Loosed from all our chains...

Today is the feast of St. Peter-ad-Vincula. It recalls the event found in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 12, verses 3-19) wherein St. Peter is imprisoned by Herod and then liberated by an angel, the chains falling from the Apostle's hands. The account shows St. Peter bewildered by God's sudden freeing power. Even those who first hear of his release cannot accept it, so unlikely it was.

This day in the English Calendar was also known as Lammas Day—the first harvest festival of the season, when wheat and bread made from the new crop were presented and blessed in a sort of English version of Shavout (Pentecost), linking the cycle of nature with the message of salvation from God in Christ [St. Timothy's observes this custom on the Sunday occurring on or just after August 1st). Thus, this day is really about beginnings and promise.

St. Peter had every reason to believe his earthly ministry was about to conclude while in prison; but God surprised him with a new lease on this life and freed him from what seemed a certain death. Many people have experienced something like this, whether it be from a near-death experience or deliverance from a life-threatening illness. After the initial bewilderment and  intense sense of gratitude, it usually follows that the recipient of such a gift comes to see the rest of life as consecrated to a deeper purpose.

Just as the harvest entails great effort in order to have enough for the coming winter, so times of personal deliverance serve as a kind of harvest of God's grace to be used wisely in the coming seasons of life and not to be squandered by wandering back into the "old life" before.

I was thinking about this as I was driving back home through the Willamette Valley one evening recently. I passed by a large field where a crew baling hay by tractor-light as the sun went down. Harvest is hard work and must be accomplished within a definite time limit.

This made me think about my own brush with mortality, when cancer showed up in my life and death took on a profound reality for me. One of the blessings God had for me in this was to understand the preciousness of earthly life, to know that the sun does set for us all here in this world and that every hour, each day and encounter with God, nature, and neighbor has an intense meaning and significance. My deliverance from cancer brought about bewilderment and gratitude…but increasingly a sense of the importance of living life with intentionality and purpose. The harvest season is in full swing for me.

On this same trip I was told about an exchange between two Christians where one person had challenged the integrity of another, damaging a relationship and injuring a parish community's shared ministry. Attitudes were hardening, figurative prison bars were being forged and locks being installed—when a simple apology and an offer to discuss things in humility could stop this process, allowing the work of harvesting to the glory of God to continue in peace. It made me think about this holy day in a new way.

St. Peter's ministry was in the hands of God; it was not time for that ministry to conclude, for there was work to do. Peter's understanding of that ministry itself was being re-formed in order to include Gentiles as well as Jews, and he would eventually be called to participate in the expanded work of the Great Harvest by sharing in the Council at Jerusalem and (tradition tells us) journeying to Rome itself. Liberated from an earthly prison, he was called not to return to a spiritual prison by going back to his old way of life and thinking. This is true for all of us who follow the Risen One. The sun is going down but the labor is not yet over; we must be about our business and cast away every shackle tying us to death in its various forms.

A collect for St. Peter-in-Chains prays God to "break the chains of our sins." Wherever sin has ensnared us, we turn to God in our daily prayer and confess it, opening our heart to his humbling grace and accepting the angelic guidance that takes us out of whatever prison to which we have been consigned—often of our own making.

For indeed, there are many forms of liberation in the spiritual life: liberation from prisons of shame, poverty, abuse, loss, un-forgiveness, hatred imposed on us from outside, and liberation from an imprisonment in which we have participated and to which we have sadly consented.

As we do the important work for justice and freedom for all people (especially the invisible people it would be easy to forget, where we might just be God’s angel sent to free them) we must be wary of falling into prisons of the mind and will that lock us up as completely in the spirit as an earthly prison locks up the body. God needs workers willing and able to share in the harvest labor, not penned-in onlookers holding, but unwilling to use, the key of liberation.

Collect for St. Peter ad Vincula

O God, who didst cause thy holy Apostle Peter to be loosed from his chains, and to depart without hurt; Break, we beseech thee, the chains of our sins, and mercifully put away all evil from us; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For Prisons and Correctional Institutions

Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance and amendment of life according to your will, and give them hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice. Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison, O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All this we ask for your mercy’s sake.  Amen.

