Gelasian Latin version
Deus, qui diligentibus te bona invisibilia praeparasti: infunde cordibus nostris tui amoris affectum; ut te in omnibus, et super omnia diligentes, promissiones tuas, quae omne desiderium superant, consequamur.
Translation by me:
O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee good things beyond sight: pour into our hearts the affection of love of thee; that, loving thee in all things and above all things, we may attain thy promises which exceed all desire.
Prayer book of 1549
GOD, whiche haste prepared to them that love thee suche good thynges as passe all mannes understanding; Powre into our hartes such love toward thee, that we lovyng thee in al thinges, may obteine thy promises, whiche excede all that we canne desyre; Through Jesus Christe our Lorde.
Prayer book of 1662
O GOD, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man's understanding; Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that wee, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
What is a good thing? Who will show us any good? This is a really good question these days. What really defines what good is? We all know what it is to feel good, by which we often mean happy and healthy. If we have a tummy ache or are feeling stressed then we don't feel good. Yet, we might have a tummy ache because we're dieting in order to get healthy. Scientists tell us, also, that some stress is necessary for us to live. So there is good there. Sweets taste good, but too much are not good for us. This brings us to a paradox: how can too much good not be good for us?
We all have our own idea of what good is, and it almost always has to do with how we experience life. However, we do fall into the trap of thinking that good is purely subjective, that it depends upon the individual. That's actually false, especially when we turn to the Creator.
God is good. More than that, God is what it means to be good. He is His own goodness. It is of Himself that He makes us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. Our good cannot be purely subjective but must depend on our relationship with God and how we draw that goodness from Him. In our very selves, all things are good. All human beings are good because they exist and have their being and likeness of God. That likeness gives us a dignity that is inseparable from our being. However, we are capable of Evil, and that is why we need to be taken out of an existence in which our choices tear us away from God. Who will shew us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
The modernist paperclip and the use of correction fluid
A recent comment from a liberal "Protestant" blog criticizing those who defend traditional Church doctrine:
Let us then be clear what the Nestorian heresy is. Our Lord has two natures, that of being human and that of being God. According to the proto-Nestorian Theodore of Mopsuestia, these natures were joined together externally like a marriage of natures. I rather like Archbishop Haverland's idea that, in this heresy, the two natures of Christ were paper-clipped together. For the true Nestorian, Mary could never be the mother of God, she was just mother to the human nature of Jesus.
Actually, the heresy is not too hard to refute. The very first chapter of St John's Gospel talks about the Divine Logos - the Word - which becomes flesh and dwells among us. The joining of human and divine nature is internal to the Person of Our Lord as flesh is to bone, only more so. That flesh-bone analogy breaks down when we consider Divine simplicity. Our Lord's human nature is indivisibly linked to His divine nature.
That is what the Catholic Faith says. Anyone who denies it cannot be Catholic and contradicts Holy Scripture itself.
Mary is the mother of Jesus; Jesus is God; therefore Mary is the Mother of God. The logic is as simple as it can be.
The way that Nestorianism creeps into our time comes about from statements like we see above. The idea is that Our Lord was a man of His time and therefore what He says is only ever appropriate in the context of that time.
Why is this Nestorian?
Our Lord's visible ministry is bounded by time according to human nature, yet that ministry was to the whole world. By His death, He saves His people in one great sacrifice for sin at one point in time. Yet, that one perfect sacrifice pervades all time, so that we in our day may participate in that sacrifice which took place in His day. His day of salvation remains our day of salvation, and that day is today - it always will be today.
Likewise, Our Lord teaches His people. He teaches them of what sin is and what death is, and what the Kingdom of God is, and Who He is, and what He has come to do. Is this the teaching of a man of his time? No. He is speaking of things of Eternity. He is speaking from Who He is - human and divine, not one thing or the other, but Divine words on a Human tongue. How does He know the will of God? Because He possesses that knowledge in His divine nature. If He is speaking divine truth then, then He is speaking the same divine truth now. Divine truth is Eternal or it is not divine.
To say then that Our Lord's teaching is only of His time therefore falls under the charge of Nestorianism. It says that some things that Our Lord speaks are human in origin, and other things are Divine in origin. But these things have one single origin - Our Lord and He is indivisibly Divine and Human.
Of course, one might say, "When Our Lord says, 'I thirst!' that must be human in origin, because God cannot thirst." That is perfectly true. Our Lord is inferior to God in His human nature but equal to God in His Divine nature. There are things that the human nature can do that the divine nature cannot, and vice versa; that's what distinguishes them. However, teaching the Will and Commandments of God requires knowledge of the Will and Commandments of God. Our Lord says, quite clearly:
Of course, the liberal "Protestants" who post on the blog also say things like:
Of course, this individual is right that we have to think critically about what we believe. We do need to rely upon our conscience, but we must inform that conscience and keep it subject to the Rule of Faith rather than the Rule of Whim.
Either we believe that Our Lord speaks to us through Scripture, Tradition AND Reason together, or we must face the fact that we are walking only in the light of our own experience of the world.
"[Jesus] was a man of his time, rooted in eschatological Judaism, proclaiming what he took to Adonai's imminent judgment on the world."Here we see an old heresy re-emerging, namely that of Nestorianism. I have to be very careful here because there are Oriental Catholic Churches who recognize Nestorius as a saint. I believe that it has been a subject of debate whether Nestorius indeed was a Nestorian; certainly the Oriental Churches do actually proclaim the Catholic Faith as has been revealed in dialogue with them.
Let us then be clear what the Nestorian heresy is. Our Lord has two natures, that of being human and that of being God. According to the proto-Nestorian Theodore of Mopsuestia, these natures were joined together externally like a marriage of natures. I rather like Archbishop Haverland's idea that, in this heresy, the two natures of Christ were paper-clipped together. For the true Nestorian, Mary could never be the mother of God, she was just mother to the human nature of Jesus.
Actually, the heresy is not too hard to refute. The very first chapter of St John's Gospel talks about the Divine Logos - the Word - which becomes flesh and dwells among us. The joining of human and divine nature is internal to the Person of Our Lord as flesh is to bone, only more so. That flesh-bone analogy breaks down when we consider Divine simplicity. Our Lord's human nature is indivisibly linked to His divine nature.
That is what the Catholic Faith says. Anyone who denies it cannot be Catholic and contradicts Holy Scripture itself.
Mary is the mother of Jesus; Jesus is God; therefore Mary is the Mother of God. The logic is as simple as it can be.
The way that Nestorianism creeps into our time comes about from statements like we see above. The idea is that Our Lord was a man of His time and therefore what He says is only ever appropriate in the context of that time.
Why is this Nestorian?
Our Lord's visible ministry is bounded by time according to human nature, yet that ministry was to the whole world. By His death, He saves His people in one great sacrifice for sin at one point in time. Yet, that one perfect sacrifice pervades all time, so that we in our day may participate in that sacrifice which took place in His day. His day of salvation remains our day of salvation, and that day is today - it always will be today.
Likewise, Our Lord teaches His people. He teaches them of what sin is and what death is, and what the Kingdom of God is, and Who He is, and what He has come to do. Is this the teaching of a man of his time? No. He is speaking of things of Eternity. He is speaking from Who He is - human and divine, not one thing or the other, but Divine words on a Human tongue. How does He know the will of God? Because He possesses that knowledge in His divine nature. If He is speaking divine truth then, then He is speaking the same divine truth now. Divine truth is Eternal or it is not divine.
To say then that Our Lord's teaching is only of His time therefore falls under the charge of Nestorianism. It says that some things that Our Lord speaks are human in origin, and other things are Divine in origin. But these things have one single origin - Our Lord and He is indivisibly Divine and Human.
Of course, one might say, "When Our Lord says, 'I thirst!' that must be human in origin, because God cannot thirst." That is perfectly true. Our Lord is inferior to God in His human nature but equal to God in His Divine nature. There are things that the human nature can do that the divine nature cannot, and vice versa; that's what distinguishes them. However, teaching the Will and Commandments of God requires knowledge of the Will and Commandments of God. Our Lord says, quite clearly:
Jesus answered them, and said , My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. (St John vii.16)and
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.(St Johnxiv.23-24)Thus, what Jesus says is not of a man's time but of God's Time, i.e. Eternity. His teaching is absolute and not to be contradicted or superseded by the fashions of the time or the prevalent philosophy.
Of course, the liberal "Protestants" who post on the blog also say things like:
If the Bible has to be taken literally, then Adam and Eve had no ancestors, science and evolution are wrong, and God desired the slaughter of the children in Canaan when it was ethnically cleansed.And saying this they belie themselves as no Protestant. Obviously, they have no idea about the senses of Biblical interpretation, and certainly categorically disbelieve in the Bible as theologically inerrant. How then does such an individual know that God is love? How does such an individual know that Jesus taught us to love our enemies? How does such an individual know that the central issues that he or she believes are only applicable to 1st Century AD and to none other? All they can rely on is teaching that fits their own choosing and a God that does justice to that. Such a person cannot know that they can be saved, because they do not know whether they have to repent or even how to repent. That is actually quite terrifying! On what do they base their faith? A pick-and-choose approach to Holy Scripture? Judicious use of correction fluid in the Bible to make it conform to modern thought? This makes the attributes of God arbitrary and relative and a relative God is no god at all!
All the direction of history teaches us that the bible has to be contextualised and interpreted.
Interpreted in the context of the primary command to love.
Scriptural dogmatism, and idolising holy text as God's direct dictation or automatic handwriting is potentially harmful whether it is the dogmatists of the Bible or the dogmatists of the Qur'an.
The bible was written by fallible human beings, writing from within the culture, prejudices, and assumptions of their own time. It is wonderful and it is profound.
But it requires the exercise of our own consciences in each age, as we search for the ways of love and faithfulness.
Of course, this individual is right that we have to think critically about what we believe. We do need to rely upon our conscience, but we must inform that conscience and keep it subject to the Rule of Faith rather than the Rule of Whim.
Either we believe that Our Lord speaks to us through Scripture, Tradition AND Reason together, or we must face the fact that we are walking only in the light of our own experience of the world.
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
The strength of Law
I mused below upon the nature of the relationship between Church and State. Of course, I will readily hold up my hands and categorically state that I am no expert on law, nor on politics. What does concern me at the moment is the relationship with the Church and the those who do not believe. We have to live together in some kind of mutual flourishing as the Church of England would have it, yet, the Christian cannot but hold the Law of God as being superior to any law passed by a secular authority. And that's the rub: the Church recognizes the higher moral law by which all laws are measured, yet an increasingly significant number of members of the State do not. Many non-Christians find their morality grounded in general principles such as "do as you would be done by" or "do anything that would maximize the happiness of everyone" or the Kantian Categorical Imperative, "act only according to that rule where, at the same time, you would want it to become a universal law."
While these are worthy maxims, they are not consistent, nor do they provide a universal framework for law and for morals. Kant's ideas are certainly very compelling, but considering that Adolf Eichmann claimed to live by Kantian duty shows how either how little it can be understood, or how much it fails to be truly moral.
The fact is that, if the State were to pass a law making breaking and entering legal, we would know that this was a bad law. One could apply the maxims above, by all of which that law would certainly fail. Yet a law allowing for assisted suicide would fail the Categorical Imperative but not the Utilitarian idea of maximizing happiness, or even the Golden Rule. That's when debate comes in and where those more learned than I in legal matters construct the law.
Yet, I firmly believe in the moral law that comes from God as overriding Human Reason itself. Some may tell me that this is just silly on the grounds that I base the framework of my understanding of what is right and wrong on that which could be arbitrary and capricious. My! how people love to accuse God of being capricious.
The strength of the law comes from its power and its authority. The two are very different concepts. The law can force me to act a certain way: I don't steal because if I did, I would end up in a system of sanctions of increasing unpleasantness which I don't want. That's the power of the law: obey or be punished. The authority of the law comes from how much I buy into it, and even take ownership of it. I don't steal because I believe that the law against stealing is in the best interests of the society in which I live. The same is also true of my belief in God. If I obey Him for fear of Hell, then that's because God has the power to cast me into Hell. If I obey Him because knowing Him is the best thing for the whole of Creation, then that's a sign of His authority. Notice that, as St Thomas Aquinas would have it, God is His own authority - being with Him is the reason that persuades us to obey Him.
Yet, the law only ever has power when the sanctions that it can impose are able to act as a deterrent. Most people would indeed balk at the conditions in prison, which is why prison must be an undesirable place to be if the law is to have power. However, this is what makes religious belief very dangerous in the eyes of the law, because where the law is contradicted by religion, the strength of belief will allow the believer to endure even the worst forms of civil sanction. After all, the first Christians chose agonising deaths rather than subscribing to laws which demand that they worship the Roman Emperor. Yet this goes for any religion, not just Christianity. It is quite understandable why the State fears religious believers when legal sanctions do not have effect. It's worth noting here that actually, since we're a long time dead and likely to suffer pain anyway, what is the real power of those sanctions? The secular law can only ever have a temporary hold on people.
Thus, the strength of the law that binds communities together with a freedom of religion must rest upon the authority of the law and not its power. Religious groups of all sorts must feel that they possess ownership of the secular law that governs the country in which they find themselves.
This is very hard for me to admit as a Christian, as I believe firmly that the law should be precisely the moral law of God. That's not the case, and I don't seem to be able to change it which means I must tolerate that which I do not have the power to change, nor do I have the authority. I can't change the fact that Sunday is no longer a day free from trading. I can't change the fact that casual sex is culturally acceptable. But then, given that I am a fallible human being, it's best that I do not have the power to change the law. As well intentioned as I might be, I know that I will be capricious and I will restrict the freedom of others to live their lives. I tolerate the law while it stands, but I criticize it and seek to work around it in ways that show that I am willing to comply with the authority lawfully set over me, yet still seeking to effect the change demanded by the Moral Law which stands above the law of the land.
We have here a bit of an impasse: the State's fear of religious believers' ability to control the law by preferring to endure sanctions in order to get their own way, the religious believers' fear that their moral concerns about the content of the law will be ignored. There is a lot of fear here, and that needs to be addressed and, where possible, dispelled. Institutions always seek to hold onto what authority they have and, when they are at risk of losing it, they exercise their acts of power in order to re-establish that authority.
The Church is rather unusual in that ultimately, she possesses no power at all of Herself. Excommunication means very little these days. Yet She possesses authority because what She has comes straight from God. Any power that She has accrued comes from people who subscribe to that authority. This means that Christians must hold fast to what they believe to be true and fight, not against men, but against what is truly Evil in order to convey the truth of salvation from that Evil. Evil is something that needs to be dug out, like a deep-rooted weed that keeps growing until it is finally pulled from the Earth. The Christian War is not against one solitary man, but certainly against Sin, Worldly Power and the Devil who inspires the others. It is against pernicious and deep-seated Evil that cloaks itself in the truth in order to set society against itself.
This calls for much thought and prayer. We Christians need to see where that Evil really lies and how it is infecting our society. This is a confusing and daunting task, and many people, Christian and non-Christian, will be deluded - and I include myself in that. This means that, when faced with an unjust law, we will need to think carefully and understand what that law is saying. Too often we react before thinking not really understanding the issue or the situation involved. Does the law really say that everyone MUST donate their organs when they die? Is it really true that the law is allowing dying people to be harvested for anything that can be donated to another?
