The Tyranny of Identity

I have to admit that one of my favourite films is Donnie Darko. It's a convoluted tale of physics, metaphysics and ignorance that just doesn't quite make sense. I guess that's why I like it!

There is one particular scene... Ah! here it is (and apologies for the profanity therein - it may actually be justified)

Of course, life is not as simple as the rather closed-minded and simplistic authority figure shows in this clip. However, I do think that there is a grain of truth in what she is trying to say. I just don't think she has the intellect to understand the profundity, unlike Donnie.

Human beings are a wonderful hybrid of mind and body whatever one's philosophy. We can indeed be compared unto the beasts that perish. We are biological organisms and therefore servant to biological necessities. Love and fear are indeed two powerful emotions that indeed command some degree of control over our lives. They are, however, not as one dimensional as Mrs Farmer seems to think. There is fear, and there is fear, just as there is love, and there is love. We are all familiar with the four loves, there are probably a similar number of fears.

Human beings do indeed have some intrinsic morality that does not come from the physical world. I am sure that any reader of this little blogling would regard the rape, torture, and murder of a little child to be abhorrent, vile and unequivocally evil. We would also reason that anyone who thinks that these are morally okay, is not in possession of their right mind or is simply a person consumed by evil. Yet, this happens in the animal kingdom every day. There is no physical prohibition, like trying to walk on the ceiling, there is no social reason as this sort of thing does happen among social animals such as chimpanzees, so where does it come from? Regardless of our answer, we are glad that there is such a moral repugnance for such an awful act.

Yet we know that we can, and often do, go against any moral code that we have. Our reasons for doing so are rooted in our own self-orientation. I'm going to be bold and say that many of the troubles of the human condition are caused by self-orientation, and that it is the desperate protection of our precious identity that gives rise to our personal angst as well as the problems of living in society.

I like to think that the seven deadly sins are reasonably comprehensive in their encapsulation of human misery. All of them possess some recourse to some fear about our identity.

Gluttony
Not only is this the over-indulgence with food, it is the preoccupation with having things just the way we like them. C.S. Lewis points out that the lady who wants just a little bit of toast but done a very specific way. There is here a desire to control our resources and to impress our will upon what we consume.

Lust
As I've said somewhere before, Lust is an unbridled and uncontrolled passion that infects our consciousness. We perceive it markedly in the lust for sex, but it also seeks a complete possession of what is desired. Again, we see a desire to exercise our power over the thing we desire.

Avarice
This idea of hoarding things so that others cannot possess them again demonstrates a desire for control not only of what we have but what we don't want other people to have. Why does someone seek to be rich if not to take complete control over one's life and to protect oneself from the vicissitudes of fortune and the demands of others on our lives.

Envy
The saddest sin - a desire to possess that which another has. Here there is always that fear of missing out, of entitlement, of seeing those whom we want to be and wanting to be them so that they cease to become who they are to our benefit.

Wrath
The uncontrolled desire to force one's will on others. In wrath, we seek to impress our own justice upon others in revenge for an injustice perceived against us. Note that, in wrath, again we seek to impress our identity on the world around - in this case, our own sense of justice regardless of whether that justice is indeed just!

Sloth
In sloth, we find the disinclination to make any contribution to the world. We seek only to maintain our own comfort at the expense of the needs of those around us. We do not wish to lift a finger because the matter of other people being human doesn't matter. In sloth, we seek the comfort of contemplating our own identity from the warmth of our bed.

Pride/Vanity
Need I say more. Like sloth is formed being comfortable with our identity, pride and vanity seek only to dress up our view of ourselves with empty importance and the belief that our will is more supreme than those around us. In seeing ourselves as the most important aspect of our lives, we find only ourselves to worship.

We can see from these that at the heart of each of these sins, there is a desire to protect and develop our identity. In a sense, this is natural. The one thing that all the experiences and sensations of my lives have in common is me.

Many people in the world today believe that this Me is the only thing they can rely on. Possessions get lost or break, people leave, love fades. The only constant appears to be Me, and if the Me gets damaged or broken or lost, then I have lost absolutely everything! The Me is small, naked and fragile. What do we then do to protect the Me? We seek to keep people away from it and wrap it up in things. Controlling other people keeps them from coming near the Me and thus keeps it safe from invasion. Thus our desire for power comes from making sure that our will is supreme and that the Me cannot be touched by others demands upon it. Not caring for others again releases the Me from being changed from what we want the Me to be. We seek only to become the Me we want to be. But what happens if I actually become the Me I Want To Be?