On the Spiritual Meaning of Independence Day

Independence Day is a Holy Day in the Episcopal Church’s liturgical calendar. Oddly enough, even though many of the Founders were themselves Anglicans, this day was not included in the Episcopal calendar until the 1928 BCP. The reasons are complex, but the upshot is that since so many Anglicans at the time did not desire separation from England, and because this matter was not judged to be of the essence of the Faith, it was not placed on our calendar until its celebration had lost the sense of “winner-takes-all” that it had in the first decades (century?) after our independence. This, in itself, a fine example of Anglican restraint and should be studied by many in our country (and even in the contemporary Episcopal Church’s leadership) today.

The collect and lessons from Scripture appointed for this day form a careful commentary on the issues of faith, the State, commonwealth, and that necessary and Godly balance which alone expresses the ideal found in the Declaration of Independence and (in less explicit terms) the Constitution. While many today prefer to think of American secularism as a form of Frence laïcité, a careful read of our history shows this not to be case. Instead, the various Christian traditions in the U.S.A. have almost always thought of this nation as a spiritual state of being, with a unique character and mission. Only in this era, with so many in our population no longer identifying as Christian (or practicing any communal form of Christianity) has the nation found itself so unsure about its spiritual destiny and purpose (or so devoid of the tools for its effective healing).

This is not to say that past notions of Manifest Destiny or Exceptionalism were either right or in proper accord with Holy Writ or catholic teaching. Indeed, it is clear that much of what was once seen as permissible Civil Christianity gave rise to terrible forms of oppression, injustice, and cruelty. But, the current tendency to try and force underground all spiritual consideration of this nation and its populace is both un-historical and profoundly misguided. The Establishment Clause of the Constitution does not exclude religious discussion, comment, or influence in the French sense from our Civic life; neither does it not allow us to establish one permitted or endorsed form of practice or belief. One could argue that spiritual consideration of the State is in fact essential for the kind of reform and renewal found in the Civil Rights movement, for example. Without such a source and vision, the nation is much more likely to slip into utter selfishness and venality.

Independence Day, for Episcopalians, is an important commemoration of the significance of the American experiment in governance and faith…and a reminder of the centrality of the condition of the human soul to that experiment’s continuance. This is a day of real spiritual reflection, work, and repentance (always the hallmark of serious Christian endeavor) as well as celebration and rededication.

A fine expression of this understanding of July 4^th is found in the lesson from Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach) at Morning Prayer today:

A wise magistrate educates his people, and the rule of an intelligent person is well ordered. As the people's judge is, so are his officials; as the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants. An undisciplined king ruins his people, but a city becomes fit to live in through the understanding of its rulers. The government of the earth is in the hand of the Lord, and over it he will raise up the right leader for the time. Human success is in the hand of the Lord, and it is he who confers honor upon the lawgiver. Do not get angry with your neighbor for every injury, and do not resort to acts of insolence. Arrogance is hateful to the Lord and to mortals, and injustice is outrageous to both. Sovereignty passes from nation to nation on account of injustice and insolence and wealth. The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker. For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations. Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard-of calamities, and destroys them completely. The Lord overthrows the thrones of rulers, and enthrones the lowly in their place. The Lord plucks up the roots of the nations, and plants the humble in their place. The Lord lays waste the lands of the nations, and destroys them to the foundations of the earth. He removes some of them and destroys them, and erases the memory of them from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings, or violent anger for those born of women.

Ecclesiasticus 10:1-8,10:12-18 (NRSV)

What an extraordinary indictment of our current era’s attitude toward money, greed, power, pride, and shortsighted partisanship!

The lesson recalls the long-established historical lesson that a foolish people produces a foolish governance, with a fixed time limit to that governance’s endurance. What follows is a time of violence resulting in overthrow and a new order (though not necessarily a better one). It is a solemn warning, indeed.

