tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10830772486308848532024-03-13T02:59:33.824+00:00Streams of the RiverDavid Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.comBlogger1702125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-40901022729646601342023-12-11T18:26:00.001+00:002023-12-11T18:26:37.940+00:009 LESSONS & CAROLS AT ALL SAINTS' BENHILTON<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjku57p1iL18JXeJqIHsLr5a8H3ES1OPENSSorsVthLQAZXb1xip27zJepC_89ANx5G1M1wD8hOh4BOQAFz3Hz6FoZhROl9k7U9vDkm62Z-i3N9VsoE8iruQSRQGOb92tYqIFtOPWHCZMqomMLbrMLgIAPAWypuQ5Vq7sUwkMcGJ0iD2Q9Nm1-bu6YQ-L0l" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="688" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjku57p1iL18JXeJqIHsLr5a8H3ES1OPENSSorsVthLQAZXb1xip27zJepC_89ANx5G1M1wD8hOh4BOQAFz3Hz6FoZhROl9k7U9vDkm62Z-i3N9VsoE8iruQSRQGOb92tYqIFtOPWHCZMqomMLbrMLgIAPAWypuQ5Vq7sUwkMcGJ0iD2Q9Nm1-bu6YQ-L0l=w400-h329" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-49371328188140617822023-11-30T17:03:00.004+00:002023-12-01T21:42:35.785+00:00ADVENT AND THE LONGING OF OUR HEARTS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrw8CWjBndL9qDZMhLkzP2PnRvvbOFnCDT5CM7KLMzXGkdelbk7nTBHpc0wyZ28cGxH-wchnJqjUsojU3QZuQ4zvMJozbJmV9sqOmJBhYkMaQGQrgxKvmMPoV1Yt1vITVsggWZg1HYlNu9BrLvgk9uegXlC8_Un8CKWrIAcQnFMTXdLzsbZTxx7H_5O9f7" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="3020" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrw8CWjBndL9qDZMhLkzP2PnRvvbOFnCDT5CM7KLMzXGkdelbk7nTBHpc0wyZ28cGxH-wchnJqjUsojU3QZuQ4zvMJozbJmV9sqOmJBhYkMaQGQrgxKvmMPoV1Yt1vITVsggWZg1HYlNu9BrLvgk9uegXlC8_Un8CKWrIAcQnFMTXdLzsbZTxx7H_5O9f7=w415-h474" width="415" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We are almost into the season of Advent, the beginning of the Christian year. At All Saints' Benhilton the church has been prepared, and we look forward to this First Sunday of Advent when, as well as the blessing of the Advent Wreath and the lighting of the first Advent Candle at Mass, we will gather again at 4.00 p.m. for a service of choral anthems, hymns and Scripture readings to launch us into this season.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(153, 0, 0); color: #990000;">In his </span><u style="caret-color: rgb(153, 0, 0); color: #990000;">Devotions for Advent,</u><span style="caret-color: rgb(153, 0, 0); color: #990000;"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(153, 0, 0); color: #990000;">Matthew Woodley captures a really crucial dimension of the Church's Advent season:</span></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(153, 0, 0); color: #990000; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, our culture often fosters a complacent, blasé, smug approach to Christianity. In the words of C. S. Lewis, "We are far too easily pleased." We're happy to numb and freeze our restless ache for a better world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Advent is the season of the church year that ignites that longing in our hearts. Before we rush into "Happy Holidays," we pause and let longing rise up within us. Throughout Advent we catch glimpses of a better world<span>.</span></div><span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">And as we catch glimpses of this Messiah-healed world, we long for its coming now. All of the best Advent hymns capture this spirit of groaning and longing for Messiah's better world. When we sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," with its dark, unresolved melody, it cracks our hearts open with longing's wound. And yet, we know Messiah has come, even as we wait for him to come again. Advent is a deliciously painful mix of joy and anguish<span>.</span></div><span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">This Advent-like longing is at the heart of Christian spirituality. Augustine's Latin phrase desiderium sinus cordis-"yearning makes the heart grow deep"-became a central theme in his pilgrimage on earth. Augustine cried out, "Give me one who yearns; . . . give me one far away in this desert, who is thirsty and sighs for the spring of the Eternal country. Give me that sort of man: he knows what I mean.<span>"</span></div><span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">C. S. Lewis claimed that in this life the Advent-like stab of longing serves as a spiritual homing device, placed deep in our heart by God to lead us back to him. Thus, as Psyche realizes in Till We Have Faces, "It almost hurt me . . . like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home. . . . The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from. . . . The longing for home.<span>"</span></div><span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;">Advent trains us to ache again. Of all the seasons of the church year, Advent is the time to acknowledge, feel, and even embrace the joyful anguish of longing for Messiah's birth and the world's rebirth. So we sing our aching songs while we light candles and festoon the church with greenery. That is Advent longing, and we couldn't imagine it any other way.