

Throughout Advent, we have been looking at how we play our part in generating the Christ. Our Lord has a genealogy and we can read two different lists of His ancestors at the beginning of St Matthew's Gospel, and the beginning of Jesus' ministry in St Luke's Gospel. The lists differ because St Matthew and St Luke are making different points. St Matthew starts with Abraham and works forwards showing the Jewish heritage of Jesus. St Luke starts with Jesus and draws the line back to God Himself, emphasising Jesus Humanity and His Divinity. In these lists we see the sweep of History as it is. There have been so many changes to generate the Messiah and now here He is.

[PAUSE]

We cannot expect each Christmas to fit the chocolate-box fantasy of a nineteenth century Christmas. The Scrooge of today does not work in a lending house, nor does he deprive his employees of coal. The Scrooge of today exploits the poor and uses their labour for his gain. The Scrooge of today runs the workhouses. We can romanticise the down-trodden worker in Bob Cratchit, but we miss the reason why our T-shirts and trainers are so cheap.

Although Scrooge has changed his appearance and mode of employment, he is still the same human being whose reasons for living the life he does run deep. He still requires salvation. He still possesses that reflection of the Divine image buried beneath his fallenness. He is still redeemable, even if the ghosts themselves must take on different appearances in order to make their point. 

[PAUSE]

This is where we come in. Appearances change but the substances do not. We bear witness to the unchanging nature of the Faith and to the Divine and Human natures of Christ from Eternity. In some ways, Jesus is a product of His time in terms of His clothes, His language and His customs, but His truth does not change, His teaching does not change, His love does not change and His commandments do not change. Certainly His Divinity cannot change!

While the apostles might be surprised at how we say the Mass, they still recognise what we are doing. They still see the same Jesus at our altars as at theirs. They see that the Church continues and teaches the same Faith to this day. They see the very same sacraments at our hands that they hold in theirs.

[PAUSE]

They also see that some have fallen away because they see the romance of the world around as being more important than what the Church preserves. They see those singing songs about how great it feels to be a Christian and who concentrate on their selves rather than turning East to face God.

They see a church filled with politics and movements for justice and inequality and correctness rather than a Church that centres itself firmly on teaching people to put on Christ. They see a church filled with robins and snowmen, holly and ivy, and snow covered country houses rather than a Church gathered around a Virgin, a bemused but supremely faithful artisan-husband and a manger filled with God's Light.

[PAUSE]

We are the Church. We generate the Messiah for our time by putting on the same Christ pointed out by St Luke and St Matthew and all the other saints. Christmas looks like however it appears outside your window, however it appears in your house, and however it appears in your heart, but it is what it is in the Eternal presence of Christ.

Is the Messiah being generated in your heart, or is it full of robins?

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

O Dear

 


A short reflection on the O Antiphons.


Do please also check out Fr Anthony Chadwick's meditations on them.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCBt2evHlE6Q1tvbkdceT5NQ

Monday, December 20, 2021

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Generating righteousness

Sermon for the fourth Sunday in Advent

The Church says, "Do not commit adultery!" The world says, "Shut up! Judge not lest ye be judged!" 

Have you heard that sort of thing?

[PAUSE]

It's worth remembering that if the Devil can use the words of God to mislead us, then he will. There are many who try to use Holy Scripture to justify their actions or to condemn others.

Our Lord does indeed say, "judge not lest ye be judged" but that's not to stop us from making an assessment of whether something is good or bad, but rather a reminder that we, too, must submit ourselves to the same assessment.

You obviously remember that, when we judge, we are making an assessment between what is right and what is wrong. But to make that assessment we do need to know what right and wrong are in the first place, and that's the problem. If we can't see, then our assessment is flawed. We can only judge as far as we can see: we cannot truly see the speck in someone else's eye if our own eye has got a piece of two-by-four stuck in it.

How do we remove the two-by-four? That ought to be easy, oughtn't it?

Well, you'd have thought so, wouldn't you?

[PAUSE]

St John the Baptist cries out the words he has heard from Isaiah, "make straight the way of the Lord."

Isn't the Lord's way straight already?

Not if we are the ones making the path!

It's clear that it is not God's responsibility to prepare His way, but ours. It is we who have to prepare ourselves for His coming. It is the path to our own heart that needs to be straightened and tended. This requires repentance. But how do we repent?

We know that repentance means turning to God but it also means seeking His righteousness. It is an action to perform, not just the reciting of a prayer of confession. We have to work repentance.

This means we have to learn to be righteous ourselves because God is righteous. God is what it means to be good, so if we seek to be good then we seek God. If we succeed in being good then God is with us.

But we need God to do this right from the start! We cannot be truly good without God. We cannot work our way to Heaven by our own effort. God is the beginning of life's journey and He is its end. With our eyes fixed on Him and our hearts making Him a home, we make straight in life's desert a highway for our God.

[PAUSE]

The challenge, then, is to focus not on changing the Church's teaching. Adultery is a sin and the Church will declare it because God declares it and God is not only a judge but He is justice itself. The challenge is to put on Christ, to follow His example, to change our ways for the ways of righteousness and, with Him, become like Him. The challenge is to judge the world by allowing God to transform us. 

