Passion and Spiritual Eczema

There's little more infuriating than having an unscratchable itch. Any sufferers from eczema will be more than aware of that itch which does not seem to be relieved even from scratching and yet the temptation is to keep scratching it more. The results are often quite horrendous. The only thing to do is not to give into the temptation of scratching that itch. One has to learn to suffer.

These days, of course, there are many over-the-counter remedies that can be used to soothe the itching that eczema causes and which calm the inflammation. One really does have to have these to hand otherwise that temptation to scratch just comes back and any good is undone.

So it is true with our habitual sins. None of us are at all perfect, but we are perfectible and indeed, if it is our firm intention to walk with God, we are in the process of perfection. Nonetheless, our imperfection has within it the potential for our bad habits to take over our lives. Very often we find ourselves back in the rut which our habitual sins have carved out for us and we go around the cycle once more. We scratch the itch until we are really quite sore and very damaged and in need of the restorative Grace of God to be renewed in us.

It is quite common for habitual sins to blight our lives quite profoundly and seriously. They can even cause us to despair of our very salvation, which is indeed a most serious situation. All sin is serious; some sins are most grave and require urgent attention; but all sins are forgivable - except one!

The good news about the Unforgivable Sin is that if you are really and honestly worried that you've committed it, then you haven't. The Unforgivable Sin is a continued wilful rejection of God's love and a hatred of the Holy Spirit. To some extent, all sin is a rejection of God's love, but for the soul that is open to His correction this is completely soluble. Those who can't be forgiven are those who just don't want to be forgiven either because they don't believe God, or because they hate Him. The choice to be forgiven is ultimately ours.

So what does this mean about our habitual sins? Well, they have to be recognised for what they are and worked on. The skill is in the recognition of old habits and doing something to counteract their effect. This takes some doing. The itch is deep, and insistent and we fall more often than we want. Yet, if our heart is true, we should not let this discourage us. We suffer much less than some.

Liturgically, we observe Passion Sunday, the beginning of the inexorable trip to Calvary. It's a time of mixed emotions for the Christian. One cannot have Easter Day without Good Friday and we cannot have Good Friday without Easter Day. Our Lord suffers, and suffers horribly voluntarily on our behalf. He knows that the only way to get to Easter Day is through Good Friday and so suffering is both inevitable and completely undesirable. How can any man want to be crucified?

Jesus doesn't want to be crucified - He is not some kind of masochist, as some modern critics rather ignorantly describe Him - but He does want to save from scratching ourselves to pieces for eternity. Hell is, after all, being left with an eternal, untreatable, irresistible and completely debilitating itch. This is where the fire of Hell comes in, for such sensation could only be accurately described as a burning. Crucifixion is the only remedy, and this is the price that Jesus is willing to pay on our behalf, freely, generously and lovingly. Those who wish to keep scratching their itch for eternity are free to do so.

The crux (literally!) of the matter is that Christ accepts something that He does not want to do, that no healthy human instinctively wants to do. The habit of humanity as an animal is to flee suffering, often at all costs. This is the origin of our innate impatience. Much of our sinfulness has its root in this primeval impatience. Anger often results from our impatience of another’s perceived faults, or of an inconvenience for ourselves. Sex occurs before marriage on the grounds that people cannot endure the physical separation from the other who excites them. Gluttony occurs when we cannot be patient with waiting for food or not having the food the way we like it. In fact much selfishness occurs because we are impatient with that which gets in the way of getting what we want. Impatience produces the itch – our instinct is to scratch. Stimulus – response, stimulus – response.

God made us more than just creatures of unthinking stimulus –response mechanisms. However, if we are to get to grips with the very nature of our humanity, then we have to rise above mere animal instinct, to rise above seeing ourselves as nothing more than biological machines that, if you press one button a specific response occurs. The reality of this transcendence is that of Passion in its original meaning of suffering.

If we wish to connect with all humanity as we are commanded then we must see the suffering in others and be impatient with their suffering to the extent that we suffer in order to help them. Christ may indeed have done something that no other human can replicate – the redemption and eventual salvation of sinners – but He has given us the pattern of taking up the cross to follow Him. This taking up of the cross is a very public thing. Those due for crucifixion were very visible, and to take up a cross willingly is also a very visible thing. If one is doing so to accept the concomitant suffering rather than for effect, then one is truly following Christ.

We should always take heart: if we firmly intend to follow Christ, then our habitual sins cannot prevent our growth and , provided that they are dealt with realistically, firmly with contrition, but also with recognition of our frailty as human beings, we can overcome them. However, this means accepting suffering and using that suffering to lift those more vulnerable up and out of theirs. We may have the tub of E45 cream – if we can’t reach the eczema on our own backs, why not apply it to the back of someone more needy than ourselves?

Crosser and Crosser

The tensions between the sacred and the secular seem to be growing of late. Many Christians feel that there is some anti-Christian sentiment in the British Government evidenced by the latest kerfuffle over whether the wearing of the Cross is a genuine and necessary expression of faith in the same way as the turban for the Sikh and the Burkha for the Moslem. The Government seems to be arguing that because the Cross is not an obligatory item of apparel that it is reasonable for an employer to demand that it be removed.

I've been asked to consider the issue carefully and produce a few thoughts which I may try to crystallise later. As an exercise in thought, I’m going to try to proceed scholastically here.I apologise unreservedly in advance to the Angelic Doctor for mangling his style so hideously.

The question is: Has an employer the right to demand an employee to remove their cross?

Objection 1: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as it is not a requirement of the faith to wear one.

Objection 2: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as it now only holds decorative value. Many people who wear crosses are not Christian.

Objection 3: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as claiming religious reasons for defying an injunction would set a precedent for other employees wearing inappropriate articles under the pretext of religious belief.

Objection 4: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as it may cause an accident or prove unhygienic.

Objection 5: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as it may cause offence to those who oppose Christianity.

Objection 6: It seems that an employer has the right to demand that an employee remove their cross as it may upset an environment that requires a certain amount of religious neutrality.

On the contrary : Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. St Matthew xvi.24

I answer that: While it is true that there is no obligation for many Christians to wear the cross, this is not true for all Christians. The Orthodox Church presents a cross to the newly baptised with the expectation that it be worn constantly as a reminder to that person of their faith, The Cross is of central importance to Christians who are reminded of the willing sufferings of Christ on our behalf.

The cross has always been a sign of controversy. At the outset, it was simply a gibbet, an instrument of execution. That the fact that the Christians adopted it as one of their symbols, amused, bemused and even scandalised the Romans and others who saw the sign as somehow subversive. Of course, it was a sign hated by the Moslems during some terrible times during the crusades. However, in the U.K. the cross has always been associated with the religion of the land, namely Christianity. While, the U.K. can and should welcome all of every faith and none into its society, it cannot change the past in which the central sign of the cross remains iconic: Charing Cross Hospital, the Red Cross, King’s Cross station, the Union flag comprised of the three crosses of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick.

These are part of our national identity as well as our religious identity. For many Christians, the religious identity is of greater importance.

The question of the rights of an employer cannot be separated from their responsibilities. If the employer has the right to ask an employee who sincerely believes to remove that symbol of their belief then what provision will they make for that employee to feel that their belief is being resected and that their sense of identity as a sincere religious believer remains fundamentally unchanged? This question requires an answer at both the general and the particular.

Reply to Objection 1: For those who genuinely profess the Christian Faith, the wearing of the cross may indeed be a requirement. For the Orthodox Christians it is indeed a requirement. Any employer needs to recognise the needs of their employees to have the freedom to profess
their faith as part of their intrinsic identity.

Reply to Objection 2: That non-Christians wear crosses means that they will have no objection to removing them. For the Christian, the fact that they do object to removing a cross, is sign that they have a genuine belief unless they demonstrate otherwise. An employer needs to understand the objections of their employee and act with due particular consideration rather than act generally.

Reply to Objection 3: Like the Burkha, the Turban and the yarmulke, the cross is a recognised religious symbol, in this case of Christianity which has a long establishment in the United Kingdom. Again, the employer needs to consider individual cases rather than issue general statements.

Reply to Objection 4: Unless it can be proved at the particular case that a cross is being worn in an unhygienic or dangerous fashion, there can be no objection on these grounds.

Reply to Objection 5: Christians have to put up with many unchristian ways of life being imposed upon them: Sex before marriage is presented as the norm via every media outlet; Gluttony is rife as evidenced by the increase in obesity; people are encouraged to believe that truth is relative; old folk are neglected; babies aborted. Christians are expected to tolerate these values which are contrary to the Faith and it is reasonable that this be done as far as possible (the horror of abortion is perhaps too much to tolerate) though the Christian has no obligation to accept these values as part of his lifestyle. Likewise, it is reasonable that the non-Christian should tolerate expressions of Christian values in the same vein. Advertisements are everywhere and no-one is expected to object to them, though many indeed find them disagreeable. Advertisements are part of modern life. Thus, if non-Christian values and advertisements are to be tolerated, so should Christian values and advertisements. The wearing of a cross is just as much an advertisement of faith as those who choose not to wear one. The tacit assumption thatGod does not exist should not be used as a reason for objecting to Christian values and symbols.

