Holy Week Journal 2012: 6. Holy Saturday

From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

Something strange is happening -- there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. 

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve. 


The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: 'My Lord be with you all.' Christ answered him: 'And with your spirit.' He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: 'Awake, o sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.' 




I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. 


Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in Me and I in you; together we form one person and cannot be separated. 

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, Whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden. 




See on My Face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On My back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. 


See My hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree. 

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced My side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you. 




Rise. Let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

The Crucifixion and God's Plan for Love

Remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.

By

            The sweating of great drops of blood,

            The agony of your soul,

            Your head crowned with thorns driven in 
                        with the blows of the stick,

            Your weeping eyes,

            Your ears filled with reproaches

            Your mouth receiving drink of vinegar and gall,

            Your face defiled with shameful spitting,

Your neck loaded with the burden of the cross

            Your back ploughed with stripes and wounds from the scourge,

            Your hands and feet nailed through,

            The loud cry, My God, My God,

            Your heart pierced with a spear,

            The water and the blood that flowed,

                        Body broken,

                        Blood outpoured,

By all these,

Lord forgive the sins of your servant,

                        Cover all my sins,

O Lord, when they broke your commandment and fell.

You did not despise nor reject them,

But as a tender Father, you visited them in so many ways,

Granting them your great and precious promise 
               with the life-giving seed,

Opening to them the door of faith, and of repentance into life.

In the fullness of time you sent your Christ

To take on the seed of Abraham,

And in the offering of his life

He fulfilled, in perfect obedience

And in the sacrifice of death,

A ransom for the whole world,

And in his rising again, he gave us life.

O Creator of all things,

Your will is to return us to yourself,

That all should be partakers

Of your divine nature and eternal glory…

Blessed, praised, celebrated,

Magnified, exalted, glorified,

Hallowed be your name, the recalling,

The memory, and every memorial of it,

Now and forever.

Bp. Andrewes

As translated by David Scott

A True Priest's Prayer

What is a parish priest? How do humans dare to take upon themselves the mantle of Christ’s Eternal Priesthood? With what words can a priest speak authentically about this vocation?

Only those clergy who have learned that Christ is the only true Deacon, the only true Priest, the only true Bishop, may ever truly serve in holiness—for they will shine with the light of Christ and draw others to God.

This prayer, part of a larger work on the priesthood, is an example of the true spirit of priestly humility that must be recovered amongst us for the Faith to be renewed in our lands.

O Lord, I know that I am wholly unworthy to be counted among the ministers charged with public exercise of the universal priesthood of Your Church. He who receives such a commission should be better than those he represents. But I, to the contrary, am more culpable than they are, since I have been offered greater illumination and more abundant grace than they. I have often neglected and even profaned that grace. I am a priest only insofar as I participate in Your own infinitely holy priesthood; and nevertheless I am so often far from You, doing things that displease You, refusing to do Your will, injuring souls by the very hand that You have consecrated to bless and to heal. O Lord, I confess my great misery! Make or remake of me a true priest, by drawing me to Yourself, the only Priest, the supreme Bishop of our souls. Amen.

-- Fr. Lev Gillet (“A Monk of the Eastern Church”) in Be My Priest

Holy Week Journal 2012: 4. Maundy Thursday

Shocking Work and Food for Disciples

One of the two “mandates” (from which we get the word “Maundy”) given to us this day by Jesus is to love one another as he has loved us. To demonstrate this in concrete terms, he proceeded to do the unheard of: to wash his disciples’ feet. As anyone who has spent time in a nursing home knows, the care of feet is not for the faint-hearted. Now, as then, this is not work people are lining up to do. It is often demeaning, taking a person down from any thought of being significant. Foot washing was totally inappropriate for a Rabbi, and totally appropriate for the Messiah.

In the Maundy Thursday Liturgy, the foot-washing ceremony can be taken a number of ways. Frequently today, one hears of parishes where members wash each others’ feet. This, on one level, seems to be a living out of Jesus command that we do exactly that. There is a sort of ritual literalism here that appeals to our era’s ideological predilections, especially a kind of liturgical egalitarianism.

But the older custom was for the celebrant to lay aside the cope or chasuble and to wash the feet of 12 persons selected from the congregation. This, too, has a certain literalism about it (especially when some parishes limit the recipients of the rite to men); but it—like its modern, egalitarian alternative—has something to teach.

