The Rector's Corner: A Season of Silence; A Season of Listening

There are times in life when it is best to be silent. Indeed, the Desert Fathers seem to indicate it would be best if we lived most of our lives in silence. People who know me well also know that I am far, far from achieving that condition. However, the last weeks have been a time, as least as far as this web log is concerned, for what a mentor of mine used to call “a season of silence.”

Writing one’s thoughts down for public consumption, even if it is only a few people who might see it, is a rather grave matter. Extracts of my writings in newsletters and other parochial publications have ended up in the local paper and all manner of other places. It is sobering to see one’s words return to one’s own eyes and ears like this. It reminds me of hearing my children say things I know I have said to them in the distant past—sometimes bringing joy, sometimes regret.

So, the last weeks have been a time to be much more about active ministry: listening, serving, and working alongside the other members of the parish. It has been uncommonly busy, but also uncommonly rich. While I have been using a lot of words, they have been the words of the Good Shepherd speaking (by God’s grace) through me and my own limitations, rather than words of reflection and analysis in a web log or a parish newsletter.

However, we are now at the end of the Autumn Embertide. This quarterly grouping of three days for prayer, fasting, and focused reflection on the ministry of the Church provide for a stopping point, an opportunity for deep consideration. During the Ember Days it has long been my custom to offer the Litany of Remembrance (often referred to as the Southwell Litany). It was composed by Bishop George Ridding of the newly-created Diocese of Southwell, England in the nineteenth century. Bishop Ridding wrote this litany for his diocesan clergy to say with him at the Embertides and other retreats when they gathered for prayer in perhaps one of the most beautiful rooms on earth: the cathedral’s Chapter House, with its extraordinary stone carving (the entrance to which is pictured above). What a thing to imagine in our day: a bishop simply praying with his clergy! No hired expert, no panel discussion, no complex agenda or expensive multi-day conference. Just prayer. Perhaps our economic difficulties will force us to consider such humble things once again.

I first met the Southwell Litany in a revised form for laypeople published by the Forward Movement Press in the Episcopal Church. It was the first “examination of conscience” I encountered. I met it again, this time in its original form for clergy, in a copy of The Cuddesdon Office Book I purchased on my first visit to England in 1984. At that time, I had no real idea how important these words would be, thinking as I did then I was going to be an attorney. When I entered seminary, however, the deep wisdom in this litany—even if couched in at times the most purple of Victorian prose—became evident and very applicable. It has formed a part of my Rule of Life since.

This prayer, along with the Litany of Missionary Intercession, The Litany of the Holy Spirit, and other traditional Embertide prayers has helped me to become open in new and deeper ways to what God is saying in my life. Far from being a welter of words or ecclesiastical rhetoric, such prayers have taken root in my soul. Their beauty has not masked their almost ruthless honesty, their absolute insistence that the Pastoral Life—like all Christian life—is a call to share in Christ’s holiness, Christ’s wholeness. I cannot imagine serving as a priest and pastor without such tools.

In our own day, the priesthood has been “deconstructed” and “demythologized,” so to speak. Clergy today have a tendency to be more akin to spiritual technicians or, as Rumpole of the Bailey once sneeringly put it, “members of the caring community.” This reaction to the mystification and hierarchical manipulation of an earlier era is to some degree understandable, of course. However, like all reactions, it has tended to become simply the inverse of the illness it seeks to correct.

While largely ignored today, the Embertides remain there in the calendar. They call to us—lay and ordained—with their quiet, patient voice, reminding us that no amount of techniques, seminars, how-to’s, revolutionary new technologies, or re-clothed bankrupt strategies of the past will suffice. Our ministries live or die to the degree they are lodged in the living Christ, who is always and eternally in the Will of the Father.

I like to think of Bishop Ridding in his billowing rochet, kneeling down in the Chapter House of Southwell Cathedral, leading his parish clergy in their quarterly prayers together. Sometimes it was cold and dank in that stone room; sometimes it likely was hot and sultry. But, they were there. They knew it was essential. I like to think of joining them in their sacred obligation to review their ministry and the state of their vows. I am grateful for their company, and I pray that through it, I may be strengthened to be a better pastor of the people I serve in this corner of Christ’s vineyard.

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A Litany of Remembrance

(Commonly called “The Southwell Litany”)

[Dr. George Ridding, first Bishop of Southwell, who composed this Litany for use at meetings of his clergy, was accustomed to introduce it with the following words:

Seeing, brethren, that we are weak men but entrusted with a great office, and that we cannot but be liable to hinder the work entrusted to us by our infirmities of body, soul, and spirit, both those common to all men and those specially attaching to our office, let us pray God to save us and help us from the several weaknesses which beset us severally, that he will make us know what faults we have not known, that he will shew us the harm of what we have not cared to control, that he will give us strength and wisdom to do more perfectly the work to which our lives have been consecrated--for no less service than the honor of God and the edifying of his Church. I will ask you to let me first say the suffrage to each petition, and then all join in repeating it together; after which a short pause shall be made.

Let us pray.]

O Lord, open our minds to see ourselves as Thou seest us, or even as others see us and we see others, and from all unwillingness to know our infirmities,