Leghorn Liturgy

Perhaps you remember the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. For those that don't, he was a rather puffed-up and arrogant rooster with precious little in the way of self-awareness. His adventures usually centred around being vindictive to the farm dog. Mel Blanc who voiced Foghorn Leghorn was a man who would often give his creations their character through a speech impediment. Sylvester and Daffy Duck had a lisp, Porky Pig a stutter, and Foghorn Leghorn used to repeat, I say, repeat himself constantly. The point is that this rooster had such a value of his own self importance that he believed that everything he said was worth repeating. It was a stroke of genius on Blanc's part and shows why these cartoon characters are still loved today.



Forghorn Leghorn might be described as a battologist - someone who repeats himself needlessly. This comes directly from a Greek word which has the idea of empty chatter, or babble. Interestingly, this is a word that appears in the Gospel according to St Matthew. In chapter six, Our Lord tells us:



 "when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." (vv 5-13)



Our Lord accuses the heathen of being battologists (in fact that very Greek word is used in the original text!). What was actually happening? We must remember that the "heathen" in this case were the Romans and Greeks who worshipped the Olympic gods. They would attend sacrifices, with long babbling prayers but lived their lives as if these gods had nothing to do with them. These gods didn't mean much to these heathen unless they wanted a favour: they were simply paying lips service to a social custom.  The point is that these battologist heathen live two completely different lives. They were not sincere to their religion. Of course the big difference between the Olympic gods and Our Father who is in Heaven is that Our Heavenly Father really does exist: the gods of Olympus do not. Any prayer to them would certainly be in vain,  but our prayers to Our God are not because He hears them and they mean much to Him.



That's the point that Our Lord is making when He warns us to guard against vain repetitions. We are not to babble to God with a list of things we want Him to do. Prayer isn't like that, and Our Lord wants us to pray properly. Thus He gives us the wonderful Lord's prayer.



Interestingly, the Lord's prayer is a prayer that we repeat often - at least three times a day. If we want to avoid vain repetitions, surely we only need to pray it once in our lives - just one sincere recitation of "Our Father..." would be enough once for all. Except, prayer isn't like that either. Our Lord is telling us to pray the Our Father when we pray. We don't just pray once, we pray lots of times. In the eighteenth chapter of St Luke's Gospel we read that:





Jesus "spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith . And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (vv 1-8)



God is greater than any judge let alone an unjust judge. He hears prayers which are continually offered to Him. Prayer is clearly something that expresses our relationship with God. We are to do it always -pray without ceasing! - even when we don't feel like it. In fact one might say that we should pray especially when we don't feel like it and "take Heaven by storm". Having set words helps us to formulate our prayers and focus on how we are interacting with God. Of course, we can say our own prayers in our own way, but it is good to join in the same prayers with the whole Church and to pray alongside countless millions across Time and Space. Using the same words helps us do just that. Of course, Our Lord's words about vain repetitions hold true here. We are not to pray in vain, i.e. without thought, just paying lip-service to God.


Nor are we to babble without meaning: St Paul reminds us that if anyone prays in tongues, someone needs to be able to interpret what they are saying otherwise it is meaningless. We are not to use the words of liturgy without thought. Yes, the words will praise God, and the fact that we do intend to pray will always help us, but the words are to be prayed carefully. St Benedict suggests that monks who don't take care over the words of the liturgy should be punished!



During the Mass, we often repeat ourselves. For example, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, et c. Notice that this is not a vain repetition. We are addressing the Holy Trinity for mercy. We need God on our side. We need His love in action. We cry out with the whole Church for mercy on humanity. We are merely following Our Lord's example in St Luke's Gospel.



Another repetition occurs at the moment we are to receive the Holy Sacrament. Three times we say "Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed." Why three? Is that vain repetition? Not unless we make it vain by not taking care about what we're saying. Again, we follow St Luke's passage above, but notice what effect repeating this three times has. Each time we say it, we become more aware of what is happening. We are forcing ourselves to recall our need for God, our unworthiness to receive Him, our need for faith like the centurion whose words we are paraphrasing, and thus becoming more and more aware that we are to receive truly the Body and Blood of Christ into our fallible little bodies. The repetition is not vain. This is not battologism.



What about the Rosary with all those repetitions of "Hail Mary," "Our Father", and "Glory be"? Surely these are vain repetitions? Again, not unless we make them vain through being slack in our prayer lives and just paying lip-service. However, do we really subject ourselves to the Rosary just for something to do - a way to kill an hour? Surely not! Surely, we have some desire within us to say it as a prayer in the first place! It's very hard at first to say all the prayers devoutly with attention and devotion, but it does come with practice. The words do matter, but the wonderful thing about those repetitions is that it has a good effect on our brains. In occupying our body, we free our minds and souls to soar to God. Repeating those words reinforces our desire, and are not vain repetiotions. This is St Luke 18 again. In saying the Rosary, we allow Our Lady to help pull us up towards her Beloved Son.