The celebrant, here as at the time of Communion, is in persona Christi—in the person of Christ. By washing the feet of those selected, we see the story of discipleship articulated in action very clearly: Christ takes up the way of servitude, demonstrating servant leadership in its rawest form. But this way of being is never “from the grass roots up,” in the sense that Christians in some way “do” ministry on their own initiative or in their own way. It is always—always—given to us at the hands of Christ. This is one of the reasons for the traditional way of enacting the Maundy. It must start with Christ. The celebrant is not the “keeper of ministry,” but is the icon in this action of Christ giving ministry to His disciples then and now.

This is the same principle that stands behind the celebrant being the first to receive the Holy Sacrament at the Communion. Some Episcopal clergy—quite in violation of the Prayer Book rubrics—have taken up the peculiar practice of receiving at the end of Communion, often from a lay person. This seems to be done in the spirit of a hoped-for humility or a desire to express some sort of egalitarianism. But, in fact, it serves mostly to reinforced the notion that our worship is essentially human-centered, rather than a Diving Gift, wherein the celebrant receives from the True Host--Christ, the Great High Priest--and then proceeds to share with others what has been personally received (this is also a very physical and clear expression of how doctrine is supposed to be received and transmitted in the Church...but that is another post).

In our day, the meaning and power of liturgy to convey the totality of Divine presence and ordering has largely been overcome by a kind of political sentimentality, one relentlessly driving home the human and egalitarian rather than an integrated divine-human mystery.

This is seen, par excellence, by the unquestioning rush to push—even demand—communion of the unbaptized. The rationale for this usually places some slight focus on a tendentious reading of Scripture (certainly, it has nothing in common with how the Church has understood the Eucharist from the start), but the major selling point is the sense that “all are welcomed,” or (in more edgy parlance), a “radical hospitality.” It is a remarkably, even brutally, un-nuanced understanding of the Holy Mysteries.

But washing feet or receiving Christ’s Body and Blood are, no matter current trends, work and food for disciples, not passive onlookers or uncommitted visitors. Both of the mandates given this day are shocking, profound, and decisive. They require a commitment to follow Christ and His Way, not the way of this world. They are not tools for hospitality but gifts for fellow servants. Finally, they require an openness to a never-ending mystery that cannot be reduced to simple formulae or slogans. They must be received as gifts in a new life that has been given from the Lord of Life itself once and again, or they become more furniture in a religious museum of amorphous, surface, and trivial "spirituality."

Holy Week Journal 2012: 3. Holy Monday and Tuesday

Monday or Tuesday in Holy Week usually finds me driving to see my confessor as make my final personal preparations for the Triduum (the “Three Great Days” of Maundy Thursday-Good Friday-Holy Saturday/Easter forming one liturgical “day” or action). By then, the fruit of my Lenten Rule has usually become clear, and I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be brought out in confession. My journey towards absolution then finds its place in this week’s journey from sin and death into life and love.  That is easy to talk about in a theoretical way; but much more humbling to do over and over again with the same person—someone who has come to know my nature in a very specific and intimate manner.

The nature of a longtime relationship between a confessor and penitent is hard to describe. It passes through many stages, from a certain stiffness and formality, through a gradual awareness on both parties’ part of the other’s character, perhaps a period of dissatisfaction or uncertainty, and then (if all matures well) into a unique relationship of honesty, trust, and openness. The confessor becomes, in a very real way, a sign of God’s persistent desire for our repentance and healing.

As I drive to and from confession, I am reminded how much the Christian may take for granted: forgiveness, a new start, a God of patient and enduring love. For many in this world such thoughts are either non-existent or very rare. So many feel so trapped in a cycle of loss, frustration, and pre-determined outcomes. I am offered the opportunity to have my sins and wrongs scrubbed away, to let go of my fears and anger. I am given the grace and strength to become my potential self.

When the priest places his hands on my head and declares God’s absolution, I am challenged to believe it, to accept the gift given. I usually go home feeling light, happy, hopeful. The difficulty comes when I wake up the next day: can I recall, will I live in, that joy of forgiveness or not?