If I were to become the Me I Want To Be, then I could never change. If the Me changed, then it would not be the Me I Want To Be. If what I wanted changed, again, the Me would not be what I wanted it to be. If both changed together, how would we know? We could look back and see that we have changed, but we would see that the past Me would not have been the Me I Want To Be that I now am.In that case, I would conclude that I was deluded in thinking that I was the Me I Want To Be because I wanted to be the past Me, and that I could not be sure that I am now the Me I Want To Be, and I would want to be sure that I am the Me I Want To Be! I'm sorry for the linguistic jiggery-pokery, but I think this proves that it is impossible for me ever to be the person I want to be, unless I suddenly become changeless, i.e. either becoming God, or becoming dead. We find ourselves slaves to the tyranny of our identity.

The way out is simple. If we want to be free, then we must let go of the illusion that we can ever be in control of who we are. We have to let others have some investment in our identity. We must let them help us find some self-definition. Concern for others is indeed vital if we wish to find some fulfilment in life. I can become a better Me, by seeing the good in others and assimilating that good in Me so that still others can see the good in Me.

Yet, the Me still has one final surrender. What is the point of Me if I am doomed to die and wink out of existence. If there is nothing after this life, then all this work in finding fulfilment in truly being me is worthless. I might as well strive in the futility of seeking to become the Me I Want To Be even if it is impossible. It will make no difference either way, since, eventually if there is nothing else, there will not only be no Me, there will be no other Mes at all! With the end of this planet comes the end of all the Mes, and there will be no Good nor Evil, just dust and then nothing at all.

But there is Good and Evil. This leads me to conclude that there is something beyond our existence that determines Good and Evil, and further something that determines the Me that I am gives me the idea of a better Me I Want To Be because there is some idea of perfection. There needs to be an end if there is any real sense of meaning in this universe other than the arbitrary meaning that human beings impose upon it. That end can only ever be God, and we can only ever see the perfection of humanity in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we seek truly to be happy in this life, then we will never find it in ourselves and the pursuit of developing and protecting a false identity will prevent us from ever really finding satisfaction in simply being ourselves. We can only look for an identity in God and, if we do, we can find and develop sufficient confidence in Him to become the Me He Wants Me To Be which will be the Me I Want To Be!

Collect for the seventh Sunday after Trinity

Prayer book of 1662

LORD of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Reflection
Our Lord is very emphatic when He calls Himself the true vine and us the branches. Many people would see this and say that He is being figurative and thus use that idea of being figurative to deny His presence in the Holy Sacrament. Yet, if He says that He is the true vine, then that is what He is. This collect demonstrates quite clearly the ideas of Divine viticulture employed to bring salvation to the Church.


First, we are grafted into Christ in the Church through His love and recognition of His authority. A graft is the deliberate wounding of a vine in order to restore a severed branch. Christ Himself receives real wounds and it is through His wounds that we find our way into being united with Him. The graft has to be bound firmly in place; likewise we are bound to Christ by our religion. The grafted branch receives nourishment from the parent vine; likewise we are nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ Himself.


Eventually the graft takes and the new branch becomes a substantial part of the vine. We too, through the mercy of God, remain in Him by walking His way and keeping His commands. This is no figurative analogy, this is very much the truth of our salvation.

When every word is not enough.

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the seventh Sunday after Trinity.

Occasionally, you’ll hear the phrase, “Oh! She just wants to have her cake and eat it.” It’s a peculiar little phrase and yet it is something that rings true for most of us. There is something profoundly frustrating in life when we have something delicious in front of us that we really want to eat, and yet, if we do eat it, it will be gone forever. Human beings are seldom satisfied. We’re a very hungry species.

Human beings can get very confused about what they are hungry for and what makes them truly alive. We can hunger for different things and yet think we can be satisfied by one good binge. Many people who are sad, stressed or lonely think they feel better with a bit of “retail therapy” and give their credit cards a heart-attack. Yet the novelty of the new things wears off and they feel no better. So out on another shopping spree they go, and the circle goes round again.

We can look around and see that, as a nation, we’re getting fatter and fatter, while the World’s poorest are still dying from hunger. Clearly, we eat enough to keep our bodies working, and working well, yet we seem unable to stop eating. We’ve been overcome with gluttony. If we don’t need the food, then why are we still hungry? What are we actually hungry for?

[PAUSE]

At His temptation, we hear Our Lord refuse to turn the stones into bread with the words, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” However, something should strike us as being a bit wrong here. At the feeding of the four thousand, Our Lord says, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.”

If Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, why are the four thousand hungry? Is Jesus not God? The multitude has been listening to Him, following Him for three days out in the wilderness, surely the word of God is enough? What’s gone wrong?

[PAUSE]

It seems that just listening to Jesus teach is not enough for us to be alive. But words that come out of the mouth of God are not always words of teaching. Nor is everything that comes out of the mouth of God a commandment to us. Sometimes the word that comes out of the mouth of God is the word that makes bread multiply miraculously so that human beings can be fed. Sometimes the word that comes out of the mouth of God is a blessing, or a promise, or a reassurance. Many people who are not in the Church think that the only words that comes out of the mouth of God are that of condemnation, of vengeance, of “thou shalt not…” If they think that, then they are not listening properly, and so they will never be fed by the word of the mouth of God.

The fact of the matter is that even fervent Christians find themselves at times getting no nourishment out of reading the Bible, nor out of prayer. Many good Christians suffer a dry spell, when God seems far away. That’s okay, it’s normal and natural. It means that our hunger is not for Bible-reading or prayer, or study. It means we are hungry for something else. If our hunger is for God Himself, then we are truly blessed, but then we realise that this hunger will never be satisfied until we stand before Him face-to-face.

Man shall live by the word that proceedeth from the mouth of God, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and His flesh is meet indeed. Here we are at Mass. Welcome to the feeding of more than just four thousand!

Yes we are!

I can't count the number of times that I've heard the idea that Catholics are not Christians and I'm often amazed at the arguments given as to why calling oneself Catholic rules one out of some people's idea of Christian, most notably among the more fundamental Protestants.

Given that I, being part of the Anglican Catholic Church, identify myself as a Catholic and not as Protestant (see here for a refinement of that idea) I do have a vested interest as to defending Catholicism against the idea that we are not Christian.

Of course, being an Anglican Catholic, I am not a Roman Catholic. I do not believe that Rome defines Catholicism. If it did, then it would not regard the Orthodox Church as being Catholic either. Surely the Orthodox Church would properly be called Protestant if Protestant means "not Roman Catholic". As I've said before, I believe in the Primacy of the Pope but not his Supremacy, the two are different things, and I've not yet heard one successful argument from the Fathers or from Scripture that proves that the Pope is indeed Supreme. It does mean that I cannot entirely defend Roman Catholicism from the rabid attacks by Ian Paisley, but I am confident that they have already mounted a successful defence against those (usually straw-man) arguments.

Yet, I must state quite clearly that if you claim to be a Catholic, then it must be demonstrated that you are a Christian first. How is this to be done? What is a Christian? 

The good news is that the word "Christian" is biblical. In Acts xi.25-6, we read:

Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass , that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

Is there a significance here? Well, yes, we know that St Barnabas and St Paul/Saul and the disciples of the Church in Antioch are qualified to receive the epithet of "Christian". If we look a little later in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we find St Paul before Agrippa. The conversation is worth presenting in full, even if you have a bible at hand!

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thyself. 

Then Paul stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself : I think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused of the Jews: Especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews: wherefore I beseech thee to hear me patiently. My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews; Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify , that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come . 

For which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death , I gave my voice against them. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto * strange cities. 

Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And I said , Who art thou , Lord? And he said , I am Jesus whom thou persecutest . But rise , and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen , and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.  

Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me. Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles. 

And as he thus spake for himself , Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself ; much learning doth make thee mad. But he said , I am not mad , most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest . 

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said , I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.

So what does one conclude? Agrippa is almost persuaded to become a Christian by what Paul says, so there must be something in what Paul says here that characterises being a Christian. In fact, what is here is the beginnings of the Catholic Creeds. Compare what is said about the criterion of faith in the biblical passage with

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

and further, with,

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man, And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and dead: Whose kingdom shall have no end.

It seems quite clear that an active and well-formed belief in the Catholic Creeds is sufficient to fulfill the criteria for being a Christian according to St Paul. For, believing that Jesus Christ is the son of God means to believe His teachings and His witness. His witness, as the Church has always maintained, leads to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Church as the Bride of Christ.

Do Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came down from Heaven to give us light to show us our need for repentance and gave the promise of reconciliation of us with God through His Death upon the cross?

I believe the phrase is "you betcha!"

So why are Catholics often rejected as Christians? Most of the time it's because we're told what we believe by people who don't want us to be Christians. We're told that we worship Mary and the saints/ We're told that we worship priests and popes and statues. We're told that we worship bread and wine.

All I can say is, isn't it wonderful to have people with so infallible a vision through the window into men's souls? Such infallibility rivals that of the Popes they seek to demonise.