The next time we are tempted to react to a news story about the law, we need to feel our anger rise, then we really do have to stop, count to ten, and then reread looking for actual facts and not speculations. We also need to see where that anger within us comes from and discover the motives that we have for feeling this way. Then we pray. Then we think, taking at least a week to mull things over. And then we seek our what the true Evil is, where the real lie is. And then we act around that lie. We Christians need to become expert fencers or surgeons, able to split a hair with a well-aimed flick of the wrist, rather than lumbering reactionaries trying to remove the speck in our brother's eye with a dirty great spear as well as forgetting the beam in our own eye.
This is how we can help dispel Society's fear that the Church wishes to bring down the law wholesale, when really we seek to sanctify humanity. Lawful authorities pass unjust laws, and Christians must be seen to respect that lawful authority when they challenge the unjust law. That authority is there to prevent different beliefs tearing human beings apart in a series of crusades, purges and jihads, but that selfsame authority is fallible, vulnerable and can be distracted. The more that Christians demonstrate rational and reasonable means to make their points, and have patience before the State concedes those points, then the more the moral authority of the Church will increase. With God all things are possible, yet His will be done.
While these are worthy maxims, they are not consistent, nor do they provide a universal framework for law and for morals. Kant's ideas are certainly very compelling, but considering that Adolf Eichmann claimed to live by Kantian duty shows how either how little it can be understood, or how much it fails to be truly moral.
The fact is that, if the State were to pass a law making breaking and entering legal, we would know that this was a bad law. One could apply the maxims above, by all of which that law would certainly fail. Yet a law allowing for assisted suicide would fail the Categorical Imperative but not the Utilitarian idea of maximizing happiness, or even the Golden Rule. That's when debate comes in and where those more learned than I in legal matters construct the law.
Yet, I firmly believe in the moral law that comes from God as overriding Human Reason itself. Some may tell me that this is just silly on the grounds that I base the framework of my understanding of what is right and wrong on that which could be arbitrary and capricious. My! how people love to accuse God of being capricious.
The strength of the law comes from its power and its authority. The two are very different concepts. The law can force me to act a certain way: I don't steal because if I did, I would end up in a system of sanctions of increasing unpleasantness which I don't want. That's the power of the law: obey or be punished. The authority of the law comes from how much I buy into it, and even take ownership of it. I don't steal because I believe that the law against stealing is in the best interests of the society in which I live. The same is also true of my belief in God. If I obey Him for fear of Hell, then that's because God has the power to cast me into Hell. If I obey Him because knowing Him is the best thing for the whole of Creation, then that's a sign of His authority. Notice that, as St Thomas Aquinas would have it, God is His own authority - being with Him is the reason that persuades us to obey Him.
Yet, the law only ever has power when the sanctions that it can impose are able to act as a deterrent. Most people would indeed balk at the conditions in prison, which is why prison must be an undesirable place to be if the law is to have power. However, this is what makes religious belief very dangerous in the eyes of the law, because where the law is contradicted by religion, the strength of belief will allow the believer to endure even the worst forms of civil sanction. After all, the first Christians chose agonising deaths rather than subscribing to laws which demand that they worship the Roman Emperor. Yet this goes for any religion, not just Christianity. It is quite understandable why the State fears religious believers when legal sanctions do not have effect. It's worth noting here that actually, since we're a long time dead and likely to suffer pain anyway, what is the real power of those sanctions? The secular law can only ever have a temporary hold on people.
Thus, the strength of the law that binds communities together with a freedom of religion must rest upon the authority of the law and not its power. Religious groups of all sorts must feel that they possess ownership of the secular law that governs the country in which they find themselves.
This is very hard for me to admit as a Christian, as I believe firmly that the law should be precisely the moral law of God. That's not the case, and I don't seem to be able to change it which means I must tolerate that which I do not have the power to change, nor do I have the authority. I can't change the fact that Sunday is no longer a day free from trading. I can't change the fact that casual sex is culturally acceptable. But then, given that I am a fallible human being, it's best that I do not have the power to change the law. As well intentioned as I might be, I know that I will be capricious and I will restrict the freedom of others to live their lives. I tolerate the law while it stands, but I criticize it and seek to work around it in ways that show that I am willing to comply with the authority lawfully set over me, yet still seeking to effect the change demanded by the Moral Law which stands above the law of the land.
We have here a bit of an impasse: the State's fear of religious believers' ability to control the law by preferring to endure sanctions in order to get their own way, the religious believers' fear that their moral concerns about the content of the law will be ignored. There is a lot of fear here, and that needs to be addressed and, where possible, dispelled. Institutions always seek to hold onto what authority they have and, when they are at risk of losing it, they exercise their acts of power in order to re-establish that authority.
The Church is rather unusual in that ultimately, she possesses no power at all of Herself. Excommunication means very little these days. Yet She possesses authority because what She has comes straight from God. Any power that She has accrued comes from people who subscribe to that authority. This means that Christians must hold fast to what they believe to be true and fight, not against men, but against what is truly Evil in order to convey the truth of salvation from that Evil. Evil is something that needs to be dug out, like a deep-rooted weed that keeps growing until it is finally pulled from the Earth. The Christian War is not against one solitary man, but certainly against Sin, Worldly Power and the Devil who inspires the others. It is against pernicious and deep-seated Evil that cloaks itself in the truth in order to set society against itself.
This calls for much thought and prayer. We Christians need to see where that Evil really lies and how it is infecting our society. This is a confusing and daunting task, and many people, Christian and non-Christian, will be deluded - and I include myself in that. This means that, when faced with an unjust law, we will need to think carefully and understand what that law is saying. Too often we react before thinking not really understanding the issue or the situation involved. Does the law really say that everyone MUST donate their organs when they die? Is it really true that the law is allowing dying people to be harvested for anything that can be donated to another?
The next time we are tempted to react to a news story about the law, we need to feel our anger rise, then we really do have to stop, count to ten, and then reread looking for actual facts and not speculations. We also need to see where that anger within us comes from and discover the motives that we have for feeling this way. Then we pray. Then we think, taking at least a week to mull things over. And then we seek our what the true Evil is, where the real lie is. And then we act around that lie. We Christians need to become expert fencers or surgeons, able to split a hair with a well-aimed flick of the wrist, rather than lumbering reactionaries trying to remove the speck in our brother's eye with a dirty great spear as well as forgetting the beam in our own eye.
This is how we can help dispel Society's fear that the Church wishes to bring down the law wholesale, when really we seek to sanctify humanity. Lawful authorities pass unjust laws, and Christians must be seen to respect that lawful authority when they challenge the unjust law. That authority is there to prevent different beliefs tearing human beings apart in a series of crusades, purges and jihads, but that selfsame authority is fallible, vulnerable and can be distracted. The more that Christians demonstrate rational and reasonable means to make their points, and have patience before the State concedes those points, then the more the moral authority of the Church will increase. With God all things are possible, yet His will be done.
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity
Prayer book of 1549
GRAUNTE Lorde, wee beseche thee, that the course of thys worlde maye bee so peaceably ordred by thy governaunce, that thy congregacion may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietnes; thoroughe Jesus Christe oure Lorde.
Reflection
Physics describes the Universe with mathematical principles called laws. The theory of our evolution as a species is given by carefully stated principles which demonstrate how we have come to be. There are other laws such as the Peter Principle - being promoted to one's level of incompetence - which also show how social and corporate dynamics work. Virtually every method we use to predict future events is by application of laws and principles.
The study of these laws and ideas is fascinating and give much fulfillment to the scientist when she finds her predictions corroborated by experiment. Mathematics even seeks to derive these laws from ever more simple principles, and yet the law for the submicroscopic does not yet marry up with the law for the galactic. How do these laws themselves come to be? Are they habits formed by matter and energy which are now so engrained? If so, then how do those habits start in the first place?
With God, we have some explanation as to why the laws of the universe are the laws that they are. We have know knowledge of any other potential universes that God may have created, we only have this one with its rich tapestry of law and order which makes Science such an affirmation of being human. However, if we seek the truth more fully, then we must look at where the laws come from and ask "why?" not "how?" because "why?" is a question that transcends the scope of "how?". It is God our governor and how excellent is His name in all the Earth!
GRAUNTE Lorde, wee beseche thee, that the course of thys worlde maye bee so peaceably ordred by thy governaunce, that thy congregacion may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietnes; thoroughe Jesus Christe oure Lorde.
Reflection
Physics describes the Universe with mathematical principles called laws. The theory of our evolution as a species is given by carefully stated principles which demonstrate how we have come to be. There are other laws such as the Peter Principle - being promoted to one's level of incompetence - which also show how social and corporate dynamics work. Virtually every method we use to predict future events is by application of laws and principles.
The study of these laws and ideas is fascinating and give much fulfillment to the scientist when she finds her predictions corroborated by experiment. Mathematics even seeks to derive these laws from ever more simple principles, and yet the law for the submicroscopic does not yet marry up with the law for the galactic. How do these laws themselves come to be? Are they habits formed by matter and energy which are now so engrained? If so, then how do those habits start in the first place?
With God, we have some explanation as to why the laws of the universe are the laws that they are. We have know knowledge of any other potential universes that God may have created, we only have this one with its rich tapestry of law and order which makes Science such an affirmation of being human. However, if we seek the truth more fully, then we must look at where the laws come from and ask "why?" not "how?" because "why?" is a question that transcends the scope of "how?". It is God our governor and how excellent is His name in all the Earth!
Monday, June 29, 2015
Building a Hall of Mirrors
Update 02/07/15: I have always asked for people to correct me, or question me if they believe I am wrong. Following a conversation with one of my superiors, I realize that I needed to clarify my original post which I have done, and hope that this does indeed make things clearer.
Circumstances have conspired so that I have had a three week hiatus in writing sermons - something I have not intended. However, we find ourselves with the fact that, as human beings, we simply cannot have our way. We should thank God for this!
At the time of writing, there is a bit of a hoo-hah in the blogosphere over the United States Supreme Court legalizing the civil marriage of homosexuals. I don't need to say much on this, save what I have already said here. The fact of the matter is that Church and State are built upon very different principles, even if the development of both have been closely intertwined. In some sense we are faced with the Divine Personhood of Our Lord here who was both fully divine and fully human and inseparably so. Likewise, the life of human beings has the opportunity to find and acquire divinity in the body of Christ. Each one of us has an opportunity to see ourselves as part of both State and Church so that we can do justice to being more Christ-like. Humanity needs both State and Church in order to live.
Why is that?
Clearly, every human being needs the State in order to survive. Secular Government should provide us with all the rights that we need in order to live comfortably and in peace with other human beings who may or may not share the same beliefs. The fact of the existence of other beliefs does mean that a sympathetic State Government is necessary and vital; for the most part, there is often a sufficiently common core to human beliefs on which a secular government can be built. However, it is also true that there are some freedoms which that secular government permits which cannot be permitted by different faith groups, indeed some of those freedoms are almost intolerable to those other faiths. Given that every Christian must carry the cross on which he or she must be eventually crucified, the Church has a duty to be tolerant of the secular government and its effects in the State Society, yet not accepting of any deviation from the Christian Faith. What does this mean?
The State can pass any law that it likes, essentially, but clearly not all laws are good, just, honest or fair in the higher moral scheme. Some, like the allowing of the recognition of men as women and vice-versa, are largely self-contradictory and allow for the breakdown of common sense and common language by which human beings can communicate. The Church, in Her battle against evil must set itself in opposition to all things that are rooted in the deception of the Devil. Those things may indeed appear good and motivated from good desires, but they are often founded on some moral misconception. In any moral position, careful thought must be made as to the source of that moral position. If a State Law is found morally lacking, it must be opposed, but it must be opposed well and with thought and Love.
We know that Love bears all things, but it doesn't rejoice in iniquity but in the truth. Likewise, the Church must bear, even in tears, sorrow, sackcloth and ashes, all things legalized by the State, but also must proclaim Her doctrine against anything that simply is not true, accepting the consequences to opposing unjust and self-contradictory laws. That's the enormous challenge the Church faces. Are we willing to be arrested for our belief that God is the author of the moral law to which all secular laws must yield? We should be! But there are ways and means of opposing unjust and unfair laws which can be more effective in their execution. Some ways of opposition, as the Reformation shows, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
For example, the State has attempted to legalize Abortion (i.e. sanction the termination of a human life) under certain conditions which, it believes, reflect the freedom of human beings. Under the Law of the State, all have the freedom to choose that option. Yet, for the Church, this must be borne in agony just as Christ Himself bore the agony of each and every one of our own personal sins in His own body on the tree. The Church can never, ever accept Abortion as part of its doctrine: She must oppose it at the source. Therefore, the Church must seek ways to help women circumvent the problem, preferably by actively seeking ways to stop the need for it in the first place rather than resorting (with what amounts to abusive language and truly horrible propaganda) to protest it without due care, thought and love! Yes, the Church must be loud in its opposition, but it has to do so by looking at the reason that each and every single woman has come to an abortion clinic and treat her in the situation she is in. The Church must come to her as she is and help, not demonise.
The State needs the Church in order to survive. For the Church, this much is obvious. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus! Humanity can only ever know about what Salvation is from the Church because the Church has received the Word of God by which all people can be freed from sin. The trouble with the State is as I stated earlier: the State must allow the freedom for people to operate according to their beliefs. If God has allowed us freedom to choose Him or Not-Him, then we have to allow that freedom too as far as human beings can. The days of coerced church attendance are thankfully over and thus the churches are filled with those who have some modicum of belief, no matter how rudimentary. Of course, that makes it difficult for the Church to proclaim Her Message but, as St James and St Francis of Assisi observe, the Message is better transmitted through Acts of Mercy rather than by berating people for not believing.
Church and State are effectively a hall of mirrors created in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The State reflects the nature of humanity to the Church in all its brokenness, its sin, its frailty and fallibility, in its lack of understanding, its confusion, its need for God. The Church reflects the Divinity of God in the graces of the Holy Sacraments, in the reflection of Christ present with us, in the reflection of Heaven. There are so many times when these reflections are muddled, when the State tries to be Church and when Church tries to be State. When Church hierarchy becomes political, and Bishops are seeking to be governors of the minds of people, when the clergy act in unholy ways pretending to make sacred that which is not sacred, when ecclesiarchs seek their own vaunting and care more about their image and impact on the people around them seeking people to fawn and doff their caps, rather than the humility of Christ, then we see less of the Church and more of the State.
Yet when the State believes that the laws it passes must necessarily be passed in the Church and necessarily outride the beliefs of all people, when the State believes that the truth is necessarily passed by a majority decision, when the State declares that its law is the moral law, then the god that it is reflecting is not the God worshipped by Christians and to impose that god upon them is a denial of the very freedom that the State professes to maintain. That makes the State out to be a liar and a tyrant even as the Church has allowed Herself to be in the past.