Reply to Objection 6: Religious Neutrality is a myth since every human being has a set of values and morals by which they live life and they exhibit these values in their manners and in the way that they dress. This is even true of those in uniforms since the wearing of a uniform takes on the idiosyncrasies of the wearer. The wearing of a cross is an outward expression of an inner faith and the symbol becomes a vehicle for the wearer to be aware of their religion as part of their identity. The employer has no right to change the identity of their employee.

Breadcrumbs and Theosis

Labour not for the meat which perisheth , but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed . Then said they unto him, What shall we do , that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent . They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see , and believe thee? what dost thou work ? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written , He gave them bread from heaven to eat . Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, ever more give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst . But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing , but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

Today's readings from Mattins (Exodus xvi.4-15 & St John vi.27-40) would probably be better suite to Corpus Christi rather than Mothering Sunday. Yet both tell of the origins of the Mass as we know it. To realise the importance of the Mass, sometimes it's a good exercise to perform a little ecstasy. No! I don't mean taking illicit and illegal substances, nor do I really mean working oneself up into such a frenzy so as to induce an altered state of consciousness. I do mean that sometimes we need to be like one outside the Church looking in.

Of course there are lots of people who look upon the Mass as being quite a bizarre spectacle, including some Christians. After all, Sunday by Sunday, ever-dwindling groups of people appear to be turning up to see a bloke dressed in robes hold up a little wafer of bread, solemnly declare it to be the "Body of Christ" and then promptly distribute it to the folk around them. More scandalous to them is the Rite of Benediction when this little wafer gets stuck in a carry-case for people to kneel at and do this obscene thing called "adoration". For atheists it's just silly. For Protestants it's a scandal. What scandalises the Atheists is that Christendom is divided over the issue of this little wafer, and who gets to wave their hands over it, and the resulting tribal warfare has indeed brought shame upon the Church.

It all appears to be an utterly ridiculous, foolish and irritating waste of time.

But it isn't - at least not for the Catholic.

It is very difficult to explain to those from the outside looking in why this is so important, especially when many of them (a) restrict the number of words you are allowed to use, (b) are not really asking out of interest but to confirm their own positions and (c) are not really out to experience the Catholic Church as a mother.

The long and the short of it is that Mass is the way a Catholic experiences the love of God acting like a mother in nourishing His children with food that will make us grow into what He wants us to be. This seems a little odd, particularly in Western Churches where the taste-buds are regaled with all kinds of wonderful sensations. However, it is clear that He is not nourishing us for this world but rather the world beyond.

I freely admit that I find this world hopeless in itself and simply cannot believe the Atheist claims that this is all there is, that we are all predetermined bits of dust that suddenly grab this little thing called consciousness only to discover our own meaninglessness before evaporating into oblivious clouds of atoms into the far wastes of a cold dark universe. You may call my reticence a flight from reality, but it's just not the way that I understand not only the integrity of my own being as an amalgam of biological machine with a rational soul, but the integrity of every other person in this universe. It doesn't make any sense that I should become conscious, meet people, teach some of the most inspirational young folk, only for me, and they, these bright young things, just to wink out of existence in a few score orbits of a clod of matter orbiting a ball of burning gas. If atheists choose to believe that, fine, I'm not going to stop them, but how do they live life without meaning. Why is meaning important to a human being in the first place?

Of course, I believe in God, so I must concede that He wanted to create me and further, that He wishes to save me from the consequences of the fact that I can choose not to follow Him. If Christ is indeed right and that He is the key to some form of life beyond this one then it stands to reason that I am being invited to participate in this "other" life. While I admit that this could conceivably be a con by a supposedly evil deity, nonetheless I content myself to trust in what He wants is my good. The alternative is just as bad as the eternal bleakness of a cold, dead, Godless universe. So, not only do I believe in God, I also believe Him.

St John does tell us that one day we Christians shall be like him because we shall see Him as He really is. Again, we are given another promise that somehow we will have put on ourselves a new being. This is a gradual process in our lives and we must look and see how this process occurs. If we become like Him, then we have somehow to take into ourselves something of what He is and allow that to build up, transforming our flimsy, atomic being into something far more substantial and indivisible. In St john's Gospel, we hear Christ say very specifically "I am the bread of life" He also tells us that unless we eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His blood we cannot share that Divine manner of living, we cannot somehow possess within ourselves the substance of our Creator. We have to choose to become like Him!

Our Lord Jesus as St Thomas Aquinas' self-wounding pelican, that mother bird who in legend feeds its young on its own self exhibits characteristics of motherhood in providing Divinity of Himself to those who seek Him, but not for those who seek Divinity apart from Him. He does this via the sacrament of the Mass. In receiving breadcrumbs, God Himself. We can't get crumbs of God, because God is indivisible, so we receive Him into ourselves as He is by our own choice.

Of course, it would all seem rather incongruous, even ridiculous, to those outside, but there is perfect reasonable sense here which has its origin in believing what the Lord Jesus tells us in the Gospels. Of course, one is free to discount the evidence of the Gospels and wander one's own sweet way in life, but it seems quite clear that one can only gain anything of Eternity from the being of God Himself. A single breadcrumb can be worth more than the entire universe itself because it contains the very being of God.

Do I have a shred of evidence to back up what I'm saying? The only evidence I have is that which many discount as being inadmissible because it conflicts with their idea of the universe. I suspect that I may well be guilty of the same, but I do live in a universe which is filled with hope and meaning that can't readily be scrutinised by any who refuse to use Divine light to see.

We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He really is, now in the Host where He may be adored in Benediction, then face to face as we grow into Him.

If this doesn't appeal to you, how do you find your hope in this universe?

Institutional entropy and Christian Chaos

No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.

Rudolf Clausius, German Scientist (1822-1888)

It is a direct result from the work of Clausius that the rate of change of Entropy increases in a thermodynamic system. While I appreciate that many of my readership are not scientists (indeed, I would hardly call myself a scientist) I hope that you understand sufficiently the consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as stated above - Entropy always increases.

Entropy is the amount of energy in a thermodynamic system that is not available to be turned into specifically mechanical energy, or work. In running a car, the amount of energy used in making it go is significantly less than the energy that you put into it and this difference is always increasing, much to BP's glee. Much of the energy is wasted as heat or as noise, and, as a consequence, it takes more and more energy to keep a system going, i.e. preserving order, as time goes on.

The amount of entropy determines the amount of disorder and so, if this increases, the system becomes more and more disordered. The physical laws stay the same, but the system becomes less and less predictable. In short, we end up with more and more chaotic behaviour.

That's the Science, but let's look beyond Science and at our own experiences of living. Is it objective to say that our society is becoming more and more fragmented, or is this purely our own opinion? Life is surely never entirely predictable, but there is always some small scale on which we can be confident that we can draw reasonable conclusions from the data. In the mathematical sense of the word, Life is Chaotic and we wouldn't expect anything else. One might say that Chaos gives Life its beauty, but then Chaos is also perhaps responsible for its ugliness too. Chaos is like beer. The more you have of it, the happier you feel, but the more likely you'll fall over - or worse, given some of the scrapes my former students find themselves in.

And then there's God. God brings order out of Chaos. What does this mean?

As a Christian, I believe that God is responsible for why there is something rather than nothing, though there is no undisputed Scriptural evidence for how He achieved this feat though Science gives us some convincing explanations. However, we find ourselves in a Universe which not only had stuff in it, but there are rule - law of physics - which determine how that stuff moves and interacts, or appears and disappears.

But, God's ordering influence is not related just to the physical but to the social as well. If one believes in an active Creator, it is clearly His intention that humans have some ordered society and that that we have a modicum of freedom in the way we interact. I believe firmly that humans were created to share in God's life as independent rational beings in our own right. It is that independence that causes the entropy of society.

Pope Benedict XVI said in visiting Croatia that "individualism ... gives rise to a vision of life without obligations". One might regard such lack of obligation as a positive, however there is always a price.

In the soundtrack to Metropolis, Jon Anderson speaks of the Cage of Freedom:

Cage of freedom
That's our prison
Where the jailer and captive combine
Cage of freedom
Cast in power
All the trappings of our own design
Blind ambition
Steals our reason
We're soon behind those invisible bars

On the inside
Looking outside
To make it safer we double the guard
Cage of freedom
There's no escaping
We fabricated a world of our own....

I would suggest that the Cage of Freedom is the entropy of our society. The more energy we invest in an individualistic system, the more it will be wasted because the only unit in the system is the individual. If the waste energy dissipates as heat then only someone other than the individual will be able to benefit from its warmth. The more energy the individual loses, the less it will be able to move, to function, to live except trapped within our cages of freedom.