Often, Protestants like to pull Catholics up on what they pray using Our Lord's dim view of vain repetitions. They have a good point to make. Our lives as Christians MUST be sincere. We cannot just pay lip-service to God. He knows the secrets of our hearts. It is important that we don't live double lives of saying one thing and doing another, but that our words and actions come from the same place. We will damage our souls if we just say the words without trying to encounter God. Agreed, sometimes we just go off on auto-pilot. That's easily forgivable when we're tired or distracted, but when we recognise that we are going off on auto-pilot, we should use the words we're saying to bring us back to our focus on Almighty God. That's what they're for.


Before we pray our liturgy we should pray:


Open Thou, O Lord, our lips to bless Thy Holy Name. Cleanse also our hearts from all vain, evil, and wandering thoughts. Enlighten our understanding, enkindle our affections that we may say this office with attention and devotion and so be meet to be heard in the presence of Thy Divine Majesty through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.


However we get distracted and our words become vain repetitions, we should take comfort in the fact that God's Word is never in vain.

Beauty, Happiness, Mathematics and God

I was struck by a bit of a vision today. By this, I don’t mean that I was thrown to the floor by bright lights, angelic choirs and the glory of the Beatific Vision – I’m not meant for that yet, otherwise it would have happened.

As I sat in the college chapel, my mind conjured up the image of a plane of glass in the chapel floor which raised itself up at an angle. I thought that within the glass was a picture of a cloud as one might find painted onto glass in a stained glass window. As I looked more closely, I could see that it was a galaxy, moving and swirling like a drop of milk in black tea. Of course, this is in perfect keeping with the origin of the word galaxy. It occurred to me that I was being given a window into another dimension, a vision of another multiplicity of worlds beyond the shallow horizons of my own little mind.

I do love looking at astronomical photographs. I still cannot take in that what I’m looking at is not just millions of miles away, but millions of miles in size and millions of years old. The scales are mind-boggling, and yet perhaps we forget that there are a million square millimetres in a square metre. The telescope is capable of giving us windows into the infinite, resolving angles ten-thousandths of a degree wide. Here is William Blake’s infinity in the palm of our hands.

Being a (largely failed) mathematician, my mind is always looking for the structures inherent in Creation. That’s probably high-minded of me and I do confess that praying Psalm 131 is not an easy task. Is it high minded of me to try and comprehend what’s going on? I’m hoping that it isn’t in the proviso that I understand that I will never completely understand what is going on until I have seen God face to face. Even then…

I often wonder what my students find beautiful. For teenage boys, it seems that beauty is an ill-defined affair and perhaps that’s because they lack the language for saying why something Is beautiful. They have not yet refined and honed the senses or the descriptors that will inspire them the most, but they are surely capable of appreciating beauty. In my teens, I remember being struck by the beauty of the solitary church bell and by Italian Renaissance Organ intonations. They certainly transported me beyond my own little world. Yet, I cannot be sure that my school mates had ever had that experience, and I dared not ask them. If they did, then perhaps this beauty was something that was so personal to them that even in the telling it would ruin it for them. Sometimes language destroys a dream rather than brings it into existence.

Beauty has always been something difficult to define, perhaps rightly so if the adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is correct. What is certainly clear is that beauty resonates within the individual like that solitary church bell. I fail to see how it is possible for someone to register beauty without reacting to it on more than just the rational level. The resounding of that bell of beauty allows the senses of our mind to be transported to places beyond our physical senses. There is a sort of happiness here, even when one finds beauty in a sad film like Atonement. There is a happiness in one’s emotion, as if one is feeling pleasure in actually feeling something other than the background level of emotion.

Sometimes language destroys a dream. I don’t find that with mathematics, though. Mathematics doesn’t destroy dreams in my experience, largely because mathematics deals with the necessarily abstract. I’ve challenged some of my students to tell me what algebra is, but find the repeated phrase “it’s maths with letters in it” coming back to bite me. When one realises that algebra is looking at the processes of arithmetic without taking things for granted, one can see some truly wonderful structures coming into play. Algebras allow us to ask the great “what ifs” of arithmetic. What if two times three is not the same as three times two? What would happen to subtraction if we weren’t allowed to have negative numbers? What happens if I allow negative numbers to have square roots?

Algebra answers these questions by producing new algebras, rings, groups, semigroups, division rings, and quandles. Thanks to Descartes, these lead into geometry and topology in which shapes bend and warp, blow up, project and expand in so many ways, even into higher dimensions in which situations make more sense. We understand more about our universe by looking at space and time together. This gives us four dimensions, though we are hard pressed to visualise anything that might be going on in 4D. Tesseracts and hyperspheres are the province of the fiction of Robert Heinlein and his ilk, but that just shows how mathematics yields dreams rather than destroys them.

I know that mathematics passes most people by. I can sympathise as it has passed me by too. There is another old adage, “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Mathematically, I fall into the latter category.  I’m not fishing for sympathy here: while I’d like to have progressed further into academic mathematics, I was simply not clever enough to do so. There is no shame in that, and perhaps it does help me appreciate that mathematics is a hard mistress to woo. I have some affinity, then, with those who struggle with the rough terrain that comes before one enters the darksome mathematical jungle. I can lead the curious to the edge of the wild but, if they can go, they must go without me.