Today we celebrate the feast of St Peter and St Paul, two very different Christians with very different lives and very different ways of being human. With St Peter, we see a fallible, bumbling, yet strong, robust, and loud humanity acting in the Name of Christ. With St Paul, we find a zealous, hard-nosed, former-polemicist and anti-Christian who realizes his mistakes with true contrition, repentance and love, and finds tolerance and acceptance in the Church once he has accepted the Truth. On them, in their frail and fallible humanity is the Church built, because they rest upon the foundation of Christ Himself. Their example of Christian witness holds up the mirror of the Church in which we see ourselves convicted of human failings, small broken and fallible, yet they hold up the mirror of Humanity in which that frail humanity is reflected to God in conjunction with their frail humanity. When you hold two mirrors up to each other, they produce reflections of reflections of reflections all the way to infinity. And Infinity is where we find God!
If the State says that homosexuals may marry meaning that homosexual couples are eligible for the same Statutory Rights as heterosexual married couple, then that is surely easier for the Church to tolerate as it preaches about the moral benefits of heterosexual marriage and celibacy outside marriage, because the rights that come from laws are designed to care for human needs and people have a legal right not to listen to the Church: the Church must tolerate that freedom. However, the State has no moral right to demand that the Church recognise that homosexual marriage is a sacrament and that the Church has a duty to confect such a sacrament. If that means that the Church be stripped of Her legal rights to perform legal marriages, then that can only be a good thing.
Ultimately all human authority will pass away. There will be no need for State laws, or even Church Canon Law since we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ whose Divinity and Humanity will judge us all. Nor must we ever think that any one of us is purely State or Church, for within each of us Church and State are inextricably mixed. The State as a human institution will pass away to be replaced with the Divine Rule of Christ. When this happens the Church will be revealed as the true Bride of Christ and will yield up Her mandate to Her Bridegroom and King.
It is right that Church and State be separate, neither one becoming the other and operating in different spheres, but they must both recognize that they are not actually separable. The key is listening, but listening very carefully to expose the deceit with the mirror of the Truth.
Circumstances have conspired so that I have had a three week hiatus in writing sermons - something I have not intended. However, we find ourselves with the fact that, as human beings, we simply cannot have our way. We should thank God for this!
At the time of writing, there is a bit of a hoo-hah in the blogosphere over the United States Supreme Court legalizing the civil marriage of homosexuals. I don't need to say much on this, save what I have already said here. The fact of the matter is that Church and State are built upon very different principles, even if the development of both have been closely intertwined. In some sense we are faced with the Divine Personhood of Our Lord here who was both fully divine and fully human and inseparably so. Likewise, the life of human beings has the opportunity to find and acquire divinity in the body of Christ. Each one of us has an opportunity to see ourselves as part of both State and Church so that we can do justice to being more Christ-like. Humanity needs both State and Church in order to live.
Why is that?
Clearly, every human being needs the State in order to survive. Secular Government should provide us with all the rights that we need in order to live comfortably and in peace with other human beings who may or may not share the same beliefs. The fact of the existence of other beliefs does mean that a sympathetic State Government is necessary and vital; for the most part, there is often a sufficiently common core to human beliefs on which a secular government can be built. However, it is also true that there are some freedoms which that secular government permits which cannot be permitted by different faith groups, indeed some of those freedoms are almost intolerable to those other faiths. Given that every Christian must carry the cross on which he or she must be eventually crucified, the Church has a duty to be tolerant of the secular government and its effects in the State Society, yet not accepting of any deviation from the Christian Faith. What does this mean?
The State can pass any law that it likes, essentially, but clearly not all laws are good, just, honest or fair in the higher moral scheme. Some, like the allowing of the recognition of men as women and vice-versa, are largely self-contradictory and allow for the breakdown of common sense and common language by which human beings can communicate. The Church, in Her battle against evil must set itself in opposition to all things that are rooted in the deception of the Devil. Those things may indeed appear good and motivated from good desires, but they are often founded on some moral misconception. In any moral position, careful thought must be made as to the source of that moral position. If a State Law is found morally lacking, it must be opposed, but it must be opposed well and with thought and Love.
We know that Love bears all things, but it doesn't rejoice in iniquity but in the truth. Likewise, the Church must bear, even in tears, sorrow, sackcloth and ashes, all things legalized by the State, but also must proclaim Her doctrine against anything that simply is not true, accepting the consequences to opposing unjust and self-contradictory laws. That's the enormous challenge the Church faces. Are we willing to be arrested for our belief that God is the author of the moral law to which all secular laws must yield? We should be! But there are ways and means of opposing unjust and unfair laws which can be more effective in their execution. Some ways of opposition, as the Reformation shows, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
For example, the State has attempted to legalize Abortion (i.e. sanction the termination of a human life) under certain conditions which, it believes, reflect the freedom of human beings. Under the Law of the State, all have the freedom to choose that option. Yet, for the Church, this must be borne in agony just as Christ Himself bore the agony of each and every one of our own personal sins in His own body on the tree. The Church can never, ever accept Abortion as part of its doctrine: She must oppose it at the source. Therefore, the Church must seek ways to help women circumvent the problem, preferably by actively seeking ways to stop the need for it in the first place rather than resorting (with what amounts to abusive language and truly horrible propaganda) to protest it without due care, thought and love! Yes, the Church must be loud in its opposition, but it has to do so by looking at the reason that each and every single woman has come to an abortion clinic and treat her in the situation she is in. The Church must come to her as she is and help, not demonise.
The State needs the Church in order to survive. For the Church, this much is obvious. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus! Humanity can only ever know about what Salvation is from the Church because the Church has received the Word of God by which all people can be freed from sin. The trouble with the State is as I stated earlier: the State must allow the freedom for people to operate according to their beliefs. If God has allowed us freedom to choose Him or Not-Him, then we have to allow that freedom too as far as human beings can. The days of coerced church attendance are thankfully over and thus the churches are filled with those who have some modicum of belief, no matter how rudimentary. Of course, that makes it difficult for the Church to proclaim Her Message but, as St James and St Francis of Assisi observe, the Message is better transmitted through Acts of Mercy rather than by berating people for not believing.
Church and State are effectively a hall of mirrors created in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The State reflects the nature of humanity to the Church in all its brokenness, its sin, its frailty and fallibility, in its lack of understanding, its confusion, its need for God. The Church reflects the Divinity of God in the graces of the Holy Sacraments, in the reflection of Christ present with us, in the reflection of Heaven. There are so many times when these reflections are muddled, when the State tries to be Church and when Church tries to be State. When Church hierarchy becomes political, and Bishops are seeking to be governors of the minds of people, when the clergy act in unholy ways pretending to make sacred that which is not sacred, when ecclesiarchs seek their own vaunting and care more about their image and impact on the people around them seeking people to fawn and doff their caps, rather than the humility of Christ, then we see less of the Church and more of the State.
Yet when the State believes that the laws it passes must necessarily be passed in the Church and necessarily outride the beliefs of all people, when the State believes that the truth is necessarily passed by a majority decision, when the State declares that its law is the moral law, then the god that it is reflecting is not the God worshipped by Christians and to impose that god upon them is a denial of the very freedom that the State professes to maintain. That makes the State out to be a liar and a tyrant even as the Church has allowed Herself to be in the past.
Today we celebrate the feast of St Peter and St Paul, two very different Christians with very different lives and very different ways of being human. With St Peter, we see a fallible, bumbling, yet strong, robust, and loud humanity acting in the Name of Christ. With St Paul, we find a zealous, hard-nosed, former-polemicist and anti-Christian who realizes his mistakes with true contrition, repentance and love, and finds tolerance and acceptance in the Church once he has accepted the Truth. On them, in their frail and fallible humanity is the Church built, because they rest upon the foundation of Christ Himself. Their example of Christian witness holds up the mirror of the Church in which we see ourselves convicted of human failings, small broken and fallible, yet they hold up the mirror of Humanity in which that frail humanity is reflected to God in conjunction with their frail humanity. When you hold two mirrors up to each other, they produce reflections of reflections of reflections all the way to infinity. And Infinity is where we find God!
If the State says that homosexuals may marry meaning that homosexual couples are eligible for the same Statutory Rights as heterosexual married couple, then that is surely easier for the Church to tolerate as it preaches about the moral benefits of heterosexual marriage and celibacy outside marriage, because the rights that come from laws are designed to care for human needs and people have a legal right not to listen to the Church: the Church must tolerate that freedom. However, the State has no moral right to demand that the Church recognise that homosexual marriage is a sacrament and that the Church has a duty to confect such a sacrament. If that means that the Church be stripped of Her legal rights to perform legal marriages, then that can only be a good thing.
Ultimately all human authority will pass away. There will be no need for State laws, or even Church Canon Law since we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ whose Divinity and Humanity will judge us all. Nor must we ever think that any one of us is purely State or Church, for within each of us Church and State are inextricably mixed. The State as a human institution will pass away to be replaced with the Divine Rule of Christ. When this happens the Church will be revealed as the true Bride of Christ and will yield up Her mandate to Her Bridegroom and King.
It is right that Church and State be separate, neither one becoming the other and operating in different spheres, but they must both recognize that they are not actually separable. The key is listening, but listening very carefully to expose the deceit with the mirror of the Truth.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Collect for the fourth Sunday after Trinity
The prayer book of 1662
O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
Whether Catholic, Reformed or both, one of the things that makes Archbishop Cranmer so inherently loveable as a liturgist is that he can do justice to tradition in the vernacular. He may not have been a Catholic in the Vincentian definition of the word, he certainly was not the Pope's man nor was he a puritan in the same vein as Oliver Cromwell a century later with its obvious change and refinement. Yet his, with Bishop Coverdale, is the mastery of language. If he had seen fit to change this collect at all, he would have done so. We can truly say then that this is a collect that passes over the Reformation unchanged and is good Anglican Catholic doctrine.
Here we see Cranmer and St Thomas Aquinas in harmony and it is beautiful. A man is strong, another is stronger, but God is strongest because God is what it means to be strong. A woman is holy, another woman holier, but God is Holiest because God is what it means to be Holy. We have no true knowledge of things without first seeing that knowledge in God Himself. All good things come from God including the faith to reach out to Him. The only way we can be strong enough to escape the clutches of death is to draw strength from Him, not to trust in our own strength. The only way we can be holy is not by prating and preaching, nor dressing up in cassocks, birettas, mitres and tiaras, or fasting long and sore, self-flagellation, self-mutilation, mumbling from breviaries or prayer books in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Coptic et c., but rather by seeing that the only way to be holy is to draw that holiness from God. Holiness is separation for God's work, and therefore nothing we can do can make us Holy, save only by choosing to seek God first so that all things can be added unto us.
We humans are strange beasts and can shipwreck our salvation simply by forgetting from Whom good things come. Being both flesh and spirit, we straddle the knife-edge between the temporal and eternal. Only God can freely move between both! We must rely on His ability to draw us across that knife-edge in the substance of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
Whether Catholic, Reformed or both, one of the things that makes Archbishop Cranmer so inherently loveable as a liturgist is that he can do justice to tradition in the vernacular. He may not have been a Catholic in the Vincentian definition of the word, he certainly was not the Pope's man nor was he a puritan in the same vein as Oliver Cromwell a century later with its obvious change and refinement. Yet his, with Bishop Coverdale, is the mastery of language. If he had seen fit to change this collect at all, he would have done so. We can truly say then that this is a collect that passes over the Reformation unchanged and is good Anglican Catholic doctrine.
Here we see Cranmer and St Thomas Aquinas in harmony and it is beautiful. A man is strong, another is stronger, but God is strongest because God is what it means to be strong. A woman is holy, another woman holier, but God is Holiest because God is what it means to be Holy. We have no true knowledge of things without first seeing that knowledge in God Himself. All good things come from God including the faith to reach out to Him. The only way we can be strong enough to escape the clutches of death is to draw strength from Him, not to trust in our own strength. The only way we can be holy is not by prating and preaching, nor dressing up in cassocks, birettas, mitres and tiaras, or fasting long and sore, self-flagellation, self-mutilation, mumbling from breviaries or prayer books in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew or Coptic et c., but rather by seeing that the only way to be holy is to draw that holiness from God. Holiness is separation for God's work, and therefore nothing we can do can make us Holy, save only by choosing to seek God first so that all things can be added unto us.
We humans are strange beasts and can shipwreck our salvation simply by forgetting from Whom good things come. Being both flesh and spirit, we straddle the knife-edge between the temporal and eternal. Only God can freely move between both! We must rely on His ability to draw us across that knife-edge in the substance of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc" Prayer
I lost my breviary last night and had to resort to a copy of the breviary in Latin which I don't like doing since, being an Anglican Catholic, it's important that I say my prayers in English. Of course it was good for me to practise my Latin which is very rusty. However, frustrated after a day of not quite getting the rhythm of the psalms right, I said a prayer to St Anthony and within 10 minutes I found that pesky breviary which had fallen down the back of a table!
Of course, those of you with a rational mind and/or Protestant sensibilities will balk at what I've done. Have I just given into a popish superstition, or have I just committed a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy?
To the charge of the former, prayers to the saints are no different from asking a friend to pray for you. That doesn't mean that you should not pray to God yourself, but rather that you pray with someone. Membership of the Church means that we are all united in Christ even if that unity is not an organisational one. We believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, the Communion of the Saints, and in Eternal life - a life not bound by Time - for those who love God and believe in His name, so to deny that the saints pray for us flies in the face of believing that they have communion with us or that they have eternal life.
When we ask people to pray for us, we gain solidarity in being with the Church. A lost breviary is not that important in the grand scheme of things, but it is irksome and that which is irksome can lead one into sin if one is not careful. To know that there are folk on your side is comforting and can draw you back from falling into sin. St Anthony is the go-to saint for lost things, and I didn't expect him to appear and get down on his hands and knees and look under the piano. I simply asked him to pray for me for help. I also prayed to God for help - that's the deal. That help came, and now I can say my office for the Nativity of St John the Baptist in English.
Ah! But then, the skeptical reader will say "Post hoc ergo propter hoc!" ("after this therefore because of this") meaning that they say that I believe that my prayer was the cause of finding my breviary. The post hoc ergo propter hoc (PHEPH) fallacy is a confusion of coincidences. If M.R.James whistles at night and a wind just happens to blow, he might infer that his whistling has caused the wind to blow. That is PHEPH. Did I find my breviary because I prayed for it? If I'm honest, I cannot be sure, and I am very glad I cannot because there is something very sinister that could lurk at the bottom of the way we pray for things. If I didn't find it, then I believe I would have been given a way forward - a way I might not have been comfortable with but which would have been better for me if I accepted it as part of God's way forward.
I have said before that we should not treat God like a genie. When we pray, we need to make sure that we honour the majesty and supreme authority of God, making sure that we are complicit with His will. He wants us to be more than just happy which is why we don't get our own way with superficial happiness. Since God is infinite, little things matter to Him, but what is more important to Him is that we should not fall into sin. We need to pray for our own suffering (yes, that's fine), but we pray for the suffering of others too which may be more than we could ever imagine, or even different from what we can imagine!
No doubt we all have The List in our Parishes, a collection, read out at Mass each week, of names of people who need our prayers. This list never seems to change much; week-in, week-out we read Edith's name not knowing who on Earth Edith is, but knowing that she has been on the list a long time. Why isn't she getting better? Likewise, The List seems remarkably incomplete. Why are some people's names missed off? Is it deliberate? Are we failing in our duty to pray for the needs of folk regardless of who they are, where they are, or whether they are even Christian? We are bound to pray for the whole world. Indeed, when I raise the chalice at the Offertory, I pray on behalf of my congregation for our salvation and that of the whole world.