It is individualism that does tear us away from God. So many liberal Christians think it's a good idea to campaign for people to be able to do what they want and proclaim that it's God's law and that any adherence to traditional teaching is a restriction of the Holy Spirit. What they have to show is that their interpretation of the Holy Spirit is compatible with what is actually present in Scripture and Tradition as has always been received. Of course, they are free to reject all this interpretation, but they then lose the right to criticise others for failing to see their reasons for rejecting the corpus of traditional thought. They also cut themselves off from those Christians who have gone before and who died in the faith that they now reject.

Of course, many of the Revivalists and Quakers have a much higher view of the individual's capability of accurately interpreting the movements of the Holy Ghost than Catholics who follow St Peter's dictum not to go in for private interpretation and St John's warning to try every spirit to see if it be from God. What does one test spirits against if one prefers one's own authority of interpreting Scripture to that which has been handed down? That's not to accuse Quakers of ignoring the body of Christian belief - they don't - but it does lead a lazy soul into misinterpreting that idea for their own ends.

Of course, there are lazy Catholics too who disregard the principles but they're usually easier to spot.

If Christianity is to have any impact on this rapidly fragmenting world, then it can only do so by offering to a chaotic, rapidly atomic, world an ordering principle - a life-ring to those drowning in entropy. Christianity must emulate the Creator by seeking His order in the Chaos and presenting it as something life-giving and, while not immediately safe, pointing towards a greater stability. Of course, there is a multiplicity of people who call themselves Christian but we each need to scrutinise our lives and our beliefs carefully so that we can indeed present something of the ordering principle of God to a world that fears order because it encroaches on its freedom to walk away from God.

We're not going to be able to rid ourselves of Chaos but, as I said above, there is always local order within a chaotic existence which, if we let it, will allow us to be carried along more peaceably than if we try to control it. It is God who provides such an order in His Peace which passes all understanding. Perhaps this is what the Christian can offer the world - the Peace of God.

But then we would need to be Peaceable in the first place, wouldn't we?

Just a reminder

Our Archbishop Mark Haverland will be visiting the Diocese in April. He will be celebrating Mass at Central Hall, Westminster as part of the Diocesan Synod at 11 o'clock on 21st April. He will also be celebrating Mass in the archdiaconal parish in Rochester at 10 o'clock on 22nd April. He is well worth hearing speak, so feel free to come along and see what the Anglican Catholic Church is all about.

Lent II: Love and Sensibilities

Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold , a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying , Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil . But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

St Matthew xv.21

Sometimes we are tempted to see things only from the point of view of our Western eyes and believe that the time of Jesus is terribly far away from us now to the point where our way of thinking is superior to that of the time. The temptation then is to go with the flow and try and re-interpret everything in the light of modern philosophies which stem from more worldly concerns and cosier sensibilites. What do modern eyes make of this passage in which Jesus, in this modern worldview, seems to be a bit disreputable, snobbish, even racist!

I’ve heard some say that because Jesus is fully human, He is not fully aware of His calling and that this marks the moment where He realises the full extent of His ministry outside of the house of Israel. This is really a product of the “Jesus is nice” worldview that we seem to have rampant in society. It suggests that Jesus’ love for us must necessarily be affirming and cuddly and come with a cup of tea and a slice of cake. In so doing, it commits two errors.

The first is that it does tend towards the Nestorian viewpoint, separating the Divinity of Christ from His Humanity. These two natures have been at harmony in Our Lord from the moment of His Incarnation (et homo factus est). Seeing that it is Original Sin that causes conflict between the Human and the Divine, it would be a violation of that harmony and His Immaculate Conception for the Lord to presume from His Human Nature anything that was not communicated to Him in His Divine.

Added 05/03/12. Whoops! I've overstated myself here and there is a clear error in what I've written. See the comments. Clearly, Our Lord learned in the same way that we learn. This is just one of the wonderful things about Our Lady who gave the Lord such a firm start in the faith as she sat him on her knee and taught him. But what of His calling? That can only come through dialogue between Him and the Father, just as our callings are really only between us and the Father. The difference is that we often need the Church to assist us in discovering that call. For Christ, that intermediary is unnecessary.

Second, it fails to understand the context of the situation fully and give any depth to God's love for us and His hatred for Sin. Tyre and Sidon were renowned for being thoroughly dissolute and “wicked” places. They were both ports and the cosmopolitan nature of those ports made it very difficult for the covenantal purity of the Jews to be practised amid the temptations of the world of the materialistic merchants and the influx of foreign practices and strange ideas. Indeed, many Jews strayed far from the covenant and the good worship of God in order to be more "tolerant" of foreign practices. The people of these towns were not well regarded and rightly so.

So then, here is Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ reaching out to the Jews that have lost their way and are now living dissolute lives when He meets with a Canaanite woman. Her reputation clearly precedes her as no-one wants to know her in the time of her trouble. When He does speak to her, Jesus tells her of His mission and why it is that He is here in these places of dubious morals. However, it is clear that she sees the Divine in Jesus – she worships Him, falling before His feet.

His response is an old Jewish proverb. It might just as well be uttered by a Pharisee whose knowledge of wisdom would have been comprehensive. “It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs” It certainly sounds harsh and rude, calling the woman nothing more than a dog even if it refers to the little pet dogs to which one would feed titbits at meal times. In so doing, Jesus confronts this woman with the reality of the Jewish position – the Law. It is a call for her to make a response. What responses?

Turn tail and leave disappointed? What would this say about the strength of feeling about this daughter that she loves so much that she seeks to cross social boundaries and reach out to someone who can help? Surely to do so would be to dismiss her own child.

Take umbrage and argue? If she really sees the Divine in Jesus, then she knows that this would be an act of false pride. If this woman is aware of the wickedness of the locale and of the history of the Canaanite people in relationship with the Jews, then she knows she hasn’t a leg to stand on. The Jews were given the land of Canaan by God and thus God has a preference for the sons of Israel on account of the covenant that He has with no other nation.

She does the only thing she can. She recognises the untenability her position in the eyes of a superior mind and reaches out in humility. She may be a dog but surely there will be a scrap that will fall from the table of the Children of Israel.

No. Jesus has not been nice to this woman, but He has loved her more dearly than we often appreciate. His is not a nice, affected, cloying, teddy bear love. His is an active love that causes something – makes things happen. This is a love that will cut evil out, challenge every pride and even insult our sensibilities in order for us to be brought closer to Him. In having her faith tested, the effects are more than just a healing: the woman gets more than she asked for. Her daughter is certainly made well, but there are affirmation and congratulations for her actions. Further, her actions are recorded in a Gospel for all of us to read and take as an example of true faith to heart. Gos wants the faith of this woman to be known to every Christian. That is only a part of His respect and love for her.

In the same way, we cannot expect God to be polite to us if our actions are causing us to fall away from Him. Indeed, naughty children used to expect a smacked-bottom from their Mum if they tried to run into a ditch, not a simpering word of “George, don’t do that” and letting them go in tolerance of self-expression. We can expect the Love of God to pull us up short in no uncertain terms, demolishing our pride, our “self-esteem” and our “self-worth” in the process. We have to respond to our transgressions of the New Covenant in humility like the Canaanite woman because in so doing do we see our true worth and true esteem in a God who does actually love us and will not let little things like our cultural “sensibilities” from getting in the way of that Love.

Compensation, fairness and Katy Perry

Admittedly, this was a last minute job after a confusion of dates. Consequently, the Lenten Theme is not obvious, but I believe it's there.


Homily preached at Eltham College on 22nd and 29th February 2012 based on St Matthew xvi.24-26.

Life is unfair.

Yes, that’s a phrase that’s usually accompanied by
a lot of shouting, tears,
a frustrated run upstairs
and a slamming of the door which,
despite rattling the crockery,
taking some plaster off the ceiling into Dad’s tea
and even causing the cat to turn over in its basket,
fails to impress Mum sufficiently
for her to change her mind about
letting you go to the tattoo parlour
to get “I love Labrinth” imprinted on your shoulder.

Well, it might not be quite that exact scenario,
but there are always some rows
that you have with your parents
and all of them will involve some argument
about whether or not you are allowed to do
this that or the other.

Why is it that you’re having these arguments now?

Whose fault is it?

[PAUSE]

Life is unfair.

You’re there at the train station on time.
The train you’re waiting for
arrives at the station
and then decides to carry on past,
fleeing into the distance faster than John Terry
from a Bridge family reunion,
leaving you stranded in the pouring rain.

Twenty minutes later,
you board the next train
only for the announcement that
it’s not going to stop at your station
but the one after.

For what reason, you’re not told.

For all you know
it’s because someone’s
dropped a bottle of Hugo Boss
and the resulting chemical hazard
has closed the platform.

Who knows?

The trains are a law unto themselves.

Whose fault is it that you’re late for school?

What can you do to get those
precious minutes of your education back?

Whom do you blame?

[PAUSE]

Life is unfair.

