The Rector's Corner

The blessing of fatigue...

2012-01-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

This poem by Vaughan speaks of both our human desire for continual activity (not a new phenomenon), and the blessing of fatigue, something that God has given us as a way to "come to ourselves," as the Parable of the Prodigal puts it, so that we might return to God's embrace. Something to ponder in our ever-more technological society.

The Pursuit

By Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)

Lord! What a busy, restless thing

Hast thou made man!

Each day and hour he is on wing,

Rests not a span;

Then having lost the Sun and light

By clouds surprised

He keeps a commerce in the night

With air disguised;

Hadst thou given to this active dust

A state untired,

The lost son had not left the husk

Nor home desired;

That was thy secret, and it is

Thy mercy too,

For when all fails to bring to bliss,

Then, this must do.

Ah! Lord! And what a purchase will that be

To take us sick, that sound would not take thee!

“… commerce in the night” –A reference to our study of the stars, or work by artificial light

“The lost son…” –A reference to the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15

Intercessions during Natural Disasters

2012-01-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Salem and surrounding areas have just gone through a time of flood. Below is an adaptation of a litany drafted for times of natural disaster. This, along with the Great Litany and the Supplication in the Book of Common Prayer, are good prayer resources for such times.

A Litany in Response to a Natural Disaster

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth,

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, redeemer of the world,

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful,

Have mercy upon us.

Holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, One God

Have mercy upon us.

Remember not, Lord Christ our offenses, neither reward us according to our sins. Spare us, good Lord, spare your people, whom you have redeemed by your cross and passion, and by your mercy preserve us forever.

Spare us, good Lord.

From all natural disasters, from hurricanes, fires, tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis, blizzards and floods,

Good Lord, deliver us.

From all disease and sickness, from famine and violence,

Good Lord, deliver us.

In all times of sorrow, in all times of joy; in the hour of death and at the day of judgment,

Good Lord, deliver us.

Hear our prayers, O Christ our God,

O Christ, hear us.

For the + repose of the souls of our brothers and sisters in Christ who have died in this disaster, that your holy angels may welcome them into Paradise,

O Christ, hear us.

Console all who grieve: those whose loved ones have died, whose families are torn; whose homes have been destroyed, whose possessions have been ruined, who are now unemployed.

O Christ, hear us.

Heal those who suffer from injury and illness, emotional and spiritual distress. Give them hope and encouragement to meet the days ahead.

O Christ, hear us.

Give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty.

O Christ, hear us.

Give rest to the weary and peace to the restless.

O Christ, hear us.

Give strength to the governments of affected regions and all others in authority and leadership; grant them wisdom and power to act in accordance with your will.

O Christ, hear us.

Bless the clergy and people in areas of danger and destruction who strive to do your service in the midst of their own grief and pain. Give them fortitude to serve as you would serve.

O Christ, hear us.

Grant your people grace to witness to your word, to open their hearts in love, and to give generously from their abundance, that they may bring forth the fruits of your Spirit.

O Christ, hear us.

Forgive us Lord, for all negligence and hardheartedness, for an over-reliance on technology and a lack of preparedness that result in bitterness and strife, in injury and death.

O Christ, hear us.

In the midst of loss, grant us eyes that see, ears that hear and hands that work so that we may discern how you would have us respond.

O Christ, hear us.

We give you thanks, Lord God for all agencies and individuals who assist in relief efforts; continue in them the good work you have begun, through them your presence is made known.

We thank you O, Lord

You are our refuge and strength

Our very present help in trouble

In you Lord is our Hope

And we shall never hope in vain

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever.

O merciful Father, you have taught us in your holy Word that you do not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men: Look with pity upon the sorrows of your people [especially _______, for whom our prayers are offered]. Remember them, O Lord, in mercy, nourish their souls with patience, comfort them with a sense of your goodness, lift up your countenance upon them, and give them peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Potential of Doubt

2012-01-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

What follows is a lecture given by Metropolitan Anthony in 1987. This lecture continues to challenge and inspire me as a disciple of Christ and as a priest of his sacred mysteries. It is a read of the Church's history that notes the move from experience to observation, from the full integration of the human person in God through Christ to the "self-sufficient intellect," detached from God, from the Creation, from integrated experience of life.

As we speak of renewal, re-structuring, and mission in the Church, one cannot help but feel that the groundwork done is of a very functional, non-introspective nature. By focusing on "fixing" various perceived "problems" alone, the necessary attention to assumptions about First Things is ignored. If we merely change the facade of the building while the structure continues to rot, nothing is actually accomplished. The Church in the U.S.A. must abandon both its fixation with institutional success AND its fantasies of relevance gained through chasing the culture. Its power and authority have always been found through utter transparency to Christ's work of liberation from sin and death in all its forms.

Metropolitan Anthony's thinking disturbs any and all complacency in the Church. It also reminds us that we must look at the world around us with an eye of curiosity, hope, and openness--not tossing out the essentials of the Faith for a lazy and ultimately trivial "relevance," but listening to the experience of the Other while sharing the fruit of a truly lived faith, not the museum faith resulting from living in the intellect alone.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

The Church of the Councils:

the “onslaught of the intellect” and the potential of doubt

------------------------------------------------------------------------

'That which we have seen with our eyes'

It is important to remember that a first generation of the Church's members knew Christ as a person, and some of them from very early days. Nazareth, Capernaum and Cana are little towns or villages distanced from one another by a few miles; it is not inconceivable that those who later became Christ's apostles and disciples had even met the Lord when he was a boy, a youth, a young man, and had thus discovered him in an exceptionally gradual manner. In due course we can see disciples gathering around him, discovering in him a unique friend, a guide and an adviser, then a leader. Eventually they are to discover him as he truly was: as God who had come to them, who had come into the world.

This progress reaches the kind of culmination to which the words of Philip point early in the Gospel of St John: 'We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth'. And what I said about its early stages may well explain the response of Nathaniel, 'Can there anything good come out of Nazareth?' For if you were to be told that somebody you have known practically from childhood, an inhabitant of a minute town round the corner from your village is declared to be the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, you would probably have reacted in much the same way.

The first disciples had such a direct experience of Christ, and it was important for the world that the first witnesses should be people who had been with him from the beginning, had step by step discovered him for who he was. Indeed, when Judas died his tragic death and the disciples wanted to elect an apostle to take his place, they made it quite clear that they wanted someone who had been with them from the beginning and gone through this gradual process of discovery. Thus they could all speak directly of Christ's days in the flesh as the days in the flesh of the incarnate God.

'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you' .

The years passed, the apostles preached and proclaimed what they knew in the deepest and most personal way. Later — several decades later — the New Testament writings took shape. Fr Georges Florovsky once noted the importance of the fact that these scriptures were not produced as immediate, spontaneous, lyrical descriptions of what the disciples had undergone. Otherwise one could have doubted the validity of writings produced under the effect of strong emotion and deeply shaking events. Thirty, forty, sixty years later, these written testimonies appear as a mature reflection of people who had known Christ in the flesh, discovered the Christ of the Spirit and proclaimed an experience that could no longer be suspected of being merely an emotional response to friendship, love, bereavement or hallucination. Rather could it be seen as something deeply considered and true, not only autobiographically, but objectively. It could be seen as God's own truth about Christ.

With the passage of centuries these scriptures are received, are lived by, are experienced not only as the object of scholarship but as the means of communing in the experience which they convey. And not only they. To this day believers are able to assert, 'I know that God exists because I have met him': 'I know that Christ is risen, because within my experience I know the living Christ'. It may be through prayer, it may be at moments of particular illumination, it may be through the sacraments. One way or another, it is a direct conviction.

But at the same time there was a watering down of the experience in the life of many. It is easy to understand that in the heroic times when the Church was persecuted, when to be a Christian was not only costly but entailed the risk of torture and death, only the few were Christians: those who were prepared on the ground of an experience they had lived, an experience which they could not deny without denying themselves. But when the Church was permitted to exist openly, and later became the Church of the empire, floods of people came into it who would never have thought of joining the Church when it was a question of life and death. This dilution of commitment gave rise to several different factors.

On the one hand monasticism was born as a reaction against the anaemic Christian society which was taking shape. It began as a protest not against the world, but against the Church which had become weak and unsure in many of its members. It involved an exodus away from the weaklings of the Church.

It was not an escape into the desert of people who were afraid of living in the city. It was a migration into the battlefield with Satan. It was an exodus of those who wanted to fight the true fight rather than live a comfortable life of devotion within the framework of religion while yet possessed of a secular world-outlook.

The 'onslaught of the intellect'

At that stage another phenomenon came to the fore. It was what Daniel-Rops has called the 'great onslaught of the intellect'. The intellect marks the period of the Councils. People submit the faith to the criteria of their intellectual acceptance or rejection. Is it possible to believe this and that? Is it possible to accept such and such realities testified by the apostles and proclaimed by the Church? Can one reasonably be a Christian?

On the lowest level, it could have been seen that way. On a higher level, for instance that of Arius, the problem was more complex and more earnest. For Arius was a man of great culture and of outstanding intelligence. And he submitted the Christian faith to the test of philosophical assessment. One may see that he is an outstanding example of what a heresy can be when the intellect is considered as empowered to judge revelation, to judge the formulations of those who possess an experience which the observer himself does not possess, either at all or to the same degree. For Arius, the problem was basically that God could not become man since an infinite God could never become the prisoner of finitude. God was eternal, and could not become the prisoner of time. And in those days (and I refer once again to Florovsky, since for me his word has enormous value) no Arius could resolve the problem. Indeed, it took centuries of philosophical and scientific reflection and research to arrive at a vision of time which can accommodate the notion of eternity and space. For the first scientific book I know which really faces the problem (Emile Borel, Le temps et l'espace) was only written at the turn of the century. Before that, there was no scientific or philosophical basis that would allow someone to make the distinction and yet to realise that there is no contradiction in eternity pouring into time and not being a prisoner of it, or in infinity being within space and not being limited by it. Time and space, eternity and infinity were simply different categories.

One could say that eternity and infinity are God, and all the rest are created. But it is possible to go further. There is a remarkable phrase of St. Maximos the Confessor in which, speaking of the Incarnation, he says that the divinity and the humanity in Christ are united to each other in the same way in which fire can pervade a sword plunged into a furnace. The sword enters the furnace cold and gray, without any brilliance; it emerges aglow with fire, resplendent. Fire remains fire, iron remains iron. But this is imagery that would not have satisfied Arius: an image does not provide an answer to a philosophical question. Nevertheless this kind of image is an adequate description of a direct experience; and in this lies its importance.

What we find in this period of the Councils is people who try to address the gospel proclaimed by the Church from the first days to their own time against the background of classical philosophy or of the various philosophies and mystery religions that had developed later. Some harm could have been done because some of the imagery could be compared with that of the gospel and could thus be used as an accusation that the gospel itself is simply a new mythology.

Doubts were engendered in the minds of many: is not Christianity simply a more elaborate and philosophically more acceptable myth, but still of the same kind (and as unreal) as the mythology of the various nations of the past? As philosophical thought developed, as philosophy taken from the ancient world acquired a new maturity, the intellect came to feel self-sufficient, no longer in need of being guided by God himself. Thus problems arose from the confrontation of a mature intellect with the problem of faith.

The nature of doubt

Perhaps I should say a few words about the nature of doubt in this context. If you consider that your intellect is the criterion and that you have a right to submit all the data of revelation and all forms of experience to the judgement of the intellect, you are bound to condemn as unacceptable everything that does not fit within the categories of your intellect at the point of development it has reached at a given moment, and in the context of the culture which is yours at this particular time. Yet this is exactly the phenomenon before us. No longer is it the experience of the Church which is the object of this onslaught of the intellect. It is the scriptural text itself which may be taken to be faulty when it does not correspond to the intellectual expectations of the reader. The text can be reinterpreted or misinterpreted in ways which can be warranted perhaps by linguistics. But this is to forget that language forms part of a spiritual tradition and must be understood within this tradition and not outside it. Not surprisingly, it becomes a commonplace to attack the text of the Gospels, to argue that it is unsatisfactory, that it must be understood in a away in which the Church never did understand it. Here, indeed, is something which is inherent to the human approach to truth, and at the root of any progress in thought or in experience.

Let me make a parallel between the doubt, or succession of doubts, which a fever can have, and the way in which a scientist confronts created reality. A scientist collects all the existing facts of which he is aware. To begin with they are disparate; they may belong together in any way. The scientist tries to group them and at a certain moment, when a number of facts are capable of being held together, a model is built that allows him to hold all these facts together and reason about in their totality. If the scientist is honest and creative, the first thing he will do is to ask himself whether his model holds, whether it is a model that has no intrinsic flaw within itself, whether it takes into account all the information possessed to date. If he is satisfied on these counts, his next move will be to look for new facts that will not fit in with his model and will explode it. For the aim of a scientist list is not to create a model for which he will be remembered in the history of science. His aim is to create temporary models, hypotheses; models that must explode in order to enlarge knowledge and to contain new knowledge. Doubt in that respect for a scientist is a creative activity, an activity which is elating because the discovery that something does not fit in a preconceived or ready-made model allows him to discover reality on a wider scale and to see that reality unfolds wider and wider, deeper and deeper, making it possible for him to discard one hypothesis after the other, one model after the other. For him reality is unshakeable and cannot be lost because the model is exploded.

What is tragic in the doubt which we find in a believer is that instead of saying that the model of God, of creation, of the Church, of man which satisfied him fifty years ago no longer satisfied him, can no longer satisfy his intellectual and spiritual development, he makes an either/or decision: either to retrench himself in the old or to abandon his former position altogether. Whereas the developing person who rejects the model he earlier had of God or the creation when confronted with the depths and range of science or of philosophy, is proceeding with something not only legitimate but essential. By contrast, a believer who at the age of eighteen or eighty would remain faithful to a model adequate for an eight-year-old would be spiritually and mentally backward, incapable for communing with all the vastness, depth and greatness of God and of his creation.

Doubt, creative and destructive

Doubt, then, is legitimate. It is a creative, an important part of the discovery of the depths of God and the vastness of man and of the created world. But doubt in which only the intellect is used to judge the past model or the past experience is a doubt that will be destructive. Moreover, it will be destructive not only of the model, but of the very possibility of believing in the objective reality which is the object of our contemplation, our communion or our quest. And this is what I feel did happen in the period of the Councils. It is what we find in Arius, it is what we find in all the subsequent heretics: an intellectual problem does not correspond to an anaemic, insufficient spiritual experience, and the vigour of the intellect kills the abortive spiritual experience.

What we find in the Church is the contrary. It is the primacy of the experience which must be contemplated with all the powers of man, his intellect, his heart and all the powers at his disposal. I remember two definitions of theology which are entirely alien to what theology is in all its fullness. An introductory phrase in someone's Christian Dogmatics reads, 'Theology is to God what ornithology is to birds'. But this is exactly what it is not. First of all, God is no bird. You cannot catch him in the garden or in the field. You cannot take a film of him. You cannot go around him to see what he looks like from the side and from the tail end. And, what is perhaps even more serious, you cannot make a post-mortem. So you cannot know God and do theology in the way in which you can do ornithology. Another definition of theology I came across some thirty years ago states, 'Theology consists in drawing from scripture all the conclusions one can intellectually draw'. Far from it. Theology is an increasing knowledge of God through communion. It is an act of sharing in God's life, discovering it from within this communion and sharing, and so proclaiming it — nothing less. It involves speaking of God from within the knowledge of God.

Unrealised potential

We are confronted with such problems in the period of the Councils. But has the Church of the Councils come to an end? I think not. It has not come to an end because the same onslaught of the intellect, the same onslaught of the godless approach to divine things, has continued throughout the ages. It is in action nowadays, within the Church and from without. And if we ask ourselves about heresies and heretics, what their position vis-a-vis the Church is, I would like to point out two things. First, the Church was right in condemning the heresies. But the Church which condemned the heresies from within an experience and a certainty often did so without explaining why this heresy could not be acceptable on the intellectual, rather than the spiritual plane. What I said about Arius, and the fact that in his time the distinction between time and eternity, space and infinity, was not philosophically and scientifically mature, allows people in our days to reason in the same terms. For the Church has not taken advantage of what philosophy and science have discovered and understood about these categories, has not explained what an Athanasius could not explain in his time in scientific or philosophical terms. And that could apply to every other heresy. Thus there is a task for people of our time who are conversant with philosophy or steeped in scientific knowledge. They have to reconsider the ancient heresies and ask themselves whether there is some sort of answer that can now be given from a point of view which is not simply the experiential point of view of the early centuries. For however intellectually mature that was, it failed to solve the problem on the level of the questioner who came from outside.