</div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtZbSk65ed68AB4PW275dkVCMYWBqG0TERTF1INKRvOiJMCiPr5D8f56GW3y_UbGj5qDLdUbpL8vVOj2XCiLVKXPyPlIY9Y4aNkgXlDqam1r85byg-EE63_bdEuSswU0GTREsx3h_gQN6WUWfNXpR-dafwECbDPVJZZhvvdIVCefl6VeCIKjUfqF9t3rXY" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="499" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtZbSk65ed68AB4PW275dkVCMYWBqG0TERTF1INKRvOiJMCiPr5D8f56GW3y_UbGj5qDLdUbpL8vVOj2XCiLVKXPyPlIY9Y4aNkgXlDqam1r85byg-EE63_bdEuSswU0GTREsx3h_gQN6WUWfNXpR-dafwECbDPVJZZhvvdIVCefl6VeCIKjUfqF9t3rXY=w382-h400" width="382" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-60965061397280658072023-10-27T01:00:00.005+01:002023-10-27T09:42:11.261+01:00The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks' 2014 address to the Vatican symposium on marriage and complementarity <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fQzt6gGwvJQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="fQzt6gGwvJQ"></iframe></div><p></p><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">If you are fed up with the shallow onslaught against 'complementarianism' that comes from secular philosophers and some 'liberal' Christian theologians, you MUST watch this video of the late Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. He was speaking in 2014 at HUMANUM - a symposium held in Rome on marriage and complementarity, the keynote speakers for which were drawn from a wide range of traditions.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">The audience of 300 in the Vatican’s synod hall gave Lord Sacks a standing ovation. His account of the development of marriage from a sexual act between fish in Scotland right up to the present day, by means of seven stories, ended with his exegesis of the Genesis account. He bemoans the dismantling of what he calls 'the single most humanising institution in history' resulting in a whole new era of poverty and social division. Yet the recovery of that institution offers hope. Watch his address here:</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><br /><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-74872465124846540082023-10-26T01:00:00.001+01:002023-10-26T01:00:00.144+01:00THREE THINGS SO-CALLED SECULAR PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR - John Stott<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-QM5I79lWjJhISLZqfGNlLBxdLP31fJ_ozQlAguCbOUghJgHVWKNpmVdCgDPMgXe8Us1nvmkZzZJ8TMjuRDLQaY2OgfiaIdm5_JXQqAssP8YMFSA_OWul1EkvH8EKTvL04Up_BYJtPJ-/s1600/oh-no_evangelism01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-QM5I79lWjJhISLZqfGNlLBxdLP31fJ_ozQlAguCbOUghJgHVWKNpmVdCgDPMgXe8Us1nvmkZzZJ8TMjuRDLQaY2OgfiaIdm5_JXQqAssP8YMFSA_OWul1EkvH8EKTvL04Up_BYJtPJ-/s200/oh-no_evangelism01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">The Reverend Dr John Stott (1921–2011) was sometimes known as “the evangelical pope.” A prolific author from his days as Rector of All Souls’ Langham Place in London, to his later global ministry, he influenced generations of Christians from all cultures, and clergy of all traditions. Regarding evangelism in our very secularised world he remained an optimist, as can be seen from this gem, part of an interview with him by Tim Stafford published in <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Future-Church-Christianity-Today-Series/dp/1418534110">Christianity Today Current Issues Study Series “The Future of the Church” 2008</a></b>, pp. 17-18. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Stafford: </span><i>What about what some call the greatest mission field, which is our own secularizing or secularized culture? What do we need to do to reach this increasingly pagan society?</i> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">Stott:</span> I think we need to say to one another that it’s not so secular as it looks. I believe that these so-called secular people are engaged in a quest for at least three things. <b><span style="color: #990000;">The first is TRANSCENDENCE. </span></b>It’s interesting in a so-called secular culture how many people are looking for something beyond. I find that a great challenge to the quality of our Christian worship. Does it offer people what they are instinctively looking for, which is transcendence, the reality of God? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">The second is SIGNIFICANCE.</span></b> Almost everybody is looking for his or her own personal identity. Who am I, where do I come from, where am I going to, what is it all about? That is a challenge to the quality of our Christian teaching. We need to teach people who they are. They don’t know who they are. We do. They are human beings made in the image of God, although that image has been defaced. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCiYlpMNZY8ZE5d8b11MhaSWVjOdW-ZAr86Ijhv_LS7PxmbU__sf1xr_oFtvnady87whsUdmzLHBN6K6o3j4ksWt2OVp0alHRh4XSBjab31M5O0y-9uKVmTE5ceuDjOw9tooLoLZTKX4R/s1600/stott01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCiYlpMNZY8ZE5d8b11MhaSWVjOdW-ZAr86Ijhv_LS7PxmbU__sf1xr_oFtvnady87whsUdmzLHBN6K6o3j4ksWt2OVp0alHRh4XSBjab31M5O0y-9uKVmTE5ceuDjOw9tooLoLZTKX4R/s1600/stott01.jpg" /></a><b><span style="color: #990000;">And third is their quest for COMMUNITY.