You fall off your skateboard, landing on your nose,
completely spoiling your good looks
on the same night that you’re
taking Katy Perry out on a date
to console her from the whole
Russell Brand fiasco.

Whom do you blame?

[PAUSE]

Well, whose fault is it?

As soon as you yell that question loudly in your mind,
something truly creepy happens.

Figures begin crawling out of the shadows,
sliding out from under the doors,
oozing their way towards you,
smiling unctuously – all teeth.

As their pallid hands clutch your shoulder,
they whisper in your ear,
“claim compensation!”

[PAUSE]

Claim compensation?

One can debate whether some lawyers
are really out to help you obtain
the highest levels of justice,
genuinely helping those in need,
or whether they are a bunch of ambulance chasers
out to get money from other people’s misery.

Now is that fair?

If you have a family member in a law firm,
you will probably think not.

If you’re in a family who has been damaged by a court case,
you might agree.

What do you think?

[PAUSE]

Life is unfair,
so claim compensation!

How does that sound to you?

Reasonable?

Clearly, it appeals to our sense of justice,
our appreciation of right and wrong.

But what do we really gain
from obtaining compensation?

If we’ve been injured due to someone else’s negligence,
we can’t work anymore.

It seems reasonable that we are given some support
to help us to live,
to cope with our new disability.

If our house has been damaged by someone else,
it seems reasonable to expect some kind of help
in repair and restoration.

If we’ve got to school all soggy and miserable and late,
what compensation could we seek?

“Dear Southeastern trains,
I demand my money back,
a hot towel and an English lesson to replace the one I missed…”

If you’ve gone on your date with Katy Perry
looking like something dredged up from Luxury Comedy,
what good would compensation do you?

“Dear Council,
I demand an instant new nose with which to enchant Miss Perry.”

What compensation do you wish to claim
from your parents for the injury
that you’ve suffered in not being allowed
to sport a tattoo from the Screaming Skull Parlour?

“Dear Parents, I demand payment
for loss of status among my peers…”

“Dear Child of ours, we demand payment
for the lump of plaster that fell off the ceiling
into Dad’s tea during your last rant…”

[PAUSE]

The trouble is that some people get obsessed
with “getting what’s rightfully theirs”.

What does it mean to get what’s rightfully yours?

What do you have a right to?

Do you really know your rights?

What about those in our sister school in Kinsasa?

Do they worry about what’s rightfully theirs?

What about the poor in Calcutta?

[PAUSE]

Why, then, does someone take a council to court
for saying prayers before a meeting?

Because it’s unfair to have Christian values shoved down your throat?

Interesting.

Is it therefore fair that Christians get secular values
like sex before marriage
shoved down their throats?

Ah, but Christians are wrong!

Really?

That’s an assumption that has yet to be proved.

[PAUSE]

Is it fair, that someone who devotes their life
to feeding the poor gets pilloried as a Christian fanatic
and a negative influence to real progress?

That’s what Christopher Hitchens says about Mother Theresa.

Yet, if God does exist, surely she is doing the right thing.

If you’re starving in India,
would you really care about being set free from the ravages of religion
if that very religion is actually putting
a bowl of soup into your hands?

To say that Mother Theresa is wrong
to devote time to promoting Christianity
is to assume that her belief in God was wrong
and that is something that has yet to be proved.

But life is unfair!

[PAUSE]

Mother Theresa cares not one jot about getting what is rightfully hers.

She is concerned only with giving what she has.

After all…

What good is it to demand compensation
and bankrupt a train company?

What good is it to demand payment and lose a friend?

What good is it to demand the ability
to get a tattoo and cause pain to those who really love you?

What good is it to gain the whole world, and to lose your very self?


Surely, it is better to give of yourself,
to write off some of Life’s injustices
in order to grow into a better, more loveable person.

Surely, it is better just to let others get on with
getting their just deserts,
and to live a real life without worrying about things
that are only going to fall apart,
get lost or go mouldy.

Surely, it is better to bear Life’s unfairness
in order to address the real hardship of others.

…and so many of you lot really do.

You’ll run a marathon so that some child
in Africa can get the learning you have.

You’ll embarrass yourself just so that
someone your age has got some where to go away from their abusers.

You’ll fall out of a plane so that
some person can afford an operation.

That’s why you’re brilliant
and so much better than those who will only
lift fingers to help themselves and claim compensation
for every little thing in lives which have lost all meaning.

So what is really unfair in your life?

Are you sure?

First Sunday in Lent: Naughty but nice?

Cakes! Yum!

Years ago, there was a series of adverts for pastries and cakes whose slogan was "Fresh cream cakes, naughty but nice!" and the viewer would be presented with shot after shot of gorgeous delicacies -cream horns, Black Forest Gateaux, chocolate eclairs. These days, Dervla Kirwan seductively invites you into partaking of the yummy wares of Marks and Spencer and makes Advent as much a difficult time of dealing with temptation as Lent - if you regard Advent as a time of abstinence and fasting, that is!

Advertisements are, at their core, a form of temptation. They want to make you buy something, or buy into something. However, they can only really work effectively if you somehow buy into the premise that you need what they are selling.

Temptation is a very clever tool that the Devil uses because it plays upon our basic needs and wants. We're all tempted in different ways because we all have different desires and wants in our very being that need to be addressed and filled. Most of these needs are natural in origin and require a natural solution. We need to eat, therefore when we are hungry, food becomes tempting. We need to sleep, therefore when we are tired, the lure of a soft bed becomes too much to bear. We need to be loved, therefore the arms, body and warmth of our lover become more valuable than gold. All temptation plays upon our basic needs.

The trouble is that our needs become perverted. This is primarily how Original Sin manifests itself in our lives and within our society. Our weakness in balancing what we need with what we want is the cause of much iniquity in the world. The word "iniquity" carries the sense of not being equal, not being fair, not being honest, balanced or true. Our tendency to being self-serving is usually unconscious and unwitting, but nonetheless has deadly consequences.
It is worth looking at our temptations to see just what it is that we are being tempted to do and from what need this temptation springs. If we do so, we learn much about ourselves and about our relationship with God.

Let us then look at the Lord’s temptation in the fourth chapter of St Matthew’s gospel.
The Devil tempts the Lord into making bread out of stones. This plays upon the Lord’s physical hunger and the need to eat. In emptying Himself of His divinity, Jesus has made it possible for Himself to be hungry and frail and liable to die if the need for food is not met. If there is nothing to eat, then humans must accept that. For Jesus to turn stones to bread would be doing just the opposite of what His mission is.

In taking Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple, the Devil is playing on the human need for certainty and stability in a transient and fleeting life. How do we know there is a God? Can we trust Him? Can we draw up an experiment that will prove that God exists once and for all? In trying to get Jesus to doubt Himself and His Father, the Devil is hoping that he can provoke God into doing something rash and superficial, as well as undermining Jesus’ trust in God. In trying to break the bond between Father and Son, the Devil hopes for a victory against God.

The invitation for Jesus to bow to the Devil in exchange for the riches of the world is a temptation for Jesus to resume His rightful crown the easy way. Because Jesus is from the Father, He has a natural need and desire to return to the Father. He is aware of His Kingship and it is rightfully His. The Devil is offering Jesus a return to His rightful place but on the Devil’s terms. But Jesus has not come to exercise His rights but His love.

Each temptation of Christ is a temptation to reject what He has already accepted. In surrendering Himself to temptation, Jesus would be clinging to His Divinity and rejecting His humanity and this would be a clear betrayal of both God and Man. The Lord Jesus recognises the temptation for what it is and focusses His attention on the Divine Will, subordinating the Human Will to Providence.

We can look at our need for love and translate that into something more sensual and thus more sexual. Trying to fill the need with sex is such a sad way of living life, although it can produce wonderful sensations. Some try to fill the void with food and comfort eat themselves to death. Others will try to fill the void with religious practices and believe that they can earn God’s love or rather what they perceive of it.

Of course we all have basic needs, but we must seek them in the right place. God tells each one of us, “My grace is sufficient for thee”. We have to see in Him the fulfilment of our basic desires and needs. It will be because we look out at God for this filling the void that we will see others in need, and in need of the very things we have to offer. We look out from the introspection of our wanting, the hole in the soul as it were, into the light of Tabor, the Divine light, and we see the reason for that longing in Him. The more we can shed that light of Tabor from our living, the more will others’ find themselves touched and the less hold will the Devil’s temptations mean for us.

We pray, “Lead us not into temptation?” By this we pray, “be present with us, O Lord, in our very lives, that we may see our lives completed in Thee.”

How is that cream cake looking now?

Gratitude

I'd just like to express my thanks for the kind words and congratulations I've received at becoming a licensed Lay Reader again after 11 months hiatus. It's good to be back and I look forward to adding a few more entries under the category of "Sermons" rather than just the homilies I produce for the college.