Fractions frighten people, and negative numbers really do upset those whose experience of the world is knowing how many beans make five. How many of us know how many beans make minus five? Of course, what may well be going is in effect a category mistake, after all, negative numbers are not numbers that can count how many physical objects there are. They can count how much money someone owes, or what the temperature of liquid nitrogen is – you need a reference point for that, a zero level. However the realisation that, under the same basic rules of arithmetic that everyone knows that minus one times minus one MUST yield positive one is a moment when one can appreciate that mathematics has a strange beauty that doesn’t really intersect this world in ways we would think.

Yet mathematics goes further and gives us a glimpse of the Divine. Those of us who cannot understand how God can exist without physical space or time would do well to know that numbers do just that also. We can determine statements of truth and falsehood about numbers just like we can with physical objects, and so their existence is assured. However, they have no space, nor time. They do not exist in an area of the brain, but are objective in their presence. Numbers really do point the way to God.

Of course, there are those who would read strange numerological significances in Holy Scripture but take them too far. Seven signifies perfection, forty the nature of penitence, three the completion of the loving family. These numerological fancies are just illustrations, just stories to colour our understanding of the world around us. Those who try to force arcane meaning or significance onto numbers are missing the point. This includes physicists who try to impose ridiculous limits on mathematics by meaningless notions like adding up all the positive whole numbers and getting a negative twelfth. Forcing that kind of physical limitation on that which is not physical is as destructive as language is to the dream.

As I look at my students, my worry is that they will seek contentment in the material world. There is nothing wrong with God’s Creation as I said in Sunday’s Sermon, but to look at the world and see everything in terms of clumps of matter and worth and commodity and fashion misses the true beauty that exists in what is really there. Can they see beauty in a muddy puddle or a plastic bag blowing in the wind? If they can, then perhaps our walk together has been fruitful for all of us.

Michaelmas: Angels and Demons

Written for the Magazine of St Peter and St Paul's Church, Swanscombe at the request of a friend.

Do you get the feeling that Dan Brown has it in for the Church? First there was the Da Vinci Code with a lot of untruths about Jesus having a family and the Holy Grail being his descendants. Then came the story Angels and Demons with a group of Scientists trying to blow up the Vatican!

It does seem that there are many people in the world who have it in for the Church as a whole. There are a whole host of reasons. Professor Richard Dawkins believes that the God of the Bible is cruel, jealous and arbitrary. Christopher Hitchens believes that God doesn’t exist because Christians are so bad. Karl Marx sees religious belief as something that drugs people from seeing the truth about their own poverty. What do you think about this? What arguments have you heard that God doesn’t exist? Is the Church living a lie?

It’s very easy not to care with our comfortable lives or our economic worries and it isn’t surprising that people fall away from the Faith because it fails to address their concerns. But then didn’t Jesus say something about the word of God falling among nettles and thorns? Our modern society believes that the only things that exists are the things we can lay our hands on or measure in some way. Our society doesn’t believe in God for the simple reason that He cannot be observed in action, put into a test-tube or seen through a telescope. If God doesn’t exist, then neither does life after death, so eat drink and be merry et c. How can anyone answer back at this?

It’s understandable that we feel daunted at going against this Materialism in our society, especially when it means that we come up against our friends and even family, or even ourselves! How tempting it is to put down our daily Bible reading in favour of watching Emmerdalenders or Coronation Farm! In the light of so much against us, it’s easy for us to feel weak and helpless.

And what would the Lord say? Easy: “Be not afraid!” Listen to the two Patron Saints of the Church in Swanscombe. St Peter says, “be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist strong in the faith.” [1 Peter 5.8]. St Paul bids us be strong and disciplined and “put on the whole armour of God. that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” [Ephesians 6.11] What are these Patron Saints saying?

First, as sure as God exists, so does the Devil. It’s very tempting to write off both Angels and Demons as fairy stories and not really existing – that’s actually something that the Devil wants so he can hide from us. If, however, we believe in God and in His Son Jesus Christ, then we don’t really have a choice about believing in Angels or Demons, because the Lord Jesus himself casts out devils and talks about Satan and Beelzebub and the like. The Lord Himself tells us that we will one day judge the Angels, and remember the angels present at His birth! If Jesus says that Angels and Demons exist, and we believe Him, then Angels and Demons exist.

Second, St Peter and St Paul tell us what demons are. If you think about it, you already know the answer. Who is it who tempts you into losing your temper, or avoiding the train fare, or filling in the wrong numbers on a tax return? Who is it that puts the ideas in people’s heads to riot? Remember that poor girl who had just graduated and was trying to become a lawyer, and yet still looted a television during the riots despite the fact she knew it was wrong. We are all susceptible to temptation, but just as we are led to God by angels, so are we led away by demons. They may not have pitchforks, horns and pointy tales, but they’re there! They are those powers which tempt perfectly sane and moral people to act insanely and immorally. That includes me, and that includes you.

Third, St Peter and St Paul tell us what to do - be Faithful. We may not be able to answer back to those who shout that God does not exist, but we can refuse to allow their words to rattle us. The first way of showing faith is prayer. To pray to God shows already that you believe He exists. Pray for strength. Second, receive the Holy Sacrament every Sunday, because you are receiving Our Lord. Third, keep up the Bible reading, because then you can hear God speak. Fourth, don’t be afraid. It is written He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. (Psalm 91)

On September 29th we remember St Michael, the warrior angel who defeats Satan. We also remember all angels who are sent by God to help us. If we play our part and open ourselves to God then we find some assistance in the angels. We also must remember that the Devil is only an angel, he is not equal to God. If we are faithful, then we can resist him. It takes a lot of work and prayer, but there are more on our side than we think there are!

