The Nativity of the Virgin

Almighty and everlasting God, who by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost didst prepare the body and soul of the Virgin-Mother Mary to be a dwelling-place for thy Son; Grant that we who rejoice with her in Jesus may ourselves be kept unspotted from the world, and made a pure temple for his dwelling, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, now and evermore. Amen.

Though not a Scriptural feast, the Nativity of the Mother of Our Lord recounts an obviously historical event and has a long history in the Church (East and West). It forms part of a cycle of feasts attested to by ancient authorities, but not found in the Bible (and thus for Anglicans not "required teaching") however there is nothing in these ancient commemorations that is counter to the New Testament's teaching. Indeed, the Episcopal Church saw fit to add this feast back in to the Kalendar due to its significance in the story of salvation.

The collect for this day focuses on the purity of Mary, building on the ancient belief that she was in some way purified by the Holy Spirit of all Original/Ancestral Sin. This understanding allowed God the Son to take flesh without being himself conformed to sin. In this way he was able to be a true and full human--for we were not made for sin from the start, but fell into it. So deeply are we conformed to this condition that we often think of it as part of the essence of what it means to be human, but "not so," says our God.

Interestingly, the belief that Mary was herself cleansed from birth-sin in her conception was widely held in Classical Anglicanism, without the least sense that it was overtly “Roman” in character; see Bishop Pearson’s seventeenth century commentary on the Apostles’ Creed--and absolutely standard text on Anglican doctrine at that time. The popularization of this particular feast in the Medieval period was greatly assisted by one St. Fulbert of Chartres in France.

What strikes me most about this feast, though, is the focus on God’s loving, caring preparation. Mary is prepared long before the fact to receive the Christ-child – yet she is free to say “no” to her calling at each step. God prepares us for our calling through gifts of skill and capacity, yet we are free at each moment to reject that calling. What freedom we are given! What degree of thoughtful preparation God takes with us! What risks our loving God runs with each one of us!

I am also reminded by this feast that each of us, like Our Lady, is a temple called to receive the Lord. While she is uniquely blessed in how that vocation was lived out, we are each of us no less called to “bear” Christ into the world in our own way. We are once again recalled to the fact that our minds, our bodies, our wills are to be holy places of worship and encounter, where (as Psalm 29 puts it) all is crying in unison "Glory!" We do well to cast our mind on this fact each time we prepare to receive the Holy Mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood in the Divine Liturgy.

Once more, the Church’s memory recalls us to the eternal Now of God’s presence and our discipleship. This feast day, like all others, presents us with a restored image of the human person and a picture of our destiny in Christ.  Come, let us embrace the life that is truly life!

For Fridays: An Obsecration before the Crucifix

Lord, by this sweet and saving Sign,

Defend us from our foes and thine.

Jesus, by thy wounded feet,

Direct our paths aright:

Jesu, by thy nailed hands,

Move ours to deeds of love:

Jesu, by thy pierced side,

Cleanse our desires:

Jesu, by thy crown of thorns,

Annihilate our pride:

Jesu, by thy parched lips,

Curb our cruel speech:

Jesuby by thy closing eyes,

Look on our sin no more:

Jesu, by thy broken heart,

Knit ours to thee.

And by this sweet and saving Sign,

Lord, draw us to our peace and thine.

- Richard Crashaw, and others.

The Knot

Bright Queen of Heaven! God's Virgin Spouse

The glad world's blessed Maid!

Whose beauty tied life to thy house,

And brought us saving aid.

Thou art the true Love's-knot; by thee

God is made our ally;

And man's inferior essence He

With His did dignify.

For coalescent by that band

We are His body grown,

Nourish'd with favours from His hand

Whom for our Head we own.

And such a knot, what arm dares loose.

What life, what death can sever?

Which us in Him, and Him in us,

United keeps for ever.

-- Henry Vaughan

Our Share in These Things

It is time we acknowledge that Christians themselves bear a large share of the responsibility for this tragedy of freedom, that it is not accidental that the roots of this tragedy stretch out into that world and that culture that not very long ago at all called itself Christian. On the one hand, the unheard of, impossible good news of freedom – the call, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore” (Gal. 5:1) – came into the world with and only with Christianity. It is precisely Christianity, and only it, which has forever spoiled human consciousness with this unquenchable thirst. But on the other hand, who, if not Christians themselves, have substituted, or one can even say, handed down this good news while reducing it – for the world, for “those outside” – to facile, “scientific” and “objective” knowledge about God, to a knowledge from without that cannot define God other than in categories of power, authority, necessity, and law. Precisely from here stems the terrible pathos of theomachy [a war or struggle against God], inherent in all ideologies that promise freedom to mankind. And here there is no misunderstanding, for if God is what “knowledge about God” self-assuredly affirms about him, then man is a slave, in spite of all the stipulations and elucidations suggested in smooth apologetics and theodicy. And then, for the sake of freedom, it is necessary that God not exist, that he be killed, and through this murder of God contemporary man, deifying himself, advances to his lowest depths.

