The Joy of Lent

Far from being a season of doom and gloom, Lent is a time of joyful new beginnings in faith. This season is sometimes referred to as “Easter’s Herald,” announcing as it does the fact that in God there is available to us a new start, a new possibility, a new day. That “day” for us is found in the Resurrection on Easter Day. To embrace this universal gift to all humanity, though, requires we set down the burden of sin and delusion we carry from day to day. That is a central part of Lent’s mission.

So much of what we carry with us keeps us from accepting New Life in Christ…

How many unseen
burdens do we carry?

“I can find peace through giving into my passions.” Wrong. Our desires, disconnected from communion in God, lead us toward selfishness and isolation. Greed, anger, sensuality, fear… these things lie close at hand when we let our desires lead us. The pleasure itself is not the issue: it is the way that pleasure blinds us to the misdirected ends we are choosing. Sometimes there is a way that seems to be right, but in the end it is the way to death. (Proverbs 16:25)

“By focusing on the shortcomings of others, I can successfully ignore my own need for healing and transformation.” Wrong. Comparisons with others are always mistaken because we cannot fully know the other person’s situation. Just as we cannot be “radish Christians” – followers of Jesus on the outside but unchanged on the inside – neither may we substitute our false judgments of others for knowing and amending our true selves. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37)

“By being busy I will avoid painful reality.” Wrong. Denial—in whatever form it takes, whether it be addiction, burying one’s self in work or activity, emotional sterility, or indulging in immoral activities, or something else—simply puts off the inevitable to a time when we are likely less able to be able to respond with courage, vigor, and confidence. Christians are not called to live in the past or in some imagined future: we must live in the NOW of God. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. (Matthew 13:22)

These are just some of the ways we keep carrying the heavy load of sin and distortion in our life. When Christ announces the Gospel, he always begins with this word: Repent! He tells us that we must change direction, dropping the corrupt and soul-destroying burden of sin in the process: that is Lent’s challenge—and Lent’s joy!

St. Timothy’s is a healing, freeing, reconciling community in Christ. Lent is the season where “the rubber hits the road” in our response to Christ’s call and grace. From developing our Lenten Rule, through Ash Wednesday’s fast and liturgy of repentance, and during the 40 days of Lenten ascesis and mindfulness, to the solemn liturgies of Holy Week, this is the season when we live out with greatest intentionality what it means to lay down what keeps us enslaved to death and to take up the Cross of Life and follow where Jesus leads.

It is a joy to call you, my sisters and brothers, to this “dear feast of Lent” (as George Herbert calls it in his poem on the season). In truth, it is a time of rejoicing in finding and being found, just as the father says of the prodigal in Luke: “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Luke 15:24). We are all that child, welcomed back into the embrace of our heavenly Father. Let us answer that call by observing a Holy Lent!

Rejoice this Lent: during this holy season we are bathed in Truth and renewed in Hope. It is, indeed, a New Day with God once more.

Under the mercy of Christ,

Brandon+

Peter Chrysologus on how to observe a Holy Lent

From a homily by St. Peter Chrysologus (the “golden-worded”), 406-450 A.D. bishop of Ravenna

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.


           Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.


           When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.


Let this be the pattern for all men when they practise mercy: show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you.


           Therefore, let prayer, mercy and fasting be one single plea to God on our behalf, one speech in our defence, a threefold united prayer in our favour.


           Let us use fasting to make up for what we have lost by despising others. Let us offer our souls in sacrifice by means of fasting. There is nothing more pleasing that we can offer to God, as the psalmist said in prophecy: A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; God does not despise a bruised and humbled heart.


           Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim, remaining your own and at the same time made over to God. Whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself you are never without the means of giving.


           To make these acceptable, mercy must be added. Fasting bears no fruit unless it is watered by mercy. Fasting dries up when mercy dries up. Mercy is to fasting as rain is to earth. However much you may cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out vices, sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your fasting will bear no fruit.


           When you fast, if your mercy is thin your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what you pour out in mercy overflows into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.

            Amen.

Sent to Preach, Sent to Love

If you are to preach, you must make up your minds that you are sent, and sent by God.

Without the gift of love, you will never be a preacher.

Bp. Edward King 

Today is the commemoration of Edward King, parish priest, sometime head of Cuddesdon College, and later (and most famously) Bishop of Lincoln. His life and character continue to inspire me more and more each year.

A parishioner did some work on Bishop King for a college project a while ago, and went to Lincoln Cathedral as part of the research. There, she encountered the living legacy of a holy man. In reading his personal letters, it became clearer and clearer that the private person was very much like the public one: gracious, generous, deeply spiritual, humane, and wise.

The above two quotes from Bishop King demonstrate something of why he was so loved and respected. His faith, rooted in the scriptures and the Fathers, was alive with the joy and energy of the Holy Spirit, and it was deeply conscious of the power of God's love to move the human heart and mind. For King, two dimensions of the priest are always easily over-looked: the pastoral life, and the life of prayer.