It is always easier to blame the “leaders” of a nation for its ills—and sometimes rightly so. But in our country, the “leaders” (more often than not) simply reflect what the people (i.e. voters) want or idealize. Over time a kind of feedback loop develops between electorate and the elected…resulting in a pit-trap of folly that only a spiritual renewal of the people can truly change (leaders don’t generally lead people in directions they aren’t already seeking on some level).

Independence Day is not a day to celebrate the triumphal success of a perfect governmental system, nor the first form of “Brexit,” nor the glories of jingoistic American Imperialism. Rather (from our point of view), it is a Holy Day on which to give thanks for peculiar gift and possibilities of this nation, and to realize once more—and with great humility—its unfinished character and our role to be of service to the Gospel in the context of this nation’s journey.

For the Christian, there is ultimately only one true loyalty: to God the Holy Trinity. That loyalty finds itself often in the service of others as we share the Good News of God in Christ through various vocations and communities. But, that loyalty to the revealed will of God also forces us to take seriously where we have erred in ways that undermine the commonality, cheapened the discourse, and make a mockery of the sacrifice of others. The exercise of this freedom—the freedom to take stock of ourselves in light of the standards set forth for us in the Holy Scriptures—is perhaps one of the most underutilized freedoms we possess. This day is a good day to enjoy and practice it, before the barbeques and fireworks turn our passions and gaze from the spiritual meaning of this Feast.

The Collect for Independence Day:

Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Litany for our Nation

For use on or near Independence Day



O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land, that we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations of the earth.

Lord, keep this nation under your care.

To the President and members of the Cabinet, to Governors of States, Mayors of Cities, and to all in administrative authority, grant wisdom and grace in the exercise of their duties.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

To Senators and Representatives, and those who make our laws in States, Cities, and Towns, give courage, wisdom, and foresight to provide for the needs of all our people, and to fulfill our obligations in the community of nations.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

To the Judges and officers of our Courts give understanding and integrity, that human rights may be safeguarded and justice served.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

Teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

We thank you, Lord, for the natural majesty and beauty of this land. They restore us, though we often destroy them.

Heal us.

We thank you for the great resources of this nation. They make us rich, though we often exploit them.

Forgive us.

We thank you for the men and women who have made this country strong. They are models for us, though we often fall short of them.

Inspire us.

We thank you for the torch of liberty which has been lit in this land. It has drawn people from every nation, though we have often hidden from its light.

Enlighten us.

We thank you for the faith we have inherited in all its rich variety. It sustains our life, though we have been faithless again and again.

Renew us.

Help us, O Lord, to finish the good work here begun. Strengthen our efforts to blot out ignorance and prejudice, and to abolish poverty and crime. And hasten the day when all our people, with many voices in one united chorus, will glorify your holy Name. Amen.

A Prayer for our Nation:

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners.  Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

(From the Book of Common Prayer, 1979)

St. Basil’s Day & The Importance of the Divine Spark

Today is the annual memorial of St. Basil the Great: Bishop, Monk, Theologian. His life was truly multi-faceted, and he used every facet in the service of the Kingdom of God.

Born into a privileged family (descended from a martyr) and deciding early for the Christian life, he seems to have followed the course of his mother (St. Emmelia) and sister (St. Macrina) in an assured clarity of action, rather than struggling with the anxieties that plagued his younger brother (St. Gregory Nyssa) and close friend (St. Gregory Nazianzus). (This remarkable family also produced two other saints: Basil’s remaining siblings, St. Peter of Sebaste and St. Naucratius the Hermit!) Basil was resolute, brilliant, at turns deeply compassionate and fiercely demanding.

It is largely as a result of St. Basil the Great’s efforts (together with the two Gregorys) that the Faith proclaimed at the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea (325) was upheld and bolstered at the Second Council in Constantinople (381). This led to the eventual triumph of Christian Orthodoxy over Arianism and Apollinarianism, two of the most destructive heresies in Christian history (and, to some degree, the two that remain with us in one form or another still as a temptation and snare to take our eyes off the Christ revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and the sacred tradition of Holy Church).