Secondly, in order to be balanced in our judgement of heresies, we should realise that the Church has been treating heresies in different way at various epochs. There is a remarkable article published more than half a century ago in The Christian East by Metropolitan Antonii Khrapovitskii, one of the narrowest traditional theologians of the Russian Church. Writing on the heresies, and in a manner contrary to what one might expect from him, he notes that the Church took an ever increasingly lenient attitude to successive heresies throughout the ages (allowing for certain exceptions when an ancient heresy was resurrected under some new guise). And he argues that one can explain this in two different ways. Either one says that the Church's sensitivity to what was true or wrong had diminished, and therefore that the Church, being less and less perceptive, accepted with ever more leniency the successive heresies. This he rejects wholeheartedly, and I think we all can and should reject it. Alternatively, the early heresies rejected elements of the Christian faith that were essential to the very existence of the Christian truth. To deny the divinity of Christ, to deny the humanity of Christ, were two heresies that denied everything that stood under the vocable of Incarnation and all that it means in terms of the nature of God, of the love of God, of the providence of God, of the nature of man, of the vocation of man, of the destiny of mankind and of the cosmos. Therefore such heresies were to be rejected without any kind of compromise as not being Christianity at all. But Antonii says that as the centuries went by, heresies attached to statements that did not hit at the very heart of the Christian faith. The monothelite discussion, or other more recent heresies of the West or of the East, were such as still accepted essentials which allow those who held them to be considered Christian. And Metropolitan Antonii uses a phrase which I find interesting: in his view every subsequent heresy or group of heretics took away with them an ever increasing amount of Christian truth and weakened it by the incompleteness of their vision of what was left. Thus were subsequent heresies more Christian and less destructive of the kernel of Christianity. So modern heresies, whichever they are - I would quote the theology of the papacy as one - would still be encompassed by the vision of the undivided Church. And this despite the fact that the teaching introduced something that was profoundly untrue as to the nature of the Church.

The Christian in his confrontation with the world

So we must again give thought to that with which we are confronted. We are confronted in the modern age with atheism. We are confronted with non-Christian religions. We are confronted with Christian heresy. We are confronted within the Church with ignorance of our faith and with an anaemic experience of the faith we hold. And all that we must examine most attentively with the same determination, courage and vision as the early Councils and the early Fathers of the Church faced their own experience. The expression they gave to this experience is something for us to heed: the way in which they could convey this experience in a way understandable to heretics or to outsiders without losing anything of the content or the quality of the message.

We should accordingly also face atheism with more understanding than is often done. For atheism - the loss of God that kills - is rampant outside the Church. It is also rampant within it to the extent to which death has power over us. When Christ identified with mankind, he identified not only with the limitations of a created world, the distortions of the fallen world, the consequences of sin, the needs of mankind in being tired, hungry and thirsty. He accepted to share with us, and not us individually but with mankind in its totality, the loss of God that kills. And when on the Cross he cried, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me', he measured in a way in which no atheist ever has or will what it means to be without God and die of it.

So if we look at the surrounding world, the alien world, the pagan world, but particularly at the atheist world, we must realise that even this world is not outside of the sacrificial, tragic, crucified experience of Christ. And we must realise that our vocation is to understand from within Christ something which the godless world cannot understand about itself. This makes us into another and different Church of the Councils.

We do not hold ecumenical councils, we are far too disorderly and too divided. But each and every Christian, each parish, diocese, denomination, is confronted with the same problem as the undivided Church when it had to face the outer world, heretical, pagan or godless. And we also need to go beyond condemnation of it in order to achieve its salvation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

* - Edited version of the Lev Gillet Memorial Lecture 1987. Sobornost. 1987. Vol. 9. N. 2. P. 6-13.

A Prayer for God's Leading: A Litany of the Holy Spirit

2012-01-14T19:51:00.000-08:00

A Litany of the Holy Spirit

Especially for Pentecost, Embertides, opening prayers of church meetings, and Thursdays (traditionally the weekday commemorating the Holy Spirit).

To be used either separately or as part of the Daily Office (following the Collects) or in the Holy Eucharist at the opening Procession or the Prayers of the People.

God the Father,

Have mercy upon us.

God the Son,

Have mercy upon us.

God the Holy Spirit,

Have mercy upon us.

Holy Trinity, One God,

Have mercy upon us.

I. Spirit of God, who moved as wind over the face of the waters, bring order from the chaos of our world and our lives,

Hear us, we pray.

Breath of life, which God breathed into the dust of the ground and made man a living being, inspire us to live as his creatures.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, who gave Joseph discernment and foresight, help us to provide for the needs of others

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, who strengthened Joshua to guide his people into the Promised Land, give us courage to follow your leading.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, who came upon Saul and changed him into a new man, give us the joy of finding our new selves in you.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, whose presence the psalmist recognized in all times and all places, help us to trust in you always.

Hear us, we pray.

II. Spirit of the Lord, promised to God’s gathered people, turn our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh and quicken the dry bones of our hopes.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of the Lord, promised to the branch from Jesse’s root, to David’s son, open our eyes to recognize the Messiah.

Hear us, we pray.

Holy Spirit, by whose power Jesus became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, visit us and prepare us daily for his coming.

Hear us, we pray.

Holy Spirit, Dove of God, who descended from heaven and anointed Jesus as Servant of the Lord, the chosen one, open our hearts to acknowledge the Messiah.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, who led Jesus to be tempted by Satan, help us and save us who are assaulted by many temptations.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of the Lord, who empowered Jesus to announce the fulfillment of the good news, open our mouths to proclaim the Gospel.

Hear us, we pray.

Spirit of God, by whom Jesus cast out demons, open our eyes to see the Kingdom.

Hear us, we pray.

III. Holy Spirit, by whose power we are born again in baptism and sustained in new life, grant that we may be marked as Christ’s own forever.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

One Spirit, by whom we acclaim Jesus as Lord and are baptized into one body, unite us in the bond of peace and manifest yourself in us for the common good.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Holy Spirit, Fire of God, distributed upon the disciples, loosen our tongues to witness to the mighty works of God.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Holy Spirit, who sent the disciples to speak the Gospel to foreigners and pagans, give us courage to seek out those strange to us.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Spirit of Truth, Strengthener, whom the Father sends, dwell with us and in us.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Spirit of God, Sanctifier, whose presence in us gives us freedom in the Lord, transform us into his likeness.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Holy Spirit, Teacher, sent in Jesus’ name, bring all his words and deeds to our remembrance.

Come upon us and cleanse us.

Almighty and most merciful God, grant that by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit we may be enlightened and strengthened for your service; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Epiphany begins...

2012-01-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

A Responsory for the Epiphany

All nations shall be blessed in him,* and do him service.

All nations shall be blessed in him,* and do him service.

All kings shall bow down before him:

And do him service.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

All nations shall be blessed in him,* and do him service.

V. The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall pay tribute:

R. The kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer gifts.

Let us pray.

O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This day, one of the Principal Feasts of the Church Year, is a day of spiritual beauty. All creation—led by the star—pays homage to its maker come to earth. The Magi, representatives of the Nations and all human wisdom, honor the source of all wisdom. The doors of true communion with God stand open to all. Only this is required--that we bow before him and do him service, the service of calling upon him as Lord and loving others as he loves us.

A joyous Epiphany to you!

A Litany of Preparation for Communion

2011-12-31T20:27:00.000-08:00

A Litany of Preparation for Receiving Holy Communion

O God the Father, of Heaven:

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world:

Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the Faithful,

Have mercy upon us.

Holy Trinity, One God:

Have mercy upon us.

Help us, O God our Savior:

Have mercy upon us.

From the dominion of all vices:

O Lord, deliver us.

From blindness of heart:

O Lord, deliver us.

From all evil:

O Lord, deliver us.

We sinners:

do beseech thee to hear us.

That thou spare us:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou give us a sure hope:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou vouchsafe us a right faith:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou bestow on us a perfect love:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou mortify in us the loathsome forms of all vices:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou quicken us with the excellency of all virtues:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by thine Incarnation thou wouldest open for us an entrance into the Holy of Holies:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by this most holy Mystery thou wouldest renew our souls and bodies:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by it thou wouldest purify our consciences:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou suffer not this tremendous Mystery to be our condemnation:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That we may handle with pure hands this Holy Sacrament:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That we may receive it with pure minds:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by it we may obtain pardon of all sins:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by it we may be able evermore to cleave unto thee:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That by it we may be thought worthy to have thee dwelling in us, and ourselves to dwell in thee:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That it may please thee to pour into our hearts the Grace of the Holy Spirit:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That it may please thee to preserve the Christian people who have been redeemed by thy most precious Blood:

We beseech thee to hear us.

That thou vouchsafe us a place of repentance:

We beseech thee to hear us.

O God the Father, who in thy great and ineffable love to man didst send thy Son into the world, to bring back the wandering sheep, turn not away thy face from us when we approach this thy tremendous and unbloody Sacrifice; for we trust not in our own righteousness, but to thy gracious compassion, whereby thou dost redeem our race. Amen.

From Ancient Collects and Other Prayers,

by William Bright

A New Year: Remembering God's Mercies

2011-12-31T19:39:00.000-08:00

It is a great and holy thing to be bearers of the Gospel. Sometimes we forget just how overwhelming, how vast the Gospel’s message of mercy and grace really is. Dr. Donne, the priest, poet, and homilist, didn’t forget. He knew those mercies deeply. As we begin a new calendar year, it is worth reflecting on the gift we have received, and which we are bound to share again and more deeply in 2012…

A blessed New Year to all who read this!

HE air is not so full of motes, of atoms, as the Church is of mercies; and as we can suck in no part of air, but we take in those motes, those atoms; so here in the congregation we cannot suck in a word from the preacher, we cannot speak, we cannot sigh a prayer to God, but that whole breath and air is made of mercy. But we call not upon you from this text, to consider God's ordinary mercy, that which he exhibits to all in the ministry of his Church, nor his miraculous mercy, his extraordinary deliverances of states and churches; but we call upon particular consciences, by occasion of this text, to call to mind God's occasional mercies to them; such mercies as a regenerate man will call mercies, though a natural man would call them accidents, or occurrences, or contingencies….

If I should declare what God hath done (done occasionally) for my soul, where he instructed me for fear of falling, where he raised me when I was fallen, perchance you would rather fix your thoughts upon my illnesses and wonder at that, than at God's goodness, and glorify him in that; rather wonder at my sins, than at his mercies, rather consider how ill a man I was, than how good a God he is. If I should inquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ my name in the book of life, I should sooner be afraid that it were not so, than find a reason why it should be so. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies. In paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianum, our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday, he never says you must again tomorrow, but today if you will hear his voice, today he will hear you.

If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now - now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

John Donne, Priest.

From A Sermon for the Evening of Christmas Day, 1624

Break Glass in Case of Success?

2011-12-31T13:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the commemoration of St. Sylvester I, who was Bishop of Rome (Pope) from AD 314-335. He was the leader of the Roman Church community at a very dramatic time: Constantine the Great had embraced Christianity. The persecutions were over. The Church was allowed to come out from the catacombs and flourish. It all seemed very much like a miracle.

Sylvester had to guide the Church through a rapid and dizzying transition. In addition to dealing with the overwhelmingly powerful Constantine, he was also occupied with keeping the witness of the Church whole and truly “catholic” in an era of burgeoning heresies.

But perhaps his biggest challenge was success. The Church was legal, it was favored, it was being promoted. Success was, and always will be, a very dangerous time for Christians. To use Blake’s quote: “The strongest poison ever known / Came from Caesar's laurel crown.” The challenge was to use the opportunity, the peace, the forum wisely and to God’s glory. This challenge remains for the Church today, in whatever place it is found—wherever it is not openly persecuted. That is something to think about as we end one year and look towards another. Will we rely on success, reaching for money, power, position—and the opportunity to settle scores—rather than on the humility of the Gospel? Will we rely on the Holy Spirit, or will we “break the glass” and reach for what promises, in the short run, what only God can truly give the Christian disciple?

We actually know very little about St. Sylvester (though much was made up about him later), even though he was such a pivotal figure. In a way, though, I rather like this. It allows us to ask the above questions without having lots of answers… and to look into the mirror of faith and give what we see some honest scrutiny.

The Collect for St. Sylvester

O God, our Heavenly Father, who raised up your faithful servant Sylvester to be a bishop and pastor in your Church and to feed your flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

St. Stephen's Day: Conflict, prayer, and a new way of living

2011-12-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

We give you thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to your Son Jesus Christ, who stands at your right hand; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

The Collect for St. Stephen's Day

I suspect one of the bigger disappointments for many in the Church—and perhaps especially for those outside of it—is the persistence of conflict. There is something in us that knows conflict is fundamentally wrong. While we are resigned it to in most dimensions of life, there is rightly a sense that in matters of faith such resort to argument, bitterness, and (particularly) violence is a sign of tremendous failure. The justification for much conflict in the Church is similarly wrong: “that’s just the way it is,” or some version of “conflict is the only way to sort the true believers from the false ones.” This has all the wisdom of the Vietnam-era saying “to save the village, we must destroy the village.” Conflict does so much damage within communities of faith that, when all is said and done, it is hard to see what the benefits really were. This is particularly true when conflict moves from a simple difference of opinion to enmity. It takes very little to go from vilifying an idea to vilifying a person. Once it "gets personal," the cycle of conflict moves with a seemingly inexorable logic. The story of St. Stephen's death at the hands of religious opponents provides one of the most clear-cut examinations of this sorry state of affairs. It also provides us a way through it.

Conflict does continue to happen, and Christians must have a response. When it comes to the personal dimension of conflict, that response must of necessity be the one Jesus taught: pray for those who persecute you. This completely counter-cultural phenomenon in the Gospel is rather like the landing craft in an amphibious assault. It is the way a beachhead for peace on earth.

Christ’s life was a living prayer. His birth at Christmas was the beginning of his prayer to the Father for a divided and broken humanity. He taught those who would follow him to do the same. For us it is always essential, whenever conflict sets in, to make clear that whatever the wrong we may confront, we do not do so with the notion that we ourselves, or an ideology or a program we carry, are the solution. The solution is to become part of Christ’s eternal prayer to the Father.

This is what St. Stephen became in his martyrdom. He was no hate-filled terrorist, no ideological prig needing to bring on a riot to settle scores or accomplish his plan for revolution. His conflict with the Sanhedrin was not “his” conflict: it was the Sanhedrin’s conflict with truth itself. Holding a mirror up to them, they were confronted with what they had become. Their response to was take down the mirror, to kill Stephen. The sign that this was so was his response. He asked forgiveness for those killing him. For Stephen, the battle was already over, and had been so since Christ had brought his perfected humanity to his Father’s throne and presented it to him in victory.

Conflicts are not a fact of the human condition: they are the result of an ongoing choice of humanity. By choosing to make the conflict “ours,” we continue the apparently “natural” cycle of alienation, violence, and retribution. St. Stephen, whom we have remembered and honored today, shows us this supposed inevitability may be challenged and overturned by opening up our life so completely to Christ’s life that his grace, his prayer, his justice, his victory becomes ours.

Remembering in the Now of God

2011-12-23T22:52:00.000-08:00

The Nativity, by the hand of Duccio, c. 1255-1319

Once in royal David's city 

Stood a lowly cattle shed, 

Where a mother laid her Baby 

In a manger for His bed: 

Mary was that mother mild, 

Jesus Christ her little Child.

-- Cecil Frances Alexander

Christians do a great deal of remembering—but we do so in a special way. Most people remember in order to bring something from the past into the present. What they are doing can be enjoyable, providing solace, or it can be painful, dredging up sorrows. But in any event what they are doing is essentially the same: something that is locked in the past is being temporarily brought to mind, as if it is really in the here-and-now.

When Christians remember, we are doing something quite a bit different—and much more powerful. When a follower of Christ remembers the things of God, she or he is actually entering into the eternal “now” of the Divine, for whom all times and seasons are the living present, the eternal “here” of the God who is in all places, all dimensions.

When we celebrate Christ’s birth in Bethlehem through scripture, poem, and song, we are not looking in a kind of scrapbook of remote events. We are participating in the actual events themselves. For us, Christ is always being given, always entering into our lives, our world, our need. For the Christian, time is not tragic (separating things); it is hopeful, measured out day by day until there are no more days: culminating in one great unity of Creation with its God. In Advent and Christmas, we remember both the past and, in an amazing way, the future—and find them present through all our days in the eternal Now of God.

Come, let us adore Him in the mystery of His love this Christmas—ancient and yet ever new.

A Blessed Christmastide to all!

Brandon+

Rootedness for Real: O Radix Jesse

2011-12-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

O root of Jesse, you stand as an ensign to the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, and nations bow in worship: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

The “O Antiphon” associated with tonight speaks about roots and rootedness—a faith coming from someplace real and verifiable, not just mythological. This matter of roots is of real interest to me as an American. I live in a nation built on severing roots, cutting ties, and “moving on.” In fact, such is the obsession with being rootless that when we can endure this condition no more, we gorge ourselves on the most trivial forms of nostalgia in order to create a brief, collective feeling of being “rooted” in an imagined past. Just walk into any 1950’s-themed diner, and you will know what I mean.

The roots of our faith are not about nostalgia… at least they shouldn’t be about that. Our roots are about a deep, biological connection with a community of faith over time, going back to the origins of its identity, and commemorating the successive encounters—still ongoing—with God along the way. Those encounters are never an invitation to worship the past: they are an insistent call to find (and be found by) God in the present through worship, study, service, and an intentional consciousness investing every action, every choice, every encounter with its true identity—an encounter with the fullness of our being and the divine presence. Only in this way does our faith become something other than a static “idea.” It becomes an ensign, as the antiphon puts it, a sign of God’s claim on us and on the Creation he formed in Love.