Purity in Passiontide

1Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead , whom he raised from the dead. 2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served : but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. 3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard , very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, 5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? 6 This he said , not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein . 7 Then said Jesus, Let her alone : against the day of my burying hath she kept this. 8 For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always. 9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death ; 11 Because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away , and believed on Jesus.

St John xii.1-11

The Life of Brian paints the Jewish people as being a fickle lot, listening to the ravings of lunatics, fanatics and weirdos as their latest whims took them. This is a little unfair. Certainly there are many itinerant preachers such as Honi the Circle Drawer prattling about the countryside and various sightings of the Messiah hither and yon, yet in a time of Roman occupation, the Jews are probably better at holding onto their heritage than at the times when they were in the ascendant.

Look at the way they held onto their faith during their captivity under the Babylonians, Assyrians and Greeks. Their Jewish heritage becomes something to cling onto when the world appears to lose its head. So why is it then that, in this time of crisis, the Jews suddenly start going away to follow Jesus? Are they so jaded and scornful of their heritage that they are easily swayed by an itinerant preacher, one who, despite claiming to be the Messiah, is not acting in the militaristic manner as they had expected?

Of course, the Pharisees see in Jesus nothing but a threat. However, do they see him as a blaspheming charlatan, or do they actually recognise some aspect of His Divinity and shudder at the prospect?

The point that they fail to see is that Jesus is not pulling people away from their heritage but drawing them further in. He is stabilising them, grounding them further in their heritage as the family of God. He tells them no lies and, were it not for the fact that He follows His claims up with signs and wonders, His claims would legitimately be seen to be the ravings of a lunatic. Lunatics, however, are not in the habit of raising people from the dead. He tells them straight: He is the Son of God. God in Passiontide makes Himself transparent to us little human beings. He does not hide his reality from us, though we cannot comprehend Him fully. There is no deceit here, for God is Truth.

And so Christ calls us to be pure. We are already transparent to Him as God for our lives lie completely open to Him, and we cannot do anything about that. However, in living our lives in purity we become transparent to our fellowmen. Christ calls us not to hide the Truth, or cross our fingers behind our back, or prevaricate with fancy words, but to let our "Yes" be a yes and our "No" be a no.

To reflect the Truth of Christ in our lives means that we have to cultivate purity. Think of how wonderful the light glistens through a glass of pure water or through a pure diamond crystal. The beauty of water and diamond arises because of its purity and how the light reacts to it.

Because Mary (Martha's sister, remember) sees Jesus' transparency to her in the way that He shares her grief at the death of Lazarus, hears her protests about why He wasn't there to heal him before he died, and then goes on to raise Lazarus from the dead, she knows that He is Who He has always claimed to be. The purity of His human nature allows the Truth of His divine nature to shine through into our understanding. So Mary treats Him as she now believes in the purity and simplicity of her heart.

The hearts of the Pharisees, however, are tainted with the concerns of this world - their social standing, the number of bums on seats in their synagogues, and their way of doing things. It is they who object to Jesus' regard for the integrity of the Jewish Heritage, not knowing that it is they who have changed it to suit their methods and promote their causes, and who are prepared to dissemble, cover up and spin in order to do so. Jesus has exposed this practice for what it is, and that's why they want to kill Him. It is the impurity of their hearts and of their motives that drives them to opposing God Himself.

The purer we become in our motives and in our worship of God, the more shall this world become transparent to us so that we see God Himself at the centre of all things. Also, in purity of living, we become transparent to this world and the more will the light of Christ shine through us before others who may, if we are indeed pure, see through us to that same Christ - and what a privilege would that be for us all!

A la Couperin: Et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis

et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis

καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία

and in earth peace, good will towards men

This, of course, concludes the song of the Angels as reported in St Luke ii.14.

I am not a Greek Scholar; my Greek is very rudimentary, but I am struck again by the seemingly fundamental nature of these opening lines because the subsequent teaching of Our Lord hangs on these two clauses sung by the angels. First, one is to glorify God, to recognise His impact in bringing us as individuals into being, and to react to Him accordingly in nothing less than worship. Does the second clause really suggest that one is to have a good intention to all human beings indifferently to their state? This would encapsulate the two Dominical commandments beautifully.

The Gloria demonstrates that peace and goodwill are for all mankind but who is the source of this goodwill, Man or God? The word εὐδοκία means good favour, or an enjoyment, and this song of the angels which we echo at Mass ascribes first Glory to God and then intends for His people to be at peace in His pleasure. It appears to me to be rather covenantal in its structure: we give God glory, He takes pleasure in us, and Earth is at peace. It would be nice if εὐδοκία were qualified with a possessive pronoun in order to distinguish whether it is truly God's good will that we receive in covenant or whether it is a good will in which we must also participate together with Him.