</span></b> Everywhere, people are looking for community, for relationships of love. This is a challenge to our fellowship. I’m very fond of 1 John 4:12: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The invisibility of God is a great problem to people. The question is how has God solved the problem of his own invisibility? First, Christ has made the invisible God visible. That’s John’s Gospel 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">People say that’s wonderful, but it was 2,000 years ago. So in 1 John 4:12, he begins with exactly the same formula, nobody has ever seen God. But here John goes on, “If we love one another, God abides in us.” The same invisible God who once made himself visible in Jesus now makes himself visible in the Christian community, if we love one another. And all the verbal proclamation of the gospel is of little value unless it is made by a community of love. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These three things about our humanity are on our side in our evangelism, because people are looking for the very things we have to offer them. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Stafford:</span> <i>And therefore you’re not despairing of the West? </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Stott:</span> I’m not despairing. But I believe that evangelism is specially through the local church, through the community, rather than through the individual. That the church should be an alternative society, a visible sign of the kingdom. And the tragedy is that our local churches often don’t seem to manifest community. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"> * * * * * </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Here is John Stott's well-known morning prayer to the Holy Trinity: </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Heavenly Father, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I pray that I may live this day in your presence </div><div style="text-align: justify;">and please you more and more. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lord Jesus, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holy Spirit, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself </div><div style="text-align: justify;">and cause your fruit to ripen in my life: </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">three persons in one God, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">have mercy upon me Almighty God.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Creator and sustainer of the universe, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I worship you. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lord Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord of the World, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I worship you. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the people of God, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I worship you. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, </div><div style="text-align: justify;">As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Amen.<br /><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-11894767613847670682023-10-25T02:30:00.001+01:002023-10-25T02:30:00.148+01:00LIFE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FAITH - Carlo Carretto<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6M0YkdOJ2fpu9xe0jvb277wiRrMLhVH0Eq17H5WBMvICFhsbnN_Lyei0Cj6QKyqWFHGwWHD7YtURScobZNfYKlwc1szF8aLXJ8KckhfJws12EHudrpw3rgIsB5dROBhoLj2HCsuijvyJo/s1600/perspective.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6M0YkdOJ2fpu9xe0jvb277wiRrMLhVH0Eq17H5WBMvICFhsbnN_Lyei0Cj6QKyqWFHGwWHD7YtURScobZNfYKlwc1szF8aLXJ8KckhfJws12EHudrpw3rgIsB5dROBhoLj2HCsuijvyJo/s1600/perspective.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">Here are two more passages from Carlo Carretto's <b><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Impossible-Readings-Modern-Spirituality/dp/0232517525" target="_blank">God of the Impossible.</a></b> They emphasise the Christian life as a way of seeing things, a basic orientation of faith with regard to all reality.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">We must make ourselves small before God, as small as possible, as small as David who believed absolutely that he could not be beaten by Goliath, as small as Joseph who never disputed the angel’s orders, as small as Mary who accepted with unswerving simplicity the improbable betrothal of herself and the Spirit of God, the incredible conception within her of Jesus the Christ. “Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1:45): therein lies Mary’s greatness – and ours too, if we learn to believe and hope. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">There is no other test of greatness. Looking at a piece of bread on the altar and saying “that is Christ”, is pure faith. Noting and listing all the sins of the people of God and its leaders and still letting oneself be guided by the mystery of the Church and its infallibility is a formidable thing; knowing that our bodies rot in the grave and yet believing in the resurrection of the body is a tremendous last test of life. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">The successful candidate is the one who has made himself small and does not treat God’s mysteries as though they were coins in his pocket.