The first days of Holy Week, after Christ’s Triumphal Entry, have few observances tied to them. Jesus seems to have come into Jerusalem on these days to teach in the Temple precincts, at times having confrontations with the religious leadership as everyone sensed things were working their way to a crisis.

For me, these days are a time to clear my mind and quietly to go about the mental and emotional work of re-committing to walking with Christ through the week. The little evening services on Monday and Tuesday serve to help this occur. By the time Holy Wednesday is reached, and (in our parish) the solemn and poignant liturgy of Tenebrae) is offered, I am ready to enter once again into the Paschal Mystery that stands at the heart of our faith—and to accept in greater measure what is given to me from the hands of a Lord who wants to offer me everything there is.

Holy Week Journal 2012: 2. The Sunday of the Palms

The children of the Hebrews, bearing branches of olive, went out to meet the Lord, crying out and saying: Hosanna in the highest.

Anthem at the Blessing of Palms

Few occasions in the liturgical life of the Church mirror with greater honesty the situation they seek to describe than the Palm Procession on the Sunday of the Passion, commonly called “Palm Sunday.”

The usual pattern of Sunday morning comes crashingly to a halt. The geography of worship is transported from twenty-first century Oregon to first century Roman-occupied Palestine. In place of the nave, we gather in the echoing Parish Hall, forming an uneasy semi-circle of parishioners looking like fish out of water, removed from the familiar, orderly ranks of pews. Instead of the organ prelude, the quiet time of preparatory prayers, the ringing of the service-bell, and all standing in unison to begin the liturgy, there is the murmur of the crowd, the screech of babes in arms, and the occasional burst of energy as a young child bolts from its parent’s restraining embrace, making a break for the wide-open space that denotes the usually un-filled front pews in church. A brief chase ensues. People shift from foot to foot. All is a bit uncertain, not-according-to-schedule, somewhat “un-Anglican.”

Commencing with an exchange of glances between the priest and the music director, the Liturgy suddenly launches into action. The choir announces: Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest! It has begun. The first words are words of blessing and excitement that He—HE—is in our midst.

The story of Palm Sunday is then told once again, chanted slowly, with great dignity—telling us that this semi-organized situation is exactly the environment of Christ’s Triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was a curious mix of improvisation, divine plan, and mistaken identity. It was so human, so true to Jesus.

The palms—with a few branches of olive from the parish’s lone specimen held aloft by members of the choir—are blessed with the sign of the cross, holy water, and incense. Supple greenery, destined to grow brown and stiff, receives the royal treatment in sacramental terms. How much this echoes the day’s events, when a young rural preacher and healer is hailed—for a time—as the solution to Israel’s captivity before being rejected, tossed out of town, and killed with all the reviling scorn disappointed hearts can hurl.

The palms make their way around the assembly (some children immediately realizing their potential as weaponry), the parade forms up and lurches out of the Parish Hall. Some years we step out into sun; most Palm Sundays here are dappled or drenched in some form of rain. But all of them recall with haphazard and stunning honesty that we—like our spiritual predecessors, the “children of the Hebrews” the choir sings of before we parade out—are a changeable people, volatile and in need of a lover of souls who can overcome our chaotic, lost hearts. That is what we journey into as we make our way to the rest of the worship on this day and the whole week to come. We are stepping out into the place where we fall, and God catches us in the most unheard-of embrace ever known.

Liturgy’s gift so often comes to us in the raucous juxtaposition, the unintended moment when this collides with that, and suddenly God’s desire for our healing, our redemption fluoresces brightly before us. Palm Sunday, with its extraordinary pairing of sacred encounter and an admixture of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (complete with the sense that the whole thing might just go off the rails) is a day particularly ripe with this potential.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

John Keble and the Character of Lived Anglicanism

Yesterday the Church commemorated John Keble—priest, poet, teacher, preacher, pastor, and unlikely prophet. It was through Keble’s ministry that the Oxford Movement began. More than most involved in this movement, Keble kept grounded and focused, refusing to fall in with any of the various “-isms” arising from the conflicts in the Church of England of his day. When others felt the call to leave for the Roman Catholic communion, he remained faithful to Anglicanism through good times and bad over a long life, demonstrating the gift of stability in a time of tumult.