Of course, from what we know with hindsight is that this is not an either/or situation but very much a both/and. From what the angels sing to the shepherds on the day of Our Lord's birth, it is a clear announcement of the New Covenant, a vision of what should be, and indeed will be - God living with men at peace in His glory.

However, when we sing it at Mass, we are singing of this covenant, especially mindful of our side of the bargain. This is where the second statement brings us in mind of the good will that we should have for each other, that we should take pleasure in our neighbours and look to live in peace with them. So we do indeed find that Our Lord's commands are enshrined within the Gloria, but notice that they are suffused with God Himself, as He intended them to be.

A la Couperin: Gloria in excelsis Deo

I've been meaning to try and tackle something a little more substantial for a while, and I must confess that my previous post has been something of an inspiration to which I hope I can do some justice. Having looked at the Doxology that is used in conjunction with the psalter, I thought it might be an idea for me to try tackling the larger Doxology, that of the Gloria in excelsis.

My own parish has jettisoned this hymn at Mass in favour of a "song of praise" inserted into the liturgy. I am convinced that this is simply another instance of dumbing down and making the liturgy more understandable and therefore less edifying. This "song of praise" is just a modern song from Mission Praise and just doesn't point out into the infinite in the same way as the traditional texts which have stood a greater test of time, and inspired a good many Christians from all walks of life - not just the bishops, saints and theologians.

Hmm, in considering the Gloria bit by bit, I feel rather like Francois Couperin.

Let's start at the beginning.

Gloria in excelsis Deo.

Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις Θεῷ

Glory be to God on High.

The word "Glory" fascinates me. Gloria and Doxa both translate the Hebrew word כבוד (chabod) which itself derives from a Hebrew word meaning weight, substance and honour. To me, this suggests that Glory is about the impact that something makes on the world around. The more substantial a body is, the greater its impact. Compare the glory that a ping-pong ball, a cricket ball and a foot ball possess bouncing off the top of one's head!

A sunrise is glorious precisely because it thrills the heart to see such resplendent colours first thing in the morning across a snowy landscape - that is its impact on our lives. Of course, Kings and Queens have their glory, as do presidents, but can one properly talk about the glory of a terrorist? The impact that they have on people's lives is devastating. That the terrorist's community will applaud his actions and honour him suggests that he does possess glory, but clearly not for the innocent victims of his actions.

There seems to be a subjective element to glory - an impact on people's lives which we deem to be honourable, and we recognise this impact with awards, peerages, honorary doctorates, pats on the back and a box of chocolates with a "thank you" card on it. Such is the glory that man gives to man, yet doesn't it soon cloy? Our media likes nothing more than to exaggerate the glory of one person, and then revel gleefully as it takes it away again.

In saying "Gloria in excelsis Deo", we are making a very definite statement that God has made an impact which has benefitted everything that exists. This is our statement of faith; it is practically credal in what is says.

It is You, O God, to Whom we attribute the greatest achievements that Creation has experienced.

In the Te Deum it is "Heaven and Earth are full of the Majesty of thy Glory". Again, just as my friends and I discussed and as I posted below, we are faced with not a vacuum of space, but a plenum filled with God.

In the cosmological award ceremony (which, thankfully, is unlikely to be hosted by Billy Crystal), we give to God all the trophies, all the accolades, all the medals when we say or sing this little phrase on a Sunday morning (if we are lucky enough to have a traditional liturgy).

It is also a plea. Brother Lawrence was aware that he was full of the glory of God as he practiced the Presence of God, and it is this glory that is indelible in each human being though many are not fortunate to see it. Thus in singing our Gloria, our plea is that as we attribute to God all glory, He would make us more and more aware, that He would impact Himself more and more on our lives so as to call us into His presence.

How shall I sing that Majesty?

My sabbatical ends this Sunday, and I will no doubt be asked to provide magazine articles once more. Here's one that I've prepared for some of my critics. Thanks to Ed Pacht for his thoughts on the matter.

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Those of you who see me in Church will notice that I do not sing when the hymns are from the Mission Praise song book. It's quite reasonable that I should be questioned as to why I don't join in with these congregational songs and I do owe an explanation why.


I do take my hymn singing very seriously, after all singing praise to Our God is fully Biblical. Indeed the Bible is riddled with poems and songs and references to singing hymns en masse. So clearly congregational singing is part of our heritage and everyone in the congregation ought to sing as best as they can in order to offer praise to God as one body of Christ.


If I'm saying that everyone must sing congregational hymns, then why am I behaving like the hypocrite by not doing so? If our taste in music is not important and we should sing regardless of whether we "like" the music or not, then surely I am in the wrong by closing my mouth whilst everyone else's is open.


You see, I don't refuse to sing on the grounds of taste, but on the grounds of theology. As I say, I take my hymn singing very seriously, and the first consideration that needs to be made is answering the question "what is this hymn saying to God, to the people around and to me?"


Take this little song

I'm accepted, I’m forgiven,
I am fathered by the true and living God.
I’m accepted, no condemnation,
I am loved by the true and living God.

There’s no guilt or fear as I draw near
To the Saviour and Creator of the world.
There is joy and peace
As I release my worship to You, O Lord.

321 in Mission Praise.