Pastoral work is frequently allowed to "pile up" in churches because of the immense amount of time involved, and the way it never "ends." In our consumerist society, we are seduced into desiring clear "products" or "outcomes"instead of the messy reality of people and their lives--even in the Church. Pastoral care is a never-ending journey with the people of God toward their ultimate healing and redemption in Christ. It requires much time and also the conscious ability to hand off to God what cannot, what must not, be carried by the human pastor. And this is where the life of prayer comes in.

Without a deep and growing prayer life, the parish priest will become overwhelmed by the demands of true pastoral care. Clergy and lay ministers gradually substitute "fixing" people for serving them; ownership gets confused with stewardship. It becomes a nightmare for all involved. An active prayer life sorts out what must be dealt with on the local level, and what must go to the heavenly. It brings about humility while also providing insight and strength.

Perhaps one of the reasons so many people find Church irrelevant today has little to do with the music or the service format or the kind of coffee being served: perhaps one of the main reasons the Church in our day seems to be in eclipse is that its pastors do not enter into the depth of what it means to be a disciple in their own lives, and are thus unable to share with the people they serve the fruit of that experience. As King said:

Nothing anonymous will ever persuade--the faith and conduct of the preacher give life and power to his message. Thus preaching is different from mere feeling. You may teach mathematics or geography without being fully convinced. But in delivering the Gospel message, if it is to be a living life-giving message, there must be in the preacher a sense of message and the desire to deliver it.

There is too much "anonymous" preaching, pastoring, and praying today. It will not do. Only the experience of being loved by God and the ongoing work of being healed by God can make any impact in the lives of struggling people. Only when the love of God the Holy Trinity reaches out through us and into the lives of others are we truly "valid" in our ministries, for only then do the torn and bleeding hearts of others know we are sent, and "sent by God."

Transfiguration: Challenge and Mission

Icon of the Transfiguration

Church of St. James, Omaha, Nebraska

Fr. Richard Reiser, iconographer

We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 

(from 2 Peter 1)

The Sunday before Holy Lent commences always tells the story of Our Lord’s Transfiguration. It was after this mysterious showing-forth of Jesus’ nature as Son of God that he “set his face toward Jerusalem” as St. Luke says, making his final assent to the Holy City and the place where he would show forth his nature in another way upon the Cross.

The light of the Transfiguration shines brightly into the hearts of all who have received Christ, but to those who have never known him, fear, anxiety, and discomfort can arise. Even for those who call themselves ‘Christian,’ this event can be unsettling, if they have begun to make peace with the world “as it is.” For this light is not of the world; it is a divine light, and challenges all of our earthly expectations and assumptions.

Christ is more than we knew

The Transfiguration challenged even those innermost disciples as to their understanding of Jesus. In this encounter, he is revealed to be beyond their conceptions or personal experience. This sets up a dynamic for all Christian life and practice: knowing Christ is not a way of capturing or defining him, conforming him to our point of view or ideology. To know Christ is to enter into the life and will of the Father, and this means an inexhaustible flow of knowledge and love. The Christian must not settle for anything less than this type of relationship with Christ. Turning him into a guru, a political, or ideological “celebrity” inevitably means turning him into a mirror of our own incomplete being. The Transfiguration means, among other things, an end to the search for a “lesser” Christ—one of our own making or determination. This is why the Creeds do not attempt to “define” Christ beyond the most basic essentials.

The Creation is Holy

When Christ is Transfigured on the Holy Mountain, all created matter is revealed to be holy. This event does not occur in a purely “mental” or “spiritual” manner: it involves physical reality in the person of Jesus’ body, in the darkness, cloud, sounds, place (mountain, sky), physical presence of the witnesses, the past (in the persons of Moses and Elijah), and eternity (the voice of the Father). There is no bifurcation of reality into “spiritual” and “physical” categories: all is revealed to be one in Christ. This is an essential message of the Church in the world today. The creation was made in holiness and suffers now because of our rejection of this fundamental unity, and by our attempt to abstract ourselves out of creation, making ourselves little gods above and apart. God himself partakes of the creation in his Son, and by illuminating all with the uncreated light of Transfiguration, God gives us a foretaste of the restoration of that unity in Christ.

Christian Worship participates in the Transfiguration

Just as all Eucharists are a proclamation of the Resurrection, so all Eucharists are a participation in the Transfiguration, in that the Holy Mysteries are a showing forth of the transformative character of God’s love and presence in the world. As Christ took only his innermost disciples to the mountain, so the Eucharist is not something that can be “understood” by just anyone: it speaks with the language of a pre-existing relationship to those who have chosen to follow the Way of Christ. The Eucharist nourishes the members of Christ’s Body, the Church, in the mystery of his redemptive power and mission, neither exhausting its meaning nor holding the disciple at arm’s length. In the Eucharist, those who have received the Holy Spirit in Baptism are revealed to be participants in the light of the Transfiguration as they share in the Holy Scriptures, the priestly work of God’s people, and the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Strengthened in the Mission of God through worship, we may then take up our cross, “set our face” toward our own vocation in living out the Gospel, and follow Our Lord in his strength and by his light. Amen.