Though an Oxford academic and leader of an important spiritual movement, Keble had the good sense to know his limits. He was not a master Church politician or innovator. Neither was he a born activist. He was instead a man of faith so deeply grounded in the Gospel that he could see where the culture (and the Church) was heading. His witness of faithfulness, integrity, and deep continuity with the Scriptures and the Fathers was a reproach to the indolent and self-indulgent Regency era in which he had grown up. Holiness of life is always a critique of worldly corruption.

Keble knew that the Church of England, though reformed, was a catholic Faith. He knew that it had been through a period of laxness and decadence. He could also see that the forces of government and economy in his day were aligning themselves to reduce the Church to an utterly “harmless” entity. Those forces wanted the Church to be entirely the lap-dog of the State, devoid of its connection to an ancient, pre-industrial vision for humanity. Keble knew that to accept this would lead to a nation without meaningful foundations for conscience or ideals. His sermon “National Apostasy,” which challenged this decent into secularism, is the usually-accepted beginning of the Oxford Movement.

For me, one of Keble’s best characteristics was integrity. When some began to take the recovery of the catholic dimension of the Church to mean an obsession with ritual and microscopic exactitude in observance, he was clear that “high” Anglicanism was no “knock-off” or wanna-be Roman Catholicism. His was not a “theoretical” catholic Anglicanism: it was the real, lived, vital thing. He did not need to embrace various fads or trends in order to look catholic: his whole life in the Church was the practice of the catholic Faith as an Anglican.

Keble also knew something that many of us today have forgotten: that the soul of the Anglican tradition is pastoral in nature. This means that the parish (or whatever one is going to call the local sacramental faith community gathered in prayer and study for mission) must be a place where human life is deeply interrelated with the Divine Life through all its stages and in all its activities. For Keble, the “cure of souls” was not a burden but a gift, and the parish clergy were to engage in the care and formation of parishioners with eagerness and skill.

During his lifetime, and for many decades after, Keble was best known for his collection of poems entitled “The Christian Year.” This little book, along with his sermons and pastoral work for many long years at Hursley Parish, expresses beautifully Keble’s ideas. In it one finds poem after poem integrating the Scripture lessons and the collects with the feasts and fasts of the Church Year. With this volume (now admittedly dated in many places—but still quite valuable), many average Anglicans began to understand the value and meaning of the Liturgical Year anew. We could use a modern analog in the Episcopal Church today.

In his famous sermon about the spirit of apostasy and our response to it, Keble the professor and poet showed that practical character which was to make him a witness to the enduring qualities of Anglicanism: prayer, faithfulness, constancy:

After all, the surest way to uphold or restore our endangered Church, will be for each of her anxious children, in his own place and station, to resign himself more thoroughly to his God and Saviour in those duties, public and private, which are not immediately affected by the emergencies of the moment: the daily and hourly duties, I mean, of piety, purity, charity, justice. It will be a consolation understood by every thoughtful Churchman, that let his occupation be, apparently, never so remote from such great interests, it is in his power, by doing all as a Christian, to credit and advance the cause he has most at heart; and what is more, to draw down God's blessing upon it.

And elsewhere, he reminds us of the need to remain balanced and whole-minded in the midst of our struggles, not becoming small-minded or resorting to the bald use of power:

As to those who, either by station or temper, feel themselves most deeply interested, they cannot be too careful in reminding themselves, that one chief danger, in times of change and excitement, arises from their tendency to engross the whole mind. Public concerns, ecclesiastical or civil, will prove indeed ruinous to those, who permit them to occupy all their care and thoughts, neglecting or undervaluing ordinary duties, more especially those of a devotional kind.

It is this way of being a catholic Christian—doing all with "piety, purity, charity, and justice"—that continues to draw many to Anglicanism (where it is practiced). We know we fill fail, and we know we may repent and return to Christ when we do. His was a vision that can inspire and not wear out, encourage but not cajole.

But in our day, when the Church’s focus is so often distracted by an anti-intellectual trendiness, fears of becoming “irrelevant,” ideological fixations, and witch-hunts for those not sufficiently “toeing the line,” it is refreshing to be reminded of Keble’s witness for stability, depth of piety, personal integrity, and commitment to the highest and best in the Faith: and Anglicanism still (in some sense) waiting to be born.

Collect for the Commemoration of John Keble, Priest

Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servant John Keble, we may accomplish with integrity and courage that which thou givest us to do, and endure that which thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.