-- from The Eucharist by Alexander Schmemann

A Question of Rights

The Rule of St. Benedict is imbued with an extraordinary force for normalizing the relations between God and man, and between man and his fellow. It has a rare wholesomeness and capacity for giving man an equilibrium both psychic and physical by re-establishing in him right concepts and by ordering an hierarchy of value in him. There is in it no neurotic affirmation of the rights of man. Where God occupies his true place, everything sorts itself out in the best way for man. The rights of man are assured where the rights of God are respected.

- from Serving God First, by Dom Sighard Kleiner

Thoughts on True Prayer

Anyone who prays should pray having his heart in touch with his mouth and his mind with his lips. If, however, he bows down and stretches out his hands in prayer while his heart is daydreaming somewhere else, then he is like the cedars which storms bend down and flatten out. Or if his lips are eagerly murmuring but his mind is somewhere [else], then this resembles the case of doors being buffeted by the winds, which no one can open or shut.

For anyone who stands in prayer a discerning compassion is required. Tears of compunction are also beneficial. He also requires a recollected mind. If he has any grudge against any of his fellows, he should wash this away from his heart. And he should pray in silence, his lips murmuring with awareness. And when he puts the seal on his prayer, let him stop and remain still in silence. He should not occupy himself with empty talk or with unedifying chatter; rather, he should remain in silence and awareness. Then his prayer will be fully accepted by him who receives prayers and pure thoughts.

Philoxenus of Mabbug (obit. 523 AD)

Strength in Fragility

From all evil and wickedness; from sin; from the crafts and assaults of the devil; and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us.

From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice; and from all want of charity, Good Lord, deliver us.

From all inordinate and sinful affections; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us.

In these three petitions we bring before God the vulnerabilities, flaws, and delusions which beset all humanity. Why this? How can it be “good psychology” or “beneficial self-esteem” to do this? It is because the strength we seek can only be found by a clear understanding of our own fragility.

The first petition cries out to God that we are utterly beset by brokenness. Any honest, clear-eyed assessment of the world will attest to this fact. We had best admit this; if it were not so, why would be appealing to God on behalf of a suffering world in the first place? This brokenness, this illusory search for life apart from God, has a name: sin. It is not just an impersonal “concept.” It is a highly personal fact, addressed to each one of us by our ancient foe: the devil. Evil’s desire is for our final “undoing,” our complete rejection of relationship with the Triune God. The ultimate cost of yielding to the false logic of sin is an everlasting aloneness.

The second petition moves from the grand scale to the theatre of the human heart. In our search for life apart of God, we have become blind of heart: alienated from the illumination coming from God alone, we grope in the darkness of our own aloneness. Having lost full union with the God who gives us dignity and value, we have substituted pride and vainglory, searching for identity and purpose by exerting power and control over others. Because we are not whole and honest with the God who formed us, we have split the world in two – the world of “being seen” and the “personal life” where we live and do as we please, giving rise to hypocrisy. With these distortions in our heart, we are constantly tempted to act out of their deadly fruit: envy, hatred, malice, and want of charity. Our Lenten pilgrimage each year deepens our recognition of this “other law” within us, a law we must acknowledge in order to fight against in the power of God revealed at Easter.

The third petition “gets down to cases,” as we might say. We confess to the specific ways in which sin operates on the personal level. In a society obsessed by comfort and license, we recall the inordinate and sinful affections we place higher than “the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” and by which we allow the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil to go unchallenged as our personal (if unacknowledged) “logic.” Thus, the tragic dimension of our fallen reasoning, desires, and expectations are laid honestly before our own eyes and before our God. But why do we do this here in the Litany?

The reason is difficult for the secular – or the secularized Christian – mind to comprehend, distorted as it has become by confusing self-esteem with self-awareness. The Christian confesses his or her fragility precisely because it leads to renewed trust and strength in God. Without this we will likely only further the wrong done by those before us. By renouncing Satan’s ancient lie – that by severing our life in God we can become “gods” – and embracing the gift of True Life which comes from God alone through salvation in Christ, we are freed to do the true work of discipleship. Only then, with humility (in the sense of knowing and living in reality), may we proceed in prayer aware of our true place, our proper and indeed essential role of sharing in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation and intercession. It is when we come to understand, with St. Paul, that we are "treasures in clay vessels" that God's strength may be "perfected in human weakness."

(Photo: Ad Meskens)