[PAUSE]

God has created us to live a good life and enjoy it. This is why He comes to us as a baby, for what is more joyful, more glorious, more human than the birth of a baby? How about the birth of a baby that is God with us?

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Generating joy

Sermon for the third Sunday in Advent

It's rather difficult being happy at the moment, isn't it? There is much sadness and, as Christians, we must mourn with those who mourn. It's about time we gave up trying to be happy and become joyful instead.

[PAUSE]

Happiness is not the same as joy. We are happy when things go our way. We are happy when we find something unexpectedly pleasurable. We are happy when we have good luck. That's the problem: happiness depends on our circumstances here and now. That's why the word happy is related to words such as happening and mishap. Christians are not called to be happy, we are called to be joyful.

[PAUSE]

Happiness depends on luck: Joy does not.
Happiness depends on who's around us: Joy does not.
Happiness depends on our circumstances, our social standing, our possessions and our location: Joy does not.

St Paul recognises this which is why he tells us to be careful for nothing. We should not associate our joy with anything that worries us. Joy is one of the treasures that we store up in heaven. It is one of the fruits of the Holy Ghost and it requires growing.

The Psalmist says we may live our lives in the morning, sowing the seed of good works in sorrow and hardship but, when evening comes, we come home in joy bringing the sheaves of our labours with us. Often we confuse the search for joy with the search for happiness and this explains much of why the world around us is in a state.

The world's search for happiness is like growing weeds rather than good plants. Some weeds like dandelions and daisies look pretty but they fall away. The world chases weed after weed after weed and cannot understand why it isn't getting happier. The happiness the world offers is immediate gratification but, after a while, that pleasure cloys and bores us.

Joy is not like that. We can rejoice in the Lord always even when we are grieving. True joy is to be found in gazing upon the face of Almighty God and seeing in Him all our desires satisfied Eternally. That is what we are looking for and it requires work because we are fallen from God. If we want joy then we must seek God for only God can give us joy: it is from the Holy Ghost. 

This is why the holy martyrs can bear such incredible pain: they do not find happiness in the pain, but rather they find joy in loving God so much. Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. The martyrs long for nothing less than the friendship of God and their pains for Him mean that they reap the fruit of joy. See St Stephen's joy in seeing Christ Jesus at the right hand of the Father as he is stoned to death. 

[PAUSE]

You don't have to be a martyr to find joy. It's just more noticeable with them as their joy is more obvious. All the saints find joy in their lives walking with God and sainthood is our calling too. Advent is all about preparing ourselves for Joy which we find when we gaze upon the face of a baby who is God. In Advent we hear the tidings of great joy, not of great happiness.
The birth of the Christ Child is more than just a happening: it is Eternity breaking into Time; it is Joy breaking into Happiness.

And how do we gain this great joy? We ask God for it and then prepare our lives by seeking to be like Him. We seek the end of our Happy Christmasses by growing Joyful ones.

Thursday, December 09, 2021

The Second of the Four: Judgement

 


How judgement is rooted in the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Sunday, December 05, 2021

Generating family

Sermon for the second Sunday in Advent

We worship the One True God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and yet most of us are not Jewish. We have a priesthood but it is not of the priesthood of Levi. We have a Passover but we hold it every week, not just once a year. There are things we do that look Jewish, but few of us are actually descendants from Abraham. If the first Christians are Jews then shouldn't all Christians be Jewish?

[PAUSE]

You know the answer to this already, don't you? The very first Council - the Council of Jerusalem settled this right at the beginning of the Church's mission to the world. You can read that in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. St James calls the council and St Peter gives God's word on it. Gentiles can become Christian but they must not eat food sacrificed to idols and they must not commit fornication.

It is, however, St Paul, a Jew of the best pedigree, the most Jewish of Jews who says that Gentiles are not second class Christians but full members of the body of Christ. There are no second class citizens in the Body of Christ. 

God reveals Himself in the covenants with Noah, Abraham, the Hebrews in the desert and with David. He makes a nation of them but they fall away. And now God gives the New Covenant with us all. Jesus has to be born a man, and this is why God gives the world the Jewish people to prepare the world for the birth in time of God Incarnate. The Jews are chosen to be the family of God before He is born. After He has come, He redeems us all. We are all now one family. 

[PAUSE]

This is why racism would be laughable if it weren't so serious. After all, a race is formed from a few families living together and growing and prospering in the land. And yet, right from the beginning, God sees us all as being one family in Adam and Eve. There is only the human race, really. We are all brothers and sisters together. 

[PAUSE]

It is in Advent that we remember this fact. We cannot undo the sins of the past because God doesn't give us that power. We cannot apologise for the sins of those long dead because God holds us guilty of our own sins, not the sins of our fathers. We can learn to see Christ in the person of everyone we meet. We can learn to behave like brothers and sisters. We can learn to hear the hurt of our family and bear it with them. But we are the people of God and we can bring everyone to the manger to gaze upon our new baby brother and Lord.


Wednesday, December 01, 2021