And so our Savior approaches... O Wisdom

2011-12-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and reach from one end of the earth to the other, rightly and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

The final week of Advent has begun. The Great O Antiphons commence with calling upon God as Wisdom and begging the gift of prudence. What an extraordinary gift to seek in our imprudent age! Yet seek it we must. Prudence is the ability to make decisions about right actions and thoughts based on foresight, knowing where decisions and action are likely to lead. It means the full use of our reason.

Human reason is sadly incomplete without God. That is why we call upon the Lord as our Wisdom tonight. God, the author of wisdom, is the source of our full rationality. Ah, yes... for us reason and faith are not opposites: they are fulfilled in each other. Sadly, many Christians live as if they were mutually exclusive; but we in the Anglican and catholic faith are not forced to make such assumptions. This is a good night to rejoice in that truth.

Our life of prayer and the sharing in the Holy Eucharist constantly reinforce this mutuality of human reason restored by communion in God. That communion is made possible for all peoples through God's own sovereign action of coming into the world in Christ. It is to that fact we look forward--now intensified by the language and imagery of the O Antiphons before and after the Song of Mary at Evening Prayer this week.

To God be praise and glory for bridging the gap between...

... humanity and the Divine,

... heaven and earth,

... faith and reason.

O, Wisdom from on high...come and teach us prudence once more!

Recalling Christ’s Passion on Fridays

2011-12-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

Below are reprinted (in their Jacobean English form) the ancient prayers for use on Fridays throughout the year (excepting perhaps Christmastide and, of course, Eastertide). They form an important prayer resource for the Friday Devotion enjoined by the Book of Common Prayer (page 17).

These prayers take us through all the stages of the Passion Story: from the early morning sentence of death through his being led to the Cross, the Crucifixion, the hour of Christ’s death, and his burial. In so doing, they invite us to enter into both a deeper awareness of Christ’s total identification with us in his self-offering, and our own loving response to that offering.

At Daybreak

EVERLASTING Jesus, who in the early morning didst give thyself to be reviled and scoffed at by thine enemies; Visit us, we pray thee, at this hour with thy grace and mercy; that so throughout the day we may find peace and joy in all that ministers to thy praise and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who at the first hour of the day wast brought before Pilate, and thyself the Judge of all didst yet endure the severest doom; We beseech thee by that judgement to be merciful to us sinners when at the last day we stand before thee; who livest and reignest God, for ever and ever. Amen.

At Mid-morning (9 AM, traditionally)

Antiphon: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is mute, so he openeth not his mouth.

V. It was the third hour.

R. And they crucified him.

Let us pray.

LORD Jesu Christ, Son of the living God, who at the third hour of the day wast led forth to the pain of the cross, for the salvation of the world; We humbly beseeth thee, that, by the virtue of thy most sacred passion, thou wouldest blot out all our sins, and mercifully bring us to the glory of thy blessedness, who livest and reignest God, world without end. Amen.

At Noon

Antiphon: I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.

V. Lord, remember me;

R. When thou comest into thy kingdom.

Let us pray.

MOST gracious Jesus, our Lord and our God, who, as at this hour, didst bear our sins in thine own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, might live unto righteousness; Have mercy upon us, we beseech thee, both now and at the hour of our death; and grant unto us, thy humble servants, with all other Christian people, that have this thy blessed passion in devout remembrance, a godly and peaceful life in this present world, and, through thy grace, eternal glory in the life to come; where, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, thou livest and reignest, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

-or-

LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, who at the sixth hour of the day didst with great tumult ascend on Golgotha the cross of pain, whereon, thirsting for our salvation, thou didst permit gall and vinegar to be given thee to drink; We, thy suppliants, beseech thee, that thou wouldest kindle and inflame our hearts with the love of thy passion, and make us continually to find our delight in thee alone, our crucified Lord; who livest and reignest God for ever and ever. Amen.

At Mid-afternoon (3 PM, traditionally)

Antiphon: When he suffered he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.

V. Even there shall thy hand lead me;

R. And thy right hand shall hold me.

Let us pray.

EAR us, O merciful Lord Jesus Christ, and remember now the hour in which thou didst commend thy blessed spirit into the hands of thy heavenly Father; and so assist us by this thy most precious death, that, being dead unto the world, we may live only unto thee; and that at the hour of our departing from this mortal life, we may be received into thine everlasting kingdom, there to reign with thee, world without end. Amen.

LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray thee to set thy passion, cross, and death between thy judgement and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Vouchsafe to the living mercy and grace, rest to the faithful dead, to thy holy Church peace and concord, and to us sinners everlasting life and glory, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost liveth and reignest God, world without end. Amen.

GRACIOUS Lord Jesus, who didst vouchsafe to die upon the cross for us; Remember, we beseech thee, all sick and dying persons, and grant that they may omit nothing which is necessary to made their peace with thee before they die. Deliver them, O Lord, from the malice of the devil, and from all sin and evil, and grant them a happy end, for they loving mercy’s sake. Amen.

At the Close of Day

LORD Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who at the hour of Compline didst rest in the sepulchre, and didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people; Make us so to abound in sorrow for our sins, which were the cause of thy passion, that when our bodies lie in the dust, our souls my live with thee; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.

An Embertide Hymn

2011-12-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

A Hymn for Embertide

I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here I am; send me. –Isaiah 6:8

Lord of hosts, enthroned in glory,

Holy, Holy, Holy, Three;

Thou whose will doth order all things,

Thou whose service maketh free:

Meanest men and brightest angels

Wait alike the word from thee.

Now thou speakest—hear we trembling—

From the glory comes a voice—

“Who accepts th’Almighty’s mission?

Who will make Christ’s work his choice?

Who for us proclaim to sinners,

‘Turn, believe, endure, rejoice?’”

Here are we, Redeemer, send us!

But because thy work is fire,

And our lips, unclean and earthly,

Breathe no breath of high desire;

Bid thy seraph from thine altar

Brand us, purge us, heal, inspire.

Thou didst come that fire to kindle;

Fain would we thy torches prove,

Far and wide thy beacons lighting

With th’undying spark of love:

Only feed our flame, we pray thee,

With thy breathings from above.

Now to God, the soul’s Creator,

To his Word and Wisdom sure,

To his all-enlightening Spirit,

Patron of the frail and poor,

Three in One, be praise and glory,

Here, and while the heavens endure.

—John Keble

This hymn, though written in the nineteenth century for a theological college training persons to be ordained, expresses (in admittedly Victorian language) truth for all Christians, lay or ordained, to consider during the Embertides.

Keble writes of a deep desire to lay down one’s life in the service of a light so bright, cleansing, and warming that no other light can compare. This hymn also reminds us that a minister of the Gospel can do nothing—nothing at all—apart from the Holy Spirit. Do we believe this? Is this the aim of our life?

The renewal of this love, this humility, is what we pray for each Embertide—for all who minister in the Name of Christ.

Collects for the Ministry (Ember Days)

For use on the traditional days or at other times:

I. For those to be ordained

Almighty God, the giver of all good gifts, in your divine providence you have appointed various orders in your Church: Give your grace, we humbly pray, to all who are [now] called to any office and ministry for your people; and so fill them with the truth of your doctrine and clothe them with holiness of life, that they may faithfully serve before you, to the glory of your great Name and for the benefit of your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

II. For the choice of fit persons for the ministry

O God, you led your holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that your Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of your kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

III. For all Christians in their vocation

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Pure Paradox of Advent

2011-12-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Throughout its long history, Advent has been a paradoxical season: a time of joyful expectation combined with penitence, looking forward to the Second Coming while preparing to celebrate the First, a season of peaceful inwardness mixed like oil with the vinegar of stories of thieves breaking in, kings returning in judgment after long absences, and prophets warning of how little time we have. To the modern person, it can seem utterly disorderly, impossible to simplify and make “downloadable” in a simple package.

But, then, that is precisely the point.

Advent is not meant to be clear or easy, dipping into the mystery of time and eternity as it does. When a physicist begins to discuss quantum mechanics or String Theory, we know we are entering an arena so complex that no one—not even our guide—can adequately express it. Speaking of probabilities and multiple dimensions is dizzying because no one can fully understand it. Yet, we study these things because in doing so we come to a deeper understanding of the physical universe in which we live.

Advent is, to a degree, similar. None of us can fully understand what it is to be like God, living outside of the limits of space and time. Being made in the image of God, though, we cannot simply live on the purely animal level of physical and material reality. The spiritual part of being human must be nourished: either on its true diet of communion with God (in and through the Creation and the neighbor, as Jesus taught and lived), or by a diet of “junk food” that mimics the spiritual life, but leads ultimately to metaphysical malnourishment. This latter choice goes a long way to explain why we are in such a terrible way today… but that is another talk, I suppose.

To eat the authentic diet of faith, we must learn to accept some nourishment that at first seems impossible to consume. That nourishment is called paradox. Essential Christianity knows that Truth with a capital “T” is so vast a thing that no one of us can fully appreciate it. What is needed is a way to open up the richness of Truth in God for a moment so we may step into it briefly and gradually become acclimated to it, much as a very cold person must gradually become used to the warm waters of a bath. Paradox is one of the chief ways Christianity does this, and we learned it from our Lord.

When teaching, Jesus frequently employed parables. I once served a very wise parishioner who called parables “a device for comparing apples and oranges.” She was pointing out that in parables, the ordinary things and relationships of this world are used to contemplate and teach the extraordinary things of God. In much the same way, during the Advent season we place together, side-by-side, the very things the world says are incompatible: joy with penitence, peacefulness with excitement, the past with the future, contemplation with active preparation, time and eternity.

In doing this, we experience an opening—however brief—in the mystery of existence. We grow a little more in the knowledge of what God is like and what we are supposed to be like now that we have been baptized and claimed for God. When a person is baptized and takes Christ to be his or her Lord and Savior, that is only a beginning: before us lies a vast eternity of deepening love and knowledge, more like a treasured friendship or the best possible marriage than a contract or a course of studies. Advent is an annual reminder of this dimension of what it means to “look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come,” as the Nicene Creed puts it.

One of the finest ways Advent does this—and there are many ways it seeks to do so—is by the use of a word we don’t usually associate with a penitential season (ah, paradox again!): Alleluia. This ancient praise-shout to God is one of the hallmarks of Advent, filling these days with a sense of both celebration and yearning for that which is in this world, as yet, incomplete. During the other great season of penitence—Lent—we fast from Alleluia, but in Advent we employ it with a certain zest, looking forward to the time when it will fill all things in victory, and tasting of that time through the Liturgy—wherein we encounter the victory of the Lamb described so powerfully in the Revelation to John. Once again, paradox: now, but not yet!

Christians need Advent because it is hard to live in paradox. It is so much easier to take the wrinkles and mysteries of faith and iron them flat, making them fit neatly into the pages of book or into a PowerPoint presentation. But we all know, deep down, that this is untrue and unworthy of God. It is we who much learn to adapt to reality, not reality to us. That reality, though, is not a riddle to be mastered. It is a relationship to be cherished, meant to grow forever.

And so Advent in its relative brevity may be seen as a sort of spiritual telescope connecting time and eternity, our finite nature to the infinite of God, our need for salvation and forgiveness with the abundance of God’s love and truth. Unlike a man-made telescope though, when we look through Advent’s telescope we look not into the distance or into the past of the universe, but into the eternal present of God. In preparing for the celebration of Christ’s First Coming in Bethlehem we are remembering or making present that reality—that God is always giving to us, always sharing and calling us to share in the Divine Life. When we look forward to the Second Coming, we are also remembering (!), making present a reality which has not come to pass in this world, but is already accomplished in God: the victory of communion over alienation, love over sin, life over death.

Because of all of this paradox, Advent is a bonanza for poets, artists, musicians, and preachers, because all of these people know (or should, at any rate) that it is only by entering into the paradoxical that we may contemplate the power and presence of God and thus grow more and more into the fullness of being truly human and truly alive.

"Soul of Christ" -- A Prayer for Fridays and the Eucharist

2011-12-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

The Anima Christi

Traditionally said at Communion and on Fridays.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me;

Body of Christ, save me;

Blood of Christ, refresh me;

Water from the side of Christ, wash me;

Passion of Christ, strengthen me;

O good Jesu, hear me;

Within thy wounds hide me;

Suffer me not to be separated from thee;

From the malicious enemy defend me;

In the hour of my death call me;

And bid me come unto thee;

That with thy saints I may praise thee;

Through the ages of eternity. Amen.

XIV Century

18 Years: The Feast of St. Andrew, my Ordination Patron

2011-11-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

Today marks eighteen years since my ordination to the sacred priesthood in Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church on St. Andrew’s Day. It was a beautiful, powerful, poignant liturgy. So much of my life led up to it, yet it was not a “mountain top” experience, an event isolated from the rest of my life. Rather, it was a confirmation, journey further into, an opening up. I shall never forget when the chasuble was lowered over me at that liturgy. While I knew that the “moment” of ordination was during the laying on of hands, it was in the otherworldly silence and enveloping of that fleeting action that the grace of ordination was truly impressed on me. For a brief second, the seamlessness and tranquillity of the Christian faith completely overcame this fragmented and anxious world. It was a foretaste of heaven.

Andrew and his brother Peter, the Gospel according to Matthew tells us, were mending their nets when Jesus called them to follow him. They were engaged in the ordinary things of life for fishers. This fact about St. Andrew’s life and vocation has not left me. It is in the ordinary run of things that God so often comes to us. Andrew, who had begun this journey as one of St. John the Baptist’s disciples, was clearly ready to hear the word of invitation to follow Jesus; he was a person of deep faithfulness and thus makes for a great Ordination Patron, whom I remember daily and at each Eucharist. But the moment of his calling that St. Matthew paints for us is one of the daily, the routine, the unglamorous. Much of being a parish priest falls into this category. For some, this is a trial. I won’t say I haven’t been frustrated by it from time to time, but on the whole, it is precisely in the ordinary, the mundane, the scut-work of this vocation that I have found Jesus calling to me. Along with the riches of the liturgy, it is in the hidden and simple round of parochial life that I have most often found Our Lord—and been found by him.

Pray for me, the deeply imperfect servant of Christ.

Pray for me, St. Andrew.

The Collect of St. Andrew

Almighty God, who gave such grace to your apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of your Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give us, who are called by your holy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

From the Ordination Liturgy

The Bishop says

As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.

In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.

My brother, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?

Answer I believe I am so called.

May it be so, by God’s grace and the prayers of his people.

Saint Ephrem of Edessa on why we do not know the exact time of the Second Coming

2011-11-28T21:18:00.000-08:00

To prevent his disciples from asking the time of his coming, Christ said: About that hour no one knows, neither the angels nor the Son. It is not for you to know times or moments. He has kept those things hidden so that we may keep watch, each of us thinking that he will come in our own day. If he had revealed the time of his coming, his coming would have lost its savor: it would no longer be an object of yearning for the nations and the age in which it will be revealed. He promised that he would come but did not say when he would come, and so all generations and ages await him eagerly.

Though the Lord has established the signs of his coming, the time of their fulfillment has not been plainly revealed. These signs have come and gone with a multiplicity of change; more than that, they are still present. His final coming is like his first. As holy men and prophets waited for him, thinking that he would reveal himself in their own day, so today each of the faithful longs to welcome him in his own day, because Christ has not made plain the day of his coming.

He has not made it plain for this reason especially, that no one may think that he whose power and dominion rule all numbers and times is ruled by fate and time. He described the signs of his coming; how could what he has himself decided be hidden from him? Therefore, he used these words to increase respect for the signs of his coming, so that from that day forward all generations and ages might think that he would come again in their own day.

St. Ephrem of Edessa, Deacon [373]

Unlike some Christian groups, Anglicans do not concern themselves with trying to determine the exact time of Christ’s coming, precisely because he has told us not to (and because St. Paul also made clear the foolishness of such an endeavor). Rather, we are called to live our lives in the continuous expectation of his coming. For us, the Second Coming is a revelation of God’s truth, and something we earnestly desire. The Christian does not have to wait for this event in time in order to begin to experience it. We may do so even now by reading God’s word to us in Scripture, receiving the sacraments, doing the works of the Gospel, and examining our conscience and repenting from sin.

The eagerness St. Ephrem points to is a desire for a union of will and life in God, not a timetable for self-vindication. That eagerness is essential to the spirit of Advent—and to the Christian life always, in every season and place.

The Eucharistic Table: Classical Anglican Thoughts

2011-11-27T22:18:00.000-08:00

For as God descended and came into the tabernacle invested with a cloud, so Christ comes to meet us clothed with a mystery. He hath a house below as well as above; here is his dwelling and here are his provisions; here is his fire and here his meat; hither God sends his Son, and here his Son manifests himself. The church and the holy table of the Lord, the assemblies of saints and devotions of his people, the word and the sacrament, the oblation of bread and wine and the offering of ourselves, the consecration and the communion, are the things of God and of Jesus Christ; and he that is employed in these is there where God loves to be, and where Christ is to be found; in the employments in which God delights, in the ministries of his own choice, in the work of the Gospel and the methods of grace, in the economy of heaven and the dispensations of eternal happiness.

