The Terror of the Cute

I notice among some folk that there is an apparently strange reaction to things that are cute. We can be presented with a playful puppy or kitten, or be given a baby to hold who just smiles and smiles at us. It is as we get overwhelmed by the happy feelings that these wonderful things that a certain negativity arises in us. We suddenly want the cuteness or beauty to end. We seek to push it away, even crush it, destroy it. Somehow we just cannot cope with this wonderful thing. Cuteness hurts.

Yet, this is actually very normal, if rather unwelcome or disturbing. It seems we have a limit to the sheer joy that we can feel before it becomes too difficult to endure. We see this in St Peter's reaction to Our Lord. The sheer greatness of God, even as a human being is too much for us that, like St Peter, we say "away from me, Lord, for I am a sinner." We are so used to the sin in our lives, the darkness of the World and the blind indifference of the universe to the needs of its inhabitants, that we cannot cope with the beauty with which we are all created.

Cute things come with the label, "please take care of me". The purity and innocence they convey shows up in us the filth and wretchedness within our own selves giving us the the dreadful realisation that, actually, we cannot take care of them. Yet, the cuteness is insistent to the extent that the vision of ourselves causes the feelings of affection to cloy and corrupt. We know that we cannot adequately meet their demands, and so try to obliterate the demand that cuteness infallibly makes.

To recognise that our love and ability to take care of lovely things is limited is always a shock. Yet it points to the fact that we need taking care of too. We need help and kindness and warmth if we are to function. We too bear a label that says "please take care of me". Although we may not present the same cuteness as a kitten or baby, we still have it. God beholds us as being adorable. That's the terrible fact and it is unavoidable. We are loved and cannot fail to be loved.

Worms might never get the same press as kittens, but God rejoices in creating them. Even more does He rejoice in us so much as to send His Son, Our Lord, to burst the prison of our own making. And that's the scandal.

We seek to be in control. We seek always to meet the challenge that is thrown at us. We seek to repel the invader and protect all that is vulnerable and all that we cherish. We try to possess the cute things in life and give them unwavering and absolute nurture. The fact is that we can't and it hurts us.

Dealing with these feelings and fears is the work of humility. It can only be done with God's help. We have to learn to walk away from cute things with a spirit of thankfulness to God and recognition of our inability to provide what He alone can provide.

Kittens and babies grow up and become their own selves. We can only do our best for them in the love of God.

The Lie of Deliberate Obstruction

Occasionally in our prayers and reflections, we human beings can suddenly get a sense of clarity, and we realise that we have been lied to. Thus has happened to me a few times and I  have tried to blog the results. Given that we should always be seeking the truth, indeed our family motto is veritas omnia vincit, I do intend to record these moments of clarity as they occur. We are being lied to, but not necessarily by other folk. Thus here begin reflections on The Lie.

You know the sort of situation. You turn onto a single lane road, only to see another car coming towards you. Someone has to back up.

Or you're in a hurry at the bank, and you're behind the little old lady who has decided to take out £100 in 10 pence pieces and the clerk is counting every wretched one.

All too often, we blame the other driver, or the old lady, or the bank clerk for our inconvenience as if they were acting with the express purpose of inconveniencing us, or at least blaming them for their selfish behaviour. Have we really thought about what is actually going on here?

One might say that everyone is naturally selfish. That's not quite true. Everyone is naturally looking out for their own ends and both society and religious practice can help train us to look out for others. Wilfully being self-serving is true selfishness having its expression in Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony. The old lady may need those 10p pieces to feed an antiquated gas meter that her stingy landlord hasn't bothered to replace. The bank clerk may be driven by professional courtesy to ensure that the old lady isn't diddled out of a single coin. The other driver may be just visiting his mother. Or they may all just be out to ruin your day. Which is most likely?

The real thing to blame is the timing. Human beings interact chaotically. Simple social rules and conventions create complex and colourful behaviour, allowing us to express ourselves and live our lives. But the complexity of living mean that we do get in each others' ways albeit for the most part unwittingly and ignorantly. Indeed, we can be at our most obstructive to others when we are actually trying to help.

We have to see the clear thing here. Unless we actually have the information in front of us, we can assume nothing about the other's motives or intentions. Any obstruction is most likely to be bad timing more than anything else.

This does mean that we have to learn to relinquish the illusion that things are deliberately out to get in our way. This illusion is born of another illusion which is more pernicious, namely the illusion that we can control every aspect of our lives. If we live with others, then the Divine mandate to love one another as ourselves compels us not just to allow those obstacles but to rejoice in them as an aspect of our and the other's shared humanity in the sight of God.

Of course, we ought not seek to obstruct others deliberately, but perhaps we should cut ourselves a little slack when we do.

There is nothing to blame here save our own propensity to be impatient and intolerant. Yet we must recognise that while our patience and tolerance are limited, God's is not.

Let us see the Lie of Deliberate Obstruction for what it is, and seek to see in others not an obstacle but an ikon of God's love.

Growth upon the Rock?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Third Sunday in Lent

Rocks have a bit of a mixed press biblically. It is upon the Rock of Christ that the Church is built, and St Peter is so named because the Church will be built on him too.

Yet, it is the rocky ground that yields a shallow faith. The seed of the word of God can only grow a little before it withers and dies because it has no root. Thus here we have a bit of a problem  Rocks are good for building,  but not for growing. Which should we be?

Rocks build temples, but rocks stone St Stephen to death. How can we be rocks and grow?

Remember that it takes time for rocks to form - a long time. Some rocks are born out of the furnace of a volcano, forming as the lava cools and hardens. Other rocks form by compression with the weight of ages of material crushing them into hard rock. You already know that coal and even diamond are the result of prehistoric trees being crushed under millions of millions of years of earth. There was a time when rocks were soft and able to support growth. When a rock is finally hard, it can't grow any more.

This is what happened to Pharaoh as he tried to prevent the Israelites from leaving Egypt. We are told that first of all he hardened his heart against Moses and Israel and wouldn't let them go. Then after more and more plagues, he still hardened his heart.

It comes to a point when God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. This is important. At first Pharaoh hardens his own heart, then God hardens it for him. He has lost the ability to choose because he can no longer see the goodness of God through his own pride. His heart has hardened against God.

This is frightening because it could happen to us if we decide to walk away from God. Growth on rocks is shallow because the seed cannot take root. If we want to make sure that we harden into a rock for the service of God, like St Peter, then we have to work at allowing our faith to deepen and develop.

St Peter hardens into rock for the love of Christ. Although he makes errors, he never allows himself to completely lose sight of God. See how he weeps bitterly when he realises that he has betrayed Jesus. His hardening into rock happens as a result of his perfection by God.

We, too, must harden into rock, and we have to do so for the love of Christ. How do we do this? We are already engaged on studying the Bible and praying to God. Any deepening of our faith must come from living what we believe. Do we know the fourteen works of Mercy? Do we practise them?

Our lives are spent slowly becoming what we live them to be. If we live for Christ and then we become the precious stones in the walls of Heaven.

Biblical Balderdash

"If the bible said that two and two were five, I'd believe it. It would take me a while to think through what it means, but I'd believe it."

So says one "bible-believing" Christian, and he's not alone. This actually upsets me a great deal because it shows not only a misunderstanding of what the Bible really is, but that human beings are essentially trying to live lives as "brains in vats" with everything around them being pure illusion save that which is literally printed in the Bible.