Prayers before and after the Eucharist

Prayers before celebration of the Holy Mysteries:

Purify our consciences, we beseech thee O Lord, by thy visitation, that thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ when he cometh may find in us a mansion prepared for himself, Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Most gracious God, incline thy merciful ears to our prayers and enlighten our hearts by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be worthy to celebrate these Holy Mysteries and love thee with an everlasting love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let us go unto the altar of God, even unto the God of joy and gladness, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Almighty God, Author of all light, illumine our hearts by the light of Thy grace, that our lips may praise thee, our lives bless thee, and our worship magnify thy Holy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayers after celebration of the Holy Mysteries:

Accomplished and completed so far as in us lies, O Christ our God, is the mystery of thy dispensation. We have offered the memorial of thy death, we have seen the type of thy resurrection, we have been filled with thine endless life, we have tasted of thy heavenly banquet. Whereof, we pray, grant that we all may be made partakers for ever in the age to come. Amen.

O God who in this wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy Passion, grant us so to venerate these Sacred Mysteries of thy Body and Blood that we may evermore perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, who in the Gospel of thy Son has taught us that man does not live by bread alone, grant us now and evermore to live by the True Bread that comes down from Heaven, the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

+Blessed, praised, hallowed, and adored be Jesus Christ on his Throne of Glory in Heaven, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and in the hearts of all His faithful people. Amen.

+May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

In the Evening

Two prayers from The Order for Evening Worship in The Book of Common Prayer

Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers, creator

of the changes of day and night, giving rest to the weary,

renewing the strength of those who are spent, bestowing

upon us occasions of song in the evening. As you have

protected us in the day that is past, so be with us in the

coming night; keep us from every sin, every evil, and every

fear; for you are our light and salvation, and the strength of

our life. To you be glory for endless ages.  Amen.

Almighty, everlasting God, let our prayer in your sight be as

incense, the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice.

Give us grace to behold you, present in your Word and

Sacraments, and to recognize you in the lives of those around

us. Stir up in us the flame of that love which burned in the

heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn in us

to eternal life and to the ages of ages.  Amen.

These prayers are rarely heard because this form of Evening Prayer is rarely used in our churches (though I think The Order for Evening Worship would probably form the basis of a very successful Vespers service in many parishes). The first prayer is an adaptation of evening prayers from Bishop Lancelot Andrewes' Private Devotions; the second is from the Taize Community. Appending them to Evening Prayer seems a good practice as we end the Office, especially on Sundays.

Dewi Sant

Some years ago I had the great blessing of being part of a pilgrimage to Wales. There we encountered the spiritual legacy of many holy saints. Some, such as St. Brynach (commemorated April 7), were entirely new to me. Others were known to me, but the significance of their witness was revealed in new ways. Perhaps the best example of this was St. David, locally known as “Dewi Sant,” whom the Church commemorates the first day of March.

David (c. 500-589) was a Welsh native, and the most significant figure known to us from the early Welsh Church. He was a Bishop and a monk, and his was a Celtic monasticism: rigorously ascetic but also extraordinarily compassionate; deeply orthodox and pastorally gifted. His monastic community became the basis for the cathedral church in the city of St. David’s, Pembrokshire. It was to this holy place that our pilgrimage came one sunny Welsh day.

We came to pray for God's continued guidance, and to venerate Dewi Sant’s relics, seeking his intercession as a native son and one who knew this coast--physically and spiritually--like the back of his hand. Any true pilgrimage is about being open to God's purposes on the journey. What would being in  "Ty Dewi" ("David's House") bring about?

Connections, disconnection, similarities, and communion, it turned out. It was a rare experience for us as Oregonians, where Christianity is a very recent arrival, to be in direct contact with another Christian whose witness was made a millennium-and-a-half ago. The austere and rigorous form of Christianity St. David practiced seemed so removed from our modern American version, with its insecure and often childish emphasis on personal comfort and affirmation. Yet, there were some important commonalities: David lived in a time when Christianity was struggling against the forces of paganism. We in the Pacific Northwest have more experience with this than many others in the U.S. today. St. David also lived in a place of mountains and ocean, rain and wind, removed from the center of attention. We all found this part of Wales very familiar in geography and “feel.”

And then there was the cathedral itself. As Anglican Christians, we immediately felt familiar with the worship, the piety, the “tonality” of St. David’s Cathedral. Though it was so different from our own modern worship setting in externals, the ancient faith of that holy man and his faithful community was not really foreign to us at all. We were “distant relations” come to town, but relations still. The meaning of a global Communion, though scarred by centuries of conflict and contemporary belligerence, spoke to us still… as did the Communion of Saints, made vivid and tangible to a group of Gore-Tex clad pilgrims a long way from their earthly home, but closer than ever to their heavenly destination.

Holy David, pray for us.