It seems quite simple and harmless, but it's just wrong in its understanding of God. It contains bad theology that is contrary to our Anglican beliefs.


Let's take it apart.


I'm accepted, I'm forgiven: This first line suffers from a significant lack of detail about how we are accepted and forgiven by God. I am only accepted in the eyes of God if I have fully confessed my sins, fully repented and I am fully prepared to follow Christ in my life and in proper regard with the Sacraments. Taken as it is written, that first line could be guilty of the sin of presumption. It says nothing about the sorrow for our sins that we need to have and perhaps it also encourages us not to worry about our guilt.


I am fathered by the true and living God: This line could be sung by so many folk who claim to be Christians but are not, such as the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses.


I'm accepted, no condemnation: Repetition does not make any statement more true.


I am loved by the true and living God: Everyone is loved by God, including those who are not Christian, including those who do not believe in God, and also including those who are on the pathway to Hell because of their lack of repentance.


There’s no guilt or fear as I draw near To the Saviour and Creator of the world:

Who is worthy of approaching God? As C.S. Lewis remarks in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe:

"Is he safe?" "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver... "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

If we have no fear of God, then clearly we have not understood, nor wanted to understand, Who He is. The fact that we are permitted to approach is testament to Christ's humanity. To say that we can approach Christ with any less fear is Arian, meaning that we do not appreciate His power as God.


There is joy and peace As I release my worship to You, O Lord: An interesting phrase, but does it actually mean anything? How is my worship of God constrained, and how my I release it? Am I keeping it a prisoner? If I do not praise God willingly then my body praises him regardless. Compare this with St Luke 19:37-40.

Finally, what is the most common word used in this song? The answer is "I" - I'm accepted, I'm forgiven, I'm fathered, I am loved." Rather egotistical this song, isn't it? Can this be a song to praise the same God who said, "if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily , and follow me"? At Mass, we come together to praise God as a body forgetting ourselves ("though we are many, we are one body because we all share in one bread"). The only thing that we must do as individuals is confess our own sins - "I confess that I have sinned" - and confess our faith - "I believe in one God." Isn't it God Whom we are to praise? How does a song which focuses on "me" praise God?

This song is more concerned with soothing our consciences than praising and learning about God.

We really do need to think about what we're singing and saying in Church otherwise we can really make some terrible mistakes.


But this isn't the only thing that Mission Praise does. It changes the words of hymns to make them more "understandable" to people singing. In doing so, it changes their meaning, and changes our ability to find the truth of God within their words. This is true to some extent with all hymn books, but Mission Praise likes to chop and change for convenience such as the last verse of Crown Him with many Crowns (MP 109, AMNS 147) in which two verses have been cut and wedged together. Also the last verse of Christ is made the sure foundation (MP 73, AMNS 332 part 2) has been altered to make it easier to understand but in doing so omits crucial Anglican understanding of the Holy Trinity (consubstantial is not the same as "one in power" co-eternal is not the same as "one in glory").

In short, I do not trust Mission Praise to preserve traditional Anglican teaching, and because it is necessary for every Christian to follow the traditional teaching of the Church and because I don't have time to check the theology of every hymn and song at Mass, I cannot bring myself to sing from this book. It isn't because it's not to my taste, it's because it's not what any thinking Christian believes. I hope this answers the questions of my practices.

Making a Sincere Apology

Services at Swanscombe were rather sparsely populated this Paschal-tide, leading me to question the commitment that people have to the faith. With this in mind, I wrote the following article for the Church magazine.

Did I come on too strong?

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Making a Sincere Apology

Reading the Ecumenical Research Committee’s report on how people from all denominations (and none) view their local Church, there is an interesting statement from someone in the Midlands: “It is a myth to say that the people of this country have rejected Christianity, they simply haven’t been told enough about it to either accept it or reject it.”

If this is the case then it is a sad indictment about the missions of Christians in this country. If you think that it is just the job of the Rector to call people into church, then, quite frankly, it is that attitude as to why there are fewer people in church today and why the understanding of the Christian Faith is so poor. It is not the job of the priest to go around preaching the good news about Christ Jesus – it is the job of each and every Christian to go out and help the world see the truth of the Light of Jesus Christ. We have to become apologists – people who can say what they believe and why, and live that Faith responsibly and truly.

It is the job of the priest to serve those who are “called out of darkness into [God’s] marvellous light”. The Greek word for “called out” is “ekklesia” from which we get the word ecclesiastical. We are the ones who are served by the deacons, priests, bishops, and ultimately the Pope (who is titled “the servant of the servants of God”), and their service is so that we, the ones who are to go out, are well equipped to work at the coal-face of life bringing our Christian Faith with us. While it is good that our ministers go into schools and hospitals, these are not the only opportunities for getting people into church. In fact, the best way of getting people into church is for us to invite them!

What is not being suggested here is that we all go out and become soap-box preachers shouting “Repent for the End of the World is Nigh”. That approach in fact drives more people away. The best way for us to bear witness to our Christian faith is to live it, and live it well. This means a lot of discipline on our part and requires us to develop a growing and healthy relationship with Christ.