Let me be clear, I am not saying that Science holds all the answers, nor am I intending to pour scorn on those who believe the literal interpretation of Genesis, but I am concerned that people believe that the Bible is to be accepted uncritically.

I am not going to be able to find a general solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in Holy Scripture. Nor should I think that I should. If the solution there, then I trust the Holy Ghost to lead me. Until then, I will rely on mathematical sources to aid me in this Quixotic quest.

My point us that, although I believe that Science and Mathematics are not capable of obtaining a monopoly on the truth, they do indeed bear witness to the truth. "The Heavens are telling the glory of God". Mathematics is infallible in the truth that it can tell, but this truth can never be complete - indeed the incompleteness of mathematics has been proved mathematically!

This incompleteness is no reason to doubt the truths uncovered by Science. Religion is impregnable to any attempts by atheists to use Science to dismiss it as false. It can't be done, and as of today, I have seen not one single coherent argument for the non-existence of God.

Yet Science does tell the truth. If you drop a vase, it will fall unless there are external entities that prevent that failure. Two and two are four and that is obvious though surprisingly not self-evident. The fact that we have observed gravitational waves almost a century after Einstein predicted them gladdens my heart, and I do thank God for the beauty of Mathematics.

The Bible says that pi is three, but if you read I Kings vii.23 & 26 carefully, this is not a collection of blueprints but a description of the glories of Solomon's temple. Even then, there are interesting features of Phoenician mathematics and mensuration that make it closer to the truth than is apparent. Again, the exact value of pi is not the point: the glory of God is.

The Cappadocian Fathers tell us to revere every word of Scripture carefully, not because it has a literal point, but rather it points to that which is deeper. St Thomas Aquinas would ensure that, following Holy Tradition, we make use of all the senses of Scripture to find the word of God.

Yet Christians must learn not to be so simple-minded as to drive people away from them sniggering at our stupidity for accepting what is manifestly incorrect. To believe that two and two are five based on Scripture really would make a mockery of Scripture. It would make God out to be a liar or at best, inconsistent. Too often, the Bible is carved up into proof-texts to prove a point as to deprive it of any context or depth, or insightful vision of the deep truths of God. We are to be as shrewd as vipers as well as being innocent as doves. This means that, in order to talk with people, to help them find the God we love, we cannot pay for two drinks each worth two pound and expect not to get a pound in change. We are already counted as fools for Christ, why be counted as a fool for oneself?

I am deeply saddened by those Christians who are anti-science, or those who do not think beyond the confines of the Textus Receptus. The integrity of Christian thought starts with Holy Scripture and ends with God. There's a massive distance there and this gap can only be bridged by living the Christian Faith in the world that God made!

While I remain a sceptic on many of the claims of Science on non - scientific issues, I find myself drawn evermore closer to God by the sheer complexity of the world around me, and the fascinating theories that lie behind that complexity.

Of course if two and two were five, then that really would prove that I am the Pope!

Ritual Ridicule Noted

As you can imagine, I am a member of a few online groups dedicated to the practice of ritual and ceremony. I often find that occasionally, these groups have a season of some quite unpleasant interchanges. It usually goes like this :

A: O foolish *insert denomination/jurisdiction here*! The Bishop Ordinary is present and you haven't put a seventh candle behind the crucifix. The vimpa is of the wrong colour, and the MC should not be wielding a flame - thrower outside of Ash Wednesday.

B: Who cares? It's our intention to worship God that counts, not all this pedantic obsession with ornaments and rubrics.

A: Surely sir, you have read the raison d'etre of this group. It is our intention to bring to light abuses of ritual.

B: But you ridicule them as well! That is just not the spirit of Christianity!

A: We only do so in a spirit of lightheartedness. If you're such a prissy hater of ritual, please leave the group.

B: I'M prissy? You're the bunch of lace loving losers who faint when it's half an inch too short....

...and so it continues into sarcasm, snipery, and snotty parting shots.

It's an unfortunate interchange which shows all kinds of Christians up as unpleasant and unkind and thus tars us all with the same brush. It is very difficult to see the person of Christ there in the argument. Yet He is, but you would be hard pushed to see where. Human nature is operating at its best to obscure the Love of God which fuels it.

Let us withdraw from the smoke of competing incense and try and understand A and B and why they are posting as they are.

A is clearly a ritualist following one of the great texts on the practice of ritual and ceremony like Ritual Notes, or the Anglican Directorium, or Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Explained. He subscribes to a standard, presumably the same standard that everyone else is interested in in the group.

There is nothing wrong with this. Ritual is an essential part of the worship of God right back to the beginning of our conversation with Him. In each of the texts I've mentioned, there is an integrity of theology - lex orandi lex credendi - which surrounds all the tiny details ranging from numbers of candles to whether the water of the lavabo should be from the blessed cruet of water or not. The paten is hidden from view until the fraction when it becomes the Tomb in which the Body of Christ rests after it is broken on the Cross.

All this gives colour and meaning - indeed a very precise meaning to what we do. It is this zeal for God's house that has consumed A.

In the confines of this group, A hopes to release some of the frustration he feels when he sees what he perceives as deviations from his standard. He complains with the same attitude as you might complain to your friends about the little old lady dithering about in front of them in the queue at the Post Office.

B, on the other hand, is concerned that such an overemphasis on details will detract people from living the life that Christ would want us to live. He fears an idolatry of things that Our Lord Himself cast out of the temple for clouding the sincerity and worship of God. In this, what gets done, or does not get done, is subordinate to the intentions of the heart.

For B, complaints about what he perceives to be the minutiae of ritual are evidence of that idolatry representing the traditions of men censured by Our Lord. He has probably joined the group out of a genuine interest for how things could be done, but does not hold the standards of ritual to be as authoritative as A.

In my parish, we try to follow the English Missal with our ritual guided by Ritual Notes. That is the standard of our ritual to which we subscribe subject to the approval of my jurisdiction - the Anglican Catholic Church. However, with my limited resources and relative inexperience, I doubt that I have ever said a Ritual Notes perfect Mass. My Archdeacon is always ready to instruct and I am so grateful for his pointing out my errors. It means that I can improve and seek to make my Mass better and more integrated into the Catholic Faith. For my sins and omissions, I have to rely on God to supply what is lacking and correct what is done amiss and pray for a better approach to excellence in Worship. The problem is, does this set me up for A's ridicule?

Probably, yes. I wonder how much he would complain if he knew my intentions. If he did ridicule me, would he do so according to the basic premise of joke-telling? You should only say something light-hearted if you can be sure that everyone who hears it would consider it as light-hearted. I am open to be ridiculed as much as anyone else. Does that mean that I should be ridiculed?

Out of my earshot, I guess that I am the target of much criticism and ridicule. The CofE Parish that I left painted me as autistic, crackers, and mad, and the priest did nothing to stand up for me but rather allowed the criticism to continue. I was the one standing up for high standards of ritual because I knew that it reflected our theology. I too employed ridicule of such a laissez faire attitude which, to my mind, showed full well the deterioration of belief in my old parish. I still believe that, and while my sense if humour is still as wicked as ever, I do try to make my humour appropriate to my listeners. As a Benedictine, however, I should strive to get away from complaining and murmuring. It does damage communities, especially online communities where the non-verbal nuances are missing.

While I sit with B on his concern about the tone of the comment, I must side in spirit with A. There have to be high standards of liturgy which reflect the theology of the church and for which one can strive so that one can approach God in the Catholic Faith. Chopping and changing according to whim follows only the individual subjective and reactionary view, rather than the comprehensive and universal standard set by the Catholic Faith.

