Where does the Septuagint feature in an Anglican Catholic's theology?
Monday, January 30, 2023
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Perfectly possessed?
Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany
How do you feel
when you realise
that the devils
and the demons
know Jesus better than you do?
This is a fact that we have to understand.
It is clear that the Devil knows
Holy Scripture better than we do.
It is clear that the devils recognise
Jesus as Son of God before anyone of us does.
Look, and see how it is
that two possessed men
call Jesus the Son of God
before a billion people
come to realise that fact.
So if the devils know Jesus
better than we do,
does that not show us
just how small and stupid,
sinful and worthless
we are?
[PAUSE]
The first thing to remember,
is that Christ becomes incarnate
for the sole purpose
of saving us.
Once we have that belief,
we know that
we are not worthless.
We must accept that
because we are blind to God
through Adam’s sin.
We do not understand
or see things as the spirits do.
We know that we are
not wholly spiritual beings,
because we have flesh
and the flesh lusts against the spirit
and spirit last against the flesh.
It doesn't make us stupid
that we cannot see God.
It is a consequence of our human nature.
It is a consequence of our fall from grace.
[PAUSE]
We have established two things, then.
First that we are worth the death of Christ.
Second that we are blind to Christ.
And now
we must remember
that it is partly the Devil’s fault
that we are blind in the first place.
He still is able to see God,
but he cannot approach him.
We do see that our Lord
wants to free us
from all that is not his.
To be possessed by devils
is to be enslaved to them.
To be possessed means that
whatever we want to do
we cannot do
for someone else is using us
to do their will.
Demonic possession
Is a form of slavery,
and it is motivated
by pure hatred.
How do we know?
If love seeks our perfection,
then hatred must seek
to prevent our perfection.
The Devil does not want us
to be perfect in God;
he wants us to be playthings of his will
and perfect puppets of his hatred
of all that is good.
That cannot be love.
It means that where the Devil’s will is,
God’s will is not.
There is a converse to this
that where God is,
hatred cannot be
and the Devil cannot stand.
It all depends on
who we want to be perfect with.
[PAUSE]
Jesus tell us,
“be perfect
as your Father in Heaven
is perfect.”
This is why the Devils flee
when He comes near.
This is how they know him.
They know him because
his very presence drives them away.
They may know him
but they know him out of fear.
Likewise,
the Devil knows Christ
out of fear
because he knows that
he cannot win.
The Devil cannot win souls
who truly turn to Christ.
We may be blind to Christ
through our fallen nature.
We must accept that,
but each is our search for Christ
in humility and in honesty
where we encounter him truly.
Christ’s presence
doesn't drive us away
because we are not wholly evil.
We are fallen,
and we may choose to remain fallen,
but ultimately the image of Christ in us
is still visible.
Whether we like it or not,
we are ikons of Christ.
So it really doesn't matter
if the Devil knows God
better than we do,
because he knows him out of hatred.
Our job is to know God
out of love and,
because God is love,
the more we love,
the more we know God
and we know him in a way
that makes the devil tremble
because we know God in a way
that the devil cannot.
[PAUSE]
Here in the Mass,
we receive truly
the Body and Blood of Christ.
He is truly present in the host
and within the chalice.
This means that the Devil cannot be there.
While we may receive the sacrament
with clouded minds
clouded with sinful thoughts
and foolish ideas,
we still receive Christ.
We must therefore use
what has been taken in
with our body to percolate into the soul.
This is why we have the liturgy.
If we concentrate,
if we focus our hearts and minds
on what is happening,
then we drive out devils.
We can believe that.
We must believe that.
We are allowed to be perfect in Christ.
We must therefore allow
His presence to drive out
the evil from our lives.
We cannot do this ourselves
any more then we can chase
the darkness out of the room
before we switch the light on.
But we can switch the light on.
We can seek perfection
in Christ.
We can allow the Divine Light
to shine in us
and the darkness will clear away.
Friday, January 27, 2023
Csezlawa Kwoka
Hers is the face of so many who lost their lives in the Nazi Death Camps and it's almost to hard to believe that so many men, women and children met a horrifically cruel death be they Jew, Polish, Sinta-Roman, Slavic, homosexual, politically unacceptable or simply socially "unacceptable".