And now, that we may know where to find him, we must be sure to look after him. He hath told us where he would be, behind what pillar, and under what cloud, and covered with what veil, and conveyed by what ministry, and present in what sacrament. And we must not look for him in the highways of ambition and pride, of wealth or sensual pleasures; these things are not found in the house of his Father, neither may they come near his dwelling. But if we seek for Christ, we shall find him in the methods of virtue and the paths of God’s commandments, in the houses of prayer and the offices of religion, in the persons of the poor and the retirements of an afflicted soul; we shall find him in holy reading and pious meditation, in our penitential sorrows and in the time of trouble, in pulpits and upon altars, in the word and the sacraments: if we come hither as we ought, we are sure to find our Beloved, him whom our soul longeth after.

Jeremy Taylor, in “Worthy Communicant,” (1660)

This extract from Taylor’s profound reflections on the Eucharist and our participation in it tells us much about the Classical Anglican understanding of this sacrament. Taylor is not embarrassed by the Eucharistic Liturgy. Unlike many today, who have been schooled on a diet of secular utilitarianism, Taylor knows that the Eucharistic liturgy is a direct experiencing of the Kingdom of God. The liturgy is not a means to an end; it is the sharing in the "end" itself. It deserves to be offered with care and "the beauty of holiness" because it communicates the presence, power, and purposes of God to a lost humanity. It is in this “economy of heaven,” as Taylor so beautifully puts it, that we desire to be: first in the liturgy and then in the rest of our lives.

And it is this fusion of the liturgy with the rest of our life that marks the second paragraph--and marks the Classical Anglican approach to sacramentality in general. The participation in the Divine Life that marks authentic liturgy leads to the rest of our existence sharing in this call to holiness and wholeness—both in what we must not and what we must do. In the Eucharist we see Christ in word of scripture and in bread and wine. Through this encounter, we see Christ in the poor and the afflicted, in times of struggle and in times of peaceful contemplation, in activity and in rest. The Eucharist, far from being an escape from life, is the very place where, for the Christian, life is transformed and revealed to be the holy thing it truly is and must be.

The Eucharist is the centerpiece of the Church's life until the Last Day. Anglicans of whatever stripe must both cherish it and offer it with great intentionality. This is why the Eucharist can never be taken for granted, nor may it be "tossed off" by careless clergy, laity, or parishes. To do so it to betray the very gift of transformative encounter God has given us.

Wake Up!

2011-11-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

Advent, that season of opposites, ends with the Holy Family going to Bethlehem in silent obscurity. It begins, however, with the shriek of the rooster, the disorienting clang of the alarm clock, the crash of a break-in.

Jesus’ words to his disciples in today’s Gospel lesson require eternal vigilance from us. There is never a good time to let our guard down, to get comfy or complacent.

Christianity is never a faith or a practice of avoidance: it is always a direct encounter with God, with the neighbor, with the reality of our discipleship. Falling asleep, in any of its many forms in the spiritual life, is another word for death. As C.S. Lewis aptly noted, we are ever advancing to heaven or hell. For the Christian, wakefulness is the pilgrimage to heaven: spiritual sleep is the coasting into alienation from God, the other, and self.

May this be an Advent of new wakefulness for us all.

Collect for Advent Sunday

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Art of Giving Thanks

2011-11-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

A General Thanksgiving

from the Book of Common Prayer (1979),

page 836

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and make him known; and through him, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

The Prayer Book contains a number of prayers of thanksgiving. This one, composed for this revision, ascends rung by rung into the heights of spiritual freedom and maturity.

It begins with giving God thanks for what has been done for us, personally and corporately: in creation and all that flows from it—all of it being an expression of the mystery of Divine Love found in the Holy Trinity. Interestingly, this prayer assumes a theological beginning and end, framing the entire idea of thanksgiving in our participation in the Divine, rather than in the material benefits we have received. The two things are not opposites, but in a materialist culture like ours, it is essential to make clear that the material proceeds from and points towards a spiritual wholeness.

Then the prayer tightens the focus to the particulars of our own experience. This can be difficult, especially if we find ourselves in a season of loss or pain in any of the relationships central to our life. Giving thanks for any love or care we have received, even briefly, is essential at these times. When we are grieving or in emotional turmoil, evil seeks to isolate us from all memory of God’s presence and leading. This prayer speaks to that tendency, recalling before our heart and mind that God has been there, loving us in and through others.

Then comes a thanksgiving for our work, skills, abilities, and the creative capacity God gives us each in unique ways. This includes our work (how often do we really give thanks for work? After all, we were given work to do by God in the story of the Garden of Eden well before the “fall.”) Creativity, stewardship of resources, labor… these are all ways we share in God’s love. When our work or efforts “demand our best efforts,” we find out not only more about the hidden gifts in our lives, but about how much we need God in order to unlock those gifts—and hold them with humility and for the benefit of others when using them.

The prayer dares to contemplate an extremely important, but oft-overlooked part of thanksgiving: for failures and disappointments. This is a high rung to reach for, and usually can only be understood through a costly grace. Yet, it remains true that the greatest learning we will ever have will be from our failures, should we take the time to review them with eye not to self-justification but to a desire to love and serve more authentically. That is true dependence on God. When we learn not to fear failure as rejection, but to learn from all things for deeper discipleship, our very lives become a bridge between God’s holiness and the world’s need.

The prayer then proceeds to give highest thanks for the Word made flesh: Jesus Christ. It rehearses the story of incarnation-ministry-death-resurrection-ascension (His and ours--emphasizing our share in the ascension to God), placing our whole capacity to give thanks in the light of that which frees us to live upright, holy lives. It is not our own smarts, strength, good luck, good looks, personal charisma, or any of the myriad other things the world exalts that gives us hope: it is the gift of union with the Holy Trinity made possible in Christ that should call forth from us the greatest praise and thanks.

Finally, the prayer concludes not with thanks, but a petition: for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We do this because the Spirit’s work of connecting, urging, and communicating is essential for us to make this act of Thanksgiving—whether said on Thanksgiving Day or at any other time—more than a moment in time, but a way of life.

How your parish works...

2011-11-13T15:46:00.000-08:00

How Your Parish Works:

A short introduction to the mission and life of

St. Timothy’s Church, Salem.

St. Timothy’s common life is based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In order to live out the Gospel we have developed a brief mission statement. All of our ministries and activities are related to it.

The Mission of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church

We gather to experience the Holy Trinity through Scripture, worship, study, and fellowship. Receiving and reflecting God’s love and grace, we are sent out to love and serve our neighbor, see the Christ in others, and share the Gospel by the example of our everyday lives.

Worship

At St. Timothy’s we believe the first priority of any Christian community is the worship of God. There can be no more important activity for Christians than the coming together for the purpose of worshipping our Creator and Redeemer. All other ministry is grounded in this worship: the liturgy is the training ground for service in the world. The central act of Christian worship is the Holy Eucharist, where Christ is present to His people in the Word of Scripture and by the bread and wine mystically made his Body and Blood. This is the basis of our parish’s life.

Some key aspects of the way we worship:

St. Timothy’s puts a great deal of focus on robust symbolism, with the full use of the senses (such as incense, holy water, chanting and hymnody, kneeling, &c.), all offered to God’s glory.
We value regular attendance as a way to grow in faith and gain understanding of parish activities and offerings.
Our model for worship and theology is the ancient and undivided Church, grounded in the Apostolic faith and scripture.
Sermons are generally of a practical character.
The Church Year, with its focus on the key themes of Christian teaching and practice, is central to the parish’s life.
Holy Week (Palm Sunday through the Easter Vigil/Day) is the pinnacle of our worship and community life; plan to participate!

Leadership

Vestry and Rector: The Episcopal Church lives a shared form of leadership between the laity and the clergy at each level, from the National Church through to the Diocese and at the parish church. St. Timothy’s is led by an elected body of laypersons (the Vestry) and the Rector (Fr. Brandon). A Treasurer and a Clerk are appointed by the Vestry. Two of the Vestry persons are designated Wardens. The Senior and Junior Wardens, along with the Rector, form a kind of Executive Committee. Vestry members are elected by parishioners at our Annual Meeting early each year.

Commissions: St. Timothy’s has a number of Commissions, each one covering a different aspect of ministry in the congregation. Each Commission has a Coordinator. This person helps focus and facilitate the Commission’s area of ministry. The Commission may organize itself as it best sees fit to do its work. All Commissions have a Vestry Liaison to whom the Coordinator makes regular reports of the Commission’s work. All members of St. Timothy’s are called to minister the Gospel in their daily lives: Commissions provide one way for us to do so as a parish community.

Commissions at St. Timothy’s

Building and Grounds

Ongoing maintenance & planning for future needs

Christian Formation

From the nursery through Adulthood: a lifelong process

Liturgical Ministries

Acolytes/Altar Guild & Flowers/Music/Lectors, &c.

Mission/Outreach

Ministering the Gospel locally and globally

Newcomers

Helping people move from visitor to full member

Parish Life

Our fellowship events & ministry nurturance group

Pastoral Care

Connecting members to each other in care & compassion

Stewardship

All we have is a gift from God; let us use it wisely!

Photos of Vestry members and Commission Coordinators are posted in the Narthex (the foyer leading into worship)
You are invited to join one or more Commissions. Do you see something that interests you? Talk to Fr. Brandon, a Coordinator, or our Parish Administrator, via e-mail, or by a phone call. We are here to serve!

Membership

"How do I join this Church?" The answer to this question is really two-fold. The basic steps are:

1. Baptism. All persons baptized with water in the name of the Trinity are members of Christ's Universal (catholic) Church, of which the Episcopal Church is part. If you are seeking baptism, please see the parish priest. We ask that only those baptized receive communion; if you are not baptized, please come to the altar for a blessing by the priest at the time of communion; cross your arms over your chest to signal you desire a blessing.

Having your baptism recorded, receiving communion at least three times a year, and giving in one's own name establishes membership in the Episcopal Church.

2. Confirmation. The last step toward full and mature participation in our tradition (including serving in certain leadership areas) is by being confirmed by a Bishop of our Church. Inquirer’s Classes and Catechumenate Classes leading to Confirmation are offered each year.

If you are an Episcopalian joining St. Timothy’s from another Episcopal parish, ask your former parish (or our parish office) to have a Letter of Transfer sent to establish your membership here.

All new members at St. Timothy’s are asked to attend the Inquirer’s Class & to begin giving to the work & mission of the Church in their own name by pledging or by other means.

Some Special Terms at St. Timothy’s

The Catechumenate:

An ancient process whereby adults are prepared for baptism. Adults seeking to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church and those seeking a deeper faith are also normally part of the Catechumenate. After the Inquirer’s Class series in the autumn, Catechumenate begins in Advent, and concludes at Pentecost in the spring. The Catechumenate is not only about teaching; it is about sharing our stories, questioning, and learning from each other. Interested? See Michael McFetridge, Head Catechist.

Chaburah (Ha-boor-ah)

This Hebrew word refers to a gathering of believers for a meal and discussion. They are our form of parish fellowship groups. Each year, Chaburah groups form and meet monthly in each other’s homes for food and conversation. Sign-ups are posted before the next rounds of Chaburahs.

Narthex

This Greek word refers to the entry space outside of the Nave (the worship area) of the Church. At St. Timothy’s many activities occur in the narthex, including Sunday post-worship receptions, weekday fellowship activities, and occasional teaching events.

Living in the Kingdom

A discipleship enrichment group meeting on Wednesday evenings. Retreats, presentations on various “how the faith is lived” topics, plenty of discussion, as well!

Parish Hall

The “log cabin” building just north of the main church. This was our original worship space, and is now used for parish meals and special events.

+ + +

Are there other unfamiliar terms? Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Our “church language” can be confusing, but we’ll translate!

Getting (and staying) connected

Sundays

The Bulletin: Look on the right side of the service bulletin for a quick calendar of the week. Look on the bulletin back for more detailed information about events and other parish news. Verbal announcements are often made at the Sunday Eucharist. Stay for coffee hour if possible, too.

Publications

The Tidings: This is our monthly newsletter. Please give your address information to the Parish Office to start receiving your copy.

Parish Web Site: www.sainttimothys.org

We have many offerings on our web site, including photos of events, educational, daily prayer and scripture resources, back issues of the Tidings, the rector’s blog, contact information for parish leadership, &c.

Weekly eTidings: If you have Internet access, sign up for this e-mail bulletin via the parish web site.

Other ways…

Chaburah Groups (see above),
Annual Parish Campout in August
Tuesday morning Eucharist (10 AM)
Wednesday craft group (10 AM–Noon, at church)
Summer Wednesday Evening Potlucks
Bible Studies
Commissions

And most importantly:

Inquirer’s Classes and the Catechumenate are the best tools for learning about the parish.

*Illustration from The Cartoon Church

Day by Day we praise you: an introduction to the Daily Office

2011-11-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Prayers

The final portion of the Morning/Evening Office has to do with prayer, as its title indicates.

The Prayers take all we have done, where we have been in the previous stages of the Office and, in a sense, "apply" them to the ongoing work of being more like Christ. We pray the prayer Jesus taught us, we share in his priestly work of intercession and thanksgiving, and we contemplate what it means to be merciful, compassionate, just, and loving in the full sense of these words. All the purgation, all of the illumination, now come to their highest purpose, the one manifest in Christ's Incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and in baptism: sharing in the divine life we were always meant to have, the union of wills which is our glory, our desire, our peace.

The Prayers commence with a dialog: “The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us pray.” (in Rite 2; Rite 1 uses the form “The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit.”). This assumes, of course, public recitation of the Office. When it is being said in private (remembering the truth that there really is no such thing as fully “private” Christian prayer), it is permissible to change this dialogue to “Lord hear our prayer, and let our cry come to you.” This preserves the communal sense of the Office while acknowledging the realities of the setting. This dialogue recalls to us that all our prayers are part of a dynamic interplay between ourselves, Christ’s Body the Church, and God. There are many times when we can lose track of this in life, and the liturgical forms of our worship brings us back to the truth: we do not do this alone.

The Lord’s Prayer then follows. This may be said in either its Elizabethan or modern translation. I would suggest that one try to pray this prayer in its modern form with some regularity. The Lord’s Prayer serves as the “summit” of this part of the Office. It is here where we most clearly speak about our will being in union with God’s. The prayer Christ gave to us sets the pattern for Christian life. From this flows the fruit of such a union: intercession, adoration, and thanksgiving—all connected to the actions of a life lived partly in the Kingdom of God already. The rest of the Office is, in a sense, a "living out" of the Lord's Prayer.

The Suffrages that follow the Lord’s Prayer may be a new word and concept to some people. Suffrages are a prayer form based on short intercessory phrases (the “V” and “R” mean “versicle” and “response” in public recitation of the Office). Together, they cover a great deal of territory in a short amount of time: prayers for mercy, protection, Christian leadership, the Church, peace, the state, justice, mission, the poor, purity, and the power of the Holy Spirit. They are similar to a litany (changing petitions, each with a fixed response); in fact, at Evening Prayer, the “B” set of suffrages is a short litany from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. One may certainly “toss off” the Suffrages, as one may rattle off any prayer, but I would advise anyone using them to take them slowly, thinking about what each petition means to you, today. Intercession is one of the clearest fruits of our sharing in the priestly ministry of Christ our Lord; it should be offered with care and reverence. Real lives, real souls are at stake.

At Morning Prayer, Suffrages “A” are the traditional set; the “B” set were for centuries attached to the end of Te Deum (Canticle 7 in Rite I, Canticle 21 in Rite II Morning Prayer), and I tend to use the “B” set whenever I say the Te Deum (as appointed in the Table of Canticles mentioned earlier in this series).

At Evening Prayer, the “A” set of suffrages is, again the “traditional” set, but since it is a repeat of set “A” at Morning Prayer, I tend to use the “B” set most of the time, as this litany has so much to contemplate even in its brevity. The “B” set makes provision for one to add specific saints in the final petition. A good custom here is to begin with “St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord,” as she is the uniquely-honored "God-bearer;" then the patron of one’s parish (if there is one), the saint being commemorated on that particular day, and (perhaps, especially in personal recitation) one’s name saint. It is also customary to make the sign of the cross at the petition for forgiveness of sin in this set of Suffrages. This physically recalls the significance of Christ's love for all humanity poured out upon the cross, as well as our baptism into the "Way of the Kingdom" the we are called to live out through forgiveness and mercy ourselves.

The Collects that follow are a venerable part of the Office--they once formed the conclusion to the service, and may still be used this way. The Prayer Book allows one to use as few as two or as many as one wants. For public services, three is usually a good number. In personal recitation, it is good to start simply, and then add a few as one’s comfort with the Office develops.