I have no concern about Anglicans of the Strict Observance - this is my little joke about Prayerbook Anglicans who hold to the entirety of the Book of Common Prayer : it is intended as affectionate and respectful of their position. They have their integrity written in, for example, The Parson's Handbook. It's there and they respect it. Thus they have my respect. I do have concern, and this was one of the causes of my ejection, with those ministers who believe that the heart is the source of liturgy. They are pushing a personal theology which may or may not be true.

For me, the conversation should have gone something like

A: O foolish *insert denomination/ jurisdiction here*! The Bishop Ordinary is present and you haven't put a seventh candle behind the crucifix. The vimpa is of the wrong colour, and the MC should not be wielding a flame - thrower outside of Ash Wednesday.

B: I appreciate that this group is for those who subscribe to the liturgical standards in the description of this group, however, I am concerned about the depth of adhering to the rubrics in such detail, and feel that it is wrong to describe that denomination as foolish.

A: My apologies. I was blowing off some steam. Was there anything that you particularly object to?

B: Please do instruct me on the liturgical use of flame - throwers and explain to me the theology behind them.

A: Well....

Yes, I  know that's a little stilted. However, before we post, we really should try to see the person we're addressing and see their motivation. To seek to respect the other where they are is a sign of God's love in us.

Hmm. Maybe one day even I will give that a try!

The Devil take you?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the First Sunday in Lent

The first place that receives the seed is the wayside, the pathway where the birds swoop down and take the seed away. Our Lord explains that this is those who receive the word of God, but the Devil takes it from them. Well, whose fault is that?

As we have already seen, if we allow the Devil to influence us, he can lead us by the wayside where we can lose God completely. We know that this is something that he wants to do. Look at the lengths he goes to to take the Word of God away! Had Jesus succumbed to temptation,  then the Word of God would have been lost to us all!

So what do we do? We need to protect the seed that we have received. We protect it by arming ourselves as St Paul would have us do.

By pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.

We need to be pure in our intent to love and serve God. We have to read our bibles and know what it is to be Christian. We need to stick with it through thick and thin. We need to see God in our neighbours and be kind. We need to pray to the Holy Ghost for His presence and continual influence to drive away the lies of the Devil. This is how we protect the seed that we want to grow in us.

We will suffer for it, there is no doubt. The Devil will give us a hard ride through Earthly things, but not through heavenly things. We will fall so many times in so many sad and terrible ways. We will fail, but the Holy Trinity gives us an Eternal Hope!  If we pray for help, it will come and it will bring us closer to God through Christ. We just need to cling on to what we have, and allow it to grow. Then the word of God will truly grow in us.

Springtime in the Wilderness

Many people confuse the wilderness with a desert. This isn't really that true. While the wilderness is by definition a challenging place to live, it does not challenge one's actual survival.

We go into the wilderness to think, reflect, listen, or simply realise who we are as opposed to who we think we are. It is not exactly clear how this can be accomplished if we spending the energy fighting for our lives. We know that shepherds took their flocks a way into the  wilderness for them to graze. We also know that they would have to be on the lookout for the beasts like lions, which is why shepherds had to be sober and vigilant.

However, in this challenging landscape there are many places where the vegetation is lush and green, where the water runs as clear as crystal, and where the native animals live their simple little lives unencumbered by the shackles of reason, law, order, and politics. Here in the wilderness we can truly meet God being who we are, as we were created. Here is an opportunity to sit down and allow ourselves to be known by God.

As we enter the season of Lent, we embrace the challenges of asceticism in which we seek not to make ourselves uncomfortable as if to atone for the lives that God has given us, but rather to step back from ourselves as we believe ourselves to be. We allow ourselves to see beauty in the simple things in the artificial aridity of a life forgetful of God. Like the Pharisees, we can do all the right things but in forgetting the presence of God, our efforts are vain because we forget the presence of Love.

We do not fast in order to make ourselves miserable - carrying the Cross will do that for us. We do not give things up for the challenge - the testing of our faith by Sin, the World, and the Devil will do that. We do these things to strip away the encumbrances of worldly living to find freedom to be what God created, to explore God and how He has both created and redeemed us, and to do so in the presence of that loving Creator and Redeemer!

I wish you all a blessed, happy, and fulfilling Lent!

Loving substance

It's a bit of an eye-opener when you see the question,  "what is love?" in an RS exam and see that they've only allowed two marks for the answer. Can we really sum up Love in a sentence where saints, poets and novelists have written libraries? Students are encouraged to be succinct, in which case you could say with St Thomas Aquinas that "to love is to will the good of the other". This still does not say explicitly what love is: we still have to understand what "will" and "good" are.

First, we have to see that Our Lord shows us that "to will" is not passive. We cannot sit down at a desk and say that we love our enemies because we will them nothing but good. This isn't what "will" means. It is a confusion with the word "wish". Our will consists in the capacity to choose between options the result of which usually is a clear outcome. We can wish someone well but that needs no further action on our part. Think of how decisive we are when we respond with "I will do this"!

Human beings are interesting in that it is in our nature both to love and to hate. Humanity possesses a peculiar rationality in which we can choose to act reasonably or unreasonably. Only a truly rational being can be foolish. We can choose what is truly bad over what is truly good. We can even choose to define what "good" and "bad" mean for us irrespective of how else they might be defined. And that's a problem. It's a problem that we face in this very day and age. How can we will the good of others if we don't know what "good" is?

Often what we mean by good is whatever makes life most pleasant for ourselves. This cannot be right. Whatever is truly good must be outside of our own point of view. It must be outside of everyone's point of view.

In that famous chapter by St Paul, we read:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Look at how all of these attributes of charity look beyond anyone's point of view. True love lies not in the emotions but outside in the very being of other people. And that very being is the image of God Himself. God is love because God is what it means to be good. Whatever God does is good because He does whatever is consistent with Himself. We have our being within the substance of God because our creation is good. We do not deserve love because of what we do but because we are human beings and possess the ultimate dignity of being a child of God.

It is in our nature to hate others because we have lost the sight of God in others. We are fallen from the grace of union with God and we can only have our sight restored in Our Lord Jesus whose flesh given in love restores our substance. Let us pray continually for the grace to see the image of God in others and thus will their good that divine image determines.

Hierarchy by Candlelight

When I was ordained a priest, I knew that the age of deference to the parish clerk had passed. Very occasionally, I  will hear, "mornin' Vicar" or, "thank you, Father " but more often than not I am not recognised as a priest. I get the odd look, but nothing more than that.

In many ways this is good. No-one should be compelled to recognise or defer to a priest as part of social mores. I am a human being among others, worthy of no greater nor lesser respect than anyone else. This is exactly what Our Lord wants when he upbraids the Pharisees for wanting all the honorific titles and places of honour for very little. Earthly honors and titles are worth nothing.

In a previous post, I alluded to Boethius and his view on honours. I used to rate the Oxford DD as the most prestigious academic degree. Then Oxford University awarded that very degree to Katherine Jefferts Schori, the woman who has done most to destroy Anglicanism in America as well as besmirch the reputation of Christianity in that country. This is the essence of Boethius' proof that honour and title are not worth seeking. If that title can be given to anyone, deserving or undeserving alike, what can it really be worth? Honours are purely subjective and can have no objective existence.