As she stares out at us, Csezlawa exhibits in her eyes a refusal to be crushed. Hers is the human spirit in the face of unrelenting evil. That human beings should be capable of both heroism and depravity is extraordinary. It shows that we are in possession of a power that can lay waste and stand strong. I could have published any other photograph but Csezlawa's is the one that passed before today.
It is truly heartbreaking to see an innocent girl brutalised but her resolve betrays the fact that each human being possesses an indelible dignity which lies far beyond the reach of the diabolical. In her eyes, perhaps we catch a glimpse of the Resurrection in the eyes of Christ at His Crucifixion. We weep for her because she should not suffer, because she is too young to suffer, because she is too innocent. We weep because it is our sins that cause people like Csezlawa to suffer. It is our sins that cause our children to suffer, directly or indirectly, and we cannot forget the reality of that. Csezlawa shows us why we need justice, mercy, healing and grace because our sins damage others grievously.
We have to remember that the Devil exists and hates us. He wants Csezlawa and all the others to be forgotten so that we are not confronted by the sins we have committed. He wants us to be comfortable in our descent into Hell. But we Christians have the audacity to repent, to bewail our sins, to cry to God for forgiveness and grace, and seek to be better people in that grace. And God has the audacity to forgive us, to be merciful to us, to be gracious to us. We must make sure that we take sin and repentance seriously so that we love truly our God and love truly our neighbours, for surely every Csezlawa is our neighbour.
I have one prayer, for I need her prayers more than she needs mine. That prayer is, before I stand before the Great Judge for His judgement upon me, that I shall see her face again as she is now in Heaven and know that she sees eternally that beauty and joy which pass human understanding.
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Monday, January 23, 2023
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Well actually...
Sermon for the third Sunday after Epiphany
“Well actually...”
Social media comment boxes are full of “well actually…”s.
When someone expresses a fact,
you can bet your boots that
someone will take issue with that fact
and find some way of correcting it,
loudly and obnoxiously.
Many times you can find yourself
being corrected for things
you didn't know were possible.
Why?
Why do people bother
to make comments
that correct others?
[PAUSE]
There is an old meme
on the Internet
that says,
“Don't bother me, I’m busy!
Someone on the Internet is wrong.”
Sometimes we just can't help
trying to put others right.
We do this often
because we believe
that we have the truth
and that this truth is
utterly true and
inescapably correct.
We believe that we have
the knowledge that this is true.
We believe that
we can refute arguments
with a simple one-liner.
The trouble is,
we have fallen into
precisely what Saint Paul
warns us against.
We have become
wise in our own conceits.
[PAUSE]
Saint Paul recognises the danger
of intellectual pride.
He recognises the compulsion
that we have to correct others
and to make them aware of
why they are wrong.
Of course,
this may be necessary.
If someone believes that
a lorry isn't hurtling
down the road towards them,
then telling them that there is,
loudly and urgently,
is clearly an important thing to do!
But it is the motives
in intellectual pride
that give it away
for the sin that it is.
Intellectual pride has its birth in
how we react to
being told that
we are clever.
We are praised for
being a good school child,
which is right and proper,
but if we allow that praise
to enter into our soul
as something to crave
and become addicted to
then we risk becoming the school swot.
School swots always unpopular
because their rightness
puts other people down.
It is condescending
and damaging,
pushing people away.
Their rightness comes
at the expense of others'
true growth in Christ.
Intellectual pride is only
about the standing of our own intellect,
it is not about
the perfection of other people.
And perfection of other people is
precisely the goal of loving them.
[PAUSE]
Now,
Saint Paul often writes
to correct his readers.
Look at his letter to the Romans!.
It isn't that he wants to put the Jews down,
nor that he wants to raise the Gentiles up,
but rather that he wants
both Jew and Gentile to be joined
in love for Christ and for each other.
What he doesn't do
is use his heritage
to show how clever he
and insult the intelligence
of his readership.
Our intellects have to be used for love,
not for bolstering our own egos,
or massaging our sense of self-worth.
That phrase “well actually…”
is a phrase that can be used
to alienate other people
by making them feel small
or inadequate
or to rubbish whatever learning they have.