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000;">* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">One of the hardest battles in the spiritual life, perhaps I should say the hardest, is the struggle to see God in our trivial human happenings. How often we have to renew our act of faith! At first we are tempted to see only ourselves, to believe only in our selves, to value only ourselves. Then gradually we perceive that the thread of life has a rationale, a mysterious unity, and we are led to think that we meet God in its basic stages. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Then again, as our religious experience grows, we begin to realize that we meet God not only in the big events of our lives but in all the events, however small and apparently insignificant. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">God is never absent from our lives, He cannot be, because “in Him we live, and move, and exist” (Acts 17:28). But it requires so much effort to turn this truth into a habit! </div><br /><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">We need repeated acts of faith before we learn to sail with confidence on the “immense and endless sea” which is God (St. Gregory Nazianzen), knowing that if we founder we do so in Him, the divine, eternal, ever-present God. How fortunate we are if we can learn to navigate our frail craft on this sea and remain serene even when the storm is raging! </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-49643599001763542202023-10-24T02:00:00.001+01:002023-10-24T02:00:00.135+01:00JESUS OUR SAVIOUR - THE TRUTH AND THE SACRAMENT - Carlo Carretto<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV0Vfxa-R284AlZqW5zjHp_Wx0orjFBOzD-mK35HR-VXFs8OYAfLs9sfRbrnGQbhTkMHa-qRwSoMNdl9HfVgDnq6H0jFIz_wAC8AyldGDojq4PTMJYBL-4mdwkczZhdQSL41QzmMXbucgr/s1600/love+no+greater.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV0Vfxa-R284AlZqW5zjHp_Wx0orjFBOzD-mK35HR-VXFs8OYAfLs9sfRbrnGQbhTkMHa-qRwSoMNdl9HfVgDnq6H0jFIz_wAC8AyldGDojq4PTMJYBL-4mdwkczZhdQSL41QzmMXbucgr/s1600/love+no+greater.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">Dear friends, I am so glad that many of you visit my blog each day. I know that sometimes you are so busy that the best you can do is to read quickly through whatever is there, or even just glance at it to see if anything of interest jumps out at you. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">Today, however, I would like you to find time to read this passage from Carlo Carretto (<b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=carretto+in+search" target="_blank">In Search of the Beyond</a></b>) in a contemplative way. Those of you who are not Christians might begin to understand us. Those who focus just on the Church's institutionality with all of its scandals and evil might begin to see why we remain. And those who have not been to the foot of the Cross for some time might just experience a little renewal of love for the Saviour.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">Jesus our Saviour - The Truth and The Sacrament</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I began to know Jesus as soon as I accepted Jesus as the truth; I found true peace when I actively sought his friendship; and above all I experienced joy, true joy, that stands above the vicissitudes of life, as soon as I tasted and experienced for myself the gift he came to bestow on us: eternal life.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">But Jesus is not only the Image of the Father, the Revealer of the dark knowledge of God. That would be of little avail to me in my weakness and my sinfulness: he is also my Saviour.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">On my journey towards him, I was completely worn out, unable to take another step forward. By my errors, my sinful rebellions, my desperate efforts to find joy far from his joy, I had reduced myself to a mass of virulent sores which repelled both Heaven and Earth.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">What sin was there that I had not committed? Or what sin had I as yet not committed simply because the opportunity had not come my way?</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Yet it was he, and he alone, who got down off his horse, like the good Samaritan on the way to Jericho; he alone had the courage to approach me in order to staunch with bandages the few drops of blood that still remained in my veins, blood that would certainly have flowed away, had he not intervened.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus became a sacrament for me, the cause of my salvation, he brought my time in hell to an end, and put a stop to my inner disintegration. He washed me patiently in the waters of baptism, he filled me with the exhilarating joy of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, he nourished me with the bread of his word. Above all, he forgave me, he forgot everything, he did not even wish me to remember my past myself.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">When, through my tears, I began to tell him something of the years during which I betrayed him, he lovingly placed his hand over my mouth in order to silence me. His one concern was that I should muster courage enough to pick myself up again, to try and carry on walking in spite of my weakness, and to believe in his love in spite of my fears. But there was one thing he did, the value of which cannot be measured, something truly unbelievable, something only God could do.