The Collects are more than just “prayers” in a generic sense. They are an education in the mission and theology of the Church, a laboratory for spiritual experimentation, and a formation in the depth of conversation with God. To become familiar with the collects of the Daily Office and the Church Year is to be immersed in the fertile ground of faith, where good seeds can sprout and put down deep roots.

In most Anglican forms of the Daily Office, it is customary to start the Collects with “The Collect of the Day.” This usually means the Collect of that particular week (being that of the preceding Sunday), but could also mean the Collect for a particular Holy Day. All of these prayers may be found in the Collects section of the BCP, either in traditional language (pages 158-210) or contemporary (pages 211-267). If this seems confusion (and it certainly can be—this is why I suggest starting very simply), this is where using an online source can be of some help.

Morning and Evening Prayer both have special collects appointed for Sunday, Friday, and Saturday. The remaining collects can be distributed through the week, making for a seven-day cycle. Together, they make a circuit of major areas of focus in prayer: for protection, grace, a sense of God’s presence, &c. One can use these in place of, or in addition to, the Collect of the Day. If one is starting out saying daily Morning/Evening Prayer, I would just use one of these collects, and not worry about the “Collect of the Day” above until you get the sense of how it works.

The 1979 BCP also provides three “Collects for Mission” at Morning and Evening Prayer: choose one to conclude these section. The third of these (“Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross…”) is particularly appropriate for Wednesdays and Fridays, the traditional fasting days in Christian practice. The point of these collects is to help the Church move from an excessively interior focus to a more outward- and other-focus in mission. This is central to our renewed sense of being the People of God sent (missio) into the world by Christ to bear the message of the Good News of God.

After the Collects the BCP makes provision for a variety of options. One may immediately conclude the Office here, without anything further.

Other prayers, particularly from the “Prayers and Thanksgivings” section (pages 810-841), may be added following the collects. This is a good way to work through the various prayers for particular concerns/thanksgivings for blessings that the Prayer Book so richly provides.

One may, instead, choose to sing a hymn after the collects, or say the Great Litany (page 148 and following) or some other Litany. When saying the Office in a non-public setting, one could follow the Collects with time for journaling, meditation, observance of silence, or any number of other devotions (see below).

The Office may conclude with The General Thanksgiving and/or The Prayer of St. Chrysostom. The General Thanksgiving is one of the great gems in our tradition. One can pause prior to saying this prayer and give thanks for a particular blessing, then begin. In this prayer we see the gamut of blessings from God… from our own particular concerns on to cosmological gifts of redemption and grace. This is a good prayer to memorize.

The Prayer of St. Chrysostom is probably best suited to group settings, as its content implies. However, saying it on one’s own does remind us that whenever a Christian prays, we are part of the whole Body of Christ offering continual praise and intercession to our God around the world, and beyond the grave.

The Office concludes with the Benedicamus (“Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.” – with alleluias added during Eastertide) and with what is called “The Grace,” traditionally the short verse from 2 Corinthians 13:14 (“The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore.”) while making the sign of the cross. This way of ending the Office recalls us to the central Mystery of the Christian Faith: the Holy Trinity, and our communion with the Trinity by God’s grace. Two other options from the Scriptures are also provided, as well. One might vary the concluding grace by season, as appropriate.

So, how do I deal with this massively rich and complex set of possibilities?

With so many choices, perhaps it is best to set up some rough groupings of ways to conclude Morning or Evening Prayer after the Creed. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but it is a start. Here are three such groupings:

Basic

The 1979 BCP lays out the following as essential steps in the final section of Morning or Evening Prayer:

The Lord’s Prayer
The Suffrages
A collect (prayer) for that particular day, or from those provided in the Office
A prayer for mission

Enriched

The Lord’s Prayer
The Suffrages
Collect of the Day
Collect from the seven provided in each Office (enough for one to go through them all each week)
A prayer for mission or a form of Intercession from the Book of Common Prayer such as the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions on p. 814 or another form of intercession from other sources
A hymn appropriate to the time of day, the season, the liturgical calendar, or lessons from scripture
The General Thanksgiving and/or A Prayer of St. Chrysostom from Morning or Evening Prayer
The Benedicamus (“Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.”)
Concluding grace

Devotional (likely used for personal recitation of the Daily Office)

Those items on the “Basic” list, to which may be added such things as:
Some or all of those on the “Enriched” list
Memorial prayers appropriate to the Day of the Week
Prayers of Preparation/Thanksgiving for the Holy Eucharist (some available here and here, and here)
Extended time of personal intercession, petition, thanksgiving
The Anglican Cycle of Prayer for global intercessions
A Diocesan cycle of prayer (here is an example from this diocese)
Prayer for specific local ministries, service-providers, government, clergy, parishes, &c. Also, prayer for neighbors.
The Great Litany, either as in the BCP (p. 148), or in a form such as from the Church of England’s Common Worship, available online here
Additional devotional litanies: at Embertide, of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Spirit, of Penitence, for the morning, for those who are dying and the departed in Christ (BCP p. 462, 465), &c.
Silent contemplation
Journaling

As you can see, the possibilities are tremendous in scope. The point, however, is not to become lost in an endless sea of options. Rather, we need to start with a simple rule of prayer and stick to it for a season in life, only adding or changing after we have truly come to “know” these prayers as an experience of growing union with the will of God.

A Convention Meditation

2011-11-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Thoughts upon a picture distributed at a diocesan convention, after lectures on the Kingdom of God, the Church, and our seemingly endless love affair with earthly power…

Triptych, Redux

You wait in rhythmic ranks,
            Frozen and timeless, aloof and secure;
Ivory butterflies without concern,
            Save for the flowering Imperial Christ
                        Holding all by unseen force.

We, your egalitarian successors, salute you,
            We lift our fair-trade coffee
To our unfair lips in grudging admiration
            For what you are, or were, and
                        What we still half want.

Our pensions, position, power and place
            Betray our rants, chants and daring poses:
We are radicals, Oh yes, until
            We feel the weight of our cross.
                        Then we look back at you

Furtively, in envy’s green light.
            We wonder:
Where will we fit ourselves
            In your silent, secure parade?
                        Where is our recycled, righteous triptych found?

A Litany for the Armed Forces

2011-11-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

Let us remember to pray for all those in the military--at home or abroad, in active service or veterans--on this day when we also recall St. Martin, whose life of service and holiness began while he was in the military.

A Litany for the Armed Forces

Holy God, the protector of all who trust in you:

Grant to the Armed Forces of this nation,

and all who seek you,

the assurance of your presence,

the knowledge of your love,

and the guidance of your spirit

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Bring healing and wholeness to people and nations:

let your mercy rule all that we do.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Be with all who defend your truth and your peace,

that they may vanquish injustice and wrong.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Give wisdom to leaders and commanders,

that they may be a force for good on the earth.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

In your wisdom embrace our enemies,

and those who wish us harm:

turn, the hearts of all to kindness and friendship.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Be with all medics and chaplains,

and all who support the suffering:

give then wisdom and skill, sympathy and patience.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Sustain the anxious and fearful,

and renew then with courage from on high.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Comfort all worried families, whose loved ones are in danger:

surround them with your love, protect them from all harm.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Be with the sick and wounded,

stand by all prisoners and captives:

let your mercy be shown to all, and your power to heal and save.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Receive those fallen in battle, and all innocents who have died:

surround their loves ones with compassion,

and give them a patient faith.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

Confirm what is founded on truth,

and establish your love in our hearts:

that justice may abound on the Earth,

and all peoples rejoice in your peace.

Lord, hear us.

Lord, graciously hear us.

The litany may end with the Lord's Prayer, or else this or some other collect

Lord our God, our sure stronghold,

hear the voice of our pleading

and deliver us from evil.

Strengthen us as we strive for the poor and oppressed,

and establish your justice in all the earth.

Amen.

From the Church of England's web site

No Idol Threat…

2011-11-08T17:01:00.000-08:00

O Lord our God, you call whom you will and send them where you choose: We thank you for sending your servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve you, the living God; and we entreat you to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of your service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Collect for St. Willibrord (c. 658-739 AD)

Yesterday the Church gave thanks for the witness of an Englishman who studied in Ireland and evangelized in the Netherlands and Denmark—all before jetliners and the Internet. Willibrord’s ministry was as heroic as it was pioneering. But today, it is the collect we offer in honor of him that fascinates me the most.

“O Lord our God, you call whom you will and send them where you choose...”

Ah, yes—God is the one who calls and sends, not the various forms of Church bureaucracy or the ego of the individual Christian. That is awfully easy to forget. Perhaps it doesn’t stop there? Maybe it is God who sends renewal into moribund parts of the Church, or God who decides it is time to open our hearts to the challenges of a new era—not the latest plan or initiative or trend from Central.

We thank you for sending your servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve you, the living God…”

Idolatry? Isn’t that, well, pretty out of date? Come on? Who does THAT any more? Well, maybe a little bit… I am up to my eyeballs in credit-card debt for stuff I’ve long since thrown away, and I do tend to fill the recycle bin each week with bottles (quality stuff, mind you), and there is the matter of what I do with my private time—but that is hardly idolatry. Sure, I have “issues,” but I’m working on them. I just need more time.

“…We entreat you to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of your service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising…”

All sin, whether it comes in the form of idolatry, addiction, delusion, decadence, pride, or any of the myriad other forms it takes, begins with a promise of freedom, but leads to slavery. To follow Christ starts with servitude: we must die to self and follow Jesus by taking up our Cross. But then it begins to change. We move from the slavery to self that marks the world “as it is” to freedom in God. God’s desire for us in our perfect liberation. We can never get there by simply “being ourselves,” for we have forgotten who we truly are until we stand in the light and love of God.

Holy Willibrord, as we have remembered you in our prayers this day, pray for us in our time, that we may be faithful to the mission you set before us!

Who are the saints?

2011-11-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

A short primer on the saints in the Episcopal tradition...

In the New Testament times, saint is a term denoting a baptized person, as in St. Paul’s greeting “To the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia.” This is still the basic meaning of the word today.
Beginning with official persecution of the Church under Roman Imperial authority, the title “saint” came to be given to those who had laid down their lives for the Faith, and by extension to “confessors” who, during persecutions, were faithful to their profession as Christians but were not martyred, and then simply to Christians who were notable for their holy lives.
In later times, as a result of large-scale borrowing of dates commemorating revered Christians kept in various regional Churches, a formal calendar of “saints’ days” appeared, and a process of “canonization” was developed for the recognition of saints by the wider Church (canonization meaning to add to a canon or list of saints).
During the Reformation, the place of the saints in the Anglican Tradition was returned more to its early meaning: the saints are first and foremost all baptized Christians.
The Church commemorates the lives of particular Christians (popularly called “saints”) as models for living the Gospel of Christ. For us, the Saints are a source of inspiration & support, reminding us that God uses ordinary people to do his extraordinary work.
To God, all people are alive, for God is not the God of the dead, but the living. The Communion of Saints is the recognition that all those who have turn to God in faith are part of one Body—the Church, and this Church in turn desires to share the Good News of God’s love and reconciliation with all people so that we all may come to know our true identity as saints (holy ones) of God,

(Adapted from “Words of our Worship,” by C.M. Guilbert)

Only living things need food: Hooker, the Eucharist and Baptism

2011-11-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

The grace which we have by the holy Eucharist doth not begin but continue life. No man therefore receiveth this sacrament before Baptism, because no dead thing is capable of nourishment. That which groweth must of necessity first live.

If our bodies did not daily waste, food to restore them were a thing superfluous. And it may be that the grace of baptism would serve to eternal life were it not that the state of our spiritual being is daily so much hindered and impaired after baptism.

In that life therefore where neither body nor soul can decay, our souls shall as little require this sacrament as our bodies corporeal nourishment, but as long as the days of our warfare last, during the time that we are both subject to diminution and capable of augmentation in grace, the words of our Lord and savior Christ will remain forcible, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink ye his blood ye have no life in you.

Life being therefore proposed unto all men as their end, they which by baptism have laid the foundation and attained the first beginning of a new life have here their nourishment and food prescribed for continuance of life in them.

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V—1597

Today is the annual commemoration of Richard Hooker, the great early Anglican theologian and still one of the surest interpreters of what it means to be a “reformed catholic” – the classical self-understanding of this tradition.

Hooker’s discussion of Baptism and the Eucharist here show what a profound, lively, and intensely real understanding of the sacraments he had. Far from being spiritual “comfort food,” a sign of being part of the group, or “chip-and-dip with Jesus” (yes, I’ve heard it described in these ways), the Eucharist is intensely real food for committed (though fragile and vulnerable) disciples. It is a food of authenticity: we receive it not only to be nourished, but also to be judged by the Gospel’s criteria and to have the truth of Christ poured into our lives afresh, so that our conscience being cleansed, we might witness not to our own selfishness or distortion, but to Christ’s healing and power of resurrection.

Baptism and Eucharist are not stepping stones towards something, or "about" something else: they are the thing they say they are: New Life in God and nourishment in that Life. When the sacraments are understood this way, contemporary confusions of hospitality and discipleship are resolved. Hospitality, especially for those not yet baptized, is essential… but the Life given in Baptism (and the centrality of the much-quoted baptismal covenant) and nourished in the Eucharist is not an act of hospitality: it is a radical break with this world and its power; a gift of restored life in God the Holy Trinity and the accountability and grace to live that life.

Collect for the Commemoration of Richard Hooker,

Priest & Theologian

O God of truth and peace, you raised up your servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

These Unsearchable Benefits

2011-11-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

O God, the Maker and Redeemer of all believers: Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son; that on the day of his appearing they may be manifested as your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[Collect for All Faithful Departed]

Christians grieve. We are human. Yet, we do not “grieve as others do who have no hope,” as St. Paul reminds us in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. Rather, we grieve as those with hope, with an assurance of Life’s final victory in the Resurrection, available now to us by faith and communion in God. This is one of the most obvious benefits we have been given in Christ.

Another is, however, less evident: it is the way God embraces the ambiguity and pain of our life in love and mercy. From the moment of Christ’s birth in a manger because there wasn’t room or time, to the moment that his body was laid in a borrowed tomb, Christ’s earthly life was filled with the less-than-perfect of this world. The One who knew no sin embraced and redeemed the broken, partial, and flawed. That embrace, overcoming all our unworthiness in the power of the Resurrection, is a benefit reaching into the heart of many who grieve with hope, but with pain.

For many who mourn, there are a thousand unanswered questions: “what if…,” “why…,” “how could I have…,” “if only…” and so on. Like battery acid corroding delicate wiring, these questions often burn into our souls in not only unproductive but utterly destructive ways. Being able to let these questions go is a necessary process for many who mourn… but how?

When we come to All Souls’ Day each year, we bring not only the assurance and peace of a “reasonable and holy hope” (as the Prayer Book puts it) to our grief: we also bring the unsearchable benefits of knowing a God who walks with us in the incompletion of life and death. When we have no answers, no way of making sense of loss, of lives not lived—or lived unwisely—we know that in Christ these, the souls we bear in our hearts, will be manifested as God’s children in glorious completion when the story is finally told in full. God, who knows our limitations, also searches out our deepest desires—the desire to love and be loved. Learning to live from this kind of hope, this kind of faith, we can commend what is impossible for us to the God for whom all things are indeed possible.

Rest eternal grant them, O Lord.

For the Living and Dead

2011-11-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

O God

Your majesty is ineffable,

Your power incomparable,

Your goodness inestimable.

You are the Lord of the living and the dead.

We are those whose power in the world

Is bound in the flesh.

They are those, whose bodies are laid aside and are now received.

Give to the living, mercy and grace,

And to the departed, rest and light for ever.

Give to the Church, truth and peace,

And to us, forgiveness of sins, and your good favor.

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626),

as translated by David Scott

For use as in daily intercessions, on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2), during times of grief, or at the Eucharist, prior to Communion.

This prayer expresses with precision and economy the Church's teaching on the Communion of Saints. Christians experience an assurance capable of looking through death to Life in its fullness. We do this by faith, and this faith comes from a gift given freely by God and received by the human heart. It is a fruit of love—not in this case the “love” of passing emotions, but the love of the Holy Trinity, to which the threefold opening of this prayer alludes.

A Litany for the Dead

2011-11-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

For use on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2), and during times of mourning.

God the Father,

Have mercy on your servants.

God the Son,

Have mercy on your servants.

God the Holy Spirit,

Have mercy on your servants.

Holy Trinity, One God,

Have mercy on your servants.

From all evil, from all sin, from all tribulation,

Good Lord, deliver them.

By your holy Incarnation, by your Cross and Passion, by your precious Death and Burial,

Good Lord, deliver them.

By your glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the Coming of the Holy Spirit,

Good Lord, deliver them.

We sinners beseech you to hear us, Lord Christ: That it may please you to deliver the souls of your servants from the power of evil and from eternal death,

We beseech you to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please you mercifully to pardon all their sins,

We beseech you to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please you to grant them a place of refreshment and everlasting blessedness,

We beseech you to hear us, good Lord.

That it may please you to give them joy and gladness in your kingdom, with your saints in light.

We beseech you to hear us, good Lord.