Lent and Love and Lenten love

It's very easy to dismiss the thirteenth chapter of St Paul's letter to the Corinthians due to its familiarity. If you've been to three hundred weddings or so in the CofE, this is always the text that gets read. But it is so worth sitting down and reading this carefully.

This is an excellent text to use to prepare oneself for Confession. Just try substituting your name for the word "Charity" (or "Love" if you're reading a newer translation) and then see what pricks the conscience. It's a text that can really smart!

This is one of the reasons that this text is given to us just before Lent. It's very easy to get caught up in the solemnity and fastidiousness of honouring our Lenten discipline that we forget its purpose of clear spiritual self-examination and preparation for Easter. What’s the point of giving up coffee if it makes us more of a crosspatch, or fasting if so doing focusses our attention from doing something Christian to the rumbling of our stomach. It’s surely better to eat normally and to do the will of God than to adopt an attitude of self-abnegation and narrow our vision solely to that discipline.

Of course, there is a happy medium and St Paul’s chapter on Love helps us to achieve that very balance between self-discipline and doing our Christian duty with a good attitude. Love is not passive: there is an activity to Love. It requires an object and therefore some way of affecting that object.

This is a mistake that people make when they relegate love to an emotion. Love is not just an emotion. We are told categorically that God is Love and God is by far the most active being. Love affects us at an emotional level and drives us to many actions which often apparently defy Reason. However, if Love is the Reason, then acts of Love are eminently reasonable!

This depends obviously on what we mean by Love and we could indeed traverse the familiar road discussing the four Greek words which we translate as love. Eros, Storge and Philios generate their own reasons which are largely selfish in their origin and selfish in their end. Agape does not originate in the self but has its origins in the Divine source which we acquire through God’s Grace and cultivate through our response to His agape for us.

If we therefore submit ourselves to a Lenten fast, then let it be out of Love for God and a desire to use it for the good of our neighbours. If our stomach rumbles, then let that rumble remind us of the hunger of our neighbours. If we are missing a favourite television programme, then let that sense of disappointment remind us of the how those less fortunate than ourselves find their lives thwarted by whatever poverty they suffer. If we find ourselves crosspatchy and irritable because we have a withdrawal symptom from what we have “given up for Lent” then let us think of the sadness of others and how they would welcome a cheery smile and some appreciation.

Once we have these thoughts then Love will spur us on, using our fast to address the needs of those around us. These need not be enormous acts of generosity, but rather seeds from which something more glorious can be allowed to grow in our society. Even if we reduce the levels of grudging complaint in which we often find ourselves, that will be something very positive for those around us.

What will be grown from our observation of Lent this year? Will it be Love?

An open letter to Anglo-Catholics in the CofE

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

the proceedings of the recent General Synod have been doing the rounds of the media and no doubt you’ve been watching closely for what the future holds for you. While there is a lot of speculation and many, many commentaries and comments flying around the blogosphere, the whole matter of the presence of women in the episcopate is coming to a head this summer and, unless the vote fails in July, which seems unlikely, any hope of the sacramental validity in the CofE that Anglo-Catholicism needs will be lost. If you cannot hold to women being bishops then, in the future, you simply will not know whether a priest is truly ordained or a bishop validly consecrated if there is one female bishop in their history. What will you then do?

I would very much like to encourage you that there is hope, and a great deal of it, but it requires hard work. I was very much in the same boat as you. I was a member of the CofE for a long time and a Reader too for the best part of a decade. With all these changes and alterations to the doctrine of the CofE, I struggled to remain. I tried to be loyal even when successive alterations to the Mass, the reduction in parishes with Resolutions A,B,C, and the liberal agenda forced itself upon me and upon the local church. I am fully aware of the creeping bitterness, the headaches involved in trying to square the circle in order to continue to serve the church of my birth.

I remember how hard it was to lead Mattins and Evensong from the BCP yet being unable to go to Mass because the priest had effectively made up the liturgy. Yet despite being so unhappy, I was determined to keep going, to keep my head down and trust in God to make things better. My prayers were fervent and I clung to whatever crumb of traditional worship I could find, searching for the sincerity of what has now become regarded as “the Old Religion” again.

For me, there was a way back, and when I was forced to resign my license and leave the CofE just under a year ago, through the Grace of God, I found the Anglican Catholic Church. This was not an instant decision. I had first encountered the ACC back in 2007 but it took time (four years!) for me to think things over and work out whether this was the right thing to do. I could have found a FiF parish which is a similar distance to the parishes I go to now. I could have gone to Rome or taken up the Ordinariate, but it was not right for me to do so on the strength of my conviction of how valid Anglicanism is. So when I was made to go, I knew that my position was quite untenable in the CofE. There was no way I could reconcile my Anglo-Catholic understanding with a body committed to jettisoning Anglo-Catholicism. The ACC was a clear choice for me because it did exactly what it said and so I eventually joined.

I have not looked back. It is true; I have had to sacrifice much that I loved – the glorious buildings, the music, organs and choirs in the great Anglican tradition, the sense of establishment as a valued part of the fabric of the British constitution. However, these have been steadily eroded in the CofE any way, and so you will have experienced this too. I was fortunate to have been given a good span of time to think about my decision. How much time do you have? Just how will your Society of St Hilda and St Wilfred protect you, especially in this age of litigation and squabbles over jurisdiction? If that's the route you choose, then I pray for your success, but what will it really achieve? Will it be allowed to continue by an establishment which you know is hostile to you?

What has been preserved in the ACC is certainly the true heart of Anglicanism. What the ACC possesses is the sincerity of the Anglo-Catholic ways. The first thing I felt when I started attending was that it was what the CofE used to be. The liturgy, the sincerity, the discipline, the standards, indeed, the very ethos that I knew as a boy, all were present again – the ACC truly deserves its epithet as a Continuing Anglican Church.

Many of you will tut and shake your head and wonder what on earth I'm doing with "them". You see "them" as being disloyal to the CofE or as not being a "proper" church. There seems to be an underlying distaste and dismissal when "their" name is mentioned or "their" presence felt. I would like to suggest to you that you would do well just to listen to what "they" are trying to say and to do. They – we – are trying to do precisely what you want: to continue worshipping the One True God, Father Son and Holy Ghost according to the Anglican practice which we received from the Great Church through the lens of the Anglican tradition.

Of course, you’re loyal Anglicans. Anglo-Catholics always have been loyal to the Anglican Church. How can we be disloyal if we seek to preserve it? Our opponents just don't understand that. So, isn’t better to say “we wish you well, but we can’t walk together” to those who want women ordained as bishops, and thus demand your loyalty to something that you know isn’t Anglican, than to compromise your own integrity in going along with something you know in your heart of hearts is wrong. Believe me, I tried to do that and it hurt more than I can possibly say.

It hurt because I was trying to be in communion and not in communion at the same time. The Benedictine way has always spoken of being clear what one means and what Rule one follows. Those who are not prepared to follow the Rule are declared excommunicate, i.e. they are outside because they have placed themselves outside the rule. There is always a way back - indeed, it is very difficult to be thrown out of a Benedictine Monastery - but that way back always involves accepting the Rule: one never returns on one's own terms.

It is impossible to be simultaneously inside and outside of a room. One cannot say, "well, I'm inside this corner of the room, but not that corner" when one is still in the same room as that other corner. This was the mistake that I was making because this is not how being in communion works!

Communion means sharing the same way of life, the same rules and the same understandings and breathing the common air with all in the room and Holy Communion means holding to the same understanding of Our Lord Jesus Christ's religion as everyone in the room, breathing the same Holy Spirit who doesn't contradict Himself despite what the liberal element may say. Either one follows the rule of one's church and remains in it or one rejects the rule of one's church and thereby leaves it. Standing under the lintel of the door just blocks the way for people to enter and to leave. Indeed my own thinking blocked my own growth in the faith and it was only when I was made to leave that I could see things more clearly.

You will have to decide on what grounds you regard a church as being “proper”. If this is a purely numerical decision, then at which point in Church History did it become proper? When it consisted of just twelve? Can the CofE be “proper” when it ordains women – an action which you do not believe is what God wants? Of course, you could opt for the Ordinariate, but you’re Anglo-Catholic, not Roman Catholic, and you value your Anglicanism as much as we do. We also have a great deal of love and affection for the Roman Church, and pray for her good as well as the good of the Pope whom we regard as our patriarch, but not as our monarch. However, that being said, the Roman Church does not regard the Anglican Church as being proper; those who don’t regard the ACC as being proper do so for exactly the same wrong reason. Our prayers are the same as yours; our sacraments are identical; our Bishops are validly consecrated and you may check our lineage if you wish – we comply with the Doctrine of the Undivided Church.

Admittedly, we are tiny in the U.K. We’re larger in the United States, but everything is bigger over there. Of course, we’d like to be larger, to have enough money to buy our own church buildings, to form our own choirs, and to support our priests financially. At the moment this is a bit of a struggle, but we manage and we manage well. Indeed, we benefit from the lack of encumbrances of trying to maintain a Grade I listed building and their associated “Save the Church Roof” campaigns and the interminable wranglings of the CofE between political factions. Our small size makes it easy for us to know each other and to appreciate the value of the individuals within our parishes.