Basil’s efforts also led to the clear enunciation of the doctrine of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, and all true Christian Pneumatology must ultimately be in concord with his thought, expressed so effectively in On the Holy Spirit.

But St. Basil was much more than even this. He was an extraordinarily tough negotiator. Threats of death from the then-heretic Emperor made no impression on him. He risked even his closest relationships in order to bolster the Faith in the face of heresy. He remained in office and did not betray his vows even when most of those around him in leadership did the convenient thing and sided with the Imperial culture on matters of faith and morals.  His rule for monks (developed after a tour of desert monastic communities and his sister's founding of a community for nuns) became the source text for all Eastern Christian monasticism today. He labored to renew the zeal and quality of ordained ministry in the dioceses he served and worked tirelessly for the poor. At his death he gave a vast amount of money so that an entirely new city could be founded for the poor in the region.

St. Basil was also a profound realist, in the sense that he didn’t believe in the sort of “progressive fantasy” that grips the Church from time-to-time, a mistaken hope that through continuous education (and cultural accommodation) we can make anything we want happen. This is essentially a form of atheism, in that God is not the source of all things…we are the initiators. St. Basil, in his rule for monastics, reaffirms the centrality of God’s initiation in faith and then sets about developing a school for the cultivation and nurture of that faith.

In North American Christianity one notices a persistent tendency to try to “go it alone” or to “make things happen,” occasionally clothed in the garb of prayer, but in practice more about identifying some set of “spiritual goals” and then developing elaborate, measurable, and iron-clad programs, techniques, and ideologies to “achieve” these man-made goals. The result is one trend, fad, or “renewal movement” after another—each subject to the usual dynamics of cultural fads—rather than the deeply-formed development of a stable, rooted, Christian community.

The passage below speaks of the proper way to approach spiritual growth. It is based on the recognition of the Image and Likeness of God residing within us, and the grace that is given for us to do the spiritual work (askesis) that will lead to a rich harvest of holiness. It also has a clear-eyed notion of what sin is: the misuse of the powers given to us by God for good. 

Thus, sin is really a non-Eucharistic way of living on the merely biological level—ignoring the purpose of our bodies, minds, souls, wills—and using these precious and holy gifts for a life of pseudo-independence leading to eternal death. True Christian life receives the gifts of God (in all their forms) with gratitude and then uses them as an offering to God in their right way and their revealed purpose. It is a life of deep communion with God the Holy Trinity, whose being is expressed in communion.

This is shown forth, par excellence, in the Holy Eucharist, where the baptized People of God receive in deep gratitude the Word made Flesh from Christ the Great High Priest under the forms of the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Mysteries—and then in the power of these gifts offer the creation and their lives to God for sanctification, that they may reveal the Kingdom of God radiantly.

All of this is based on what St. Basil calls “the spark of divine love,” which is implanted in us at our conception. Our culture works to curtail all sensitivity to this divine spark and the relationship it means between God and humans. In its place we are cultivating a kind of pseudo-humanity, one essentially physical, without the dynamic of the spiritual, Eucharistic, priestly, and communal character that is our true self. It is a society increasingly based on fear, hate, control, hedonism, materialism, violence, and death.

This denial is making us sick in many ways, gradually building a society with ills for which it has no cure, nor even a language to describe its sickness. It is this form of poverty and corruption that we in the Church must address as well as the traditional forms of want. Without the nourishment of the soul, even clothed, fed, and employed bodies will only turn their search for wholeness in directions leading to destruction.

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Love of God is not something that can be taught. We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians. It is the same – perhaps even more so – with our love for God: it does not come by another’s teaching. As soon as the living creature (that is, man) comes to be, a power of reason is implanted in us like a seed, containing within it the ability and the need to love. When the school of God’s law admits this power of reason, it cultivates it diligently, skillfully nurtures it, and with God’s help brings it to perfection.