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servants. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, sheep of your own fold, lambs of your own flock, sinners of your own redeeming. Receive them into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Rest eternal grant them, O Lord:

And let light perpetual shine upon them

May their souls, X and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

[From The Book of Common Prayer, 1979]

For All the Saints

2011-11-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

A Blessed All Saints' Day to you!

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

The Collect for All Saints’ Day

The feast of All the Saints, which begins the month of November in joy and triumph, is a celebration of the call to share in God’s holiness. So convinced were early Christians that this was their destiny they routinely referred to each other as “the saints of God” without irony or blush.

To become part of Christ’s living body is to partake of the life-blood of holiness. We are to follow God’s blessed saints “in all virtuous and godly living,” as the collect for this Principal Feast bids us. Ordinary people are being transformed in the Church into an extraordinary People: the Holy People of God. As the First Letter of Peter says: “…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” But what does that life look like? How will we know it?

The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) read on All Saints’ Day give us a clear and daring explanation. The saints of God—wherever they are and whenever they live—are all judged on the same basis. Are we peacemakers? Do we desire to be pure? Do we hunger and thirst after righteousness? Most importantly, do we live in poverty of spirit, wherein we become a vessel emptied of self so that we may receive and share God? These are the marks of the authentic saints. Even our worship is based on the Beatitudes: each Eucharist is both a revelation of God’s judgment of our life and a renewal in the grace to live a life worthy of the “ineffable joys” prepared for those who truly love God.

True saints are not interested in judging others but are keen to judge themselves. They submit all of their lives to the loving, redeeming, purifying care of the God who so fiercely desires to share Eternal Life with those made in his Image. When they fall, the saints turn back to God. When they succeed, they give the Love of their life the praise. When they are tried beyond their strength, they burrow down deep into the bosom of the one who was tried and found strong enough for all.

All Saints’ is but the greatest of the many feasts of the saints, scattered like seeds or gems throughout the year. The saints are people like us, indeed: human, limited, frail, and at times mistaken. But they are like us in another way: baptized into the power and strength of God. They beckon to us from every age and condition, reminding us that they know what it is to “fight the good fight” and to walk in our moccasins. They intercede for us because together we form “one communion and fellowship” of hope, endurance, and victory. For all the saints—their witness, their example, their encouragement—we give thanks not as passive observers but as active partners in God’s rescue mission to humanity through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Whole Worship for the Whole Body of Christ: The Day of All Souls

2011-10-31T16:35:00.001-07:00

November 2, though officially named the “Commemoration of All Faithful Departed” by the Church, is more commonly known by its old name: All Souls’ Day. The history of this commemoration is given in brief here,

There are many traditions around the Christian Church connected with this day. Most focus on offering prayers for the dead in Christ throughout the ages. This linking of the saints of the past with those of today is very much in the New Testament understanding of sainthood, where everyone who is part of Christ’s Body the Church is described as being a “saint of God.” This day also connects the "big picture" of our faith (the Communion of Saints, celebrated on All Saints' Day) with the personal side, the individual losses we bear. This is partly why it has a particular power, felt mostly by those who have known death's capacity to distort and diminish life.

On All Souls’ Day proper, St. Timothy's usually offers two liturgies: one for those whose schedules and abilities permit a daylight observance, and another for parishioners needing an evening service. Both liturgies are Prayer Book Requiems – Eucharists offered to God in commemoration of the dead in Christ.

The lessons from Scripture and the special prayers used are from the Burial liturgies, with one special addition: the reading of the necrology or memorial list, which includes all those names members of our parish (and others, as well) have asked to be read at the altar, and those who have been buried from this parish this last twelvemonth. When possible (i.e. when it isn’t a driving rain outside), we then process to the Memorial Garden for the memorable Litany of the Dead and concluding prayers. For us the grave is not the end of the journey, but the portal through which we all must pass into that "larger life" awaiting us with Christ in the Kingdom.

There are many theological reasons for this day: the centrality of the Communion of Saints in the Catholic Faith is deeply affirmed, the victory of Christ’s death and resurrection is shown forth by denying death’s power to separate all members of His Body in a final and decisive way, and a positive sense of connection between the “Church Militant” (those struggling against evil in this world) and the “Church Triumphant” in heaven is drawn – as shown so powerfully in the Book of Revelation.

Yet it is not only formal theology that counts in faith: the pastoral element, as an application of the “Faith once delivered to the saints” is also highly significant. On All Souls’ we experience deep emotions: loss, sorrow, sometimes even anger, regret… the very stuff of our fallen and broken world. Yet, we do so in the embrace of the Gospel: the story of God’s victory over these things is the foundation for this openness to exploring a territory fraught with unseen dangers – yet a territory we must traverse as disciples of Our Lord. Because Christ has been here before, he knows the way. His victory is ours, but we must take his yoke upon us, sharing in His victory even as He has shared in our sufferings—unto death.

So, All Souls’ is at turns a somber, tearful, peaceful, comforting, and assuring day. I have seen the unique way God performs “soul-surgery” in the liturgy – drawing connections, kindling hope, and shining light where darkness had reigned. As with all authentic Christian worship, All Souls’ day is not a “head trip,” limited to our intellects. It engages our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual selves: whole worship for the whole person. It is one of the great blessings of living in this tradition. For this teaching and practice, I am deeply thankful.

May they rest in peace!

The Collect for All Souls’ Day

O God, the King of saints, we praise and magnify thy holy Name for all thy servants who have finished their course in thy faith and fear; for the blessed Virgin Mary; for the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; and for all other thy righteous servants, known to us and unknown; and we beseech thee that, encouraged by their examples, aided by their prayers, and strengthened by their fellowship, we also may be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Some additional prayers for use on this day are located here.)

Pledging, Stewardship of Money, and the Parish Budget: An Introduction

2011-10-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

St. Timothy’s funds its ministry largely from one source: the money gifts of its members. There are a number of ways one can do this. Many people, when they first begin to attend St. Timothy’s, put cash or a check in the offering plate when it goes by. This is a great start, but is important to ask: “why am I giving?” Is it due to peer-pressure? How about “fee-for-service” or perhaps something like a club’s membership dues? If it is anything like these answers, it is time to go deeper into what we call stewardship, meaning our care of God’s gifts to us in faith.

All we have—from life itself to our relationships and possessions—is a gift from God. We don’t own anything, not even our selves. Christians are supposed to be stewards, not owners. Learning to live this way is one part of growing in Christian authenticity.

A central way of becoming a conscious steward of God’s gifts to us is by giving a portion of one’s income back to God. This is called proportional giving. It mean consciously deciding to give God the cream—not the dregs—of our money. That translates to making a commitment and doing it “off the top.” The standard of proportional giving in the Episcopal Church is the tithe, or one tenth of our income. All Episcopalians are called to give the tithe as the basic standard of financial giving.

Some people were blessed to grow up in a tithing household; they know it is not some extraordinary thing; it is the “natural” level of giving, freeing us from fear-based relations with our money, making us stewards and not owners. Others have to learn to trust God, moving their proportional giving up a percentage or two each year until they reach the tithe. Either way, this is something we need to pray about, consciously offering our monetary assets to God as a thank-offering for the many, many blessings we have received in life. Being thankful is a mark of true stewardship.

Once a person has become a conscious, proportional giver, it becomes natural to make a pledge—a commitment to the parish of a specific amount of money weekly, monthly, or annually. Our annual pledge is in the fall, but new members—or those who do not currently pledge—may request a pledge card and fill it out any time.

If, during the year, circumstances change and you cannot fulfill your pledge, there is an easy process to change it: contact our treasurer with the new amount. It will be taken care of confidentially.

Do remember: money is just one measure of stewardship: how we use our time and talents is just as important. Many opportunities are given through the year for the stewardship of time and talent.

Some other points:

No one is required to pledge; but giving in your own name is part of how full membership in the Church is defined.
The amount you give is not the issue: it is the commitment and the prayerful intention.
Pledge information is confidential (the Treasurer, the Bookkeeper, and the Rector are the three people who might know it—and they aren’t talking)
St. Timothy’s sends out reports through the year to all pledgers to help you keep track of your pledge payments.
Automatic withdrawal may be set up, if you wish.
One of the Church’s important missions—believe it or not—is to help us learn how to relate to our money properly, from a position of faith. This is one of the main reasons we give proportionally, tithe, and pledge.
We do not pledge to a budget; we give God a share in thankfulness for the blessings we have received from God’s own hand… thus freeing us to be generous is giving out all our time, talent, and treasure as directed by God. The budget is built in response to our Mission Statement, annual goals, and income, and may be adjusted through the year as necessary.
Let your giving be an act of faith: not of fear or of mere habit. Amen!

"Like a Field of Untrodden Snow" -- Beginning Continuous Prayer

2011-10-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

The theme of continuous prayer, spoken of by St. Paul and so many in the Christian spiritual tradition, can seem an unattainable goal. It is not. Metropolitan Anthony, in clear language, shows us it is a matter of resolve, desire—love. When a person turns to God, however simply or imperfectly, that person is blessed by communion with God. Responding to that blessing, we may be begin to offer our ordinary life—its hours, choices, encounters, possibilities—to God in prayer. Thus, a life of continuous prayer is born.

It is difficult to pray for a whole day. Sometimes, we try and imagine what it would be like. We think either of the liturgical life of contemplative monks or else the anchorite’s life of prayer. We don’t so often think of a life of prayer taking place in ordinary life, when everything becomes prayer or an occasion for prayer. But this is an easy way to pray, although it is of course very demanding.

Let us rise in the morning and offer ourselves to God. We have woken from a sleep which divides us from yesterday. Waking up offers us a new reality, a day which has never existed before, an unknown time and space stretching before us like a field of untrodden snow. Let us ask the Lord to bless this day and bless us in it.

And when we have done this, let us take our request seriously and also the silent answer we have been given. We are blessed by God, his blessing will be with us always in everything we do which is capable of receiving this blessing. We will only lose it when we turn away from God. And God will stay near us even then, ready to come to our aid, ready to give us back the grace we have rejected.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

Day by Day we praise you: an introduction to the Daily Office

2011-10-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Apostles’ Creed

After the Lesson(s) and Canticle(s), Morning and Evening Prayer make a turn from illuminative prayer towards the unitive. That “turn” is marked by the offering of the Apostles’ Creed.

The Apostles’ Creed is the basic statement of faith used in Western Christianity from very early on. It has always been connected to baptism, but has also been used at a variety of other liturgies, and eventually in the Daily Office itself. It came to the Daily Office fairly late, and there are contemporary versions of the Office that omit it. The Prayer Book liturgy, however, gives it a central place… and for some very good reasons.

Some people find the prospect of using the Creed each morning and evening to be a bit, well, repetitive. A friend’s wife once said she thought the idea fairly ludicrous. “Why would you need to say it so often?” The same could be said for the Lord’s Prayer, but I didn’t want to make anything of it. Sometimes (probably often), clergy need to remain quiet.

We say it often because we so often forget what we are about. We forget when we stop viewing each encounter with another person as a holy moment, when we charge head-down through the day without prayer or gratitude, when we do not notice the beauty of the sun or rain or flowers or birdsong, when we trade our identity as disciples of Christ for consumer or fearful employee or angry voter. The words of the Creed are no mere catalog of beliefs or a list of spiritual “belief boxes” to tick off: they are the equivalent to the “Pledge of Allegiance” in our faith life. This is indeed what I believe; ah, now I remember. Lord, thank you; Lord, have mercy. The Creed is always a sacred act of remembering. As C.S. Lewis made so clear in The Silver Chair, we must remember this list of “signs” to guide us through our day and our life.

The Creed is said each morning to begin the day with an affirmation of our baptism. This is the essential DNA of the faith, and I am charged with living it out in my words, thoughts, and actions.

The Creed is said at day’s end as a preparation for our life’s end. This is the faith I believe in and will give my life for; now I commend myself into your loving hands for the night in sure confidence of your saving power.

When saying the Creed, it is good to stand—the posture of a believer before God. At the name of Jesus, it is customary here (as elsewhere in the Church’s liturgy) to bow the head, honoring the sacred name of our Savior. It is also customary to make the sign of the cross at the words “and the life everlasting” as a personal signature of assent and recalling the signing with the cross at our baptism, by which we were “marked as Christ’s own for ever.” By the power of the Cross, we are given the everlasting life the Creed speaks of.

All of this is both illuminative (recalling the essential elements of the catholic faith for our assent) and yet also unitive (expressing our deepest longing: to be one with God through the faith we confess and were made part of through Holy Baptism). With the Creed, we have “made the turn;” we now come to the final part of the Office.

“That all who seek you here may find you:” The Dedication of a Church

2011-10-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Almighty God, to whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer: We give you thanks for the fellowship of those who have worshiped in this place, and we pray that all who seek you here may find you, and be filled with your joy and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This Sunday St. Timothy’s will observe one of its two Parochial Feasts: the dedication of its church (the other is its “feast of title,” the commemoration of St. Timothy in January). This annual event recalls the dedication liturgies in this parish’s history: of the first church building (now our parish hall), of the second (and current) nave, and of the educational, office, and chapel addition in 1997.

This liturgy has several special characteristics. First of all, it is a feast with its own collect, lessons, prayers of the people, and hymns. It opens with a Festal Procession, with a collect at a station where the icon of our patron St. Timothy is displayed. The Gloria in excelsis, the great hymn of praise from the early Christian era reserved for major feasts, is sung as the altar is censed. Deceased benefactors and members of St. Timothy’s are recalled in our prayers. Finally, before the liturgy concludes, a solemn Te Deum is sung, giving God especial thanks for this house of prayer as a guaranteed place of meeting and as a center of mission. So much for the liturgical details.

What must be of greater concern for us is the meaning behind this feast and its special elements, for the liturgy is a direct participation in the mystery of God the Holy Trinity, and a showing forth of the Kingdom of God, dawning even now in its fullness by the action of the Holy Spirit. What, then, does this liturgy signify to us?

The collect for the feast puts two things front-and-center: communion and its fruits. The Feast of Dedication is a thanksgiving for communion in its many forms: fellowship with God, fellowship with other disciples, fellowship with those who have already entered eternal life. It is also a plea to God that this parish—holy ground, dedicated to God’s way, God’s presence, a kind of divine beachhead in our agonized and strife-torn world—may always be a place where people may find God and be filled with divine joy and peace.

Ours has become a “desacralized” world; that is a fancy word for the condition of having little or no holiness. In its place, we have tried to substitute the material, the commercial, the purely physical. All around us we see the grotesque results of this experiment: addictions, obsessions, environmental degradation, the commodification of human life, industrialized killing, and the reduction of mystery and awe to such slogans as “follow your bliss” and “it’s all good.” The hunger for something more is being bought off—temporarily—by a less and less effective array of consumerist and ideological stop-gaps.

But we have the one thing that will satisfy that hunger: communion with God, with the creation, and with each other. Here, in this place, the cheap and sleazy answers the world hands out are not offered. Here, the utter connectedness of all things to their God is revealed. Here joy and peace are not just words: they are the currency of our shared life. Each Eucharist is a joyful renewal of that fact, reaching out beyond the buildings of St. Timothy’s into the lives of its members throughout this city and its surroundings.

The Feast of Dedication is no self-congratulatory party wherein this parish looks admiringly at itself in a mirror. It is a thanksgiving for the grace of God leading to the foresight, sweat, and sacrifice of those who came before us to bring about this parish’s physical presence. But it is more than that: it is a rousing call to take seriously the preciousness of Holy Ground in a city where hope, justice, peace, relationships, and even human life have become just words.

Here, at this place, the Kingdom of God is made known at each Eucharist, in each class or parish event. Here, those who seek God are able to find him: imperfectly, yes—but find God we may. For the Lord has blessed it, set it apart, making it a portal through which all may enter and be restored, refashioned into what we were created to be from the foundation of the world: the Royal Priesthood of Creation.

Let us give thanks for the dedication of this parish and live out its promise. Like all churches who retain zeal for the Kingdom of God, it is a beacon of hope in a world awash in turmoil and anxiety.

"And turn once more our water into wine"

2011-10-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

A poem about the forms religion may take in our world… both for divine and destructive purposes. Vaughan had lived through a period of religious bigotry, warfare, and growing atheism, but refused either to join in the distortion of faith or to turn his back on what gave him life, joy, and hope. This is a poem with great validity in our own day.

Religion

by Henry Vaughan, from Silex Scintillans

My God, when I walk in those groves

And leaves thy spirit doth still fan,

I see in each shade that there grows

An angel talking with a man.

Under a juniper, some house,

Or the cool myrtle’s canopy,

Others beneath an oak’s green boughs,

Or at some fountain’s bubbling eye;

Here Jacob dreams, and wrestles; there

Elias by a raven is fed,

Another time by th’ angel, where

He brings him water with his bread;

In Abr’ham’s tent the wingèd guests

(O how familiar then was heaven!)

Eat, drink, discourse, sit down, and rest

Until the cool and shady even;

Nay thou thyself, my God, in fire

Whirlwinds, and clouds, and the soft voice

Speak’st there so much, that I admire

We have no conference in these days;

Is the truce broke? Or ‘cause we have

A mediator now with thee,

Dost thou therefore old treaties waive

And by appeals from him decree?