We’d very much like you seriously to consider joining us. We fully understand that would involve sacrifice on your part, the loss of buildings and that sense of presence as part of the Establishment. If you are a clergyman, we know that the sacrifice is greater since we cannot pay for our priests until we are bigger – much bigger. However we have made those sacrifices and it is worth it even on this little scale!

If you join us, you would be here to work with us, to shoulder the burden of building something of great value and to ensure that the Faith in Christ to which we cling. Further, unlike in the CofE, your efforts to build the Church would be valued, your devotion, learning and integrity would find a worthy place here and we would be able to present to a sinful World the face of Immanuel.

If you’re interested and wish to know more, our website is here.

Whatever way you choose, please be assured that you will always have my love and my prayers in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

God bless you all.

In the beginning was Septuagesima

It's Septuagesima again, so back to the beginning we go. Of course, for a Benedictine this is a daily occurrence - always we begin again.

The trouble with so many beginnings is that there are always a lot of loose ends to tie up. There are two beginnings in the Book of Genesis (ch i.1-ii.3 and ii.4-end) and of course the four beginnings of the Gospels notably that of St John. It may seem strange that we have these beginnings now at Septuagesima, but the time we get to Lent, we find ourselves at the reason why. Our Lenten fasting begins with the focus being squarely back on the Fall.

It doesn't matter how many beginnings we seem to have, we still seem to make a mess of it somehow. We wander off and find ourselves completely at odds with what God wants of us. As St Paul says, the will of the flesh is contrary to the will of the spirit and vice versa! Wouldn't it be easier if we could just jettison these sinful bodies and go off to heaven as disembodied spirits, freed from the lusts of the flesh which keep causing us to fall and fall hard?

The trouble is, this direction lies Gnosticism. Gnosticism separates spirit from flesh in an entirely draconian way. It does so because it fails to appreciate that God is actually happy with a material Creation, in fact Gnosticism demotes God to an imbecile for having created in the first place. Therein lies its heresy and its inherent breaking of the first commandment.

It's a fact that we still have Gnostic ideas floating around today, notably in the common understanding of death. The idea that when we die our soul floats up to heaven leaving our bodies behind doesn't really sit well with St Paul's notion of the corruptible body putting on the incorruptible.Both St Thomas Aquinas and the arch"dualist" Rene Descartes both viewed a human being as an indivisible fusion of body and soul - a psycho-physical unity. What this means when our body dies is uncertain - no-one can be sure of the geometry of death, save only Purgatory (more a rebuilding and re-formation) and the possibility of Heaven itself. However, the immortality of our souls is closely bound up with the fact that God remembers us, holds us in his mind and refuses to let go.

The fact that we have a body obviously does mean that it is a necessary part of us and we need to look after it as much as we look after our souls. Many people see Lent as an opportunity to flog poor "brother ass" with some unkind spiritual exercises of self-abnegation so that the soul can escape to higher planes. However, they forget that we are not just a spirit but a body too and that the health of one really does affect the health of the other. Do do Lent well, and to grow better in body and in soul, we need to prepare well. In some sense Septuagesima is the preparation for Lent which is the preparation for Easter. Boy, do we Christians do a lot of preparation!

In the Benedictine Tradition, each monk was supposed to speak with the abbot about their Lenten penance. The Gesimas provide the perfect opportunity for this to take place, to reflect on the nature of our lives and prepare ourselves to put right that which needs attention and to correct the imbalances that we have accrued since last Easter.

In bringing us back to the beginning, Septuagesima is inviting us to see where we should be. Of course, we should be in Eden walking in the Garden with God watching the Sun, Moon and Stars dance through the sky, enjoying the fresh breeze and looking after the animals. It's difficult for us really to see anything more than this picture of Eden and our idea of it may tend to cloy into a soppy Disney-style cartoon. This is because we have lost our sense of our beginnings through our Fall.

We now have the opportunity to reflect on our beginning and where we should be with God and see Lent as an opportunity for coming closer to Him. Yes, St Paul tells us that we need to discipline our bodies, but out of love, not out of a gnostic hatred. St Francis de Sales reminds us that while we are in this fallen state, we should not be surprised that we sin, but rather in seeking God's forgiveness we should learn to forgive our own weakness as well as those of our brethren and work to building up our souls and bodies together as one healthy unity.

So how do we begin to begin again?

Feast of the Purification 2012: Blood and Community

The Book of Common Prayer refers to the office of the "Churching of Women". I suspect that it's not seen as being very politically correct these days to call it thus. Of course, this is only the subtitle of the service: the BCP gives it its proper title of "The Thanksgiving of Women after Child Birth". Certainly, parts of the Church will do Thanksgivings before Baptisms and often that is the only service the child will ever receive from the Church. For some, the Thanksgiving service has become the naming ceremony and many families will understand that this is the only time they need to go to Church with their child.

For the Jewish Community, the rather bloody nature of childbirth rendered a mother ritually unclean and thus unable to take part in the fulness of Jewish rites until she had been purified. This does sound rather negative, that the woman, through no fault of her own has somehow become impure simply by giving birth to her child. Many today might read into it misogynistic overtones there, of some oppression of the woman. One might suggest they read such overtones in because they want them to be there.

Considering that a mother would actually need some time to rest and recuperate, perhaps ritual impurity could be seen as a way of regaining one's strength and healing after an arduous ordeal for mother and for baby. Some time out of society would provide this.

Of course, impurity and cleanliness were important to the Jewish way of thinking. The laws which God gave the Jews were ways in which they could preserve a distinct identity as people of God. Cleanliness meant a clear identity as one of God's Chosen People and to be unclean meant the possibility of some contamination with that which was outside. Blood was seen as a venerable substance as the life force. Considering that other tribes around the Jewish Communities were blood-cults which enjoyed the spilling of human blood as part of their rites, the rather more sparing attitude of blood was God's way of telling the Jews, "you are not like them."

One can see this when Elijah confronts the Prophets of Baal. The Prophets entreat Baal to light the fire for their sacrifice and when he does not, they cut themselves in order to entice the false divinity into action. For the Jew, blood is only something that is spilled in sacred covenants and sacrifices, not to be treated frivolously or consumed or even worshipped. It was part of the pact between Israel and God, and thus only to be treated in accordance with that pact.

Thus, even when the blood is one's own, a Jew would not wish to be identified in any way with the cults of old and thus would seek to have their part in society re-established through a cleansing rite. It was something they wanted to happen - the Jewish Community was something that each individual rejoiced in.

So now here we are. Our Lady has come to be purified at the temple. Whether she needs it or not is perhaps a matter between her and God and not for our over-curious minds, but nonetheless she seeks, as any other Jewess, to be part of the Jewish Community and for her newborn son to be part of that community too. It is a community absolutely integral to her way of life and she intends fully to bring up her son in that same beloved community.

It is the aged Simeon who has the startling revelation in his Nunc Dimittis. The Child is to break through the barriers of the Jewish Community and open it to the Gentiles too. How will He do so? Answer: through the pouring out of His blood. It is startling to think that a culture which avoided blood would find itself with the opportunity to be transformed by that very substance. This is another reason why the Lord Jesus is a stumbling block for the Jews. However, the pouring out of the Blood of Christ represents a new identity for the human soul. Not a blood cult like Baal, but a New Covenant in His Blood.

Thus the Feast of the Purification becomes a prediction for the existence of the Church, of the new identity, of the Baptism into Christ and a symbol for our own part in that community.

At her Churching, a woman brings her new baby to reaffirm her identity as Christian and to introduce her Christian family to the newest member. The next step for that little one is obviously Baptism where the child is given that new identity of its own apart from the mother. If we look down on this action then we denegrate both the offering of the woman, but also of the miraculous act of childbirth peculiar to that sex.

The example of Our Lady shows a commitment to playing a part in society, of not wanting to go one's own way, or to demand one's own path in Life separate from everyone else. She is making a decidedly Anti-Individualistic statement, seeing her identity within Holy Church and only as part of that Church. Outside of Church, she is just Mary; within it she is Theotokos - the Virgin Mother of God.

How do we show a similar commitment to the good of our society?

Hospitality and Hostile Pasties

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities stretch forth thy right hand to help and defend us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A bit late of me seeing that it's nearly the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. I love this simple little anthem by Gibbons primarily because of its intimacy and humility. I'm not one for the Elizabethan musical canon of one note per syllable, personally, primarily because it prevents the colourful accentuation of certain words via melismata, but I do agree that it does help a simple prayer to be prayed well by the listener.

However, Gibbons has set one of those wonderfully translated collects. I may not believe that Archbishop Cranmer's theology was sound but I do appreciate his ability to translate Latin texts into a beautiful English.