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">While I continued to have doubts about my own salvation, to tell him that my sins could not be forgiven, and that justice, too, had its rights, he appeared on the Cross before me one Friday towards midday.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I was at its foot, and found myself bathed with the blood which flowed from the gaping holes made in his flesh by the nails. He remained there for three hours until he expired.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I realized that he had died in order that I might stop turning to him with questions about justice, and believe instead, deep within myself, that the scales had come down overflowing on the side of love, and that even though all, through unbelief or madness, had offended him, he had conquered for ever, and drawn all things everlastingly to himself.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Then later, so that I should never forget that Friday and abandon the Cross, as one forgets a postcard on the table or a picture in the worn-out book that had been feeding one’s devotion, he led me on to discover that in order to be with me continually, not simply as an affectionate remembrance but as a living presence, he had devised the Eucharist.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">What a discovery that was!</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Under the sacramental sign of bread, Jesus was there each morning to renew the sacrifice of the Cross and make of it the living sacrifice of his bride, the church, a pure offering to the Divine Majesty.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">And still that was not all.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">He led me on to understand that the sign of bread testified to his hidden presence, not only during the Great Sacrifice, but at all times, since the Eucharist was not an isolated moment in my day, but a line which stretched over twenty-four hours: he is God-with-us, the realization of what had been foretold by the cloud that went before the people of God during their journey through the desert, and the darkness which filled the tabernacle in the temple at Jerusalem.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I must emphasize that this vital realization that the sign of bread concealed and pointed out for me the uninterrupted presence of Jesus beside me was a unique grace in my life. From that moment he led me along the path to intimacy, and friendship with himself.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I understood that he longed to be present like this beside each one of us.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus was not only bread, he was a friend.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">A home without bread is not a home, but a home without friendship is nothing.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">That is why Jesus became a friend, concealed under the sign of bread. I learned to stay with him for hours on end, listening to the mysterious voices that welled up from the abysses of Being and to receive the rays of that light whose source was in the uncreated light of God.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I have experienced such sweetness in the eucharistic presence of Christ.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I have learned to appreciate why the saints remained in contemplation before this bread to beseech, to adore, and to love.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">How I wish that everyone might take the Eucharist home, and having made a little oratory in some quiet corner, might find joy in sitting quietly before it, in order to make his dialogue with God easier and more immediate, in intimate union with Christ.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">But still that was not enough.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus did not overcome the insuperable obstacle presented by the divinity and enter the human sphere simply to be our Saviour. Had that been all, his work would have remained unfinished, his mission of love unfulfilled.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">He broke through the wall surrounding the invisible, and came down into the visible world to bear witness to “the things that are above,” to reveal to us “the secrets of his Father’s house,” to give us in concrete form what he called eternal life.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">What exactly is it, this famous “eternal life?”</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">He himself defined it in the Gospel: “And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) So eternal life is, first and foremost, knowledge. It is a matter of knowing the Father, knowing Jesus. But it is not a question of any external, historical, analogical knowledge which we could more or less imagine, possess perhaps, even now; it is rather a question of real, supernatural knowledge which, although it is still surrounded here by the darkness of faith, is already the same as the knowledge we will have when the veil is torn aside and we see God face to face. It is a question of knowing God as he is, not as he may appear to us or as we may imagine him. This is the heart of the mystery I have tried to describe as the beyond, and which is the key to the secret of intimacy with God and the substance of contemplative prayer.