Time and again do we see bishops, priests, and pastors fat with their own self - satisfaction insist that their message be heard by everyone because they are the bishop, priest, or pastor while, at the same time, either quietly hiding their hypocrisy or justifying it loudly and proudly. This was true in medieval times, and it's true now.

Yet, the priesthood is a gift of God to His people. The existence of the sacerdotal ministry is like a computer's installer. It exists in order to download and install software onto a computer. Likewise a priest is one called by God to give to His people the objective and efficient grace of His Being.

A priest is an alter Christus in that he participates in the single priesthood of Christ making real Christ in the Mass. I was once asked the question, if you meet an angel and a priest walking together down the street whom should you honour most? The answer is the priest who bears Christ in himself and makes Him present at Mass.

Like many people, I rather balked at this. It makes the priest seem superior to angelic beings, more glorious than the Cherubim. But man is lower than the angels, and in the Incarnation, Our Lord was indeed made lower than the angels. The point is that it is the presence of Christ in the priest that His people will recognise. It is His presence that is called "Father" not of the fallible little person that bears Him.

This cuts two ways. If a priest or bishop seeks the accolades proper to Christ for himself, then not only is he defrauding his congregation, he is also committing self-idolatry. That's just what the Devil did!

This, then, is where the priesthood meets Candlemas. The aged Simeon departs in peace after presenting the Christ child to God and thus to the world. Like St John the Baptist, Simeon seeks only his decrease in the light of Christ. In the ritual purification of Our Lady, Simeon's Old Testament is purified in the light of Christ. As Christ becomes the only true high priest at the altar of the Cross, so is this light shone out to the world.

This means that each priest, and more so each bishop, has a truly onerous duty. Every day the priest is confronted with, "how have you presented Christ to the world today? How have you made Him present in this dark some world?" This should terrify each cleric. If it doesn't, then he has forgotten the enormity of his orders. He is under orders, lesser than his congregation whom he serves, lesser than the society he inhabits, because he is always beneath the shadow of the cross that he bears but, by virtue of his sins, he is unworthy to bear. Thanks be to God for the grace that a priest receives in order to do this at his ordination!

The more that a priest shows the light of Christ, the more will people show the honour due not to him but to the One he bears. If people can recognise the presence of Christ, then and only then will the priest be able to depart in peace according to His Word.

The seed of Sexagesima

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on Sexagesima

What are you? Rocky ground? The wayside? The thorns? The good soil? Or are we the seed that the Sower sows? Sometimes, just listening to the parable of the sower confuses us because we don't quite know where we fit in. It's a difficult parable to understand and it appears that Our Lord intends it to be so. After all, He says to His disciples:

Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Why should Our Lord withhold the meaning from us?

Remember that He also tells us "seek and ye shall find". Our desire for God should lead us to ask further. Our Lord is giving His hearers an opportunity to do so.

When it comes to the explanation, Our Lord implies that we are the soil in which the seed of the word of God can grow. But then this gives us a problem that it does not appear that we can choose whether we can bear the fruit of the word of God. The soil can't choose whether the birds eat the seed. The soil can't choose whether it has rocks or thorns. If this is true then it means that there are some people who are not meant to bear the word of God.

This is not true. St Gregory Nazianzus says:

When you hear this you must not entertain the notion of different natures, as certain heretics do, who think that some men indeed are of a perishing nature, others of a saving nature, but that some are so constituted that their will leads them to better or worse. But add to the words, To you it is given, if willing and truly worthy.

Think about it. Our Lord is speaking to many people, some of whom will hear his message and say to themselves, "I don't want to be bad soil. I want to be good soil. From now on, I want to be free of the Devil, of shallow faith and of the cares of this life." Our Lord paints a picture of His challenge of what believing in Him takes.

As God looks at our lives from outside of Time, He sees us in our entirety, what we were, what we are, and what we shall become. We can become rocky ground by keeping a shallow faith. We can become the wayside and allow the Devil to take the word of God from us. We can allow thorns to grow and choke our faith with worldly cares. If that's what we do, then we become what we do.

As Lent approaches, let each one of us consider what soil we are. Let us spend our Lent rejecting the lies of the Devil, working at deepening our faith through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and let us reject the pull of this world on our relationship with God. Then we shall grow His fruit for the world and find the Word dwelling in us.

Respect and revolution

There is a scene in the film Dr Zhivago that haunts me to this day. Essentially, it is when the deserters seize their commanding officer and beat him to death, jeering all the while. It marks the turning of Imperial Russia to the days of Communism.

Looking back through history, it seems every revolution involves ikonoclasm and defilement of the old regime. This is understandable: in order for revolution to occur, there has to be some catastrophic resentment of the status quo that the contempt for the old regime boils over into hatred for all that regime stood for. I see this attitude frequently in the mind of converts, and have some experience of it myself during my renunciation of my membership of the CofE.

It is one of anger and fury at the establishment that leaving it is not enough. There is a desire for judgement on it for the pain and suffering it caused. For those who have left the CofE willingly or unwillingly, that judgement can never come and so the temptation is to vilify and to show profound disrespect.

Theologically, the orders of the CofE are now deeply dubious having likely defects in the intention if not the matter. If a Bishop intends to ordain a man in the same way as he does a woman, then this does indeed raise a defect of intention as, in the Catholic view, both will be doubtful because one is doubtful and both are intended to be of the same validity. This, however, is not a licence for disrespect. If they cannot be regarded as priests in the Catholic sense, they can still be regarded as ministers and given respect accordingly. Not to be respectful is a violation of St Paul's directive:

Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: (I Corinthians x.32)

Holding to Orthodoxy does not give anyone a mandate for the ikonoclasm of heterodox persons. We would be committing the same atrocities as were performed by the Reformers and Counter Reformers.

Revolutions will happen. If Deacon Christopher Little is right, they will happen soon in the West. With the liberal wing trying to legalise illogic and literal nonsense, there can be two potential revolutions. One is the threat from radicalised Islamic fundamentalists and an aggressive conservative suppression. The other is a completion of the relativistic agenda in which anything goes apart from those who disagree that anything goes. Both are obviously ikonoclastic: one seeks to obliterate the Christian religion through acts of physical violence and demolition; the other through acts of intellectual violence, demolishing logic, objectivity, and truth in favour of a false science based on a materialistic objectivism. In both, we lose our freedom of speech. In both, our ikons are seen as just pictures than Windows into the Divine.

I should love to see a third revolution in which we return to Christian government, especially an Anglican Catholic government preserving the Catholic Faith as these British Isles have cultivated before Relativism snuck in. However, with the death of the "beef-faced colonel" still very much in my mind, this revolution cannot ever occur without the principles of justice, mercy, humility and love, with no pomposity, legalism, or self-righteousness from which we suffer.

That's hard,  but every day, in every Office, I pray "Thy Kingdom come". One day, it will. Until then, I remain an idealistic conservative revolutionary. Now there's a contradiction!

In criticism of praise

It's nice to be praised, isn't it? It means that what we have done had been held in high regard by someone. If it's someone important, then that gives us an affirmation of what we do. Praise demonstrates appreciation of our efforts and hard work. And that is what praise should be for. It is an appreciation of what we do.

This is how human beings can legitimately praise God. We single out the things He has done, and we demonstrate to Him that we appreciate it. A prayer of praise is always relevant, and we should learn to exercise praise well. This should put a lot of pressure on Choirs and "Worship Groups" as this praise should be nothing to do with how the music affects us, but rather that we have taken the time and discipline to get it right for the greater glory of God.