This is a prayer for each one of us. It recognises our human frailty, and the commonality of human frailty to us all. I've already suggested below that even the Lord Jesus had to contend with this very frailty, though of course He overcame it sinlessly. Of course, the use of "our" rather than "my" raises the concerns from the level of the individual to the level of humanity itself - no, not just Holy Church, but all humanity. The Church exists for all human beings and, although opinion may be divided as to whether she fulfils her raison d'être, she has a duty to hold up all humanity, individual by individual, to the face of God in order that humanity, individual by individual, may know the warmth of the Divine Gaze.

There is an underlying issue of hospitality here. The Benedictines are very closely attuned to the needs of hospitality, the welcoming in of those who are frail and burnt by the ravages of Sin, World and Devil. However, doing so opens us up to dangers, physical, mental and spiritual. Unconditionally giving a fiver to a beggar on the street is the Christlike thing to do. If, a week later. that same beggar then stabs you (or worse, someone else) while high on heroin which he bought with your fiver then you feel the danger of being Christlike.

There is a chance that the food we prepare for our guests will, inadvertently, poison them and our hospitality rendered null by a hostile pasty. There are dangers within us, within all of us. Original Sin may have the sting of its guilt removed at our baptism, but we still have to deal with that inner brokenness. Our hospitality towards others is going to be affected by our infirmities, dangers and necessities, and this is utterly unavoidable, certainly, if we do not pray to God for His Divine sustenance.

Conversely, why pray for protection if we are not in danger? Well, if we do not believe ourselves to be in danger then perhaps we are not looking at our lives very closely. We may not be in physical danger, but we may well, in the complacent cosiness of the couch cushion, be in grave spiritual danger by allowing the numbness of our vision to prevent us from assisting those who are in physical infirmity, danger and necessity. If we really, really, want to be Christian, then we must continually strive to be Christlike and accept the infirmities, dangers and necessities of doing so. How?

A New Blog on the Sarum Rite

I'd like to take the opportunity to advertise Fr Chadwick's New Blog on the Use of the Sarum Rite and "Northern Catholicism".

As the Sun in its orb

I urge my readers to check it out.

the Second Sunday after the Epiphany: Private Miracles or Public Signs?

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.

When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

St John ii.1 et c.

It;s interesting to examine apparent differences between the Gospels especially when each has its distinctive take on the life of the Lord. Here we see the first miracle in St John's Gospel the transformation of the water into wine at the wedding feast. Compare that with the first miracle in the Gospel of St Mark - the casting out of the demon of a man in Capernaum. The way that miracles are treated in the Synoptic Gospels is different from that of St John. In the Synoptic Gospels, one is given a sense of Christ giving assistance to those in need spontaneously as that need presents itself. In St John, we have Christ speaking and then ramifying his speaking with a miracle or, as St John prefers, a sign.

Of course, the Gospels don't exist in isolation, their position in Holy Scripture is to bring us in to the life of Christ. While conflation may indeed confuse the distinctive voices of the Gospel writers, it is better to look at the corroboration of what they say. The question with which we are presented is: Are the Miracles intended to prove the identity of Christ?

In St John's Gospel, they are: "I am the Bread of Life" is followed by the feeding of the multitude; "I am the Resurrection and the Life" is followed by the raising of Lazarus. It would appear that Jesus is using the suffering of others to His own agenda of proving His identity. However, contrast that with the Christ in the Gospel of Mark who constantly tells the people whom he has healed not to tell anyone about it. So here is an apparent contradiction and a rather negative view of a mercenary Jesus using the sufferings of others for His own Glory. except it isn't like that at all.

The key factor to resolve this contradiction is the very person of Christ - God made Man. In casting off the trappings of Godhead to be like us, He has limited Himself to our mortal frame. This means a limit to His time and to His energy. He has a Gospel to proclaim and a Death to die and He also has love and compassion for all who come to Him in humility. Those who demand signs from Him so that they can satisfy their intellectual pride are frustrated. Christ comes to share yet another suffering with humanity, the suffering that we can't do it all in the time that we have.

St Mark almost has Jesus frazzled and worn out by ministering to the people. Every time He goes to pray by Himself another crowd pops up with genuine concerns which He meets. This may just be a feature of the breakneck speed of St Mark, but it does show us something about our own lives. We too are often busy with genuine concerns which interrupt our quiet time with God. There are times when we have to say "no" and make that time due to our human weakness.

The Jesus in St John's Gospel comments on His life with His disciples including St John. St John seems to be speaking of a more intimate Jesus comfortable with His friends around Him, explaining the happenings and their relevance to His life so that they might believe and spread the Gospel. This is not a mercenary Jesus, because, with St Mark, in St John's Gospel we still see the Messiah crucified for the whole world regardless of person or position.

In putting the Gospels together more carefully we have a better inkling of how it is that God became flesh and dwelt among us and still does if we are willing to accept it. The limitations to the ministry of Jesus are only limitations if we let Him do all the work. The point is that He established the Church in order that His ministry might be continued for everyone, that the hungry might be fed, the thirsty given something to drink, the naked clothed, the slave freed, the prisoner visited and comforted, the orphans and widows provided for and in these acts of Charity, the Gospel might be preached more effectively and really than by words, syllogism and argument.

We can turn water into wine, but not necessarily in the way we would expect.

Archepiscopal Advents

Occasionally, I like to use this little blogling for advertising important blogs/events/websites even though this is only the blogling of an individual. However, I do have something worth advertising.

This April, we in the ACC welcome most heartily our Archbishop, the Most Rev Dr Mark Haverland. Having been our episcopal visitor some time ago, it's very good to welcome him back into the country. For many of us, it will be the first time that we meet our hard-working and committed Primate and it would be really very good for him to see as many of the Diocese as possible and hopefully send him back to Georgia with some happy memories and encouraging news as well as the blessing of DUK.

It would also be an opportunity for those who are interested in the ACC to see what we are about.
All the details will be published on the ACC Website so please check there for further updates.

If you are unable to come by reason of geography, please offer your prayers for this visit and for Archbishop Mark's safe sojourn.

What are Christians for?

Yasmin Alibai-Brown is quite right: Christianity truly does deserve better worshippers. I'm sure that the late Christopher Hitchens would disagree with this statement. He would see Christianity as being the problem and not the solution. In his eyes, God is not great because of the wicked things his disciples do. Perhaps this doesn't do justice to Hitchens' rather colourful objections to religion. Certainly the whole problem of evil is something that humanity in its entirety has been struggling with since the time it was able to decide between Good and Evil. There are no answers to the problem of Evil. The Bible certainly doesn't offer anything to answer why Evil should exist -the book of Job asks more questions than it actually answers.

However, that's the point of the book of Job! It gives this wonderful language which allows humanity to discuss the problem. We have here the framework of at least discussing the problem meaningfully. That much of the book is poetry helps us to explore meaning with the four ways of interpreting Holy Scripture : literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. I suspect that some people think that poetry is just pretty words put together to wrench feelings from the beleaguered heart! I know that my poet friend Ed Pacht would disagree with that outlook! Poetry tells the truth not just by the words by the structure of how the words are put together.

Theodicy demands a turning away from the glib. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar do present standard but intellectually glib answers for why Job is suffering. This is why they are heavily criticised at the end of the book. While the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God and the existence of evil are not mutually contradictory, there are still questions to be answered, indeed there are still questions that need to be asked. Further, the language for these questions needs to be found and used.

It seems to me to be part of the high esteem that God has for His Children that He stands back n order for us to become what He intended us to be. But this way? Why? I've got ideas but they are far from incomplete. What will help me to complete them? Well I suspect that this is why God permits atheism and agnosticism, because it is in entering into this dialogue that the questions get hammered out. Neither side will let the other off the hook - this is a good thing! One ought, however, to be very careful.

The trouble with this is that, if this dialogue is done aggressively with harsh ridicule, straw men and ad hominem attacks, then the defensive reflex is engaged. Intellectual pride and triumphalism infect the dialogue badly and cause ill-feeling on both sides. Yes we can be "absolutely right", but if our manner of being "absolutely right" belittles those who are "absolutely wrong" then any perceived "victory" is Pyrrhic. Disagreements between Christians are inevitable, but it is how those disagreements are handled that can either reveal the Christian nature or for the fallen-ness of its practitioners. What begins with different viewpoints becomes a brawl.

There are two senses of the question "What are Christians for?" I had intended to ask the question in the sense of "what are Christians for?" as opposed to "what are Christians against?" I seem to have strayed into the teleological question for the existence of Christians - what purpose do Christians serve?

The two senses are not unrelated. All Christians are for humanity and for God, and they are called to mediate and communicate these sympathies. It's how we present our sympathy for each other and for God that makes the difference to our raison d'être. Our fallen nature makes this difficult. Hitchens loathed Blessed Theresa of Calcutta on the grounds that he believed her to be a fanatic a fundamentalist and a fraud, more keen on opening convents than caring for the sick. There may well be some truth in this and Mother Theresa will have to answer for any inadequacies before God, but this also raises the question whether less religious organisations are any different from this.