This is where I believe Archbishop Cranmer has it spot on with his prayer for all sorts and conditions of men.
What I find particularly helpful is that it is not specific about how God is to answer prayer. The man who has lost an arm wants it back. While it is perfectly possible for God to restore it (as Jesus did with the ear of Malchus) that's often not the way forward. The majority of amputees do not receive their missing limbs back again, and that's a source of sorrow for the amputee. It should also be a source of sorrow for the Church, indeed every reasonable human being. However, if we are Christian, then we have to trust God implicitly that the loss of a limb will change the world for the better in some remarkably profound way and wait for His promise of glory. Our Lord Jesus reminds us not to cling on to things earthly so that we can find life with Him, nor does He view our sufferings and labours as worthless. He sees them as part of Himself, even as He sees the Church as part of Himself and us as part of each other.
When we pray, we pray for God's will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Human beings can oppose God's will since He has given us that very freedom to do so, but we pray in that freedom that our will be joined to His. Out of all suffering caused by Human Disobedience (and it may yet possibly be that all our suffering is caused by human disobedience somewhere down the line), God provides Salvation. We have to remember the sovereign authority of God which acts supremely in unfathomable ways even around the free-will that we possess. Things happen for a reason, and we might not know the source of that reason, but we do know that the happening is a consequence of God's law. We may not know how our own prayer affects the world but we can be sure that it does, not by changing the mind of God, but rather by bringing ourselves and all that we are to Him in trust, humility and love, so that we might be permitted to see what He will do and be given patience to wait until He does it. If we take this approach then accusations of PHEPH become vacuous.
We do pray to change the world, it's just that those changes may not be seen with eyes that will not see. We pray that we might all, each and every one of us, may know God better, and that we recognize the part we play in attending to the suffering of others too.
Of course, those of you with a rational mind and/or Protestant sensibilities will balk at what I've done. Have I just given into a popish superstition, or have I just committed a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy?
To the charge of the former, prayers to the saints are no different from asking a friend to pray for you. That doesn't mean that you should not pray to God yourself, but rather that you pray with someone. Membership of the Church means that we are all united in Christ even if that unity is not an organisational one. We believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, the Communion of the Saints, and in Eternal life - a life not bound by Time - for those who love God and believe in His name, so to deny that the saints pray for us flies in the face of believing that they have communion with us or that they have eternal life.
When we ask people to pray for us, we gain solidarity in being with the Church. A lost breviary is not that important in the grand scheme of things, but it is irksome and that which is irksome can lead one into sin if one is not careful. To know that there are folk on your side is comforting and can draw you back from falling into sin. St Anthony is the go-to saint for lost things, and I didn't expect him to appear and get down on his hands and knees and look under the piano. I simply asked him to pray for me for help. I also prayed to God for help - that's the deal. That help came, and now I can say my office for the Nativity of St John the Baptist in English.
Ah! But then, the skeptical reader will say "Post hoc ergo propter hoc!" ("after this therefore because of this") meaning that they say that I believe that my prayer was the cause of finding my breviary. The post hoc ergo propter hoc (PHEPH) fallacy is a confusion of coincidences. If M.R.James whistles at night and a wind just happens to blow, he might infer that his whistling has caused the wind to blow. That is PHEPH. Did I find my breviary because I prayed for it? If I'm honest, I cannot be sure, and I am very glad I cannot because there is something very sinister that could lurk at the bottom of the way we pray for things. If I didn't find it, then I believe I would have been given a way forward - a way I might not have been comfortable with but which would have been better for me if I accepted it as part of God's way forward.
I have said before that we should not treat God like a genie. When we pray, we need to make sure that we honour the majesty and supreme authority of God, making sure that we are complicit with His will. He wants us to be more than just happy which is why we don't get our own way with superficial happiness. Since God is infinite, little things matter to Him, but what is more important to Him is that we should not fall into sin. We need to pray for our own suffering (yes, that's fine), but we pray for the suffering of others too which may be more than we could ever imagine, or even different from what we can imagine!
No doubt we all have The List in our Parishes, a collection, read out at Mass each week, of names of people who need our prayers. This list never seems to change much; week-in, week-out we read Edith's name not knowing who on Earth Edith is, but knowing that she has been on the list a long time. Why isn't she getting better? Likewise, The List seems remarkably incomplete. Why are some people's names missed off? Is it deliberate? Are we failing in our duty to pray for the needs of folk regardless of who they are, where they are, or whether they are even Christian? We are bound to pray for the whole world. Indeed, when I raise the chalice at the Offertory, I pray on behalf of my congregation for our salvation and that of the whole world.
This is where I believe Archbishop Cranmer has it spot on with his prayer for all sorts and conditions of men.
Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those, who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; [*especially those for whom our prayers are desired;] that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions.
What I find particularly helpful is that it is not specific about how God is to answer prayer. The man who has lost an arm wants it back. While it is perfectly possible for God to restore it (as Jesus did with the ear of Malchus) that's often not the way forward. The majority of amputees do not receive their missing limbs back again, and that's a source of sorrow for the amputee. It should also be a source of sorrow for the Church, indeed every reasonable human being. However, if we are Christian, then we have to trust God implicitly that the loss of a limb will change the world for the better in some remarkably profound way and wait for His promise of glory. Our Lord Jesus reminds us not to cling on to things earthly so that we can find life with Him, nor does He view our sufferings and labours as worthless. He sees them as part of Himself, even as He sees the Church as part of Himself and us as part of each other.
When we pray, we pray for God's will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Human beings can oppose God's will since He has given us that very freedom to do so, but we pray in that freedom that our will be joined to His. Out of all suffering caused by Human Disobedience (and it may yet possibly be that all our suffering is caused by human disobedience somewhere down the line), God provides Salvation. We have to remember the sovereign authority of God which acts supremely in unfathomable ways even around the free-will that we possess. Things happen for a reason, and we might not know the source of that reason, but we do know that the happening is a consequence of God's law. We may not know how our own prayer affects the world but we can be sure that it does, not by changing the mind of God, but rather by bringing ourselves and all that we are to Him in trust, humility and love, so that we might be permitted to see what He will do and be given patience to wait until He does it. If we take this approach then accusations of PHEPH become vacuous.
We do pray to change the world, it's just that those changes may not be seen with eyes that will not see. We pray that we might all, each and every one of us, may know God better, and that we recognize the part we play in attending to the suffering of others too.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Collect for the Third Sunday after Trinity
The 1549 Prayerbook
LORDE, we beseche thee mercifully to heare us, and unto whom thou hast geven an heartie desyre to pray; graunt that by thy mightie ayde we may be defended; through Jesus Christ our Lorde.
The 1662 Prayerbook
O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom though hast given an hearty desire to pray, may be comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
How often do you pray daily? Do you pray, as St Paul tells us, without ceasing? True prayer is something with which we can wrestle. We don't want to treat God like a genie who will grant us our heart's desire - that is why quite a few of our petitions are answered with a firm "no" or "not yet". We don't want to come creeping or crawling obsequiously as if we had no goodness of our own - God made us good and bids us step boldly before the throne of grace remembering that He wants us before that throne. Nor do we want to fill God's ears with prattle about every little thing -a conversation must cut two ways.
There are obstacles to praying properly. There are outside distractions from which we try to withdraw in order to go into our room and shut the door. Yet there are also interior distractions. There's often a great difficulty in bringing ourselves before God. And so we must pray for the strength to pray! The devil does not want us to hear God speak to us in that still small voice that lies beyond human words which is why we end up with so much prattle resounding in our heads.
Yet all the assaults of our enemies are like the choppy surface of the ocean. Our strength lies in the depth that God gives us and where the splashing on the surface doesn't reach even though it continues unabated. If we trust God and allow ourselves to sink below the surface trusting in God to hold us safely in Him, our prayer becomes deep and beyond words. We are not so miserable so as to be unable to find God deep within, for that is where His kingdom is.
LORDE, we beseche thee mercifully to heare us, and unto whom thou hast geven an heartie desyre to pray; graunt that by thy mightie ayde we may be defended; through Jesus Christ our Lorde.
The 1662 Prayerbook
O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom though hast given an hearty desire to pray, may be comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
How often do you pray daily? Do you pray, as St Paul tells us, without ceasing? True prayer is something with which we can wrestle. We don't want to treat God like a genie who will grant us our heart's desire - that is why quite a few of our petitions are answered with a firm "no" or "not yet". We don't want to come creeping or crawling obsequiously as if we had no goodness of our own - God made us good and bids us step boldly before the throne of grace remembering that He wants us before that throne. Nor do we want to fill God's ears with prattle about every little thing -a conversation must cut two ways.
There are obstacles to praying properly. There are outside distractions from which we try to withdraw in order to go into our room and shut the door. Yet there are also interior distractions. There's often a great difficulty in bringing ourselves before God. And so we must pray for the strength to pray! The devil does not want us to hear God speak to us in that still small voice that lies beyond human words which is why we end up with so much prattle resounding in our heads.
Yet all the assaults of our enemies are like the choppy surface of the ocean. Our strength lies in the depth that God gives us and where the splashing on the surface doesn't reach even though it continues unabated. If we trust God and allow ourselves to sink below the surface trusting in God to hold us safely in Him, our prayer becomes deep and beyond words. We are not so miserable so as to be unable to find God deep within, for that is where His kingdom is.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
General Genus and Shared Species
Oh dear. I did want not to pass comment on the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner situation, but then Rachel Dolezal turns up and suddenly we get faced with the questions, "Can I be what I want to be?" and "Do I have to be what I am?"These sound like rather philosophical questions along the lines of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" yet here, I think, we find ourselves at what is actually separating Church from Society. The question is that of supreme authority, and this means that there are two languages which are developing which are becoming very difficult to translate into the other.
Who has the right to determine who I am? Well, clearly I have a certain level of rights, and these are rights that must be observed by society. If I choose to call myself Marmaduke, and express that intention through the channels of law, then that is a solemn declaration that I am indeed called Marmaduke. I have that freedom of choice. Yet, I could declare that I live in Puddletown. However, my mail would never reach my door, because no-one else would recognise it, unless there was a unanimous verdict by the powers-that-be to agree to call the place Puddletown. I clearly don't have the right to change the identity of the place where I live because I share that identity with the people of my hometown.
The way we describe things is in terms of commonality with other things. The old scholastics called this being of a genus, and biological names still are given in terms of the general genus and the particular species. The tiger is the Panthera tigris, the lion the Panthera leo, and the leopard the Panthera pardus. We recognise that they have something in common (their genus) and something that is different (their species). This is how we classify things.
Now, readers of this little blogling will know that I have often quibbled about definitions of Anglicanism and believe that I claim to be an Anglican. Actually, I don't. I claim to be an Anglican Catholic, treating the term "Anglican" as an adjective to describe "Catholic". Others see the word "Anglican" as being a noun and they follow a different though, God willing, parallel path which will meet at the great Infinity. I have specified very carefully what I mean, and others of my Jurisdiction will by-and-large, agree with that definition. Do I have the right to call myself Anglican? I do, but confusion arises when I do so. Therefore, to ensure that I limit confusion and preserve clarity of the meaning, I call myself Anglican Catholic by which I mean "one who subscribes to the doctrine of the Seven Oeumenical Councils interpreted in the English manner."
Yet, let us look carefully at Jenner and Dolezal for we have some issues of identity here, and they are two faces of a common problem that is dividing Society. Jenner was born of the male sex. Jenner's physical body conformed to the male genus which is shared by me, by Simon Cowell, by Stephen Fry, by the Dalai Lama, by Origen, by Aron Ralston, and by Henry VIII. Yet Jenner claims that Jenner is a woman (forgive the tortuous language but I want to be as respectful as I can and yet make my point as carefully as I can. ) which I am not, nor are the others that I have mentioned, and yet Jenner still retains the same characteristics, the same genetic instructions that make me et cit., male.
We notice that the loss of an arm does stop Aron Ralston from being a human being, and that castration does not stop Origen from being male, and thus we do know that the genus of being human goes beyond having two arms, and the loss of genitals doesn't change the genus of being male. That identity lies much, much deeper. Indeed, any person genetically identical to Ralston would have two arms and any genetically identical to Origen would have clear male genitalia.
Yet the same is true of Jenner. Jenner and I have the same genetic identity of being male. We share it and yet Jenner seeks the right not to share it.
The same argument goes for Dolezal. She "identifies" with being black, and yet she does not share the same properties as any whose ancestry is indigenous to the African continent. Indeed, there are white members of my family who have been born in Africa, so simply being born there doesn't make them black! Being black is another physical characteristic and while it is good that Dolezal is fighting for true and lasting racial equality, she does not share the physical, genetic characteristic of those whose rights she is championing.
What this all boils down to is the individual's rage against not being who he wants to be. We seem to want the absolute right to choose our own being, or to be recognised by all people as being who we say we are. This is why the law courts are being involved heavily in areas of identity. The law courts pronounce what Society believes to be true. Yet, there is a problem when a woman born male tries to enter female spaces only to be told that he does not share the property of being female. This is a big issue in LGBT relations. If lesbians identify as women and transgender men identify as women, then the must agree that they share the same property. But they don't! Indeed, for the feminist fighting for equal rights for women, the transgender man does not share the property of being a woman. There is this divide and both cry out to the law to pronounce Society's universal acceptance.
This is the same issue with marriage between heterosexual and homosexual couples. From a legal point of view, my marriage to my wife should be legally equivalent to that of Stephen Fry and Elliot Spencer. Just as my wife should automatically inherit my goods on the event of my death, so should Elliot receive Stephen's goods. From a legal point of view, the partnerships are recognised and given the same legal rights. However, can Stephen bear Elliot's son? Irrelevant? Yet, that is something that can probably happen in an heterosexual marriage and definitely not in an homosexual marriage. That is, of course, the couple are truly homosexual i.e. of the same sex! Here is a property of marriage that is not shared between the two ideas.
Let us then get back to the question in hand. Do we have the right to declare who we are? Does a man have the right to be recognised as a woman? This is quite painful, because clearly there are strong feelings here and there is a genuine belief that there is something wrong. That strength of feeling needs to be recognised and respected, but there are limitations to the extent that it can be accepted. If we are allowed to choose who we are by law, then eventually the terms "male" and "female" will become absolutely meaningless. Essentially, we have here the situation that arises from rejecting Kant's categorical imperative.
The greater problem, of course, lies with the relationship with he Church. We in the Church have two fundamental objective facts upon which we build our understanding of the world which can be summed up in a verse from the Jubilate: "know ye that the Lord, He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." We take our being from God which means that we have unalterable characteristics determined by God which we share with some but not other human beings. To change them would be to change who we are, and since it is God who gives us being, we have no right to change those characteristics even if we had the power.
Thus, the Church has no authority or right to challenge God's instituted characteristics. The demand for the ordination of women, the demand that a man have the right to universal acceptance as a women, the demand that a homosexual marriage be the same as heterosexual marriage cannot be met as they fly in the face in the belief in a creator God who has made the decision first. However, the more that Society rejects the existence and authority of God, the more that human beings will believe that they are the sole arbiters of their own existence and thus there will be tensions in the Law and in Society the more that these situations arise.