Praise is only really proper to God for He and He alone is responsible for all good things. Human beings are only ever going to be unprofitable servants, not out of some false modesty or self deprecation, but rather out of a point of fact. Everything we do is God's and so there is no profit in what we do. There is only His grace; we have to cooperate with it if we stand any chance of being with God.

Unlike God, we are easily swayed by praise, and it is a good trick for people in power to use it to get our goodwill. It has a habit of rendering our critical faculties compromised if we are not careful and can blind us to the facts and ulterior motives of the unscrupulous.

Further, one can get addicted to the warm feelings that come from praise. Most praise is genuinely meant, an honest appreciation of one's work; the giver of praise is desiring to express that appreciation and nothing more. The trouble is that we can then make Praise the end of all our endeavours, resulting in showing off or neuroticism about the worth of our every action. The need for praise causes us to fear failure and shun rejection.

Our Lord has a habit of not explaining His parables fully. He speaks so that "hearing they may not hear" and this is very deliberate on His part. He wants people to seek Him actively and in humility. He does not want the education that He is providing to be a point-scoring exercise. Listening to Our Lord gives us not a knowledge to pass an exam, but rather a thirst to seek Him deeper. It is the Truth for its own sake that is important, not its utility in a rapidly materialistic age. The teacher teaches knowledge for its own worth, not so that students get a big tick in their homework.

Praise, then, while lovely when genuine, should never be an end. It should never be why we do things, but rather to participate in our Society for the love of God and of each human being. The great ascetic saints would bid us flee from praise, and to shun all honour, but rather to take our pleasure in God and the good things He gives us.

A race not to be the best

The London Marathon is one of many around the world, yet only a few really seek to come first. There are those who race competitively, and there are those who have other intentions for running. The atmosphere around it is unique, full of camaraderie and respect for those who run. Yet who is the real winner in such a race?

There are those who run to come first. If they do, then they get some recognition for such a feat. There are those who run to achieve a personal best. If they do, then they feel good about themselves. But what if they fail?  What if they don't win, or don't achieve a personal best? They try again next year. But what if they never achieve it?

Ultimately, what is winning worth? What is a personal best worth? Both are fleeting and arbitrary. Why first place? Why not 49th or last, or some other position? Why run faster? There will be times that you run slower, indeed the principle of regression to the mean guarantees that.

In this culture, there seems to be the attitude espoused by John Christie of Glyndbourne: "Not just the best we can do, but the best that can be done anywhere" It's a meaningless statement which drives people on a search for the impossible or causes them to lapse into despondent inactivity.

Why?

First, who determines the meaning of the word "best"? Who sets the standard? If it is oneself, then one automatically achieves it. If not this time, then the time previously. If we define our own best then doing the best that can be done anywhere is tautologically satisfied. If others define the standard, then how can it ever be verified. It may be that in a tiny village in Burkina Faso, one quiet little person has done the best ever, and no one will ever know. We could still strive to do the best that can be done anywhere, but we would never be presented with any quantifiable success until we say, "I've done enough " and then we are settling for the best that we can do.

Second, what is the point of spending a lifetime competing with a faceless rival in anything. Whatever it is will die with us. Boethius reminds us:

‘Further, if there were any intrinsic good in the nature of honours and powers themselves, they could never crowd upon the basest men. For opposites will not be bound together. Nature refuses to allow contraries to be linked to each other. Wherefore, while it is undoubted that for the most part offices of honour are enjoyed by bad men, it is also manifest that those things are not by nature good, which allow themselves to cling to evil men. And this indeed may worthily be held of all the gifts of fortune which come with the greatest success to the most unscrupulous. And in this matter we must also think on this fact, that no one doubts a man to be brave in whom he has found by examination that bravery is implanted: and whoever has the quality of swiftness is plainly swift. So also music makes men musical, medicine makes men physicians, oratory makes men orators. The nature of each quality acts as is peculiar to itself: it is not confused with the results of contrary qualities, but goes so far as to drive out those qualities which are opposed to it. Wealth cannot quench the insatiable thirst of avarice: nor can power ever make master of himself the man whom vicious passions hold fast in unbreakable chains. Honours, when joined to dishonest men, so far from making them honourable, betray them rather, and show them to be dishonourable. Why is this so? It is because you rejoice to call things by false names which belong not to them—their names are refuted by the reality of their qualities: wherefore neither riches, nor that kind of power, nor these honours, can justly so be called. Lastly, we may come to the same conclusion concerning all the aspects of Fortune: nothing is to be sought in her, and it is plain she has no innate good, for she is not always joined with good men, nor does she make good those with whom she is joined.’

Titles and honours and riches and power are all fleeting and will not make us happy, at least not in the long run. Failure always awaits us in the declining of our years. Our riches get spent, broken or moulder away, as do any laurels on which we rest. There is no point in running the London Marathon for any of these.

Yet, the vast majority of runners do so for none of these. They run on behalf of others. They enjoin themselves to a community in which success is just being there.

I am extremely proud to say that I have colleagues and former students who have run the Marathon not for themselves but for others. One runs in memory of his beloved mother who died of cancer and so that he can help cancer charities. Another runs in memory of a still - born child for a children's charity in the hope that his sadness can bring joy to other family. They take away with them an experience and an integrity that they cannot lose. They win only our respect, but that is only a mere byproduct of what they have really received.

St Paul reminds us that we are all running a race.

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. (1 Corinthians ix.24)

This is not a race for one winner and many losers. This is a race where simply staying the distance through adverse circumstances and agonies will win the same prize available to all. The losers will be those who choose not to reach the finish line, or determine their own finish line on their terms.

Our ancestors competed for limited resources and we have inherited that same thirst to compete against one another. Yet our true happiness is not a limited resource, for that happiness is not fleeting and thus goes beyond the whole idea of Happiness. It is Eternal Joy.
This Joy subverts all ideas of competition as demands that we should be ministering to those who are struggling and falling away, not cutting them out or running past them, so that they too should strive for that selfsame prize of Eternal Joy - God Himself.

Dioceses and Societies

It's the birthday of our Diocese on 24th, so our Mass contains a commemoration in recognition of this. Historically, a Diocese consisted of a single city, like Rome, Alexandria, or Antioch. This meant that each city had its own Bishop. The Church of England Bishop of Rochester would only have had oversight of Rochester. This is before Chatham and Gillingham were invented. This means that the Diocese used to comprise a single geographical society of neighbours.

How were these societies to be run. St Paul in his letter to the church in Rome, that little band of Christians, gives rules for how a Christian society should work.

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

St Paul tells us that we are each individuals with different abilities and therefore different roles that we can play in our society. God has not made us to be the same, but has given grace to us to be individuals. Yet we must operate together in His Love working for the Common Good. We are individuals who rejoice in each other's individuality. The key thing is that it is God's Love and not any love made by human definition : this is a love that begins in God and works through us.

As Anglican Catholics, our Diocese is the whole United Kingdom. That means we have a mandate to minster to the whole country bringing God's Love which He has given us in the Catholic Faith, organised in the Apostolic Order by which we can offer to Him Orthodox Worship. It's an enormous task, and there are so few of us, but as long as we love God and others in His righteousness, we cannot really fail, can we?

Episcopalian "sanctions"

Actually, I have very little to say about the primates meeting in Canterbury, largely because it's none of my business.

However, as always I pray for the Anglican Communion in all its internal struggles.