Of course, if they really bothered to look and see what we understand, then they would see that we are just as Christian as they are. In fact, it is because of us Catholics that there is a Bible for them to read in the first place. If what these folk say is true, there were no Christians whatsoever from the death of the disciples until the Reformation!

It's also interesting that the Roman Catholics (these days) refuse to see Protestants as non-Christian. to them non-Protestants are separated brethren, though this has been the product of listening and one of the more welcome results from Vatican II. They also say the same about non-Roman Catholics.

To say that any Catholic is not Christian is the mark of ignorance, either a genuine lack of understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches, or a genuine wilful ignorance born of a deep-seated wholesale rejection of Catholicism. I would hope that such people would be willing to listen and be educated before they pass so damning a judgment.

Of course, there are lots of different doctrines of Christianity out there, and not all of them can be right. I believe that Anglican Catholicism is the closest and also that there are many other Churches out there that believe almost practically the same things as we do, but I am not prepared to write off anyone as non-Christian unless I am given a very good reason to do so! Perhaps there should be a blanket ban on sweeping statements.

Who will show us any good?

Regular readers of this blogling will note that the themes here are similar to the themes of earlier posts. I don't really make much in the way of an apology for that because it was writing this sermon that inspired development in what I have written so far as I try to understand better how Christians are to fit in a Post-Christian society. Goodness is a vital topic for Christians to understand so I do try to understand it and hope that the reader will travel with me too.

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

How do you react when someone comes up to you and says, “it’s a terrible world, isn’t it?” Do you agree with them, or do you have another answer?

We humans do have a tendency to put things into one of two boxes. Some things go into the “good” box, and other things go into the “bad” box. Happiness, joy and love, you’ll agree, belong in the “good” box while sadness, misery and hatred belong in the “bad” box. That sounds quite reasonable.

Which box does stealing belong in? Most people would say, “in the bad box”. Stealing is a sin according to the law of God, but what if you’re stealing bread because you’re starving? What if you’re stealing bread to feed your starving child? Is stealing right then?

You’ve probably met difficult questions like that before. There are many, many moral dilemmas that we face either hypothetically or in reality. They are hard questions and they challenge our ideas of what is right and what is wrong. Yet, we need to know what is good and what is bad if we are to find God. Why’s that?

[PAUSE]

God is good. In fact, God is what it means to be good. Everything that God says or does is, by definition, good. So, if we want what is good, we must seek God first so that we can find true goodness. What is wrong pulls us away from God. This is why when we sin, we must repent, i.e. we must turn back to God in order to find goodness.

When we try to separate goodness from God, we run into all kinds of problems. If we don’t get goodness from God, where do we get it from? Do we get it from the Law? A good citizen obeys the Law, but it was only following orders that ran the Concentration Camps. If a law turns out to be a bad law, then following it cannot be good. It is possible for laws to be bad, but then we Christians know that there is a higher law that goes beyond any human law.

Our Lord offers this challenge to us, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We will not be allowed into Heaven just by following the laws of the land. We have to follow the law of the Kingdom of God! That means turning to God first to see what His law really is and how it works with our human law.

Above all things, we need to operate with love, and that means careful thought and consideration before we act. We need to see what the real problem is before we go in all guns blazing. It is often not right to oppose an unjust law by reacting with anger and indignation. Too often we protest loudly with banners waving, making a loud noise and being angry. However, it is often more productive to see how we can change the law, by thinking about why the law is there, what drives it and seeing where the injustice really is. If we really know what the Church teaches, then we should be able to apply it with reason and care and, above all, Love.

[PAUSE]

The fundamental mistake that Society makes is to assume that Goodness can ever be separated from God. We need to look to God to find His goodness in all things, even when things look dark and horrible. His goodness is there in the suffering in the world and it is only because His goodness is there that any good can come from our tears and toil. We see the people that we love grow ill and die and we say that this cannot be good. Yet without God, there is no hope at all for anyone who dies. We Christians can even dare to see good in death itself! When we trust that God has power over Life and Death, then even dying becomes a route to the good. That is why St Paul can say with authority, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.”

Our righteousness must go beyond law. It must come directly from God and obedience to His will. This is the only way that goodness can be in the world, and the only way we can hope for good things to come.

Collect for the sixth Sunday after Trinity

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.

The modernist paperclip and the use of correction fluid

A recent comment from a liberal "Protestant" blog criticizing those who defend traditional Church doctrine:

"[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.

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.

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!


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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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?

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.

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.