Of course, I will probably hear the transgender person say, "why do you hate me? why can you not allow me to be me?" What I say in return is, "I do not hate you, one little bit. The fact is: I do not understand you; you seem to be speaking a different language from me and I can make no sense of it at the moment. Until we do understand each other, let us not assume that the words we say are words of hatred but rather a search for the clarity that we have lost in the meanings of words. I recognise you as a fellow human being and therefore worthy of my love and respect, regardless of how we see the world. That is what my God teaches me. I will pray for you as most assuredly I beg your prayers. We are only human after all!"
One of the facts of being human in the Created order is that we find in ourselves things that we hate about ourselves and we burn to change them. We find ourselves as Dr Jekyll wrestling with Mr. Hyde. That is part of the human condition. We are fallen, imperfect, misshapen, by the world. by our circumstances and by our own choices. Ultimately, we must look at the mess we've got ourselves into, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and walk back to the Father we left behind as the prodigal sons and daughters that we are. Then and only then will we be able to accept ourselves as the people He created us to be.
Who has the right to determine who I am? Well, clearly I have a certain level of rights, and these are rights that must be observed by society. If I choose to call myself Marmaduke, and express that intention through the channels of law, then that is a solemn declaration that I am indeed called Marmaduke. I have that freedom of choice. Yet, I could declare that I live in Puddletown. However, my mail would never reach my door, because no-one else would recognise it, unless there was a unanimous verdict by the powers-that-be to agree to call the place Puddletown. I clearly don't have the right to change the identity of the place where I live because I share that identity with the people of my hometown.
The way we describe things is in terms of commonality with other things. The old scholastics called this being of a genus, and biological names still are given in terms of the general genus and the particular species. The tiger is the Panthera tigris, the lion the Panthera leo, and the leopard the Panthera pardus. We recognise that they have something in common (their genus) and something that is different (their species). This is how we classify things.
Now, readers of this little blogling will know that I have often quibbled about definitions of Anglicanism and believe that I claim to be an Anglican. Actually, I don't. I claim to be an Anglican Catholic, treating the term "Anglican" as an adjective to describe "Catholic". Others see the word "Anglican" as being a noun and they follow a different though, God willing, parallel path which will meet at the great Infinity. I have specified very carefully what I mean, and others of my Jurisdiction will by-and-large, agree with that definition. Do I have the right to call myself Anglican? I do, but confusion arises when I do so. Therefore, to ensure that I limit confusion and preserve clarity of the meaning, I call myself Anglican Catholic by which I mean "one who subscribes to the doctrine of the Seven Oeumenical Councils interpreted in the English manner."
Yet, let us look carefully at Jenner and Dolezal for we have some issues of identity here, and they are two faces of a common problem that is dividing Society. Jenner was born of the male sex. Jenner's physical body conformed to the male genus which is shared by me, by Simon Cowell, by Stephen Fry, by the Dalai Lama, by Origen, by Aron Ralston, and by Henry VIII. Yet Jenner claims that Jenner is a woman (forgive the tortuous language but I want to be as respectful as I can and yet make my point as carefully as I can. ) which I am not, nor are the others that I have mentioned, and yet Jenner still retains the same characteristics, the same genetic instructions that make me et cit., male.
We notice that the loss of an arm does stop Aron Ralston from being a human being, and that castration does not stop Origen from being male, and thus we do know that the genus of being human goes beyond having two arms, and the loss of genitals doesn't change the genus of being male. That identity lies much, much deeper. Indeed, any person genetically identical to Ralston would have two arms and any genetically identical to Origen would have clear male genitalia.
Yet the same is true of Jenner. Jenner and I have the same genetic identity of being male. We share it and yet Jenner seeks the right not to share it.
The same argument goes for Dolezal. She "identifies" with being black, and yet she does not share the same properties as any whose ancestry is indigenous to the African continent. Indeed, there are white members of my family who have been born in Africa, so simply being born there doesn't make them black! Being black is another physical characteristic and while it is good that Dolezal is fighting for true and lasting racial equality, she does not share the physical, genetic characteristic of those whose rights she is championing.
What this all boils down to is the individual's rage against not being who he wants to be. We seem to want the absolute right to choose our own being, or to be recognised by all people as being who we say we are. This is why the law courts are being involved heavily in areas of identity. The law courts pronounce what Society believes to be true. Yet, there is a problem when a woman born male tries to enter female spaces only to be told that he does not share the property of being female. This is a big issue in LGBT relations. If lesbians identify as women and transgender men identify as women, then the must agree that they share the same property. But they don't! Indeed, for the feminist fighting for equal rights for women, the transgender man does not share the property of being a woman. There is this divide and both cry out to the law to pronounce Society's universal acceptance.
This is the same issue with marriage between heterosexual and homosexual couples. From a legal point of view, my marriage to my wife should be legally equivalent to that of Stephen Fry and Elliot Spencer. Just as my wife should automatically inherit my goods on the event of my death, so should Elliot receive Stephen's goods. From a legal point of view, the partnerships are recognised and given the same legal rights. However, can Stephen bear Elliot's son? Irrelevant? Yet, that is something that can probably happen in an heterosexual marriage and definitely not in an homosexual marriage. That is, of course, the couple are truly homosexual i.e. of the same sex! Here is a property of marriage that is not shared between the two ideas.
Let us then get back to the question in hand. Do we have the right to declare who we are? Does a man have the right to be recognised as a woman? This is quite painful, because clearly there are strong feelings here and there is a genuine belief that there is something wrong. That strength of feeling needs to be recognised and respected, but there are limitations to the extent that it can be accepted. If we are allowed to choose who we are by law, then eventually the terms "male" and "female" will become absolutely meaningless. Essentially, we have here the situation that arises from rejecting Kant's categorical imperative.
The greater problem, of course, lies with the relationship with he Church. We in the Church have two fundamental objective facts upon which we build our understanding of the world which can be summed up in a verse from the Jubilate: "know ye that the Lord, He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." We take our being from God which means that we have unalterable characteristics determined by God which we share with some but not other human beings. To change them would be to change who we are, and since it is God who gives us being, we have no right to change those characteristics even if we had the power.
Thus, the Church has no authority or right to challenge God's instituted characteristics. The demand for the ordination of women, the demand that a man have the right to universal acceptance as a women, the demand that a homosexual marriage be the same as heterosexual marriage cannot be met as they fly in the face in the belief in a creator God who has made the decision first. However, the more that Society rejects the existence and authority of God, the more that human beings will believe that they are the sole arbiters of their own existence and thus there will be tensions in the Law and in Society the more that these situations arise.
Of course, I will probably hear the transgender person say, "why do you hate me? why can you not allow me to be me?" What I say in return is, "I do not hate you, one little bit. The fact is: I do not understand you; you seem to be speaking a different language from me and I can make no sense of it at the moment. Until we do understand each other, let us not assume that the words we say are words of hatred but rather a search for the clarity that we have lost in the meanings of words. I recognise you as a fellow human being and therefore worthy of my love and respect, regardless of how we see the world. That is what my God teaches me. I will pray for you as most assuredly I beg your prayers. We are only human after all!"
One of the facts of being human in the Created order is that we find in ourselves things that we hate about ourselves and we burn to change them. We find ourselves as Dr Jekyll wrestling with Mr. Hyde. That is part of the human condition. We are fallen, imperfect, misshapen, by the world. by our circumstances and by our own choices. Ultimately, we must look at the mess we've got ourselves into, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and walk back to the Father we left behind as the prodigal sons and daughters that we are. Then and only then will we be able to accept ourselves as the people He created us to be.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Devotion from Benediction: June 2015
We gaze upon a mystery, knowing that Christ has promised us His true presence, and that He is faithful. We gaze upon Our Lord who is always merciful and loving, giving us that which we do not deserve and withholding from us that which we do deserve.
As sinners, we cannot be where God is as darkness cannot be where light is, yet Christ Himself cleanses us through the water and blood that pour forth from his pierced sacred heart. By His blood we are washed free from sin and may stand in the presence of God.
By water in our Baptism we are made new and our wills cleansed so that we may love God all the more perfectly, our spiritual senses opened to His divine mercy. By His heart we are pulled up into the heavenly presence there, through careful practice of our faith, to dwell at His good pleasure.
Therefore we before Him bending...
Collects for the Second Sunday after Trinity
Gregorian Collect
(Latin) Sancti Nominis tui, Domine, timorem pariter et amorem fac nos habere perpetuum, quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis, quos in soliditate, tuae dilectionis instituis. Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Make us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name, for Thou never failest to govern those who Thou dost solidly establish in Thy love. Thou who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.
1549 Collect
LORD, make us to have a perpetuall feare and love of thy holy name: for thou never faillest to helpe and governe them whom thou doest bryng up in thy stedfast love. Graunt this,..
1662 Collect
O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them who thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love; Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
Perpetual fear is not something that appears on our list of things we associate with Love. It is something we might rather associate with abusive relationships, where one partner dominates the other in order to exercise power in an arbitrary and dehumanising fashion. We imagine the dominant partner in taking pleasure in belittling the other, controlling their actions, punishing any deviation from their will.
On the face of it, the substance of this collect in its several versions seems to uphold a view of God which has been adequately described by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The god of the modern atheism is a capricious totalitarian who deserves not to be worshipped but ignored like any other bully. To pray for perpetual fear seems to be a prayer of submission and a disgustingly obsequious manner from human beings who need to learn to have some self-respect.
If we bother to look deeper, we still have this troubling notion of love, a steadfast love which governs those who wish to be governed. To pray this prayer is to wish for love and to recognise something great, something utterly powerful. This is the type of love that makes one weak at the knees in its power, that causes trembling and fear, but a fear born of love, not of dread. If anything this fear comes from awe, the realisation of something massive, beautiful, of something that overwhelms us to the point of losing our precious identity.
This is the love of God which sends shivers up and down the spine. This is the love of a God who wants us to know Him for our sake and for His good pleasure in us for who He created us to be, not taking pleasure in watching us jump when He says so and torturing us when we fail to jump sufficiently high. This is the love of a God who dared to become a man and whose unpredictability, untamedness, and sheer mastery of the art of creation frightens us by its power, yet draws us into deeper love and trust. This is the terror of pure love!
(Latin) Sancti Nominis tui, Domine, timorem pariter et amorem fac nos habere perpetuum, quia numquam tua gubernatione destituis, quos in soliditate, tuae dilectionis instituis. Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Make us, O Lord, to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy name, for Thou never failest to govern those who Thou dost solidly establish in Thy love. Thou who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.
1549 Collect
LORD, make us to have a perpetuall feare and love of thy holy name: for thou never faillest to helpe and governe them whom thou doest bryng up in thy stedfast love. Graunt this,..
1662 Collect
O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them who thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love; Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
Perpetual fear is not something that appears on our list of things we associate with Love. It is something we might rather associate with abusive relationships, where one partner dominates the other in order to exercise power in an arbitrary and dehumanising fashion. We imagine the dominant partner in taking pleasure in belittling the other, controlling their actions, punishing any deviation from their will.
On the face of it, the substance of this collect in its several versions seems to uphold a view of God which has been adequately described by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The god of the modern atheism is a capricious totalitarian who deserves not to be worshipped but ignored like any other bully. To pray for perpetual fear seems to be a prayer of submission and a disgustingly obsequious manner from human beings who need to learn to have some self-respect.
If we bother to look deeper, we still have this troubling notion of love, a steadfast love which governs those who wish to be governed. To pray this prayer is to wish for love and to recognise something great, something utterly powerful. This is the type of love that makes one weak at the knees in its power, that causes trembling and fear, but a fear born of love, not of dread. If anything this fear comes from awe, the realisation of something massive, beautiful, of something that overwhelms us to the point of losing our precious identity.
This is the love of God which sends shivers up and down the spine. This is the love of a God who wants us to know Him for our sake and for His good pleasure in us for who He created us to be, not taking pleasure in watching us jump when He says so and torturing us when we fail to jump sufficiently high. This is the love of a God who dared to become a man and whose unpredictability, untamedness, and sheer mastery of the art of creation frightens us by its power, yet draws us into deeper love and trust. This is the terror of pure love!
Sunday, June 07, 2015
Collect for the First Sunday after Trinity
Prayer book
O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
It is true that the weakness of God is stronger than Man's strength. Yet, Our Lord Himself took on that mortal nature with all its weakness and temptation in the fullness of that weakness. In His Holy Incarnation, Our Lord took on limits to His power, His knowledge, His strength and His invulnerability. Instead, He was soft and fleshy and easily broken.
Yet it is through the mortal nature of Christ that we find the immortality which we can put on. In Christ's mortality, good things become possible. The Cross becomes a rent in reality through which blessings pour out and the glimpse of what is truly good can be seen. We can do good because we hve now seen it with our eyes and touched it with our hands. We have the power to do it, because we have been breathed upon by Breath that gives life as well as reassembling dead bones.
We see the loveliness of God's commandments through the mortality of Christ and, as we continue to trust in Him, we participate in the performance of those commandments in the World to bring the love of God into the world. We receive an answer to our prayers through out trust in God both with us and beyond us. Yet, if we don't pray, how do we expect to receive any of this?
O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
It is true that the weakness of God is stronger than Man's strength. Yet, Our Lord Himself took on that mortal nature with all its weakness and temptation in the fullness of that weakness. In His Holy Incarnation, Our Lord took on limits to His power, His knowledge, His strength and His invulnerability. Instead, He was soft and fleshy and easily broken.
Yet it is through the mortal nature of Christ that we find the immortality which we can put on. In Christ's mortality, good things become possible. The Cross becomes a rent in reality through which blessings pour out and the glimpse of what is truly good can be seen. We can do good because we hve now seen it with our eyes and touched it with our hands. We have the power to do it, because we have been breathed upon by Breath that gives life as well as reassembling dead bones.
We see the loveliness of God's commandments through the mortality of Christ and, as we continue to trust in Him, we participate in the performance of those commandments in the World to bring the love of God into the world. We receive an answer to our prayers through out trust in God both with us and beyond us. Yet, if we don't pray, how do we expect to receive any of this?
Indeed
Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi
Indeed.
It’s fascinating the difference one little word can make and “indeed” is a vitally important word. It’s a vitally important word indeed!
Let’s look at how we use it. If we are asked the question, “Are you going to Disney World?” we could answer with “yes”, or “yes, I am”, or “Indeed, I am.” Notice the difference in those responses. Which seems to be the strongest to you?
[PAUSE]
For many of us, to say “indeed, I am” seems to be the strongest way of saying yes without jumping up and down and nodding more fiercely than a nodding dog with St Vitus’ dance. It means something is a fact, a reality, almost a foregone conclusion. “Indeed” is the word used to translate Latin and Greek words meaning “in truth” – again a strong indication of fact. If this little word is so strong in its meaning, then how much stronger must it be if the King of the Universe uses it?
[PAUSE]
“Jesus said unto the multitude of the Jews: My Flesh is meat indeed, and my Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
So the Lord tells us that we are to consume His Flesh and drink His Blood. This scandalises the Jews and even His own disciples, many of whom leave Him. It’s a big deal to say this. In using the word “indeed”, Our Lord is making His point very clear.
Furthermore, He tells us clearly at the last supper, “this is my body” and “this is my blood”. He doesn’t use the word “indeed” here. Why not? Because His disciples have heard Him say that His Flesh is meat indeed, that His Blood is drink indeed. What Our Lord says, He means.