It seems that there is a competitive nature to dialogue and that this nature is escalating into a desire to obliterate the opposition. All humanity works for the eradication of Evil. This is a vain enterprise since each of us possesses some fallibility. The eradication can only come with the Kingdom of God - as I believe as a Christian. I don't understand how the atheist or agnostic see the end of evil, principally because I do not yet understand how an atheist or agnostic views morality beyond what amounts to subjective decisions. If it is Religion that gives humanity the language for what Evil is and to find the questions that address the suffering of innocent human beings, then its eradication is not a good thing. History shows that the Western society is based on Abrahamic morality. One may question where the Decalogue came from and how its articles evolved socially, but that Decalogue was expressed in a religious framework first and foremost, not in a manner intrinsic to human thought.

With Christianity subdivided into Catholic and non-Catholic, "Catholic" and "Protestant", et c, it seems that these divisions take us out of the realm of dialogue and into competition for souls. This is natural: if we believe that we are right, then we publish our findings even as good scientists do. If we convince people of our rectitude then all well and good, but if we start coercing people to believe, then we have lost the nature of God which allows dissent. In the U.K. proselyting does not work and seeks only to drive people further away. The more that it becomes apparent that this battle is taking place within Christianity then all the more that those outside will remember the words of the Lord which have permeated even their understanding - "a house divided against itself cannot stand".

Each individual needs to examine his walk with other Christians. There is often a great deal more of what we are for than what we are against. While there is a necessity for a walking apart, that doesn't mean that we should exempt ourselves from opportunities to spend some time walking together, nor to exclude others from opportunities for which we are responsible. A "Churches Together" initiative is always worth supporting even if it puts us into the same arena as those whose expressions of Christianity are markedly different from what we know. One can take the attitude that we are in dialogue with "heretics". The word may be apposite and completely appropriate, but it is often used without just cause and too frequently in a pejorative sense whether or not it is justified. Again, we need to see what we are both for, rather than spend all our time on our conflicts.

What to do? We may have a clear idea of our identity in Christ, but that identity is only ever crystallised in the lens of what others make for us. As St Thomas Aquinas would see it, all our desires have their end in God and all matter has goodness in its very substance. We therefore have a duty to be grateful for the interaction that we have with our detractors, dissenters and our "heretics" - this will not destroy who we are provided that we hold tight to the Faith of Christ - such interaction provides us with a framework for conversation with God. If we are strong enough, we could take St Thomas' view of theodicy and see even our sufferings as drawing us nearer to God and be thankful for them. This may also be just as glib as Job's comforters, but how else are we going to find the language to ask God that question?

Re-ordering unity

Good grief! My 400th post!

I am grateful to Jakian Thomist for providing me with information as to how Anglicans can accept re-ordination in order to enter the Roman Catholic Church. I do take his point that

"there is a sense of 'talking-past' one another on this topic, RC's 'reducing' its significance while Anglican contributors feeling as if 'THE' point has been completely missed."

Well, perhaps we need to find some way of finding the actual issue here an insuring that we get it right.

There are essentially two issues which appear to be in conflict:

1) Reunion of Anglicans into Communion with the Holy See;
2) The Invalidity of Anglican Orders via Apostolicae Curae.

From Apostolicae Curae, we see that, at the very least, Rome believes that Anglican orders are not the same as Roman orders and that an Anglican priest is not the same as a Roman Catholic priest. Are the two notions really different?
Well, here, I think, is where the idea of Absolute Ordination and Relative Ordination come in - it is a question of doubt and thence a question of trust. If one accepts that Anglican priesthood can only be truly completed by ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, then one can in good conscience submit to the process of re-ordination as a priest in order to have one's orders completed.

The problem with this attitude is that it then describes Anglicanism as being incomplete in a manner in which most Anglicans cannot accept. In a very good sense our incompleteness is true, since all "Churches" are incomplete without the others and mutual excommunication is a scandal. Anglicanism does very much need to be in Communion with Rome for the health of both Anglicanism and Rome. However, the view is that Anglicanism is incomplete in the Catholic Sense. We are then left with the question just how is Anglicanism incomplete?

Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy all stem from the Undivided Church of the seven Oecumenical councils and all claim to be following the same Apostolic Succession and the same idea of Sacrament which has been drawn from following Christ Himself. Many scholars will try to deny that, but the history of the earliest Anglicanism as independent from Rome is well attested to. Since the various Schisms have torn us apart, we now have been saddled with doubt to the intentions of the other bodies with which we formerly enjoyed full communion.

As far as I understand, the Eastern Orthodox position (and I'm honestly not quite sure that I do since there seems to be more than one Eastern Orthodox Church!) with the return to Communion will also come the return of the recognition of Anglican sacraments as Orthodox.

With Rome, the Reformation has cast a sufficient doubt on the underlying integrity of the Anglican system that there is insufficient confidence in what we do is truly what we say we do. Given the turbulence of the 16th and 17th Centuries, that's not a completely unfair position to take, provided that it were seen clearly that Apostolic Succession and the ministering of the Sacraments really has changed from the Undivided Church. As Saepius Officio shows, there is at the very least no clear evidence that Anglicanism has fallen away from the Catholic Principles of the Undivided Church.

The underlying issue is then not really of the issue of orders, though this is how it manifests itself, but rather an issue of trust.

Admittedly, churches that profess Anglicanism have done themselves no favours. If a church departs from the teaching of the Undivided Church, how on Earth can it be trusted to be following the Catholicism what is at the very heart of the existence of that Undivided Church? Corporately, the CofE and ECUSA have managed to rid themselves of Catholicism in order to appeal to a Zeitgeist. This cannot be said absolutely as many individual parishes and organisations within these bodies are striving to be Catholic. How successful they are is doubtful, but their struggles to uphold their Catholicism need support from all Catholics.

What has been more successful at completing the Oxford Movement has been the profession of the Continuing Churches, especially in the fact that they keep to the same integrity of Anglicanism prior to any change to the Catholic Faith. This has been hard, especially since Catholicism is not a popular movement in Western Society. Continuing Anglicanism has been accused of "divide, degenerate, debate, divide, degenerate, debate (ad nauseam)". This seems to be rather an out-of-date view of the way that the Continuum is travelling given the substantial commitment to unity shown by the ACC, the APCK, the APA and UECNA. There will always be some floating bodies but the the commonality, indeed Catholicity of Anglicanism makes any boundaries more fluid - just like the Orthodox jurisdictions which are just as prone to "divide, degenerate, debate, divide, degenerate, debate (ad nauseam)" and just as able to reunite and reconfigure.

All of the Anglican bodies are still recognisably Anglican because they have kept a commitment to the Undivided Church and though it be indefinable, save in a Wittgensteinian sense, there is an Anglican Integrity - a trustworthiness that we follow Our Lord Jesus Christ in the same manner as his disciples in our different time, position, culture and milieu. Those who abandon the principles of the Undivided Church abandon that trustworthiness and thus separate themselves from that integrity.

Humility is about recognising the truth about oneself and one's condition and, given that the Continuing Churches look to regulate themselves in the light of what the Church has always been, there is humility. To be united in Christ is a goal well worth struggling for, but one must be careful in the way that one accepts that unity. If one finds an impediment in conscience because of a development subsequent to the schisms, then the offered unity cannot honestly be acceptable - to deny it is not humility because it is not true belief, particularly if it comes from the conscience. One cannot enter into unity with one's fingers crossed. Such an action is insincere and an insult to both sides.

Surely the parties to be united must look to themselves with regard to these impediments and trust the other that if the impediment exists then it needs to be examined very carefully from both sides. If there is no way around them, then the question must be about the quality of unity. Is this a suzerain-vassal covenant, or a recognition of mutual integrity?

So, what the issue boils down to is not of having the humility to submit to re-ordination for the sake of unity, but rather the trust that, when only God can be convinced of Absolutes, the other party has truly been seeking the same Catholicism that existed before Schisms occurred. If re-ordination were necessary then it needs to be at the very least sub conditione not sine conditione because the latter has the monopoly on the Absolute and this cannot be demonstrated as a fact because it is an Absolute. There is only one Catholicism: this is indeed an Absolute because there is is One Lord Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

We have to appreciate that there is much that we can trust. If we follow the Covenant, then we do forge a good relationship with God and we can be as sure of that as the strength of our faith. If we have faith in our Church Leaders to uphold the principles of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, then we can be sure of the validity of the sacraments that they minister to us, and with that validity the Truth of God Himself whose Incarnation we celebrate at this wonderful time of year!

I hate to end on matters of contention. My prayer is for a corporate unity that comes from both sides - a recognition of the fidelity to the Catholic Faith and a statement in the truth of the orders of orthodox Anglicans.

May I wish you all a most happy, joyful, peaceful, fulfilling and fun 2012! God bless you all.