Yes they may indeed be
wrong in their thinking,
but there are ways and means
of helping them see the truth.
To assume that we have
the right to correct people,
is a falsehood
if we do not see the beam in our own eyes.
Look at the way
Our Lord puts people right.
The Syro-Phoenician woman is encouraged
to express her faith in Jesus
by answering His statement
that the bread of the children
should not be given to dogs.
In saying that even the dogs
eat the crumbs falling from the table,
her faith is exposed and lauded.
She becomes edified
and her prayers are answered.
Look at the way that Jesus
puts down the teaching of the Pharisees.
He has the authority to teach
because he knows the truth
fully and completely.
And it is because
He has full knowledge of the truth
that the teaching of the Pharisees
must be corrected and cast out.
The Pharisees have been forcing
their intellectual pride
upon other people
and that has been the problem.
Their zeal for bringing
people back to God through
minute performances of the law,
noble though that ambition is,
is rooted in pride in what they know
and they know best.
They have raised the Law
above the perfection
of their people.
Intellectual Pride has
thwarted the Pharisee’s ambition
to bring the people to God
by crushing their souls.
[PAUSE]
If we are to correct others,
then it must be from a position of humility,
recognising our own faults and failures,
our own propensity
to misunderstand,
misread,
and misspeak.
We must take care
not to be condescending,
or insulting,
or belittling.
If at any time we fail
to will the perfection
of those whom we seek to correct,
then we fail God.
[PAUSE]
The true way to communicate
with people is through humility
and a desire for that person’s joy in life.
It is very easy to make
glib corrections which destroy a that joy.
Careless remarks do a lot of damage,
and the only way that
this damage can be repaired
is through repentance,
prayer
and begging for the grace of God
to supply whatever is lacking
and correct what is done amiss.
[PAUSE]
Whenever we are tempted to say “well actually…”,
we must think carefully
about what we want to achieve
in telling the truth.
If we cannot tell the truth in love,
then maybe the truth that we speak
is not actually the truth at all.
Monday, January 16, 2023
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Why you don't find stones in the chalice.
Sermon for the second Sunday after Epiphany
He'll turn water into wine,
but He won't turn stone into bread.
We can compare
Our Lord’s miracle at Cana
with His temptation in the wilderness.
If we look carefully,
we might think that it is
only because the Devil wants
Our Lord to be selfish
that He does not change stones into bread.
On the other hand
to allow people to enjoy a wedding
is not selfish
and so turning water into wine seems perfectly loving.
But is there more to it than that?
[PAUSE]
Our Lord refuses to turn
stones into bread
on the grounds that
“Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God.”
That's His reason
and it is nothing to do with selfishness,
or assuaging his hunger
or for showing off
– it is about what people need.
Our Lord uses miracles as signs
because we need them.
Notice how He will not
perform a miracle on demand
but rather use miracles
only to show
us little human beings
some wonderful truth
that lies beyond
our understanding
of existence.
Turning stones into bread
doesn't show anyone anything.
It's just between our Lord and the Devil.
There is nothing that reveals any truth
to anyone by turning stones into bread.
What needs to be shown is
that human beings need
the Word of God before their bellies are filled
What is the message, then,
of the miracle of water made wine?
What significance does this have for us?
[PAUSE]
We see a wedding feast;
we see a man and a woman
joined together,
but the wedding is deficient,
it lacks something.
That something is wine.
What does Our Lord do?
He could easily have filled
those jars with water Himself
miraculously.
He could have filled them with wine miraculously!
But he doesn't.
The water is already there
but it lacks that something
to make it a vehicle of rejoicing.
Wine makes the heart merry
and our Lord does not condemn
anyone for drinking wine.
On the contrary,
he himself supplies it and it is very good.
What does this show us?
[PAUSE]
The first thing it shows us is that
the water is deficient
because it is not capable
of bringing forth rejoicing.
Our Lord supplies what is lacking
to make it a drink
of rejoicing,
of happiness,
of sheer delight!
Our Lord supplies merriment
to an occasion where there is
concern and worry
that people won't be happy.
This miracle shows us that
the human institution of marriage
is not just blessed by Our Lord
it is completed by Our Lord.