First, I pray for all the LGBT people who believe that this action will mean continued persecution. May they find relief from all the evil that be sets them.

Second, I pray for the Truth of God to be evident for the Anglican Communion, that the internal struggles may find a resolution in the clear Light of Christ.

Third, I pray that they may honour resolutions made in their own legislation which will begin a substantive dialogue with the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions  that the way of Christian Orthodoxy based on the love and righteousness of God may be demonstrated to a fallen and falling world.

Am I what I am?

According to the BBC, a government report suggests that 'as many as 650,000 people in the UK are "gender incongruent to some degree"'. That sounds like a lot of people, but it represents just 1% of the UK population, the same percentage as have autism, are members of the three mainstream political parties, or believe that their ears stick out too much.

If as many as 1% of the population are "gender incongruent" then 99% or more are not. Gender, or more properly, sex, is still well defined. It still takes a man and a woman to conceive a child without any external assistance, and likewise, it still takes a woman to give birth. This has not changed in aeons.

According to the BBC, MPs declare that the UK is still far from becoming "gender equal". What is "gender equality?

When we think of equality, we primarily think of equality under the law. The law should apply equally to everyone and everyone is expected to abide by the law for the Common Good of society. A lawful government is expected to seek the Common Good of each and every citizen. This means that must enable or supply that which can be reasonably expected for the good of each citizen so that each citizen can bring what they have to the Common Good of Society. At all stages, there is reciprocity, a social contract to draw together the individuals into a society in which they can live seeking the good of others.

What is being suggested is that, as part of their new identity as a woman, a transgender man can claim the right to female only spaces. This is clearly problematic: female only spaces have the property that a woman feeling in need of distance from the company of men can take refuge in such spaces. A transgender man (particularly before surgical augmentation) is still biologically male and thus still represents a threat to vulnerable women.

We can each one of us think of some aspect of our being and seek some entitlement from it. The question is, given that living in Society demands reciprocity, how does that entitlement enable us to contribute to Society and further the Common Good?

Of course, we inhabit a postmodern society: the word "good" means different things to different people. Relativism has exiled the idea of Common Good, replacing it with a society of individual "good"s. Thus we find more and more that the individual's perception of identity and "good"ness are impinging on others'. Most of the time, what one sees as good is rooted in what makes one happy.

This is the wrong way round: happiness needs to be rooted in goodness. To will each other's happiness should be the result of goodness. Goodness should be the cause of Happiness not vice versa. If we accept the premise that goodness is relative, then we have no grounds to complain against ISIS operating its own brand of goodness which involves lopping the heads off of innocent people. If there is no objective goodness, then there can be no moral outrage. Even if ISIS were in the majority (and perhaps they will be, if we're not very careful) their actions cannot ever be described as being good and we know that.

Goodness causes happiness. A man may not be happy being a man, but that is what he is. He may have surgery to "become" a woman, but how does he really know that he has become a woman? How does he know what being a woman is like. We can't ask ourselves what it is like to be someone else because we can never be someone else.

He may acquire certain characteristics of his preconception of what it is to be female; he may believe that he has that character even in himself but it still remains a preconception of what it is to be female, even to the extent of perpetuating a sexual stereotype. Desiring to change into the other sex cannot do anything more than perpetuate sexual stereotypes that are driving the true inequality between men and women. Not to put too fine a point on it, such preconceptions fuel sexism.

What we perceive to be our identity runs deep, even our sexual identity. Only one in two thousand people have an actual genital ambiguity. In the UK, this is about 32,000 people. The rest of us don't suffer this and thus have a well defined genital identity. However, genital identity is not the definition of a person. To reduce someone to a few aspects of their personality is stereotyping and caricature. Some people caricature themselves: we need only look at the life of the gifted comedy actor Kenneth Williams who ended his life as a self parody.

The fact is that we have absolutely no control over our identity whatsoever. We are what we are. Our lives may indeed be a collection of augmentations on that body, but we can never get away from ourselves. In a society based upon superficiality, we may be convinced. Yet, with the increasing level of dissatisfaction with the superficial culture, human beings are beginning to look for themselves again. There is an increasing unhappiness with the situation. Why? Because there is no common goodness.

The existence of a what is truly good points to God. All things made by God are indeed good. Every human being is good in themselves as an indelible part of their identify given to them at birth. For all of us, it is not the struggle to be accepted by God that matters - He has already accepted you in creating you - nor is it the struggle to be accepted by Society that matters - your identity will never meet up with every definition of "good" amid the pluralism of postmodernity - it is the struggle to accept ourselves as we are, and to accept our transformation from sinner to saint that a lifetime with God will generate. He is the author of our being and so only He can make transformation into the Good truly possible.

Symbols, signs, sacraments and sales pitches

Meditating on the three miracles of the Epiphany has brought me to consider the relationship that we have with signs and symbols. The Revelation of the Epiphany is threefold.

First we have the Magi, the famous wise men from the East who are led to Our Lord by the famous star of Bethlehem. Historically, it is unclear what this star is. Some would have it that it is a true astronomical event, a supernova or comet for example; others would have it that it is an astrological event, a conjunction of Saturn or Jupiter; others would have it that the star has merely a mythological existence. Personally, I favour the latter, after all, astrology was well studied at the time by all kinds of "wise men". We have also the famous Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh on which St Gregory has this to say:

The wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is the fitting gift to a King, frankincense is offered in sacrifice to God, and with myrrh are embalmed the bodies of the dead. By the gifts, therefore, which they presented unto Him, the wise men set forth three things concerning Him unto Whom they offered them; by the gold, that He was King; by the frankincense, that He was God; and by the myrrh, that He was to die. There are some heretics who believe Him to be God, but confess not His Kingly dominion over all things; these offer unto Him frankincense, but refuse Him gold. There are some others who admit that He is King, but deny that He is God; these present unto Him gold, but will not give Him frankincense. There are some other heretics who profess that Christ is both God and King, but not that He took a dying nature; these offer Him gold and frankincense, but not myrrh for the Manhood. Let us, however, present gold unto the new-born Lord, acknowledging His universal Kingship; let us offer unto Him frankincense, confessing that He Who hath been made manifest unto us in time, is God before time was; let us give unto Him myrrh, believing that He Who cannot suffer as touching His Godhead, was made capable of death as touching the manhood which He shareth with us. There is also another signification in this gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is a type of wisdom; as saith Solomon, In the mouth of the wise abideth a treasure to be desired. Frankincense, which is burnt in honour of God, is a figure of prayer; witness the words of the Psalmist [Ps. cxl. 2]: Let my prayer be set forth as incense before thee. By myrrh is represented the putting to death of the body; as where the holy Church saith of her labourers who strive for God even unto death My hands dropped with myrrh. (10th Homily on the Gospels, from the Readings for Benedictine Matins)

The second revelation is the Baptism of Christ in the river Jordan and thus preparing the waters of Baptism for use as the matter in the Sacrament.

The third is the miracle in the wedding at Cana of Gallilee in which Our Lord demonstrates His power to transform matter and prefigures the Mass as the wedding feast of the Lamb.

We have here signs and wonders which are central to our Christian Faith. We have signs within signs and symbols within miracles, all of which point to the deep truth of God With Us. This is something on which Christians will agree. These signs point directly to the person of Christ.