The Benedictine Rule has three aspects to it – commitment, obedience and self-examination, and it is these three aspects that can help us develop as good and fruitful Christians. It isn’t just for Benedictines!

First we need to make a firm commitment to the Church, both financially (since the Church is a non-profit organisation) and corporately. We do need to attend Church regularly. We cannot be armchair Christians. We cannot be those selfish folk who say “I’m spiritual but not religious”. If we’re expecting the priest to serve us on a Sunday Morning and are prepared to do nothing with the benefits from that service, then what is to stop God at the Day of Judgment saying “in truth, I never knew you”? Our relationship with Christ can only develop if we’re willing to help it develop. We’re not “once saved, always saved”, i.e., believing in God at one point in our lives and living terribly for the rest of it. We may be in the process of salvation by Faith, but that means co-operating with God. The Church needs members who are willing to help it in its mission to bring the light of Christ to a darkened world. This can only happen if its members are committed to the Church and engaged in praying to God with that Church.

This leads into obedience. We serve one God, and if we are to serve Him then we must hear His word through prayer and reading. The Holy Scripture is indeed the word of God, and it needs to be read frequently by every Christian – no exceptions. It needs to be read prayerfully and under the authority of the Church. Too many people (some important clergymen) have read their own interpretations into the Bible and have fallen into disobedience. In so doing, they have clouded the minds of their parishioners. It is important therefore to become obedient to the teachings of the Church. It is not a democracy, but governed by people who have been entrusted to work faithfully with the Sacred Tradition and who are themselves obedient to the Church. This puts a great deal of responsibility on our priests, that they should carefully and sincerely follow the Traditions of the Church so that they teach only what the Church has always taught.

Third, we need to examine ourselves carefully to make sure that we are doing everything in our power to serve God in the examples of Christ Jesus and our Holy Mother Mary. We need to work at finding out how we are sinning, ridding our lives of that sin, confessing it and receiving absolution. We need to examine our commitments to the Church and we need to examine how obedient we are.

A lot of work! Indeed, a lifetime’s work! But this is work that we do out of nothing but love for Christ. In doing His work we find out who He is and we find out more and more just how deeply we are loved by him. This is a job that we should find utterly fulfilling, though it will be tough. It is by living out our Faith that we will draw people to Christ. When people see the kindness that we show to each other, the love that we have for one another, the sincerity of our belief and the joy that we have from serving God, then they’ll want it too. But before we can go out and make a difference to people’s lives, we need to look and see what God needs to do with us.

Think about your faith and what it needs to grow and work for you. How might you go about deepening your understanding of the Christian Faith? How might you find out about what God is asking you to do for Him? How might you make yourself different from a person who comes to Church on Sunday but doesn’t really believe in everything that’s being said?

Head versus heart: No contest!

My latest parish magazine article which I publish here, unabridged.

“Have a heart,” is what we say to the traffic warden as he, with malicious grin and calculated manner, slaps a ticket on our windscreen despite the fact that we’ve only parked on a double yellow line for five seconds to pick up an elderly aunt. It’s an interesting expression by which we mean that the grinning embodiment of evil clad in yellow peaked cap ought to display some human emotion. But why the heart?

It was the Greeks who believed that the heart was the house of our emotions. After all, when we fall in love, get involved in a heated argument, face our fear, or cry our eyes out, that rather large muscle in our chest starts beating like a woodpecker after 100 cups of Nescafé. No wonder the Greeks thought that this is where our feelings are kept. The brain, however, the Greeks didn’t understand at all, and so put its presence down as something to do with temperature regulation. In this age of MRI-scans and other electro-magnetic imaging techniques, we can see emotions flash across the surface of the brain, so we can be sure that our hearts are doing a perfectly good job of pushing blood around the body and not pushing out waves of sadness just because the goldfish has passed away.

We might say that our tormenting traffic-warden was ruled by his head rather than by his heart, mechanically doing an unpopular but necessary job in an age when people’s selfishness have made it necessary for double yellow lines to be painted to indicate that stopping would inconvenience many others. Others are said to be ruled by their hearts and guided by where their thoughts and feelings take them, like environmental protesters marching to make a faceless organisation hear their cry of anger at the pollution they are causing. Yet some are ruled too far by their hearts and become effective terrorists, endangering the lives of scientists testing drugs on animals.

Action based on feelings without thinking can be very destructive. In this day and age where many of us are tempted to indulge ourselves with all kinds of luxury kitchens, holidays, sofas, toilet-paper to make ourselves feel more comfortable, we think not of the consequences of the effects on others around us. If scientists are right about global warming being cause by human beings (and there still is some doubt) then it is mainly through the lack of consideration on our part to consider the impact of our wants on the environment. Our prisons are over-crowded because the Government feels that it has to make laws in order to force people into being less anti-social, but who is telling us what it means to be social?

Actions based on thought without feeling produce similarly destructive results. Communism was, and in fact is, a perfectly respectable idea but which has effectively been proven not to work in practice. This did not stop Stalin from enforcing his understanding of Communism on Eastern Europe, and many still bear the scars of that today. Oliver Cromwell forced his own ideas of Christianity on the people of mid 17th Century for what he believed to be the common good. He went so far as to abolish Christmas and other festivities because they did not fit in with his system of beliefs. We may believe whole-heartedly in a theory but if we want to try and implement it, then we have to take into account people as they are: neither Stalinist-Communism nor Cromwellian Puritanism did so.