[PAUSE]
This is why the Catholic Faith holds very strongly to the fact that when we do as the Lord commands, the Host becomes His Flesh, the Wine becomes His Blood. Why then don’t we see it change?
The answer really lies in the fact that, as human beings, we are formed of soul and body. That’s why our sacraments have an outward sign, something we can experience with our bodies, and an inward grace, something that we can only experience with our souls. Angels don’t need sacraments nor do animals. They are there to bring fallen men and women back to God. For our sake, Christ becomes really present to us in His flesh, blood and divinity at the Mass but we may not see Him with our physical senses, but rather with the eyes of faith.
[PAUSE]
It may be hard for us to see this at times, and our faith may wobble because we cannot experience what is going on physically.
We trust that He is there because He tells us that He is there so that we can become more like Him by taking Him into ourselves.
If we really are what we eat, what does that mean for the faithful Catholic?
Indeed.
It’s fascinating the difference one little word can make and “indeed” is a vitally important word. It’s a vitally important word indeed!
Let’s look at how we use it. If we are asked the question, “Are you going to Disney World?” we could answer with “yes”, or “yes, I am”, or “Indeed, I am.” Notice the difference in those responses. Which seems to be the strongest to you?
[PAUSE]
For many of us, to say “indeed, I am” seems to be the strongest way of saying yes without jumping up and down and nodding more fiercely than a nodding dog with St Vitus’ dance. It means something is a fact, a reality, almost a foregone conclusion. “Indeed” is the word used to translate Latin and Greek words meaning “in truth” – again a strong indication of fact. If this little word is so strong in its meaning, then how much stronger must it be if the King of the Universe uses it?
[PAUSE]
“Jesus said unto the multitude of the Jews: My Flesh is meat indeed, and my Blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.”
So the Lord tells us that we are to consume His Flesh and drink His Blood. This scandalises the Jews and even His own disciples, many of whom leave Him. It’s a big deal to say this. In using the word “indeed”, Our Lord is making His point very clear.
Furthermore, He tells us clearly at the last supper, “this is my body” and “this is my blood”. He doesn’t use the word “indeed” here. Why not? Because His disciples have heard Him say that His Flesh is meat indeed, that His Blood is drink indeed. What Our Lord says, He means.
[PAUSE]
This is why the Catholic Faith holds very strongly to the fact that when we do as the Lord commands, the Host becomes His Flesh, the Wine becomes His Blood. Why then don’t we see it change?
The answer really lies in the fact that, as human beings, we are formed of soul and body. That’s why our sacraments have an outward sign, something we can experience with our bodies, and an inward grace, something that we can only experience with our souls. Angels don’t need sacraments nor do animals. They are there to bring fallen men and women back to God. For our sake, Christ becomes really present to us in His flesh, blood and divinity at the Mass but we may not see Him with our physical senses, but rather with the eyes of faith.
[PAUSE]
It may be hard for us to see this at times, and our faith may wobble because we cannot experience what is going on physically.
We trust that He is there because He tells us that He is there so that we can become more like Him by taking Him into ourselves.
If we really are what we eat, what does that mean for the faithful Catholic?
Thursday, June 04, 2015
Collect for Corpus Christi
Breviary
O GOD, who under a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy Passion: Grant us we beseech thee. so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood. that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption, who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
As we leave the time of the major feasts and move into so-called "Ordinary Time", we find that we often fall into the temptation of seeing green Sundays as being "normal," "standard," or even "humdrum." Have we overindulged upon our feasts after being overzealous in our fasts so that the green time becomes just ordinary and thus nothing special.
The feast of Corpus Christi helps to show us that "Ordinary Time" is actually something much more than ordinary. Every Sunday, we are presented with the memorial of the Passion, looking back to the pain of Holy Week, and the abstinence of Lent. We can look back further to the Incarnation and the Epiphany, and in so doing we are looking forward to Advent again. As far as the liturgical year is concerned, looking back is the same as looking forward because we find ourselves inextricably linked to the drama of our salvation.
In venerating the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, we find that Green Time is far from not being special and that ordinary possesses the character of the extraordinary as the miracle of Christ's continued presence with us is renewed in our sight. This is the fruit of our redemption - it is always with us in fast, feast, or ordinary time. We always possess that miracle expounded in Advent: God with us, It feeds us, gives us purpose and joins us to the Eternal. In Corpus Christi, we see yet another way in which the Christian year is entwined in and around the central fact of Emmanuel.
O GOD, who under a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy Passion: Grant us we beseech thee. so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood. that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption, who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
As we leave the time of the major feasts and move into so-called "Ordinary Time", we find that we often fall into the temptation of seeing green Sundays as being "normal," "standard," or even "humdrum." Have we overindulged upon our feasts after being overzealous in our fasts so that the green time becomes just ordinary and thus nothing special.
The feast of Corpus Christi helps to show us that "Ordinary Time" is actually something much more than ordinary. Every Sunday, we are presented with the memorial of the Passion, looking back to the pain of Holy Week, and the abstinence of Lent. We can look back further to the Incarnation and the Epiphany, and in so doing we are looking forward to Advent again. As far as the liturgical year is concerned, looking back is the same as looking forward because we find ourselves inextricably linked to the drama of our salvation.
In venerating the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, we find that Green Time is far from not being special and that ordinary possesses the character of the extraordinary as the miracle of Christ's continued presence with us is renewed in our sight. This is the fruit of our redemption - it is always with us in fast, feast, or ordinary time. We always possess that miracle expounded in Advent: God with us, It feeds us, gives us purpose and joins us to the Eternal. In Corpus Christi, we see yet another way in which the Christian year is entwined in and around the central fact of Emmanuel.
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Breaking the veneer
O Unity of threefold light,
Send out Thy loveliest ray,
Add scatter our transgressions’ night,
And turn it into day;
Make us those temples pure and fair
Thy glory loveth well,
The spotless tabernacles, where
Thou may’st vouchsafe to dwell.The glorious hosts of peerless might,
That ever see Thy face,
Thou mak’st the mirrors of Thy light,
The vessels of Thy grace.
Thou, when their wondrous strains they weave,
Hast pleasure in the lay:
Deign thus our praises to receive,
Albeit from lips of clay.And yet Thyself they cannot know,
Nor pierce the veil of light
That hides Thee from the thrones below,
As in profoundest night.
How then can mortal accents frame
Due tribute to their king?
Thou, only, while we praise Thy name,
Forgive us as we sing.
Archbishop Metrophanes of Smyrna c900AD
translated by Fr. J. M. Neale.
On Trinity Sunday, we sang this hymn to Tallis' Third Mode Melody which suited it rather well, I thought. It was clearly English and yet clearly Catholic, written before the Great Schism, and therefore perfectly Anglican Catholic. For me, personally, it presents the strange imagery of the Mass whereby in humble settings, with unclean lips, and sin-stained lives, the Light Incomprehensible can still shine forth into the world. I think sometimes we forget that this is possible.
There still is a sense in the world whereby people think that they are too sinful for God to be near them. They say with St Peter, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." and yet, rather than accepting His presence as the Prince of the Apostles, they continue to push God away. Now why should this be? I expect for most people who feel like this, the god that is so down on sinners is the one they try to steer clear of. Yet, this is not the God that we Christians worship.
What is certainly true is that where God is, no sin can be. This may sound like a rejection of sinners, but in fact it's more like saying that where light is, no darkness can be. We cannot get rid of sin by chasing it away any more than we try to sweep up the darkness before switching the bedside lamp on. The fact that we miss is that God loves us more than we can ever think.
As always, love is truly the key. This is a God Who, out of sheer respect of humanity, chooses to limit Himself so as to allow that Humanity to realise love without coercion. This has terrible consequences and yet those terrible consequences are allowed, as well as being provided for. Not one sparrow will fall without the eye of God beholding it and we are worth more than many sparrows. And yet, with God those terrible consequences mean more than some anodyne existence of not really being because they have a fulfillment within Himself. The suffering of Our Lord alongside us consecrates our suffering as surely as He consecrates the waters of baptism by being baptised in the Jordan.
It is in Christ that humanity finds itself completed. It was He who broke the lock of the door back to God put there by our failure to choose what is Good. It was He whose Humanity drags us back through death into life in God. Every single Eucharist holds this fact: Christ is truly present in the Mass and thus we find ourselves standing in the courts of heaven without realising it. We look around, and still see the cracks in the wall, the damaged floor tile, the slightly wonky nose on the statue of Our Lady, the frayed edge of the server's cotta. We look and we hear the priest's knee crack as he genuflects before holding up the little white disc.
Yes, that is what we see and hear and smell, and touch and taste, yet with Christ's presence it is truly consecrated, taken up out of the shabby shadow of our everyday existence and truly lying just behind the veil of God's infinite glory. If we come to church expecting just the same old boring things within the same old boring reality and fixating on the same old boring hymns and listening to the same old boring sermon, then we have forgotten the reality that lies behind what we see. Our reality is merely the dust cover to our true life. Look beyond the crack in the wall to see the golden walls of God's throne room; look beyond the damaged floor tile to see the emerald floor upon which the saints tread with steps beyond Time; look at the wonky nose on the statue and see beyond to see Our Lady, the Queen of Heaven, perfect in the presence of Her Son;look beyond the frayed edge of the cotta to see the white robes given to each citizen of heaven and remember that you, yes you! have your own white robe waiting for you.
Heaven is always threatening to burst in on our little thin veneer of reality, and God Himself wants nothing better to sit down with each and every sinner so that they will cease to be sinners just by His very act of sitting with us. God loves us and He is not too proud so as to separate Himself from His Creation. His divine humility shows that He has nothing to prove about His Majesty or His Glory. Neither must we bee to proud as to separate ourselves from God because we are sinners and therefore unworthy of Him. Of course we are unworthy, that's what makes the Mystery of the Incarnation more delicious. We should just accept, repent of our sins and find ourselves always in the presence of the Divine Christ.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Collect for Trinity Sunday
Prayer book and Breviary
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of thy Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee, that thou wouldst keep us steadfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
Words are often taken for granted. There are times when we send an email to someone in all innocence only to find out that it's been the cause of some offence: there has been more than one meaning and the other meaning is not intentional. Yet often we want words to mean precisely what we expect them to mean. This is not always possible.
We confess the True Faith, namely our belief in a supremely real God in perfect Trinity and perfect Unity. Three persons, One God. Each person is fully God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God. We struggle with this because we think we know what a person is. Do we really know what we mean by a person? What if it is not a human person?
Our collect reminds us that we do not pray to understand what is incomprehensible, but to do what we can by acknowledging the glory of the Trinity, the impact that God has in creation and in our lives. We acknowledge our relationship with each person of the Trinity and pray for the power to worship the One God properly. That power can only come from a Divine source.
It is only through drawing from that Divine power that we do not wander off and find ourselves separated from the Great Mystery of God.
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of thy Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee, that thou wouldst keep us steadfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
Words are often taken for granted. There are times when we send an email to someone in all innocence only to find out that it's been the cause of some offence: there has been more than one meaning and the other meaning is not intentional. Yet often we want words to mean precisely what we expect them to mean. This is not always possible.
We confess the True Faith, namely our belief in a supremely real God in perfect Trinity and perfect Unity. Three persons, One God. Each person is fully God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God. We struggle with this because we think we know what a person is. Do we really know what we mean by a person? What if it is not a human person?
Our collect reminds us that we do not pray to understand what is incomprehensible, but to do what we can by acknowledging the glory of the Trinity, the impact that God has in creation and in our lives. We acknowledge our relationship with each person of the Trinity and pray for the power to worship the One God properly. That power can only come from a Divine source.
It is only through drawing from that Divine power that we do not wander off and find ourselves separated from the Great Mystery of God.
Believing how many beans make five (or three)
Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Trinity Sunday 2015
It's a nightmare for the trainee teacher. You enter the classroom for the first time. You see in front of you sixty little eyes gazing at you, sizing you up and wondering what you're going to say. Then you realise you're going to have to teach them something. What do you do?
How about the twelve times table? That's fine if they know how it goes. If they understand the process of adding twelve each time, then it's not too difficult. If they know their six times table then they could double that. No matter what, a trainee teacher needs to learn that you must always start from what the children know.
So where should the Christian begin when discussing the Trinity?
[PAUSE]
We must start from what we know. We know that there is a God and there can only be one God because there can only be one Creator. We know, from His own lips, that God is a Father, that God is a Son and that God is a Holy Ghost. We know that each of these three is different from the others. We know that each is God in full.
And yet there is only one God. So one equals three. And bang goes your maths homework!
Try as we might, we simply cannot get our heads around this. Does that trouble you? Does that cause you to question your faith?
[PAUSE]
For some people, the doctrine of the Trinity is too difficult to believe. It goes against what we know to be true. We know that one apple is not the same as three apples. Either our numbering system is wrong, or the Trinity is wrong.
That sounds like that's it. Christianity's all wrong. Let's pack all this up and have a game of Snakes and Ladders instead.
However, before we do, we need to think. We're presented with either our numbering being wrong, or the doctrine of the Trinity being wrong. Can't there be another possibility? Our numbering system must apply to apples. Must our numbering system apply to God?
[PAUSE]
This is crucial. God is the Creator. He creates everything including apples and numbers. He is absolutely unique because He is not part of the Universe. If our numbering system applies to Him then it only does so at the most basic level. It doesn't touch Who He is.
It is impossible for what has been created to understand the Creator fully. If we did understand the Trinity, then God simply could not be God: He would be just something else in the Universe. Believing is not the same thing as understanding. We might be able to understand all kinds of earthly things like Economics, Mathematics and Quantum mechanics, perhaps even perfectly, but we cannot understand things Heavenly without God revealing Himself to us. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is comforting because it reminds us that God isn't Who we want Him to be, but rather beyond all knowledge.
And yet we shall indeed see Him as He really is, not through understanding, but through believing in Him.
It's a nightmare for the trainee teacher. You enter the classroom for the first time. You see in front of you sixty little eyes gazing at you, sizing you up and wondering what you're going to say. Then you realise you're going to have to teach them something. What do you do?
How about the twelve times table? That's fine if they know how it goes. If they understand the process of adding twelve each time, then it's not too difficult. If they know their six times table then they could double that. No matter what, a trainee teacher needs to learn that you must always start from what the children know.
So where should the Christian begin when discussing the Trinity?
[PAUSE]
We must start from what we know. We know that there is a God and there can only be one God because there can only be one Creator. We know, from His own lips, that God is a Father, that God is a Son and that God is a Holy Ghost. We know that each of these three is different from the others. We know that each is God in full.
And yet there is only one God. So one equals three. And bang goes your maths homework!
Try as we might, we simply cannot get our heads around this. Does that trouble you? Does that cause you to question your faith?
[PAUSE]
For some people, the doctrine of the Trinity is too difficult to believe. It goes against what we know to be true. We know that one apple is not the same as three apples. Either our numbering system is wrong, or the Trinity is wrong.
That sounds like that's it. Christianity's all wrong. Let's pack all this up and have a game of Snakes and Ladders instead.
However, before we do, we need to think. We're presented with either our numbering being wrong, or the doctrine of the Trinity being wrong. Can't there be another possibility? Our numbering system must apply to apples. Must our numbering system apply to God?