As Catholics, our relationship with signs and symbols is markedly different from the perceptions of the non-Catholic. For a thing to be a sign means that it possesses a property to direct the understanding to a related thing. For all Christians in whatever service they have of Eucharist, Holy Communion, Lord's Supper or Mass, the bread and wine are certainly signs of Christ's body and blood. The whole liturgy is a sign of the last supper and of the love of Christ in His preparation to die for us. Of course, the question has to be what nature of the relationship between the sign and the thing signified really is. Zwingli would have it that the nature of the relationship is purely intellectual, the Catholic Faith teaches that the nature of the relationship is physical, and real. Others have variations upon this theme. However, all are statements about the relationship between the sign and the thing signified.

One of the reasons I hold so fast to the Catholic teaching of (not necessarily Romish) Transubstantiation is that it makes sense of God's power to do things of which human beings can only imitate at a much lower level. I preached below that while human beings can name things only after the fact, God brings them into being by calling their name. That is the fact of Creation. If Christ is truly God then His "this is my body" causes bread to become His body, ratifying St John vi's "indeed". Names are signs, they point to the thing they objectify. It might be a false inference to generalize this and say that God's signs are more than just intellectual, but also real and physical, but this is the evidence of Our Lord's ministry. He says, "be healed" and people are healed; He says that a girl is not dead but only sleeping, and she is. The words, symbols and signs of Our Lord's ministry have a habit of taking on reality: that can only be done by the Creator. The reason is that our reality is only a pale imitation of the true reality of God. Our reality, to Him, can be compared to the reality of Harry Potter compared with J. K. Rowling. The actor Daniel Radcliffe gives Harry a reality like ours, and yet, Harry Potter is still less real than we are. Yet, Mr Radcliffe is the vehicle by which Harry Potter's reality becomes our own. We can really see this in the way that some people treat Mr Radcliffe as actually being Harry Potter and have a really hard time when he plays Victor Frankenstein. Confusing actors with their characters is an unfortunate confusion of realities.

Signs and symbols work at different levels of reality.  For Zwingli, the reality of the bread and wine is that of this world,  the thing that they signify is the body and blood of Christ, but there is no change in the reality of the bread and wine. The relationship, as I wrote earlier, is purely intellectual, on the same level as ideas and concepts. The two realities are different and disjoint. A sacrament, on the other hand also has two realities, our reality and the reality of God. The difference here is that our reality is absolutely contingent on that of God's. Without God's reality, there cannot be our reality. It is interesting that the Greek for Creed is Symbol. The words we say in the three Creeds take on a deeper reality if we are prepared to live the faith we proclaim therein.

Catholics, then, believe in the continual, objective action of God in Creation, that symbols can attain a reality that gives greater substance to ours.Yet, Catholics must be prepared to sympathise with the non-Catholic. Yes, of course our beliefs are substantively different but both are trying to explore the reality that we know (whether by gnosis or epistis) and come to the Salvation of Mankind as Christ. The substantive differences will mean that we walk apart, but an exploration of Reality with one's hand in God's means that we all have the opportunity for salvation. Differences of theology can indeed be occasions of walking apart, but never occasions of demonization.

This brings me to another point I'd like to explore and, as usual, I find myself on similar intellectual territory as my confrère, Fr Anthony Chadwick who is contemplating the "business" aspect of the Church. Like him, I find advertising and branding tedious. Branding, with the plethora of logos, soundbites, buzz-words and slogans brings us back to the way in which people can confuse the sign with the thing signified. The numbers in Church may show that Church is not popular, but not that it is not relevant. The wickedness of Christians may show the hypocrisy within the Church, but do not show that She is either wrong about God or that God Himself is a wicked being. At each stage, there is a confusion of the lesser reality with the greater.
A church may indeed advertise itself to say "Hello, here we are!" but it will paint a static picture of itself - all empty glitz and glamour. The best way to say, "Hello" is for a Christian to grasp another's hand and shake it warmly with a smile. I am a firm believer that the Faith lived actively needs no advertisement, but demonstrates an integrity that an advert cannot. God will not allow His Church's light to be put under a bushel. She will shine from the hilltop to all lands.

Epiphany and Gnosis

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, the Great Theophany, the self revelation of God made Man to Creation. Again, I find myself walking along a parallel track to Fr Anthony who is spending time studying the Gnostics. I haven’t had the opportunity to make such a detailed review of the subject, but while Gnosticism is a recognised heresy tackled by the Oecumenical Councils, the ideas of Gnosis and Epistemology are worth studying. Fr Anthony points me to the fact that Epistemology is the study of intellectual knowledge, and Gnosis that of experiential knowledge.

Gnosis is therefore very much part of the Epiphany. We know God as being interactive. In the person of Christ we can handle with our hands and see with our eyes. Mankind has Gnosis of God and we can recognise Him for Who He is.

The knowledge of salvation is precisely what Zacharias sings of in the canticle that Anglicans know as the Benedictus. St John the Baptist is prophesied to give us knowledge of salvation by the remission of our sins.  The word used in St Luke i. 77 where this occurs is "gnosin" and shows that we are to experience our salvation in the person of Christ the Word Made Flesh. This is not some theoretical knowledge or forensic understanding, but a knowledge that comes through experience of Love.

The Mass itself is a means to that knowledge in which we enter into the mystery of being itself. God is unique in that He isn't a being among many beings, He is Being itself. This is why I always feel it appropriate to capitalise the Holy Pronoun. The knowledge that we receive of Christ in the Mass is even deeper than sexual. The Bride knows the Bridegroom intimately and Our Lord uses that image of His relationship with the Church. The Mass has been given to us to be as experiential as possible with sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches that aren't just symbolic,  but expressions of an Eternal God transcending even His own Eternity to reveal Himself to mortal man in the fleeting fragility of a partial participation in His Being.

This is saving knowledge in contrast to any act of the intellect and is open to even those whose thinking is impaired in some way.

I, as many of you may have guessed, am a bit of a scholastic and liable to work in terms that cannot be dogmatic for any serious Anglican Catholic. However, we can look at the writer Pseudo-Dionysius who reminds us that when it comes to true knowledge of God, we have to abandon intellect and seek only those revelations that He would choose to help us know Him.

To do just that, we seek first the kingdom of God. We seek how His rule encompasses our lives and the world around us. Intellectual knowledge will tell us only so much, and only allow us a limited understanding of Him. In the Mass, we can allow ourselves the luxury of letting go of the science of wafer and wine and find Christ revealing Himself in one Eternal Epiphany breaking through into Time.

We need to make a much bigger deal of this feast, because it truly gives us knowledge of Salvation.

Democracy, Deocracy and Demoncracy

In trying to type the word "democracy", I made two typos: demoncracy and deocracy. It was interesting that I found that I kept making one or other of these typos in a single document and this has led me to think about the political systems that we have in place, especially after reflecting on the reality of the Powers of Darkness and Light.

In our time, we have a tendency to believe that Democracy is the best system of government that a country can have, after all, many systems have been tried in the past and all have been found wanting in some way. Yet, politicians as great as Sir Winston Churchill have noted that Democracy is not all that it is cracked up to be. He famously says, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Christians can always appreciate the problems with any form of politics. Man is a fallen being, tugged between Good and Evil by a capricious world, subject to powers beyond his control. Influencing Democracy at the most fundamental level are Demoncracy and Deocracy: the rules of the demons and the rule of God (though I am rather unnerved by such a wicked portmanteau word confusing Greek and Latin in the same way as "television"). Here we see the objectivity of moral values at work. There are principles which are inherently wrong despite a majority voting that they are right. If every single American citizen were to vote that first-born children should be minced alive to appease Molech, that would not stop the practice from being an abhorrent and vile abuse of human lives. If objective moral values exist, then we not only have evidence for the existence of God, but we also have a fundamental problem with democracy in that the majority can vote for something inherently wrong, even on the basis of the very best of intentions.