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">In giving us “eternal life,” Jesus gives us that knowledge of the Father which is already our first experience of living, here on Earth, the divine life; which is a vital participation, here and now, in the family of God; and which means that while we remain sons of man, we are at the same time sons of God.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus is the Image of the Father, the center of the universe and of history.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus is our salvation, the radiance of the God we cannot see, the unquenchable fire of love, the one for whom the angels sigh, the Holy one of God, the true adorer, the eternal High Priest, the Lord of the Ages, the glory of God.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Jesus is also our brother, and as such he takes his place beside us, to teach us the path we must follow to reach the invisible. And to make sure that we understand, he translates into visible terms the invisible things he has seen – as man he acts as God would act; he introduces the ways of the family of God on to the Earth and into the family of man.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-32600518494024901622023-10-23T02:30:00.001+01:002023-10-23T02:30:00.161+01:00PERSONAL PRAYER - Carlo Carretto<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtGl-TJfUlrEqjMu0TzSZ8k6shfdgmKSMg9vJBWJONGblC45I6OHke308mDmP8ocbxym9C1CyI2k0XGm5b6yQDRL2sItKqU4Pb5y6NTk-nZ4a-PUEoEeHGB1v_TclGg8Zlmc7zO2jT8Da/s1600/CarloCarretto.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtGl-TJfUlrEqjMu0TzSZ8k6shfdgmKSMg9vJBWJONGblC45I6OHke308mDmP8ocbxym9C1CyI2k0XGm5b6yQDRL2sItKqU4Pb5y6NTk-nZ4a-PUEoEeHGB1v_TclGg8Zlmc7zO2jT8Da/s1600/CarloCarretto.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; text-align: justify;"><div style="font-size: 11px;"><span style="color: #990000;">These snippets are typical of Carlo Carretto at his best. Simple, yet truly profound.</span></div><div style="font-size: 11px;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;"><b>ON PERSONAL PRAYER</b></span></div></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Prayer is not so much a matter of talking as listening; contemplation is not watching but being watched. On the day when we realize this, we will have entered finally into possession of the truth, and prayer will have become a living reality. To be watched by God: that is how I would define contemplation, which is passive rather that active, more a matter of silence than of words, of waiting rather than of action. What am I before God? If He shuts, no one opens, and if He opens, no one shuts. He is the active principle of love, He is before all, He is the one who makes within me His own prayer, which then becomes my prayer . . . It was He who sought me in the first place, and it is He who continues to seek me. (From <b><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Impossible-Readings-Modern-Spirituality/dp/0232517525" target="_blank">God of the Impossible</a></span></b>)</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Personal prayer is the meeting place between the Eternal One and me; the Blessed Sacrament is the visible sign of my covenant with him. That is why I believe in personal prayer, and why every day I wait to meet him in the Eucharist. To pray means to wait for the God who comes. Every prayer-filled day sees a meeting with the God who comes; every night which we faithfully put at his disposal is full of his presence. And his coming and his presence are not only the result of our waiting or a prize for our efforts: they are his decision, based on his love freely poured out. His coming is bound to his promise, not to our works or virtue. We have not earned the meeting with God because we have served him faithfully in our brethren, or because we have heaped up such a pile of virtue as to shine before Heaven. God is thrust onward by his love, not attracted by our beauty. He comes even in moments when we have done everything wrong, when we have done nothing . . . when we have sinned. (From <b><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-who-comes-Carlo-Carretto/dp/0883441640/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413279978&sr=1-2&keywords=the+god+who+comes" target="_blank">The God Who Comes</a></span></b>)</div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-41121561613904046602023-10-22T21:50:00.000+01:002023-10-22T21:50:13.489+01:00DARKNESS AND FAITH - Carlo Carretto<p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMgb28ZGL_ebaTiEJM4KoCZUOozkYaj6AegYmJ5CYu7lSuyEPa8qjl-h-FEtxirXWQhNdvzeHVwyi2TnKaIYh9bzVlDcWSS8AMx_YrIe_MUSQ5Xc87tV3GI5dKlWZVrSkRpj2rvMkYjOi/s1600/darknight.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMgb28ZGL_ebaTiEJM4KoCZUOozkYaj6AegYmJ5CYu7lSuyEPa8qjl-h-FEtxirXWQhNdvzeHVwyi2TnKaIYh9bzVlDcWSS8AMx_YrIe_MUSQ5Xc87tV3GI5dKlWZVrSkRpj2rvMkYjOi/s1600/darknight.