He perfects the wedding
by supplying what is lacking.
At every stage,
Our Lord is supplying what is not there
in order that it might be perfected.
[PAUSE]
We see the same miracle in every Mass.
Look very carefully
when the priest
fills the chalice
first with wine,
then with water.
In normal Masses
the water is blessed:
in Requiem Masses
it is not blessed.
The wine reminds us
of Our Lord’s divine nature.
It is the water that
receives something more
just like Our Lord’s humanity
is received into His Divine Nature
in order to be Our Incarnate Lord.
And He takes into himself
our humanity –
He takes us,
His Church,
into himself.
Just as the wine in the chalice
receives the water
which is blessed,
so does Our Lord
receive us into himself.
Why is the water blessed?
Because we are
a work in progress
and we need to work
at our perfection in Christ.
Why is the water
not blessed
in Requiem Masses?
Because the water reflects
the humanity of those
who have died,
whose work has ended.
Either way,
whatever happens
at our Mass,
the water and wine
become the same real
Blood of Christ
shed for our salvation.
[PAUSE]
At every stage of his life with us,
Our Lord supplies what is lacking.
He never takes away.
Stones don't need
to become bread,
for God created stones
which are not bread.
Our Lord created wheat
to become flour
to become bread:
that is the way that
His creation works.
But human beings have
introduced into Creation
that which is evil
and that evil runs
throughout creation
like cracks in ice.
We lack wholeness.
We lack integrity.
And we cannot fill those cracks,
because we are cracked throughout.
It is Our Lord Jesus Christ
Who fills those cracks
with His very self.
This is salvation,
salvation not in terms
of crime and punishment,
but in healing and wholeness.
Our Lord’s salvation gives us
our true selves back again.
It wipes clean
the image of God
that we bear.
This is the salvation that He offers us.
The wicked are
their own punishers,
for they remain broken
in their refusal to love
and be loved
and it is Love Himself
who supplies whatever is lacking.
[PAUSE
At our Mass,
we see wine transformed into blood,
the blood of Christ Himself.
It is a cup of
healing and wholeness
and,
if we let it,
we can find that salvation
for ourselves
and for the whole world.
Monday, January 09, 2023
Anglican Catholic Orders: a brief outline
How do Anglican Catholic Orders fit with the wider Catholic Church?
Again: no polemics will be entertained either way!
Sunday, January 08, 2023
The nature of rocks
Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of the Epiphany
As you know,
there are people who like
to try and trick Christians
in order to show that our faith
is ridiculous.
One of the favourite ways
they try this
is to ask,
“can God make a rock
that is too heavy for Him to lift?”
If He can't, they say,
then God cannot create
anything He likes
and is not Almighty.
If He can, they say,
then God is too weak
and is not Almighty.
Can God make a rock
too heavy for Him to lift?
How do you answer that question?
[PAUSE]
We can answer this question
by asking,
"If God does so
then how would
we know that He'd done it?"
We could say that
to be Amighty
means that
whatever God does
has to make sense to us,
and such a rock
doesn't make sense.
But for us Christians,
the question is
surprisingly easy to answer.
Yes, God can create a rock
that's too heavy for Him to lift.
But doesn't this contradict
His being able to do all things,
including lifting heavy things?
The answer really lies in
this festal season,
the octave of
the feast of the Epiphany.
[PAUSE]
The Epiphany is
the revelation of
the Word made flesh.
The whole point of the Incarnation
is that God takes
into Himself our human nature.
This means that Our Lord
is both human and divine
and that these two natures
cannot be separated in Him.
This means that our Lord Jesus Christ
has both a human nature
and a divine nature.
To see how this works,
we can simply consider that
it is not in human nature
to lift huge rocks such as
the Rock of Gibraltar.
Therefore, it is not in
Our Lord’s human nature
to be able to lift the Rock of Gibraltar.
So God has already created a rock
that is too heavy for Him to lift!
We can see that this is all due
to Our Lord Jesus Christ being
both human and divine.
[PAUSE]
The fact that Jesus has two natures
shows that there are many questions
that we can answer about him.
He has revealed those answers
about Himself in HIs Epiphany.
In his human nature,
he is just like us.