Or is’t so, as some green heads say

That now all miracles must cease?

Though thou hast promised they should stay

The tokens of the Church, and peace;

No, no; Religion is a spring

That from some secret, golden mine

Derives her birth, and thence doth bring

Cordials in every drop, and wine;

But in her long and hidden course

Passing through the earth’s dark veins,

Grows still from better unto worse,

And both her taste and colour stains,

Then drilling on, learns to increase

False echoes and confused sounds,

And unawares doth often seize

On veins of sulphur under ground;

So poisoned, breaks forth in some clime,

And at first sight doth many please,

But drunk, is puddle, or mere slime

And ‘stead of physic, a disease;

Just such a tainted sink we have

Like that Samaritan’s dead well,

Nor must we for the kernel crave

Because most voices like the shell.

Heal then these waters, Lord; or bring thy flock,

Since these are troubled, to the springing rock,

Look down great Master of the feast; O shine,

And turn once more our water into wine!

Song of Solomon: Chapter 4, Verse 12

My sister, my spouse is as a garden inclosed, as a spring shut up, and a fountain sealed up.

Notes & References:

juniper: 1 Kings 19:5

myrtle’s: Zechariah 1:8-11

oak’s: Judges 6:11

fountain’s: Genesis 16:7

Jacob dreams and wrestles: Genesis 28; Genesis 32:24-30

Elias by a raven fed: 1 Kings 17:6

Another time by th’Angel: 1 Kings 19:6

In Abr’ham’s test…shady even: Genesis 18:1-8

In fire: Exodus 3:2

Whirlwinds: Numbers 11:25

Admire: am amazed, wonder at

Conference: conversation, discourse

Cordials: enlivening drinks

Drilling: flowing in a small stream, dripping

Puddle: foul, stagnant water

Physic: medicine

Sink: cesspool

Samaritan’s dead well: John 4:5-15 (Jacob’s Well is “dead” water compared to the “living water” Christ promises)

The springing rock: Exodus 17:6

Water into wine: John 2:1-10

A peaceful body

2011-10-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

We must learn to acquire a peaceful body. Whatever our psychological activity, our body reacts to it; and our bodily state determines to a certain degree the type or quality of our psychological activity.

Theophan the Recluse, in his advice to anyone wishing to attempt the spiritual life, says that one of the conditions indispensable to success is never to permit bodily slackness: “Be like a violin string, tuned to a precisely note, without slackness or supertension, the body erect, shoulders back, carriage of the head easy, the tensions of all muscles oriented towards the heart.”

A great deal has been written and said about the ways in which one can make use of the body to increase one’s ability to be attentive, but on a level accessible to many, Theophan’s advice seems to be simple, precise, and practical. We must learn to relax and be alert at the same time. We must master our body so that it should not intrude but make collectedness easier for us.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

"Lord, I have expelled them"

2011-10-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

My God! Thou that didst die for me,

These thy death’s fruits I offer thee;

Death that to me was life and light,

But dark and deep pangs to thy sight.

Some drops of thy all-quick’ning blood

Fell on my heart; those made it bud

And put forth thus, though Lord, before

The ground was cursed, and void of store.

Indeed I had some here to hire

Which long resisted thy desire,

That stoned thy servants, and did move

To have thee murhered for thy love;

But Lord, I have expelled them, and so bent,

Beg, thou wouldst take thy tenant’s rent.

--Henry Vaughan, from Silex Scintillans, 1655

"This Love, This Power to Heal:" On the Feast of St. Luke the Physician

2011-10-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

It has been said that the authentic Church is known by its capacity to make saints. This is deeply true: holiness in the lives of people is a direct fruit of encounter with God the Holy Trinity. And this holiness always results in something; it is never a static condition, bottled up in itself. The holiness of God when encountered inevitably becomes an opportunity for healing on all levels of our being. For some, this includes sudden, miraculous bodily healing—events so shaking in their power that we do not speak of them easily. For others this healing overcomes memories, childhood trauma, or the effects of years of self-destructive addictions or patterns of life. Yet always this healing is the result of a call to the wholeness and holiness made available through the life and embrace of the True Physician of our souls: Jesus the Christ.

Healing is a by-product of Love. The power to heal in the authentic Church—something we must look for in our parishes, our dioceses, our bible studies, or wherever we gather as Church—is never an end in itself. It always looks forward, stretched out to the love of God, who is the author of life, health, and love itself. Jesus Christ embodies that Love, and communion with him means an unrelenting call to healing.

Make no mistake: though free to us, this gift of healing cost God everything; it can never make peace with sickness or death; all that is not love, all that is not life in its fullness, all that is not well in us, is illuminated by Love and must be let go. Much of the Christian road of discipleship is about this.

Our final healing can never be in this life. All therapies and programs for health making such promises are frauds and delusions. This world is radically and fundamentally unable to fulfill this promise. This has become the source of much misery in our day, as the capacity to extend life is confused with the ability to give life in all that means. Though a physician, St. Luke never confused these two things, and we must not, either. The fulfillment of our desire for healing can only come when God is “all in all,” in the Kingdom of Love and Knowledge, of which life in the Church is and must be the portal.

The Church holds “this love and this power to heal” that makes humans fully free. Tempted as it is to trade that gift for the power to control, punish, or indulge our unworthy drives, the true Church will ultimately always choose to live in the love and healing of Christ, and to share that love and healing with anyone who seeks it.

Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son: Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Day by Day we praise you: an introduction to the Daily Office

2011-10-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

Lessons...

The heart of the Daily Office consists of the Psalms and the Lessons. This is the “illuminative” face of prayer par excellence. When considering the vastness of the Scriptures, it can be daunting, though: “Where to start?” one might rightfully ask. A solution sometimes suggested is to start at the beginning of the Bible and go to the end. This can be useful for some people, but most find it impossible to maintain and/or mystifying in the extreme. It also means that one does not get to the Gospel for quite a while.

Fortunately, the Church has an easier and more practical answer available.

The Book of Common Prayer makes provision for an orderly and extensive reading of the Bible through use of a Lectionary, a table or program of selections from scripture appointed for each day of the Church Year. We first encountered the Daily Office Lectionary (BCP pages 934 to1001) when we dealt with the Psalms in the last section. Here we will use it again. This is why it is a good idea to keep this section marked!

The current form of the Daily Office Lectionary is arranged in a two-year cycle (we are currently in Year 1, which begins with the First Sunday of Advent prior to odd-numbered years). Taken together, it means we get to the vast bulk of scripture in two years. Some passages are omitted, while others (the New Testament, in particular) are read quite a bit more than once during that time. For most days, three readings (also called “lessons”) are appointed: one from the Old Testament (or the Apocrypha, as Anglicans use these books in our worship and faith life), one from the Gospels, and one from elsewhere in the New Testament.

Most people find having one or two readings per Office to be beneficial (two was the classical number in previous editions of the Prayer Book). Some will read all three lessons, especially if they know they will not be praying any other Office that day. My custom for years now has been to read two in the morning and one in the evening. Whatever you feel called to do, try to make it balanced. Avoid reading only from one Testament or the other. Anglicans value a balanced and integrated faith, and our scriptural diet should reflect this.

There are many online sources that can help you find which set of readings is to be used each day, but I think it valuable to learn how the Prayer Book works, so suggest some time spent with the Lectionary itself. If you get lost, you should try using Forward Movement’s Day by Day daily meditation (which lists the lessons), or seek the assistance of parish clergy or lay leaders.

You will find that for certain Holy Days there are special suggested lessons appointed at the back of the Daily Office lectionary. You may choose to use these lessons (and their accompanying Psalms) as you see fit. They break up the steady march through the scriptures in the main portion of the lectionary, but they deepen the experience of the Church Year. As one learns to use the Daily Office and Lectionary, you might try using more of these Holy Day lections. All of this seeks a balance between liturgy and scripture reading that the Church is always trying to get right… and never quite does.

Finally, some people will want to consider adding a reading from the Early Church (as made possible by Fr. Wright in his excellent Readings for the Daily Office from the Early Church—a resource I cannot praise too highly) as part of praying the Office. This practice (explicitly suggested in the Prayer Book on page 142) originated in monastic worship but has since become known and used by Christians far beyond the walls of the monastery. It provides a way for us to enter into the vast and nourishing world of the Fathers and Mothers of the faith, whose writings in the first five centuries of Christianity crystallized the way we confess the faith and live it out. Anglicanism, together with other Christian groups valuing visible unity with the Ancient and Undivided Church, hold these saints and their writings dear. This writer often reads such a lesson before the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. Consider using them, even occasionally, in the Daily Office.

Canticles…

Anglican custom is to follow each lesson from scripture with a canticle or song. Most of these are taken directly from the Scriptures themselves, but a few (the Gloria in excelsis, the Te Deum) are hymns from the early Church. The Prayer Book has a table of canticles on pages 144/5. This table allows the user to vary the canticles by day of the week or season. I find this very helpful at Morning Prayer, but much less so in the evening, where the traditional canticles of the Song of Mary (Magnificat) and the Song of Simeon (Nunc dimittis) seem to be much more natural and effective.

The canticles (often known in shorthand by their Latin openings) provide a response to the lesson just read. They remind us the scriptures are not “data” to be consumed but encounters with God, moments of transformation to be pondered and integrated into our full being. Finally, the canticles are poetic texts, often expressing intense experiences or deep mysteries in rich language able to bear the weight. Over time, Anglicans have such canticles as Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, and Te Deum committed to memory for times of prayer outside the Office. Many of us develop great associations with these poem-prayers (especially when some of the greatest composers in history of have set them to music). May it be so for you as you learn the deeper meaning and value of the Daily Office!

The Holy 'also-rans' of God

2011-10-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

A standing cross marking a site where St. Paulinus preached centuries ago.

Today is the traditional date for the commemoration of St. Paulinus of York, a date sadly missing from our current Episcopal Calendar. I say this not because Paulinus is a major figure being blatantly ignored in our country, but because he is a fairly minor figure who has something important to teach in our day.

Paulinus was part of the second wave of mission activity sent to England by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the very early 600’s. Unlike St. Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with the earlier and far more influential St. Augustine of Hippo in northern Africa), Paulinus did not enjoy a great deal of success in his missionary work.

After coming to Canterbury from Rome, he was sent north with the intention of basing his church-building efforts in the ancient (yes, by then it was pretty old) ex-Roman military base of York. This was the same city in which Constantine the Great was first proclaimed Emperor in the 300’s. It seemed a natural and poetic choice.

But ‘facts on the ground’ were very different when Paulinus arrived. The York of old was more a ruined memory than a Roman city. The environment was hostile and in constant turmoil. After vigorous efforts, he was able to make converts and ultimately did baptize local royalty and even a future saint (Hilda); but, the mission eventually ended in near total collapse after the death of his royal patron and resulting warfare. Paulinus had to beat a hasty retreat with the remnant of the royal family, leaving behind him a small contingent of locally-grown Christians to carry on the mission (and possibly to keep alive the story of his mission long enough for Bede to hear it and write it down). Even the pallium from the Pope, confirming his authority as Archbishop of the north in England, missed him ‘in the mail,’ so-to-speak. Forced to move south, he eventually re-established his ministry in Rochester, near Canterbury. It was as Bishop of Rochester, not Archbishop of York and all the North, that he died on this date. It has the feel and sound of near-disaster about it.

The seeds planted by Paulinus, though, would eventually mature into a much richer harvest through the efforts of the Irish mission to the north from Iona, via Lindesfarne—but this would not be until nearly a generation later. So, for a season, it looked like this mission had failed. What do we make of all this?

Paulinus shows us that missionary work is often slow, frustrating, and apparently unsuccessful. This can sometimes be the result of human failings: a poor choice for mission leadership, a failure to grasp the needs of a particular mission setting, arrogance or cruelty in how the Gospel is shared, brought, or (worst of all) imposed.

It can also be the result of bad timing, circumstances, or an outright attack of evil (we are not, after all, dealing with a “morally neutral” setting when we share the Gospel of Christ with the World). Paulinus and his mission seems to have suffered from some or of all of these.

There were a great many setbacks to his work simply because key people proved unreliable or all-too-human. Events and timing conspired against him on several occasions. The mission itself may simply have been set up in a way that was not flexible enough or grass-roots enough--a frequent mistake made by missionaries. The fact that Celtic Christianity a few years later was able to make inroads quickly and effectively suggests at least the possibility that the Roman and civic model Paulinus brought with him at the time was not quite the right formula.

This is something contemporary evangelists in our part of the country need to think about. Celtic Christianity’s profoundly ‘authentic’ way of living the Gospel was both deeply mystical and deeply orthodox… but it was also very simple and not reliant on an enormous, costly apparatus. Its abbots and bishops were very close to the people, being evangelists and models of Christian intentionality far more than ecclesiastical legislators. We could learn from this.

Finally, Paulinus’ ministry shows us that we must above all be perseverant and patient as sharers of the Word. St. Seraphim of Sarov, when asked what the difference was between Christians who grow in holiness and joy in God and others who made no progress and slid more and more into sin said simply: “Only determination.”

It is easy in our immediate-gratification culture to discount ministries if they do not yield results quickly. But this is a great error on our part. Authentic ministry, wherever it is offered, plants seeds that will mature. Often they do so in unexpected ways, but since it is “God who gives the increase,” ours is not to try and control the outcomes. We are needed to provide the hand- and leg-work, the eyes, ears, and strong backs for the effort: that is enough.

The mission work of the Church in the United States is undergoing tremendous shifts. Lots of people think they know how it needs to look, but none of them really do. We are too early on in this to have reached a new synthesis. Instead, what is needed is a new faithfulness, a new suppleness of outlook, and a renewed simplicity, or better, humility. Then we will have the courage and vision to send out a new Columba, Aidan, Cuthbert, Augustine, Hilda, or any of the holy “also-rans” like Paulinus.

In our day, the Church is being challenged to ‘get leaner’ not by discarding or watering-down the saving message of Christ, but by becoming more like Christ and his Apostles in its faithfulness, focus, and farsightedness. Re-introduction of mystery, sacramentality, and intentional community are needed. Institutional simplification and replacing bureaucracy with time spent in relationship-building and hands-on mission would be helpful, too. That is an adventure worth going on! It is also of such that the Kingdom of God is—and will continue to be—made.

O Lord our God, you call whom you will and send them where you choose: We thank you for sending your servant Paulinus to be an apostle to the Northern English, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve you, the living God; and we entreat you to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of your service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Banquet of God at the Restaurant of the Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

2011-10-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today’s Gospel lesson (Matt. 22:1-14) requires we know about some history and customs to understand it. The parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew is about a Royal Wedding. The King invites special honored guests, who turn him down. Not only do they turn him down, but they abuse and kill his messengers bringing the invitation. Jesus is informing his hearers that he knows exactly what they think of God’s invitation through his ministry. In a passage recalling the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 AD, the King sends an army to destroy the rebellious and arrogant ex-invitees. This part of the parable alone shows how closely tied custom and etiquette is with religion in the Bible.

After all of this, you might think the King has lost interest in the party. Not at all. There is still a wedding to be performed and guests to be invited to celebrate it. So the King’s servants are told to go out and bring everyone—the good and the bad—into the banqueting hall. I’ve seen a few real royal banqueting halls, and they are impressive: an entire building set aside for partying, eating, drinking, and making merry. Part of the custom in Jesus’ time for such an event was for the host to provide a clean, white garment for each guest—a sort of “partying uniform” as a gift. Such clothes were of the “one size fits most” variety, I imagine. In any case, wearing it was a sign of accepting the invitation and the hospitality of your host.

As the King goes around the wedding banquet, he meets all sorts of people. Remember, the “good and the bad” have all been swept into the banquet. One of the people he meets is a man not wearing the special Banquet uniform. When confronted about this, the man can’t—or won’t—say anything. By his actions, the guest has shown that he rejects the host… just like the first invitees. Like them he is condemned by his own actions.

This can seem like a very strange story, and not at all like any party we would like to be part of. But St. Matthew is trying to get into a very touchy subject. We all want peace and acceptance. God desires our participation in his Kingdom where that peace and acceptance is found. We don’t get to enter that Kingdom on our own terms: we must be invited. To accept the invitation is to agree to his conditions, and that is the Gospel way of life. When we accept these terms, we are given the white robe of holy baptism—new life in God’s eternal banqueting hall, of which this Eucharist is always a direct participation, not just a dim memory or a vague approximation.

God is very free with invitations. Some Christians forget this and try to turn our God into a hard-hearted and miserly figure. The opposite is true, and this parable reminds us of it. But the choice is still ours: do we accept the invitation or not? If we do accept, then we ourselves must become “Kingdom inviting” people. After all, if we were allowed in, how can we bar the way to others?

Maybe Christians need to be a lot less proud of being invited to the party ourselves, and a lot more interested in getting the invitation out to others.

Oh, and don’t forget the dress code: white robes are provided… just remember to wear yours.