For this reason, as by God’s gift, I find you with the zeal necessary to attain this end, and you on your part help me with your prayers. I will try to fan into flame the spark of divine love that is hidden within you, as far as I am able through the power of the Holy Spirit.

First, let me say that we have already received from God the ability to fulfill all his commands. We have then no reason to resent them, as if something beyond our capacity were being asked of us. We have no reason either to be angry, as if we had to pay back more than we had received. When we use this ability in a right and fitting way, we lead a life of virtue and holiness. But if we misuse it, we fall into sin.

This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good, a use contrary to God’s commands. On the other hand, the virtue that God asks of us is the use of the same powers based on a good conscience in accordance with God’s command.

Since this is so, we can say the same about love. Since we received a command to love God, we possess from the first moment of our existence an innate power and ability to love. The proof of this is not to be sought outside ourselves, but each one can learn this from himself and in himself. It is natural for us to want things that are good and pleasing to the eye, even though at first different things seem beautiful and good to different people. In the same way, we love what is related to us or near to us, though we have not been taught to do so, and we spontaneously feel well disposed to our benefactors.

What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and wonderful than God’s majesty? What desire is as urgent and overpowering as the desire implanted by God in a soul that is completely purified of sin and cries out in its love: I am wounded by love? The radiance of divine beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe.

-- From the Asketikon of St. Basil the Great

A Word on Holy Patience

[Jesus] put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’

Matthew 13:24-30, NRSV

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, the one who succeeds in evil schemes.

Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.

Psalm 37, vv. 7-9, BCP version

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The appointed morning Psalm and the Gospel lesson today in the Episcopal Daily Office Lectionary both focus on a difficult and demanding practice for disciples: holy patience. This virtue needs to be reaffirmed in our troubled and angry times, both for what it is—and what it is not.

The passage from Matthew, usually referred to as the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (or, the Wheat among the Weeds) is a parable of judgment (God’s v. ours) and also a parable urging a special kind of patience or forbearance.

This is not a passive, uninterested, or ethereal sort of patience. It does not ignore or deny suffering and wrong. It is deeply aware of and involved in the wrong of the world (likened here to the presence of a destructive weed in the midst of a good and life-sustaining food crop). But this type of patience knows that responding to the wrong with violent or aggressive anger will—no matter how gratifying in the moment, no matter how “it gets the job done”—ultimately compound the problem, ripping up good with bad and leaving the whole field in tatters.

Such an attitude is essentially atheistic, in no way relying on a deep communion with God. It is also an open invitation to yet another round of “the ends justify the means.”

Instead, the parable counsels, we must be honest about the wrong while not multiplying it. We aren’t supposed to equate wheat with weeds or good with bad…but we are to preserve the good rather than destroy it in some sort of human-directed war of attrition with the bad.

To this picture the psalm adds the observation that anger and fretting, by themselves, do not lead to the desired outcome. They are fundamentally destructive, not constructive, ways of responding to wrong. They may be “natural,” but in this world, what is “natural” for humans is generally twisted and sickened without the constant infusion of God’s grace. Rather, we are to “be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him,” which is another way of saying (in Christian terms) we must place ourselves in deep communion with God and respond (not react) when and how the Triune Majesty calls us.

The parable and the psalm here are not urging quiescence…not at all. The evils and injustices of this world must be acknowledged, confronted, and fought against. Yet, how one does this is as important as whether one does it. The admixture of anger taints and vitiates the intended good in ways that ultimately undermine the very outcome itself. Holy patience is active, dynamic, and participatory. But it is also the fruit not of anger, but of love—and the Love of Christ as found in the whole Gospel must be its criteria, not human retribution clothed in the mantle of high-minded morals.

Ideological and passionate movements are tempted to forget or downplay this—and thus plant the seeds of the next form of injustice. The value of a godly patience allows us to move from taking the false role of the One In Charge (visiting all our unexamined and ungodly “stuff” on the Other) to the true roles of servant, steward, instrument. In that is true power, true freedom—and true satisfaction.