As a child he has to learn,
and he grows in wisdom
and stature
and maturity.
Notice then that
Jesus is not born perfect,
but he is sinless.
Perfection is about achieving
what one is meant to do,
or what one is meant to be.
Perfection is total completion.
Until Jesus dies upon the cross,
He has not lived a full human life,
therefore He is not perfect.
But he is without sin.
So how can Jesus be God
and yet not know things?
[PAUSE]
These days, we human beings
have great knowledge
at our fingertips.
If we don't know something,
we take out our phone
and we Google the answer.
Now imagine being able to do this
without the phone.
Our Lord Jesus Christ
may not have all the answers
in His human nature,
but He does in His divine nature
and He can communicate
with His divine nature through prayer.
This is why Jesus prays.
What does this mean for us?
[PAUSE]
Our Lord Jesus can communicate
between His natures through prayer.
While he may not be perfect
in His human nature,
He can still communicate infallibly
with His divine nature
through perfect prayer.
This is why Jesus can know things
that human beings can’t
and yet be truly human.
This also shows us the pattern
for how we are to be with God.
While we may not be perfect,
and while we are certainly not sinless,
prayer is still something
that is always open to us
and can be perfected
through daily practice.
The Epiphany of Our Lord shows us
the reality of God
in His taking of our human nature.
He is like us in every way but without sin.
So we can have communion with God
through our liturgy,
through our Mass,
through our prayer.
The Epiphany shows us
that we now have direct access to Almighty God
in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[PAUSE]
Here is the reason why God became man.
He became man like us
so that we could become
divine like Him.
We can become perfect in Christ
and become rocks
that build the Church,
a Church that is carried by
and carries Our Creator.
Tuesday, January 03, 2023
Sunday, January 01, 2023
An unkind cut?
Sermon for the feast of the Circumcision
Jewish baby boys
are circumcised
on the eighth day.
This is in accordance
with God's command
to Abraham
as part of His covenant
with Abraham
and his descendants.
For those of us
who are not of the Jewish race
this seems unnecessarily unpleasant
or even an abuse of a child.
There are many that say
that children should not
be circumcised
because they cannot choose
their faith.
There are in Christianity
those who believe that
children should not be baptized
because they cannot choose their faith.
But being Jewish is
not just a religion,
it is a race,
a family,
all genetically related
to Abraham.
This is why baby boys
are circumcised
in order to become
full members of that family
in obedience to God.
This is why Our Lord
is circumcised
in order to play a full part
in the family of Abraham
to receive His inheritance
from David
and to participate in
the life of God's chosen people.
In being circumcised,
Our Lord ratifies and fulfils
the Old Testament.
But there is
more to it
than that.
[PAUSE]
Christ is circumcised for us
just as He lives and dies for us.
But He is also baptized
and, in so doing,
sanctifies the waters of Baptism
in order to bring others
into the family of God.
As we have been reminded
at Christmas,
we have fallen from
our first state of grace,
though grace has not been
obliterated in us.
We have turned our backs
to God and rejected
being part of a family
with Him.
In so doing,
we have lost ourselves
and sit in the degradation
of our own making.
This is the purpose
of Our Lord's Incarnation.
His whole life is
to re-sanctify ours
in some things by setting the example,
in others by doing what we can't do ourselves.
On the one hand,
He shows obedience to God
so that we might see
how to be obedient to God.
This we can do.
On the other hand,
He supplies goodness
to heal wounds and restore
what is broken.
This we cannot do.
At Baptism,
Grace is given back to us
in order for us to be
part of the Family of God
once more.
This is why we baptise babies,
to bring them into
the family of God,
even as they are already
members of their family.
In Christ,
we are bound together
as God's people
of the New Testament
with the God's people
of the Old Testament
as one family
whether or not
we are of the Jewish race.
This is why St Paul
can say that,
in Christ,
there is neither Jew nor Gentile.
[PAUSE]
As Gentiles,
we are spared circumcision,
but we are not spared
the pains that come
with being Christian.
As Christ suffers,
so we must suffer with Him
on the road to our perfection.
We must all endure unkind cuts in life,
but in Christ,
the are badges of honour
in which we will find Eternal Joy.