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">Carlo Carretto (1910–1988) was an Italian spiritual writer inspired by Charles de Foucauld and others who have sought God in simplicity and solitude. He was a school teacher, and a worker with Catholic Action. Between 1954 and 1964 he lived as a hermit in the Sahara desert, settling eventually in Spello, Italy, where for the rest of his life he was a hermit and spiritual director. The English translations of his books became very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the next few days I will share with you some key passages from them. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">This is from <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Impossible-Readings-Modern-Spirituality/dp/0232517525" target="_blank">God of the Impossible – Daily Readings with Carlo Carretto</a></b>:</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;"><b>DARKNESS AND FAITH</b></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">FAITH is neither a feeling nor a mental process; it is an act of self-surrender in the dark to a God who is indeed darkness as far as our human nature is concerned. And He is darkness not because of an absence of light, but rather because we are overwhelmed by the reverberations of a light to which we are yet unaccustomed, here in the restricted world of our own unfolding history. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">The area in which reason and faith operate, and in which there is an interplay of light and shadow belonging to the two clearly distinct worlds, the visible and the invisible, is a terribly complex one. When the light which emanates from the cloud of unknowing reaches the earth on which we are journeying, it forms, as it were, a mist (St. Paul) which surrounds everything and forces us to feel our way (Acts), putting us on our guard and inducing within us a continual state of anxious expectation. </div><br /><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">An expectation which obliges us to fix our gaze on what lies ahead, and gives us a glimpse of the unexpected patch of sunlight which is to come. And it is on this uneven terrain that, sooner or later, God will be waiting for us, as He waited for Abraham, as He waited for Moses, as He waited for Job.</div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-36489637644921187702023-09-30T17:38:00.005+01:002023-09-30T21:32:00.422+01:00C.S. Lewis and the Gethsemane of Jesus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2IUofHKYRumyaC5b8bhF0bqO6GXiSNODst9UIV5IYczJKf8x7Xa7XGWZVOxV79oHfKTrnktDmZNBI-RauOTjKvEctJ5TJYjqw-CO3luqsTM448J-vVAuyoY7vz_qTdHpXi4dBcQ56vmq-qeekHRbpU5qkeeX2D2yGMPycGIp9IrLNkO0SdJ2M-FYJzjBT/s1242/Lewis%20C.S.%20best%20photo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="1242" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2IUofHKYRumyaC5b8bhF0bqO6GXiSNODst9UIV5IYczJKf8x7Xa7XGWZVOxV79oHfKTrnktDmZNBI-RauOTjKvEctJ5TJYjqw-CO3luqsTM448J-vVAuyoY7vz_qTdHpXi4dBcQ56vmq-qeekHRbpU5qkeeX2D2yGMPycGIp9IrLNkO0SdJ2M-FYJzjBT/s320/Lewis%20C.S.%20best%20photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000;">Here is a wonderful passage from Chapter 8 of <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Malcolm-Chiefly-C-S-Lewis/dp/B005OHWYQC">Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer</a></b> by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) published in 1964, a year after his death. The book takes the form of a series of letters to a fictional friend, “Malcolm” with whom Lewis discusses prayer as an intimate communication between God and ourselves. Unlike some of his forthright apologetic books, Letters to Malcolm raises questions and paradoxes for which Lewis has no real resolution. This passage is Lewis' meditation on Gethsemane and the suffering of Jesus:</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">It is clear from many of His sayings that Our Lord had long foreseen His death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this knowledge must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He could not, with whatever reservation about the Father’s will, have prayed that the cup might pass and simultaneously known that it would not. That is both a logical and a psychological impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope - of suspense, anxiety - were at the last moment loosed upon Him - the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the supreme horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible . . . and doubtless He had seen other men crucified . . . a sight very unlike most of our religious pictures and images.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">But for this last (and erroneous) hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps He would not have been very Man. To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">At the end, I know, we are told that an angel appeared “comforting” Him (Luke 22:43). But neither <i>comforting</i> in sixteenth-century English nor “ἐνισχύων”in Greek means “consoling.” “Strengthening” is more the word. May not the strengthening have consisted in the renewed certainty - cold comfort this - that the thing must be endured and therefore could be? </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">We all try to accept with some sort of submission our afflictions when they actually arrive. But the prayer in Gethsemane shows that the preceding anxiety is equally God’s will and equally part of our human destiny. The perfect Man experienced it. And the servant is not greater than the master. We are Christians, not Stoics.