It is clear that love truly requires the use of head and heart, of thought and emotion. Think on I Corinthians xiii. The loveless know-it-all is nothing because he fails to see the import of human beings for what they truly are in the sight of God. Without love, there suddenly appears something which the loveless know-it-all does not know, and so he ceases to be what he believes himself to be. A loveless know-it-all submits himself to nothing rather than the cage of his own reason, and as a result destroys himself utterly.

So how should we use our heads and our hearts? Well, in his letter to the Roman Christians, St Paul tells us:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans xii)

By not being conformed to the world, we should refuse to separate the rule of our lives into thoughts and feelings which lead to pride and over-indulgence in this rather individualistic and liberal society in which we find ourselves, but sacrifice their use to God and let Him rule us rather than hearts and minds.

We are to transform ourselves by the renewing of our minds. Now this does not mean that we should be dropping everything for the latest fashion like women priests and bongo drums. St James reminds us that we are not to be blown about by the latest theological theory. But St Paul means that in order to be renewed, we need to go back to the Source – to God Himself, so that what He created He can also renew in His ways. We need renewing because we continue to stray, but the Lord Jesus spoke about the Living Water that will spring up from within us. This Living Water is again from the One True God who is humble and loving enough to make His dwelling within each of us. It is He who will help our hearts and minds work in harmony to worship Him, and love those around us.

This is the Word of the Lord

This is my latest article for the Parish Magazine, the December/January issue.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

“This is the word of the Lord”. These are the words said every Sunday by at least two readers and our response to these Scripture readings is always “Thanks be to God” even when the phrase “this is the word of the Lord” appears in the middle of the text being read. It’s an automatic response to a phrase that is engrained within ourselves as part of our Christian belief.

Most of the time the phrase trips off our tongues without too much thought, and its easy to do when the passage that we’ve just heard tells us about the fidelity of God despite our sin. However, sometimes it seems to be rather a weird thing to say considering what has just been read to us. Do we want to say “this is the word of the Lord” in response to “Take all the prophets of Baal and let none of them escape” or in response to the story of the rape of Tamar and the sad death of her brother Absolom in the second book of Samuel. Can we really say “this is the word of the Lord” in response to the savagery of Psalms 58 or 109? Sometimes it just doesn’t seem like it is the word of the Lord. How do we reconcile the savage sounding God who commands the wholesale slaughter of the people of Jericho with the loving God of the New Testament?

A few weeks ago, on Bible Sunday, we read in St Paul’s second letter to Timothy that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” This is all very well, but this sentence of St Paul was written before many of his other letters and before any of the Gospels were written. Indeed, the Gospel of St John was written after St Paul had died. How can this sentence of St Paul that we use to justify our use of Scripture be used to apply to things written afterwards, and without St Paul’s knowledge.

What people don’t seem to realise is that the Bible is incomplete. It is not merely a manual for living life, nor just a textbook for understanding the will of God. It doesn’t seem to make sense in places; in yet other places it is fussy over seemingly ridiculous details which do not seem to matter. The Jews of the First Century were treating the Old Testament just like that. These Jews could easily say “this is the word of the Lord” while stoning an adulteress to death.

At Christmas time, we hear a different phrase: “this is the Word of the Lord”. How is this different from “this is the word of the Lord.” Do you see the capital “W”? This Word is a person, our Christ, the Messiah promised to the Jews with their Scripture, and the Gentiles with their science and philosophy. At Christmas time we celebrate the fulfilment of the word of God in the Person of the Word of God – the Lord Jesus Christ. Without the Word of God, the Bible is rubbish, meaningless twaddle, the gibberings of madmen, inaccurate historians, the wild imaginings of deluded fools.

Indeed, there are folk who take the Bible and treat it this way, interpreting it for themselves, making what it says bend to fit their understandings and attempt to make all around them conform.
All Scripture is indeed God-breathed through the Word of God. Jesus is called the Word because He communicates to God the Father for us, and to us from the Father. It is only through Him that we understand the will of God, and it is only through Him that all those difficult passages of the Old Testament make sense, even if we can’t see how it makes sense. There will be justice for the dead of Jericho, for Absolom, for Tamar, for the millions of slaughtered men women, children and animals, just as there will be justice for all who have been wronged. There will also be mercy in abundance too. Don’t ask how justice and mercy can both be achieved, only God knows that, but justice and mercy are all achieved by the Word of God, born in a stable, brought up as a carpenter, taught as a rabbi, died as a criminal and was raised in body mind and spirit as our Redeemer and Saviour.

Now if there is a danger that the Scripture could be misread, misinterpreted or misrepresented, then what safeguard have we for the Word of God? Well, the Word of God isn’t just found in the Bible, that’s why the Bible is incomplete. The Word of God is in the Church Herself, present in every Mass, in every prayer, in every house-group, within the heart of any human being who genuinely holds Christ as Lord. We should listen then to the teachings of the Church which have been built century on century from the lives of all who have served Christ before, and whose lives are only briefly sketched in the pages of the book we read every Sunday.