I will hold my hands up right now and say that I'm not really what one might term a "political animal" in the sense that I have practically no training in political science or political philosophy whatsoever. I rely on those who are more experienced to guide me and pull me up where my thinking goes wrong. However, I do believe in God and that my belief is not only reasonable but justified given how I have experienced the world around me. The more evil I see in the world, paradoxically, the more I worship God because the only recourse I have to the end of that pernicious and pervasive Evil is in the Being of God Himself. I see evil at work in every political system and I do earnestly pray to God for our deliverance.

Reflecting on  something Fr Anthony said to me, I think those who point at the existence of war in the "spiritual realm" have hit upon something profound. St John the Divine reveals to us in the twelfth Chapter of the Apocalypse that:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,   And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.   And the great dragon was cast out , that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.   And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down , which accused them before our God day and night.   And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.   Therefore rejoice , ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

We are therefore faced with the fact that the struggle between Good and Evil is not only real but universal. It is not a theoretical battle, but an actual battle that we must face, each and every one of us in our dealings in this world. Fr Anthony reflects on how the Gnostics view this battle and how their dualism pits the material world against the spiritual world. We Christians know that we are not saved by knowledge in itself save that of the Salvation obtained for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ and that we have to put that knowledge to use in love. We know further that while the will of the flesh is opposed to the will of the spirit, human beings are both flesh and spirit and only receive true unification of the two in the Jesus Christ Who is both God and Man. As the Quicunque Vult states:

For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess : that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds : and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man : of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead : and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood; Who, although he be God and Man : yet he is not two, but one Christ; One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh : but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance : but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man : so God and Man is one Christ;

This is the perfection that He offers us: true union of our flesh and spirit. We should not seek the release from the flesh for then we would simply cease to be, but that we should be conformed and transformed in the same way. I, unashamedly, quote my favourite Biblical verse again:

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he shall appear , we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (I John iii.2)

However, this continues:

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.  Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth * also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.   Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.  He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested , that he might destroy the works of the devil. (I John ii.3-8)

If our democracy is indeed flawed then there will be things that we vote for that are, in fact, morally wrong despite believing the contrary. This is, essentially, demoncracy, since humanity is imprisoned away from the Good by the Power of Darkness. God's law will therefore seem to be wrong in the eyes of such a democracy. It will seem to be unjust because, from the aspect of Eternity, there are no rights, no entitlements, no privileges, no mitigations that human beings can possess. We lose the right to what happens to our bodies when we die and, if there is no Resurrection, we even lose ourselves at the moment of decease.

If there is no God, then all issues of equality and inequality, of right and responsibility, of truth, justice, right and wrong, all end in the grave. They affect only the living and then only for a short time. Thus the grossest injustice can go unpunished by the one who then blows himself up in a blaze of glory. A Godless society can shriek all that it likes against the suicide bomber, but there can be no justice.


In the presence of God, however, there is only one justice and that lies in the hand of the Divine. It is a justice that comes from the very being of God as being supreme. It will scandalize those who seek to be in control of their justice. One can accuse God of being racist or sexist or elitist or whatever, but to no effect: He is in control. "He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth." (Psalm lxxvi.12)

Human beings as political animals have the choice between demoncracy and deocracy. If they live by their own values then they live arbitrarily without a compass to say that what they believe is truly right or wrong. If they reject the existence of objective moral values then they must accept a majority ruling that runs contrary to their morality even if it scandalizes them at the most basic level. If they accept the existence of objective morals, then they must consider the source which can only be in a being transcendent of human understanding. While there is both demoncracy and deocracy, there is war: a war in Heaven and in Earth. With the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, there is the possibility of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. However, we must be prepared to be scandalized by God and to wrestle with Him as Jacob did in order to find our identity in Him, to know how our philosophies differ from His and to seek the reconciliation.

As St John says to us, we must seek purity in ourselves. This can only come about through a deeply prayerful and reflective life. We don't have to be erudite scholars because the Kingdom of Heaven is open to any human being that desires it. A prayer life based on the Lord's Prayer and the Mass, an intellectual life based on the study of the Bible  a work life centred around the Beatitudes and the Works of Mercy and an identity based on a life in the Church will bring us ever closer and closer to what is truly Good and that will be God Himself.

What's in a name(?)

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Feast of the Holy Name

It is the usual practice for parents to choose the name of their children. Most people stick with the name they were given at birth, others change it. For what reason? Some people who change their name do so because they do not believe that the name chosen for them fits who they are. It is clear that our name is something intensely personal, even to the extent of being part of our identity at the most personal levels. Indeed, the word name is essentially Greek in origin and has the meaning of "law". Our names allow us to be a law unto ourselves: they somehow give us an identity according to the rules that we live our lives by.

In the Second Chapter of Genesis, Our Lord sits down with the Man (who is not even called Adam then) and creates animals in front of him. The pleasure of naming the animals is given to man, who calls them cat, dog, bird, hippopotamus, okapi as appropriate. God has given man the power over animals and signifies this by him giving the law described by their names. The name of the animal describes its identity and its nature: the name of a man describes his identity and his nature.

Very occasionally, someone receives their name, not from men, but from God Himself. Both Our Lord and St John the Baptist have their names given to the parents by the message of an Angel of God determining the person of the people yet to be born. Thus we have John, and the Holy Name of Jesus. The name John conveys the idea of someone or something given by God. The name Jesus means God saves, or God is saving. In the Hebrew it is a continuous tense and describes precisely Our Lord's relationship with us. He is saving us from our sins.

St Paul tells us "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." "To impute" means "to call" and essentially God is saying that God can say that a sinner is not a sinner. However, this sounds very strange. Clearly if we sin, then we are sinners: we might call black white, but that doesn't stop it from actually being black. If we have sinned then necessarily we are sinners. Does that mean that God can stop someone from being a sinner by simply saying that he isn't a sinner? That would make the whole idea of God's law rather laughable, wouldn't it? God cannot be where sin is, because sin is precisely where God is not. There must be something wrong here. Either God's law means nothing, or God must call a sinner, a sinner.

There is a third possibility. Remember that Our Lord Jesus is Our Saviour. He does what He is called. This is the difference between how God names, and what Man names. Man sees what God creates and then names it. But look at the first chapter of Genesis. God says, "let there be light" and there is light. Light comes into being because God first speaks its name. Indeed, whatever God names then comes into being. This is the opposite of how human beings name things. This is why we honour the Holy Name. Some people use the name too little and in so doing forget that the Word was made Flesh. Others use the name too frequently, some even as a swear-word and thus forget that Our Lord Jesus is God indeed. Jesus is so-called because He is saving each one of us who believe in Him.

When God names something, it happens. The act of imputing by God is effective and not solely representative: it does something. If God does not impute sin to a sinner, then that person's sin ceases to be, just as the darkness vanishes when the light is switched on. Our Lord Jesus saves us by providing that opportunity for us to be reconciled with God and that find that transformation by being re-named. In the Revelation to St John the Divine, we are told that we each be given new names. However, no-one knows what these names are because no-one, not even we ourselves, truly know who we are. But we will receive a new name from God and we will become truly who we are meant to be in His name.