[PAUSE]
This is crucial. God is the Creator. He creates everything including apples and numbers. He is absolutely unique because He is not part of the Universe. If our numbering system applies to Him then it only does so at the most basic level. It doesn't touch Who He is.
It is impossible for what has been created to understand the Creator fully. If we did understand the Trinity, then God simply could not be God: He would be just something else in the Universe. Believing is not the same thing as understanding. We might be able to understand all kinds of earthly things like Economics, Mathematics and Quantum mechanics, perhaps even perfectly, but we cannot understand things Heavenly without God revealing Himself to us. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is comforting because it reminds us that God isn't Who we want Him to be, but rather beyond all knowledge.
And yet we shall indeed see Him as He really is, not through understanding, but through believing in Him.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Collect for Whitsunday 2015
Prayer book and breviary
GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
Why teach the hearts of faithful people, why not the minds? One might think that this is a bit of a relic of Greek physiology where the heart is the seat of emotion and the brain an unknown organ which was thought to be primarily for cooling - an oversized sweat gland.Yet this collect still refers to the teaching of the heart and not the mind.
The trouble is that human physiology is very fragile. The mind can be ravaged by illnesses just as much as the body can. Perceptions can be warped, things misunderstood, forgotten, unaccessible to reason. Likewise the body itself can be wracked with many diseases. However, while the heart still pumps,the body still lives.
The heart is the centre of one's being. It is there that God teaches us, no matter what of health we're in so that it cannot decay away from us, or make us lose that righteousness from which we must make our judgement. This is God's holy comfort. In Him, we are equipped with the light of His love and in Him we receive an inseparable dignity.
GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit; Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
Why teach the hearts of faithful people, why not the minds? One might think that this is a bit of a relic of Greek physiology where the heart is the seat of emotion and the brain an unknown organ which was thought to be primarily for cooling - an oversized sweat gland.Yet this collect still refers to the teaching of the heart and not the mind.
The trouble is that human physiology is very fragile. The mind can be ravaged by illnesses just as much as the body can. Perceptions can be warped, things misunderstood, forgotten, unaccessible to reason. Likewise the body itself can be wracked with many diseases. However, while the heart still pumps,the body still lives.
The heart is the centre of one's being. It is there that God teaches us, no matter what of health we're in so that it cannot decay away from us, or make us lose that righteousness from which we must make our judgement. This is God's holy comfort. In Him, we are equipped with the light of His love and in Him we receive an inseparable dignity.
Flammable Christianity?
Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Whitsunday 2015
Abba Lot says to Abba Joseph: “Father … I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart … what more should I do?” The elder stretches up his hands to heaven and his fingers become fire. He says, “Why not become all flame?”
Would you like to become all flame?
[PAUSE]
The early Christians often say things that can baffle us rather and Abba Lot and Abba Joseph are typical of the first Christian hermits who go out into the desert in order to hear God better. Notice that, despite spending all that time in prayer, they still need to ask each other about how to live the Christian life.
The disciples too spend much of their time with Our Lord Jesus a bit confused. They listen and think and do as they are told. In His Name they cast out demons and heal the sick and preach the good news of God’s love, yet still they scatter when He is crucified and disbelieve when He rises from the dead.
These are the people whom He has taught, but teaching doesn’t seem enough.
These are the people to whom He has shown miracles, but showing them miracles doesn’t help them to hold faith.
These are the people to whom He has shown His risen self, but rising from the dead doesn’t convince them.
They need something else. Some One else.
This is why Human beings needed today. We have needed to see God walk with us and to be one of us and to bring us back to God through His death on the Cross. However, human beings are limited in time and space and Our Lord is no exception. We clearly need Him to be with us always and to know that He is with us always. This is why God sends us the Holy Ghost.
[PAUSE]
Abba Joseph shows Abba Lot that simply doing our own thing is not enough. There is no way that we can earn our way to Heaven. There is nothing that we can do that can bring us close to God. It is God that makes Himself close to us so that we can reach out for Him. Abba Joseph knows that in order to live a life that leads to God, we need to call upon God the Holy Ghost.
Abba Joseph burns with the same fire that lights upon the head of each of the disciples. It is a fire that burns, but does not burn away. This is the same fire that burns in the bush and brings Moses to God.
Our Lord calls us to be the light of the world, but it is not our light that shines. It is His and His alone. It may not be our light, but we can choose to shine with it. This means living our life according to Christian principles and by careful prayer. However, we must also pray to God daily, and pray hard, that He would show us how we can allow His light to shine through us into the world and give hope to those who need it.
[PAUSE]
If we want to, we can indeed become all flame!
Abba Lot says to Abba Joseph: “Father … I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart … what more should I do?” The elder stretches up his hands to heaven and his fingers become fire. He says, “Why not become all flame?”
Would you like to become all flame?
[PAUSE]
The early Christians often say things that can baffle us rather and Abba Lot and Abba Joseph are typical of the first Christian hermits who go out into the desert in order to hear God better. Notice that, despite spending all that time in prayer, they still need to ask each other about how to live the Christian life.
The disciples too spend much of their time with Our Lord Jesus a bit confused. They listen and think and do as they are told. In His Name they cast out demons and heal the sick and preach the good news of God’s love, yet still they scatter when He is crucified and disbelieve when He rises from the dead.
These are the people whom He has taught, but teaching doesn’t seem enough.
These are the people to whom He has shown miracles, but showing them miracles doesn’t help them to hold faith.
These are the people to whom He has shown His risen self, but rising from the dead doesn’t convince them.
They need something else. Some One else.
This is why Human beings needed today. We have needed to see God walk with us and to be one of us and to bring us back to God through His death on the Cross. However, human beings are limited in time and space and Our Lord is no exception. We clearly need Him to be with us always and to know that He is with us always. This is why God sends us the Holy Ghost.
[PAUSE]
Abba Joseph shows Abba Lot that simply doing our own thing is not enough. There is no way that we can earn our way to Heaven. There is nothing that we can do that can bring us close to God. It is God that makes Himself close to us so that we can reach out for Him. Abba Joseph knows that in order to live a life that leads to God, we need to call upon God the Holy Ghost.
Abba Joseph burns with the same fire that lights upon the head of each of the disciples. It is a fire that burns, but does not burn away. This is the same fire that burns in the bush and brings Moses to God.
Our Lord calls us to be the light of the world, but it is not our light that shines. It is His and His alone. It may not be our light, but we can choose to shine with it. This means living our life according to Christian principles and by careful prayer. However, we must also pray to God daily, and pray hard, that He would show us how we can allow His light to shine through us into the world and give hope to those who need it.
[PAUSE]
If we want to, we can indeed become all flame!
Monday, May 18, 2015
Devotion from Benediction: May 2015
My friends, we kneel before the Blessed Sacrament remembering that we are to see not with our eyes of flesh,but with our eyes of faith.
We kneel before Christ in a mystery, not before a created thing, but One Who is truly present, really Present, more present than even anyone of us can be even to ourselves.
We kneel before the ascended Christ Who keeps His promise that He will be with us until the end of the Age and Who gives us Himself in the Sacrament to honour that promise.
We kneel before Christ whose ascension pulls our little humanity up into the heights of heaven yet still shrouded by a sacred veil.
As Our Lord willingly presents Himself to us, so we present ourselves to Him bringing our concerns and our joys, remembering those who need our prayers and those who have passed behind the veil.
Therefore we before him bending...
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Collects for the Sunday in the Octave of the Ascension
Prayer book
O GOD the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Breviary
Almighty, everlasting God, grant that we may always devote our wills to thy service, and wait upon thy Majesty with singleness of heart. Through
Reflection
The Prayer Book addresses our feeling of loss and confusion after the departure of Our Lord. The Breviary tries to be stoic with its "Keep calm and carry on" attitude. Many of us feel the same way.
When we learn to ride a bike, we do so with the comfort of stabilisers which prevent us from falling over. Then our parent takes away our stabilisers to encourage us to learn to keep our balance and ride our bike properly. That moment when the stabilisers are off is a worry, yet if we are to continue riding, we must keep calm and carry on, despite the worry and anxiety we have in our hearts.
With the breviary, we pray that we may keep our focus on serving God as we try and do what's right without seeing Him stand there and looking for His approval. With the Prayer Book, we lift up that anxiety of living without seeing Christ and asking for that different type of support which will enable us precisely to serve Him and thus keep riding on that same path. We will not have stabilisers, but we will have the knowledge that there is Someone there continually guiding us and drawing us forward. That knowledge and comfort will be strengthened by praying these collects more sincerely.
O GOD the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Breviary
Almighty, everlasting God, grant that we may always devote our wills to thy service, and wait upon thy Majesty with singleness of heart. Through
Reflection
The Prayer Book addresses our feeling of loss and confusion after the departure of Our Lord. The Breviary tries to be stoic with its "Keep calm and carry on" attitude. Many of us feel the same way.
When we learn to ride a bike, we do so with the comfort of stabilisers which prevent us from falling over. Then our parent takes away our stabilisers to encourage us to learn to keep our balance and ride our bike properly. That moment when the stabilisers are off is a worry, yet if we are to continue riding, we must keep calm and carry on, despite the worry and anxiety we have in our hearts.
With the breviary, we pray that we may keep our focus on serving God as we try and do what's right without seeing Him stand there and looking for His approval. With the Prayer Book, we lift up that anxiety of living without seeing Christ and asking for that different type of support which will enable us precisely to serve Him and thus keep riding on that same path. We will not have stabilisers, but we will have the knowledge that there is Someone there continually guiding us and drawing us forward. That knowledge and comfort will be strengthened by praying these collects more sincerely.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Ascension, the end of the humdrum
It's amazing how easily bored we can get. There is an interesting trend that, as soon as boredom sets in, our heads sink into chests, either to nod off, or to consult the delights of the all-knowing, all-entertaining mobile phone.
Interestingly, we get bored with pretty much everything. Animals get bored too. There are some very sad videos of horses pacing around their stables desperate to leave the shackles of their stable and to get into the paddock for a run around and explore. For animals, there is usually an alternative to being bored, some activity which will result in stimulation and thus some form of happiness. Animals' boredom usually results from a restriction imposed upon them (usually by human beings) which, when removed, allows that animal to be what it is.
Pain, hunger, thirst and fear have very clear causes and very clear methods of alleviation. To alleviate the boredom of the horse, you just need to open the stable door. To alleviate our boredom, we need to find the cause. Yet, does boredom have a cause? What sort of stimulation do we need?
As soon as a task becomes repetitive or samey, we lose interest and boredom sets in. Yet it doesn't feel as urgent as pain or fear. It's almost as if the very task of existing is repetitive or samey. The fact that humans can indeed suffer from ennui and weltschmerz points to our unease of just simply being. They are both recognized sensations. We know that weltschmerz is, by definition, a dissatisfaction with the world as it appears. Some people avoid it, finding everything in life to amuse them and give life meaning, yet still, we all seem to suffer some form of boredom. As the horse transcends her stable, do we transcend our own environment? Do we transcend the very world in which we live?
Christians believe so, and the Ascension of Our Lord points to that most definitely.
In descending to us, Our Lord empties Himself of that which would set Him apart from humanity. He becomes limited in ability, in power, in endurance, in duration and in space. Was he ever bored? Given that He wrote in the sand while the Powers-that-be sought to condemn a woman taken in adultery and in doing so seek to discredit His ministry, one might conclude that Our Lord was indeed bored with the interminable legal gnat-straining of those who believed themselves to be the arbiters of knowledge, truth and righteousness. We can only speculate with Our Lord. If He ever was bored, He never showed it and perhaps He was able to work against it.
How? By prayer? That would seem reasonable. If you seek an end to your boredom, you seek to transcend the situation that you're in. Prayer might not cure the boredom, but it might keep it in perspective by giving yourself more fully to the One Who is completely transcendent and, precisely because He is transcendent, is completely immanent.
In ascending, Our Lord is re-clothed with everything that he stripped off in order to be with us. He ascends in His Humanity showing that humanity is not destroyed by ascending. In Our Lord Jesus it is not only possible but it is a fact that Humanity and Divinity can be indivisibly entwined. In ascending Our Lord steps off of the page of the drawing that He drew in order to be present with it without limitation.
In ascending, He offers us the chance too to cease being drawings on the page, but to gain substance, depth, to become more solid and to step off the page in Him. In being with God we find ourselves given a place in His Being, in His substance that can only come from Ascension. This is not just a time of farewell to One Whose love for us gave us redemption, but a demonstration of the Christian's true fate - a gaol-break out from the stable and into Reality itself! And we'll never be bored again!
Interestingly, we get bored with pretty much everything. Animals get bored too. There are some very sad videos of horses pacing around their stables desperate to leave the shackles of their stable and to get into the paddock for a run around and explore. For animals, there is usually an alternative to being bored, some activity which will result in stimulation and thus some form of happiness. Animals' boredom usually results from a restriction imposed upon them (usually by human beings) which, when removed, allows that animal to be what it is.
Pain, hunger, thirst and fear have very clear causes and very clear methods of alleviation. To alleviate the boredom of the horse, you just need to open the stable door. To alleviate our boredom, we need to find the cause. Yet, does boredom have a cause? What sort of stimulation do we need?
As soon as a task becomes repetitive or samey, we lose interest and boredom sets in. Yet it doesn't feel as urgent as pain or fear. It's almost as if the very task of existing is repetitive or samey. The fact that humans can indeed suffer from ennui and weltschmerz points to our unease of just simply being. They are both recognized sensations. We know that weltschmerz is, by definition, a dissatisfaction with the world as it appears. Some people avoid it, finding everything in life to amuse them and give life meaning, yet still, we all seem to suffer some form of boredom. As the horse transcends her stable, do we transcend our own environment? Do we transcend the very world in which we live?
Christians believe so, and the Ascension of Our Lord points to that most definitely.
In descending to us, Our Lord empties Himself of that which would set Him apart from humanity. He becomes limited in ability, in power, in endurance, in duration and in space. Was he ever bored? Given that He wrote in the sand while the Powers-that-be sought to condemn a woman taken in adultery and in doing so seek to discredit His ministry, one might conclude that Our Lord was indeed bored with the interminable legal gnat-straining of those who believed themselves to be the arbiters of knowledge, truth and righteousness. We can only speculate with Our Lord. If He ever was bored, He never showed it and perhaps He was able to work against it.
How? By prayer? That would seem reasonable. If you seek an end to your boredom, you seek to transcend the situation that you're in. Prayer might not cure the boredom, but it might keep it in perspective by giving yourself more fully to the One Who is completely transcendent and, precisely because He is transcendent, is completely immanent.
In ascending, Our Lord is re-clothed with everything that he stripped off in order to be with us. He ascends in His Humanity showing that humanity is not destroyed by ascending. In Our Lord Jesus it is not only possible but it is a fact that Humanity and Divinity can be indivisibly entwined. In ascending Our Lord steps off of the page of the drawing that He drew in order to be present with it without limitation.
In ascending, He offers us the chance too to cease being drawings on the page, but to gain substance, depth, to become more solid and to step off the page in Him. In being with God we find ourselves given a place in His Being, in His substance that can only come from Ascension. This is not just a time of farewell to One Whose love for us gave us redemption, but a demonstration of the Christian's true fate - a gaol-break out from the stable and into Reality itself! And we'll never be bored again!