Praying through the day

2011-09-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

Many autumns ago now, I happened into a bookstore in Canterbury and found a little volume entitled “The Cuddesdon Office Book.” Amongst the many prayers and resources in it, I encountered for the first time the “Little Hours” of prayer through the day: Prime (6 AM), Terce (9 AM), Sext (Noon), None (3 PM), and Compline (before retiring at day’s end). It was an introduction to a form of prayer I had intuitively sought, but due to my upbringing, had no idea existed for anyone outside a monastery.

In the Online world, there are many places Anglicans can go for the major Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, but not so many for the Little Hours. If, like me, you find that this type of prayer has real value in staying recollected before God through the “changes and chances” of each day, and if you find yourself at a computer or hand-held device fairly often, one resource that may prove helpful (and not too complicated) is found at www.commonprayer.org. The page on the Hourly Offices is found here.

This web site is focused on “traditional language” worship, so these Offices are all in the Elizabethan English we in the Episcopal Church tend to call “Rite I” these days. I’m still trying to locate a good site with these Offices in Rite II language.

The virtue with this site is that it is simple (some versions are very complicated). The focus of most of these services is the daily recitation of Psalm 119, a great resource for recollection and supplication. I have found this to be a tremendous aid in recalling myself to the task of active, conscious discipleship.

So, if you a) like to be reminded of God’s presence at (or around) fixed times in your work-day, and b) have the opportunity, this might be a good resource. The point is to pause from our work to give God praise, then getting back to our task renewed in the presence and sustaining grace of God.

Renewal, then and now.

2011-09-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

The lesson from 2 Chronicles 29-30 today is both quite apposite and very instructive. Apposite to our circumstances because it tells the truth about spiritual life: it often goes through periods of decay. Instructive, because it gives the reader a fine example of what leaders and laity alike must do in response to such decay.

When Hezekiah calls the people back to the observance of Passover, there is a tacit admission that things had become so slack, so faithless that not even the essential elements of the observance of the Law were being carried out at the Temple. For ‘time out of mind,’ the Temple had become a sort of spiritual emporium, where all sorts of different cults and divinities were honored—not the Holy Place wherein God’s Name dwelt.

The priests were not able to observe the Passover at the right time because most of them were too lazy to be bothered to prepare adequately. I am reminded here of the growing number of clergy in my own tradition who seem content to reduce a Sacred Calling to a fee-for-service arrangement, gradually allowing congregations to become more concerned about how to make money off renting out church property than the offering of the Sacred Mysteries in the “beauty of holiness” to a spiritually-starved generation. The parallels are too many to be ignored.

Hezekiah, a good man and a rare exception to the usual trend of kings and leaders, adapts and cajoles and encourages. He restores the Temple to true worship. He re-orders the priorities of the state and religious apparatus. He does not reward incompetence or take slovenliness as “the new normal.” Overcoming one obstacle after another, he perseveres so that this peculiar, out-of-season Passover may finally be observed. The result is a sudden remembrance of what the People of God had forsaken. A renewal of conscience occurs.

Dark days are ahead in Jerusalem’s history, and this will not be the last time the Hebrews will turn their backs to God. We, too, are witnessing a season in the American Church not unlike that found in Chronicles. It is up to the leaders of this generation to recall the people to faithfulness and holiness of life. It is up to us all to set our eyes not on the lowered expectations of a corrupt and dissolute era, but on Christ Jesus, the bishop of our souls, not counting the cost but pressing on ahead toward the glory that shall be.

On the Commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes

2011-09-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

God, Father of heaven,

Who wonderfully created the world out of nothing,

And by your goodness sustains and guides heaven and earth,

You handed over to death for us your Only-Begotten:

God the Son, Savior of the world,

You desired to be born of a Virgin,

Your precious blood washed away our sins,

You rose from the dead, victoriously

And ascended into heaven:

God the Holy Spirit, Comforter,

You came down on Jesus in the form of a dove,

And you came in tongues of flame on the Apostles,

And by your grace you come down and confirm

The hearts of the saints:

Holy, highest, eternal Trinity,

Beautiful, blessed,

Good Father,

Loving Son,

Kindly Spirit,

Whose work is life, whose love is grace,

And whose contemplation is glory,

I adore you with all the affection of my heart,

And I bless you now and for ever.

--From The Private Prayers of Lancelot Andrewes,

translated by David Scott

Today is the annual commemoration of one of the greatest of all Anglicans, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. In him is combined disciple, poet, bishop, scholar, preacher, ascetic, and theologian. His work continues to witness to the potential of the Anglican “project” of a reformed Catholicism.

At the heart of his work is always a living awareness of the holiness and presence of God: in the Creation, the Sacraments, the Scriptures, and in all encounters with the “other.” The above prayer is typical of him. It bears the marks of deep encounter in prayer. He prayed from before dawn until lunch most days, and one has no doubt he knew from experience what he meant from that line “whose contemplation is glory.” In a day when prayer has been reduced to the minimum so as not to get in the way of the Church's "serious business" of either being busy or practicing "self-care," Andrewes' witness reminds us there is a higher good than the institutional goals that consumed the Church of his day--and ours.

Nicholas Lossky, in his book Lancelot Andrewes, the Preacher, calls him a true Mystical Theologian—high praise, indeed. As with all true mystical theologians, Andrewes puts forth a synthesis of faith and practice that leads to true knowledge of God. It is my belief and experience that Classical Anglicanism—in the persons of such worthies as Andrewes, Hooker, Traherne, Cosin, and the like—has this capacity. Those who remain faithful to this way of living and growing in the Holy Wisdom of God have found the "good soil" of the parable, yielding a manifold increase in faith, understanding, and discernment.

The Collect* for the Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop

Almighty God, you gave your servant Lancelot Andrewes the gift of your Holy Spirit and made him a man of prayer and a faithful pastor of your people: Perfect in us what is lacking in your gifts, of faith, to increase it, of hope, to establish it, of love, to kindle it, that we may live in the life of your grace and glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the same Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

*This collect from Holy Women, Holy Men, is a revision from the one found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. In an unusual turn of events, this revision is a considerable improvement on the rather pedestrian earlier version. It merits considerable reflection.

All Things our Delights and Treasures...

2011-09-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Because eternity is contained in the soul, a man in finding himself findeth eternity; and because in finding himself he findeth eternity, in finding himself he findeth all things. For all things are contained in eternity. Since therefore in retirement alone a man findeth himself, in retirement alone he findeth all things. Nor can there be any rest, till he findeth all things his delights and treasures. – Thomas Traherne in Inducements to Retiredness

As this set of Ember Days comes to a conclusion, I am reminded how precious times of quiet introspection are in the era of e-mail, social networks, and cell-phones. In only a few short years, these baubles of modernity have become essentials, and people feel deeply deprived, alone, and vulnerable without them. For all the sense of connection and provision of information these tools provide, however, they are very intrusive. Because we can be reached, we now must be reached. Because we can have lots of brief contact, deeper contact becomes an unaffordable luxury. Because we can chatter, we find silence difficult.

In my case, the energy and focus for teaching, pastoring, preaching, and discerning come from both a lively prayer life and much quiet, unbroken time for thinking. This has always been a bit of a problem for me. While society’s pace keeps speeding up, my own pace remains stubbornly slow. No amount of faking it works. In a world of sprinters, I’m a confirmed saunterer.

The Embertides remind me that this is entirely OK. We need times of interiority just as we need times of action. Just now, with all of the anxiety around the economy, political stalemate, and the sorry state of the Anglican Communion, it is very easy to become overwhelmed by bad news. The Christian, however, absolutely must remain imbued with the hope and power of the Good News. We cannot become part of the Bad News. Christ has given us a task as his hands, eyes, feet, &c. That task is not to do the “heavy lifting,” which he alone can do. I tend to forget this easily. The Ember Days, with their prayers and emphasis on being apart for a short season, recall me to reality.

That reality is not a form of denial or escapism. It is an engagement with “all things” in the light of the Resurrection. The Resurrection light is capable of making “all things” our “delights and treasures,” as Traherne wrote--something that the world can never do. Living in that reality is an effort, a choice, for fallen humanity. Even accepting God's grace is work for us! Taking regular time out from the rush of events, in addition to living with a Rule of Life and having a daily life of prayer, brings that choice into higher relief and makes the benefits of this work clearer.

When faith speaks to sexuality, and not the reverse

2011-09-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

From the Daily Office reading today:

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman.’ But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

I cannot think of the last time I heard an Episcopalian deal meaningfully with this text. The assumptions behind it are so challenging to contemporary modes of thinking as to be outrageous to many. St. Paul’s discussion of sexual matters offends precisely because he takes the position that sex is a subordinate passion, something that must be brought into conformity to a greater truth—our life as disciples.

Right away, he transgresses typical modern American ‘morality,’ which implicitly or explicitly states that sexuality is the Great Truth, the Highest Reality about the human being. It has become the end, not the means. Therefore, everyone is to be allowed their own opinion, their own practice—within ever-shifting limitations. Sexuality, the pseudo-sacrament of secularism, must not be “touched” by religion. It must be allowed to “liberate” us from within. The best thing we can say about sexuality from the contemporary viewpoint seems to be: “It’s all good.”

But Paul has a completely different perspective. Sexuality is a desire in the human being. It has spiritual capacity… all of our God-given aspects do… but it is not unmixed with that “other law” at work in us, the one warring against our full participation in Christ. Our sexual lives must, like our money, emotions, talk, politics, leisure, and all other aspects of our life, be in harmony with the Gospel. This means we are going to have to talk through the complex and turbulent world of sexual life from a perspective of faith, not leaving it to those outside the Gospel to set the norms for Christian life.

So, St. Paul works through issues of marital life with nuance, generosity, realism, mutuality, and above all a guiding principle: self-control. The Christian is not to be mastered by any desire. We are free in Christ. We may not submit ourselves again to the yoke of slavery.

It is this principle that guides authentically Christian discussions of sexuality. Secular, non-Christian intrusions into our life are marked by a desire to turn sexuality into a walled garden, a place above and beyond Gospel scrutiny. I once heard a church member say in all sincerity: “I don’t think God cares what I do in the bedroom.” I was mystified. Why ever not? Why is a bedroom God-proof, but a ballot or a bank account not? This is a very pathetic, diminished understanding of the God who has numbered every hair on our head, as Jesus reminds us.

St. Paul steadfastly refused to allow Christians the luxury of compartmentalization. Christ Jesus broke down the dividing wall between God and humanity, and that wrecking ball of truth will be administered to every barrier to the Kingdom of God. Each era seeks something to be exempted from the Gospel’s reach. Once it was keeping human as slaves. Now sexuality seems to be the latest such ploy. None of them can work. God and sin cannot coexist.

The Blessed Apostle’s teachings are in the service of bringing the Kingdom of God to bear on the things of our life. He invites us let our faith speak to our sexuality. The misery we see in the culture around us comes from that conversation going the other way.

Embertide thoughts on Mission and the “Post-Secular” Church

2011-09-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

What follows is a poem by 17^th century English author Thomas Traherne. The intricacies of this poem are many, as put forth in a fine essay by Forrest Gander here. When reading this poem, carefully take note of your emotions and the mood created.

“Spiritual Absence”

Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-1674)—Priest, Poet, Theologian

(Commemorated in the Episcopal Church on September 27)

That Man is Poor and Desolate whose Lov 

None seeks, no man sollicits, none Doth move, 

Whose Brightest Splendors in the Dark do lie 

And all his Great affections are thrown by. 

Rust covers his Resplendent fancy, Dust 

Soyls all his Powers, & his Lov doth rust. 

His Wit’s unseen, his Wisdom none admires, 

His Souls unsought, his favor none desires. 

None vallues his esteem, his sacred tears 

No ey doth pitty, Fury no man fears. 

His Passions are hung o’er with Cobwebs, and 

His greatest virtues idle in Him stand. 

His Courage no where is imployd his zeal

No Beauty doth to any Ey reveal. 

His Excellencies in a Silent Cave 

Are hid; his very Body is his grave. 

His faculties are Empty, all his powers 

Are Solitary, Withered, Blasted Bowers. 

His Wide & great capacity is laid 

Aside, his precept is by none Obeyd. 

His very Worth’s neglected & Despised, 

His very Riches are themselves not prizd. 

He is the poor, forlorn and needy man, 

That see, do, Prize, Enjoy, Admire at Nothing can; 

Whose Goodness cant itself comunicat, 

Nor Avarice Enjoy anothers State. 

Whose Violent & Endless Lov’s displeased, 

Whose Great Ambition is by no man Easd. 

Who no Dominion hath, Whom no Mans Ey 

Doth Prize, Exalt, Rejoyce in, Magnifie.

Who reigns not always in anothers soul, 

Whose Highness nothing can at all Controul. 

Who cannot pleas far more the Worlds! & be 

A Bliss to others like the Deitie.

This is a poem about the effects of atheism on individuals and, consequently, on cultures. It omits reference to God until the very ending word. It creates an environment, a landscape of what it is to be shorn of any sense of the holy.

The severing of the spiritual dimension of life from the human person—something just beginning during Traherne’s lifetime, and something of which he was keenly aware—has very predictable effects on us. The poem’s language and content make this clear. It is a world of negation; the “golden thread” of meaning is lost, and the human becomes untethered, impotent, disconnected from the fabric of reality.

Similarly, the atheist world becomes one of personal isolation, incommunicability. The individual is the sole measure of reality. Whereas Christian orthodoxy proclaims that all reality is the product of the relationship of the Holy Three-in-One (in which we share through the operation of the Holy Spirit), our current age’s preference for mastery over mystery has resulted in a mechanized, de-personalized definition of the world.

So many in the Church are scurrying around today trying to find the magic formula that will reverse the trends towards marginalization of religion. I think most of these efforts are wasted and profoundly misguided. The “fix” is not to be had by clever techniques, campaigns, or attempts at making God relevant to people today. Traherne’s poem puts forth the problem in frightful honesty: we have become irrelevant to each other and to ourselves. The very form of our technological society ensures our continued alienation from earth, the neighbor, the authentic self-in-relationship, and God.

The prescriptions given by many in American Christianity amount to becoming better atheists: putting more and more faith and emphasis on artificiality, removing whatever sacramentality in the world or the Church has managed to slip through our empiricist grasp, and relegating such things as beauty, wonder, awe, and transcendence to the tender mercies of consumerism, ideologies, and the movies.

This is most clearly manifested in American Christian worship, which continues to grow more and more like Narcissus gazing into his mirror each year.

Presenting so little truly meaningful alternative to the culture around us, we still find ourselves surprised that, apart from gimmicks and short-term pay-offs, we continue to loose our ability to engage the minds and hearts of those outside. Our response is to press on with the failed and empty methods of recent decades in the vain hope that repetition will result in "success," which is generally defined in terms of measurable "benchmarks" largely equated with money and popularity--two things notably absent from the records of Jesus' ministry.

The Church will not have grasped its identity and mission in our culture until it comes to admit that much of its life is corrupted and compromised by the very atheism Traherne’s poem laments. Our “Goodness cant itself communicat” while we remain locked in the assumptions of a functional atheism. The political, economic, and philosophical models we use must be held up for what they are. Where the joy of the Holy Trinity is not found, we must have the courage of all generations of true disciples and “pluck out our eye” where it offends. A Church, a clergy, a lay-leadership, that is unwilling to do this is unworthy of the name Christian, and will be rightfully cast off into the marginalia of history.

The good news in this poem is that the condition we are in can change in an instant. The last line (“A Bliss to others like the Deitie”) is only the ending in one sense. It is just as much the possibility of a beginning—a new start, a new life, a new relationship with Love and Life in its fullness. It is that renewal I believe awaits us after this ghastly era.

As with most such renewals in Christianity, it will be sparked when enough people arise to demand better of the stewards of the Sacred Mysteries. Put into contemporary terms, when a generation of Christians learns of what it has been denied by its elders in their complacency, slovenliness, and arrogance. When that day comes, pray for mercy. The hunger in these souls so long denied authentic nourishment will be a fearsome thing.

Embertide prayers for clergy

2011-09-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

Another Embertide has come. During this short period of fasting and praying for ministry--lay and ordained--I find as a priest of the Church that it always benefits me to offer the "Southwell Litany" once more. This Embertide I have encountered previously unknown matters in it, as well as some old "friends" that must be addressed again in humility. I have yet to encounter a better examination of conscience for clergy in our tradition.

What follows is an adaptation of this classic for use at the quarterly Embertides--times of reflection on the state of our ministries. The original, which I have posted elsewhere on this site, may be a bit too 'Victorian' for some. Thus, I have taken the liberty to edit it into more contemporary language while trying to preserve its effectiveness as a tool for self-examination.

A Modern Adaptation of Bishop Ridding’s “Litany of Remembrance”

Commonly called “The Southwell Litany”

Preface:

Seeing, my sisters and brothers, that we are weak 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 people and those especially attaching to our office, let us pray God to save us and help us from the weaknesses which beset us, that God will make us know what faults we have not known, and will show us the harm of what we have not cared to control, giving 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 building up of God’s Church.

Let us pray:

Lord, open our minds to see ourselves as you see us, or as others see us and we see others; and from all unwillingness to know our weaknesses;