Collect for Ascension Day
Prayer book and Breviary
GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
The Ascension of Our Lord is very revealing. Until we see the Lord ascend, there is no reason to suppose that He has descended. In rising again from the dead, He shows that it is possible for human beings to rise from the dead, and therefore, if he promises that we will rise again from the dead He has given us some physical handle to back up that promise.
But he ascends into Heaven. He shows that it is possible for a human being to ascend into Heaven and that gives a physical handle to back up the promise that we will see Him again in Heaven, or at least in an existence that transcends but does not obliterate our present existence. It also gives us a physical handle into the truth of His promise that He is God Himself, the Son of God, the Word Incarnate. We see proof that He is precisely Who He has always claimed to be. If He ascends, then He must have descended first. What comes down must go up!
In ascending, Our Lord pulls humanity up with Him, pulling its fabric up into the Godhead like a carpet. If our hearts and minds are with Him, then they will be lifted with Him into the Heavens. That is the promise that He gives us, and the promise that we seek in seeking God in Christ.
GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Reflection
The Ascension of Our Lord is very revealing. Until we see the Lord ascend, there is no reason to suppose that He has descended. In rising again from the dead, He shows that it is possible for human beings to rise from the dead, and therefore, if he promises that we will rise again from the dead He has given us some physical handle to back up that promise.
But he ascends into Heaven. He shows that it is possible for a human being to ascend into Heaven and that gives a physical handle to back up the promise that we will see Him again in Heaven, or at least in an existence that transcends but does not obliterate our present existence. It also gives us a physical handle into the truth of His promise that He is God Himself, the Son of God, the Word Incarnate. We see proof that He is precisely Who He has always claimed to be. If He ascends, then He must have descended first. What comes down must go up!
In ascending, Our Lord pulls humanity up with Him, pulling its fabric up into the Godhead like a carpet. If our hearts and minds are with Him, then they will be lifted with Him into the Heavens. That is the promise that He gives us, and the promise that we seek in seeking God in Christ.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Recognising Habits
Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Fifth Sunday after Easter
Schoolboys have some disgusting habits which are not going to be divulged at length. Shirts untucked, misplaced apostrophes, two plus two is five, et c. You can probably think of many of your own. Pity the poor teachers who have to try and break those habits so that schoolboys can grow to be part of society.
Why are habits so hard to break?
[PAUSE]
Habits are so called because they become part of how we live our lives. They are the things we do every day that we don’t even think about. Once upon a time, it was a struggle to tie our shoelaces or catch a train because we weren’t used to it. Now, it’s second nature to us. When we are little, everything seems difficult, yet with lots of times to practice, we don’t even think about what we do. That’s where our habits come in; they are things that we do on auto-pilot. We don’t think about them, and because we don’t think about them, it becomes very difficult to break them.
Have you noticed, though, how much you can recognise someone by their habits?
[PAUSE]
Think of it. You notice a plate in the washing up bowl with tomato ketchup residue, and you know that your husband put it there because a) he loves tomato ketchup and b) he never does the washing up. You can tell who is at home without actually seeing them because you know how people in your house move around. That familiarity is comforting and forms part of each person’s identity, whether they are good habits or bad. Indeed, we often miss someone the most when we don’t see those little habits.
For us Christians, the whole business of repentance is the forming of new Christian habits to replace old sinful habits. St James tells us, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”
Unless we practice what we hear and what we preach, we never really become the people that God wants us to be. If we live in the bad habits of sin, then we will never really see the person that God created us to be. We simply won’t be recognisable as Christians.
Our Lord says, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
[PAUSE]
We have to make living our faith a good habit. We should pray daily ideally in the morning and in the evening. We should seek to love people as best as we can and to ensure that we make it a good habit to think of others’ well-being. Our faith must be visible for it to be recognisable because, if it is recognisable from what we do on the outside, our hearts must be in the right place on the inside.
This clearly matters to God who showed us His true self, and asks us to show Him our true selves willingly. Of course, He already know our true selves. That is not the point.
He wants us to show Him from our own desire for Him. God wants to know us through those habits which show that we want to know Him. And we get to know God by His habits. And they are very good habits indeed!
Schoolboys have some disgusting habits which are not going to be divulged at length. Shirts untucked, misplaced apostrophes, two plus two is five, et c. You can probably think of many of your own. Pity the poor teachers who have to try and break those habits so that schoolboys can grow to be part of society.
Why are habits so hard to break?
[PAUSE]
Habits are so called because they become part of how we live our lives. They are the things we do every day that we don’t even think about. Once upon a time, it was a struggle to tie our shoelaces or catch a train because we weren’t used to it. Now, it’s second nature to us. When we are little, everything seems difficult, yet with lots of times to practice, we don’t even think about what we do. That’s where our habits come in; they are things that we do on auto-pilot. We don’t think about them, and because we don’t think about them, it becomes very difficult to break them.
Have you noticed, though, how much you can recognise someone by their habits?
[PAUSE]
Think of it. You notice a plate in the washing up bowl with tomato ketchup residue, and you know that your husband put it there because a) he loves tomato ketchup and b) he never does the washing up. You can tell who is at home without actually seeing them because you know how people in your house move around. That familiarity is comforting and forms part of each person’s identity, whether they are good habits or bad. Indeed, we often miss someone the most when we don’t see those little habits.
For us Christians, the whole business of repentance is the forming of new Christian habits to replace old sinful habits. St James tells us, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.”
Unless we practice what we hear and what we preach, we never really become the people that God wants us to be. If we live in the bad habits of sin, then we will never really see the person that God created us to be. We simply won’t be recognisable as Christians.
Our Lord says, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
[PAUSE]
We have to make living our faith a good habit. We should pray daily ideally in the morning and in the evening. We should seek to love people as best as we can and to ensure that we make it a good habit to think of others’ well-being. Our faith must be visible for it to be recognisable because, if it is recognisable from what we do on the outside, our hearts must be in the right place on the inside.
This clearly matters to God who showed us His true self, and asks us to show Him our true selves willingly. Of course, He already know our true selves. That is not the point.
He wants us to show Him from our own desire for Him. God wants to know us through those habits which show that we want to know Him. And we get to know God by His habits. And they are very good habits indeed!
Collect for the fifth Sunday after Easter
Prayer book
O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Reflection
This is the last collect before the Ascension and we recall that, before ascending to the Father, Our Lord breathes the Holy Ghost upon His disciples. For them, this is His holy inspiration and from this holy inspiration comes the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church: One Breath, One Church.
In this act of outpouring the Holy Ghost, prefiguring the day of Pentecost, our fallen wills are given guidance. We no longer have to do bad things, for we are able to choose the way of the Holy Ghost which presents us with the ways that are good and the ways that are bad. The Church has full possession of these ways, even though there are times when her members fall away from them.
Indeed, the fact that the Church now possesses knowledge of good and evil through the gift of God means that it is her members that can be truly shown up for being sinful. Her very existence exposes Christians for being the hypocrites that they are, but to their good and thus the good of the whole world. The true Christian needs to repent actively, and the Inspired Church possesses the ability and authority to help that repentance happen. This ability and authority can only be used if the ministers of God follow that same programme of active repentance and keep to the pattern that Our Lord set for us. In praying this collect, we pray ourselves to be true to the gospel we have received and submit ourselves to the authority of Christ.
O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Reflection
This is the last collect before the Ascension and we recall that, before ascending to the Father, Our Lord breathes the Holy Ghost upon His disciples. For them, this is His holy inspiration and from this holy inspiration comes the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church: One Breath, One Church.
In this act of outpouring the Holy Ghost, prefiguring the day of Pentecost, our fallen wills are given guidance. We no longer have to do bad things, for we are able to choose the way of the Holy Ghost which presents us with the ways that are good and the ways that are bad. The Church has full possession of these ways, even though there are times when her members fall away from them.
Indeed, the fact that the Church now possesses knowledge of good and evil through the gift of God means that it is her members that can be truly shown up for being sinful. Her very existence exposes Christians for being the hypocrites that they are, but to their good and thus the good of the whole world. The true Christian needs to repent actively, and the Inspired Church possesses the ability and authority to help that repentance happen. This ability and authority can only be used if the ministers of God follow that same programme of active repentance and keep to the pattern that Our Lord set for us. In praying this collect, we pray ourselves to be true to the gospel we have received and submit ourselves to the authority of Christ.
Sunday, May 03, 2015
Collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter
Prayer book
O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
St Peter reminds us to forget our fleshly lusts in preference of that which lies above. We are fallen and our ability to choose the good in life is completely impaired while we do not know what good is. We are unable to choose good without knowing that God is good and that He created us of His goodness. Our fall from grace means that we are blinded, and our eyes only opened by the grace given to us by God in baptism which rids us of our inherited separation from God.
The beauty is that the sacrament of Baptism transcends the ages and does not change because God has not changed and neither has human nature. We still sin in the same way as Adam and Eve, yet we are saved in the same way through the second Adam, namely Our Lord Jesus Christ. The world changes around us, and we are caught up in its currents and torrents. We find ourselves confused and battered by tides and tempests.
However, God is our Rock and we cling to Him by faith and cooperating with His grace, going where He goes and staying where He stays despite the raging of the times. God gives us the opportunity to be limpets and barnacles upon His being so that we may indeed endure to the end and be saved.
O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection
St Peter reminds us to forget our fleshly lusts in preference of that which lies above. We are fallen and our ability to choose the good in life is completely impaired while we do not know what good is. We are unable to choose good without knowing that God is good and that He created us of His goodness. Our fall from grace means that we are blinded, and our eyes only opened by the grace given to us by God in baptism which rids us of our inherited separation from God.
The beauty is that the sacrament of Baptism transcends the ages and does not change because God has not changed and neither has human nature. We still sin in the same way as Adam and Eve, yet we are saved in the same way through the second Adam, namely Our Lord Jesus Christ. The world changes around us, and we are caught up in its currents and torrents. We find ourselves confused and battered by tides and tempests.
However, God is our Rock and we cling to Him by faith and cooperating with His grace, going where He goes and staying where He stays despite the raging of the times. God gives us the opportunity to be limpets and barnacles upon His being so that we may indeed endure to the end and be saved.
Spoiling the Wrath
Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the fourth Sunday after Easter
Let’s face it, we Christians are just not supposed to get angry are we?
If we start to look just that little bit cross that things aren’t going our way, we hear people say “you’ve got to turn the other cheek”, “love thine enemies” and other such things, especially from people who aren’t Christian and expect us Christians to conform to a given stereotype of being all meek and mild and gentle and complete push-overs. Yet, each of us gets angry, does that mean that we are necessarily in sin, after all Anger is one of the seven Deadly Sins, is it not?
[PAUSE]
Well, actually, no it isn’t. Anger is not a deadly sin. People think that it is, but in fact when Christians reflect upon what is truly sinful it isn’t anger that’s the sin, it’s an uncontrolled anger – an anger that boils over into violence and hatred. It’s an anger that spills into the desire for destruction and complete obliteration. This type of anger is called often called wrath.
Perhaps you will have heard a teacher speak of breathing the wrath of God into a naughty schoolboy. It’s true that there is something called “the wrath of God”. Why is it that God gets wrath and we don’t?
That’s easy to answer: God is God and we are not God. God’s wrath is a very simple hatred for all evil and it’s perfectly reasonable for us to hate evil. There are lots of passages in Holy Scripture in which God is described in terms of a soldier waging war upon his enemies. The Psalmist says, “Stand up, O Lord, in thy wrath, and lift up thyself, because of the indignation of mine enemies: arise up for me in the judgement that thou hast commanded.” It seems that the wrath of God is exactly what we Christians want!
[PAUSE]
Let us be clear. Only God can control His anger. Since Evil is precisely a lack of any good at all, God can overcome Evil just by putting Good in its place. Human beings can’t actually do that. We are created by God and therefore it is good for us to exist – in our very selves we are good because we are created by God – but we are not able to work out what is truly evil and how it is truly evil. For God, wrath brings about more Good. For us human beings, well, you only have to look at the violence in the world around us to see that our wrath does not bring about Good.
[PAUSE]
That does not prevent us from being angry though. Our Lord shows His anger when He casts the money-changers out of the temple. Also, St Mark tells us:
“[Jesus] entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.”
Notice how Jesus controls his anger and uses it to allow His Father to do Good. This is how we repent of the sin of wrath, how we turn back to God. We step back and look for what the problem really is and then work out what good we can put in its place. Often, all we need to say is “get thee behind me Satan” to rid us of the temptation to hate and destroy. We must not allow our anger to overcome us, but control it remembering that we must in all things do the will of God.
[PAUSE]
It is not a sin to be angry, but is it a sin not to be angry? What do you think? This is a question for another time, perhaps.
Let’s face it, we Christians are just not supposed to get angry are we?
If we start to look just that little bit cross that things aren’t going our way, we hear people say “you’ve got to turn the other cheek”, “love thine enemies” and other such things, especially from people who aren’t Christian and expect us Christians to conform to a given stereotype of being all meek and mild and gentle and complete push-overs. Yet, each of us gets angry, does that mean that we are necessarily in sin, after all Anger is one of the seven Deadly Sins, is it not?
[PAUSE]
Well, actually, no it isn’t. Anger is not a deadly sin. People think that it is, but in fact when Christians reflect upon what is truly sinful it isn’t anger that’s the sin, it’s an uncontrolled anger – an anger that boils over into violence and hatred. It’s an anger that spills into the desire for destruction and complete obliteration. This type of anger is called often called wrath.
Perhaps you will have heard a teacher speak of breathing the wrath of God into a naughty schoolboy. It’s true that there is something called “the wrath of God”. Why is it that God gets wrath and we don’t?
That’s easy to answer: God is God and we are not God. God’s wrath is a very simple hatred for all evil and it’s perfectly reasonable for us to hate evil. There are lots of passages in Holy Scripture in which God is described in terms of a soldier waging war upon his enemies. The Psalmist says, “Stand up, O Lord, in thy wrath, and lift up thyself, because of the indignation of mine enemies: arise up for me in the judgement that thou hast commanded.” It seems that the wrath of God is exactly what we Christians want!
[PAUSE]
Let us be clear. Only God can control His anger. Since Evil is precisely a lack of any good at all, God can overcome Evil just by putting Good in its place. Human beings can’t actually do that. We are created by God and therefore it is good for us to exist – in our very selves we are good because we are created by God – but we are not able to work out what is truly evil and how it is truly evil. For God, wrath brings about more Good. For us human beings, well, you only have to look at the violence in the world around us to see that our wrath does not bring about Good.
[PAUSE]
That does not prevent us from being angry though. Our Lord shows His anger when He casts the money-changers out of the temple. Also, St Mark tells us:
“[Jesus] entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.”
Notice how Jesus controls his anger and uses it to allow His Father to do Good. This is how we repent of the sin of wrath, how we turn back to God. We step back and look for what the problem really is and then work out what good we can put in its place. Often, all we need to say is “get thee behind me Satan” to rid us of the temptation to hate and destroy. We must not allow our anger to overcome us, but control it remembering that we must in all things do the will of God.
[PAUSE]
It is not a sin to be angry, but is it a sin not to be angry? What do you think? This is a question for another time, perhaps.
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