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Does not every movement in the Passion write large some common element in the sufferings of our race? First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then He turns to His friends. They are asleep - as ours, or we, are so often, or busy, or away, or preoccupied. Then He faces the Church; the very Church that He brought into existence. It condemns Him. This also is characteristic. In every Church, in every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence. But there seems to be another chance. There is the State; in this case, the Roman state. Its pretensions are far lower than those of the Jewish church, but for that very reason it may be free from local fanaticisms. It claims to be just on a rough, worldly level. Yes, but only so far as is consistent with political expediency and <i>raison d’état</i>. One becomes a counter in a complicated game. But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal to the People - the poor and simple whom He had blessed, whom He had healed and fed and taught, to whom He Himself belongs. But they have become overnight (it is nothing unusual) a murderous rabble shouting for His blood. There is, then, nothing left but God. And to God, God’s last words are “Why hast thou forsaken me?”</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">You see how characteristic, how representative, it all is. The human situation writ large. These are among the things it means to be a man. Every rope breaks when you seize it. Every door is slammed shut as you reach it. To be like the fox at the end of the run; the earths all staked.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">As for the last dereliction of all, how can we either understand or endure it? Is it that God Himself cannot be Man unless God seems to vanish at His greatest need? And if so, why? I sometimes wonder if we have even begun to understand what is involved in the very concept of creation. If God will create, He will make something to be, and yet to be not Himself. To be created is, in some sense, to be ejected or separated.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Can it be that the more perfect the creature is, the further this separation must at some point be pushed? lt is saints, not common people, who experience the “dark night.” It is men and angels, not beasts, who rebel. Inanimate matter sleeps in the bosom of the Father. The “hiddenness” of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to Him, and therefore God Himself, made man, will of all men be by God most forsaken? One of the seventeenth-century divines says, “By pretending to be visible God could only deceive the world.” Perhaps He does pretend just a little to simple souls who need a full measure of “sensible consolation.” Not deceiving them, but tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. Of course I’m not saying like Niebuhr that evil is inherent in finitude. That would identify the creation with the fall and make God the author of evil. But perhaps there is an anguish, an alienation, a crucifixion involved in the creative act. Yet He who alone can judge judges the far-off consummation to be worth it.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I am, you see, a Job’s comforter. Far from lightening the dark valley where you now find yourself, I blacken it. And you know why. Your darkness has brought back my own. But on second thoughts I don’t regret what I have written. I think it is only in a shared darkness that you and I can really meet at present; shared with one another and, what matters most, with our Master. We are not on an untrodden path. Rather, on the main-road.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">Certainly we were talking too lightly and easily about these things a fortnight ago. We were playing with counters. One used to be told as a child: “Think what you’re saying.” Apparently we need also to be told: “Think what you’re thinking.” The stakes have to be raised before we take the game quite seriously. I know this is the opposite of what is often said about the necessity of keeping all emotion out of our intellectual processes – “you can’t think straight unless you are cool.” But then neither can you think deep if you are. I suppose one must try every problem in both states. You remember that the ancient Persians debated everything twice: once when they were drunk and once when they were sober.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><p><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;">I know one of you will let me have news as soon as there is any.</span> </p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-54541714177027376782023-08-09T00:30:00.001+01:002023-08-09T00:30:00.150+01:00Today's Commemoration S.Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)<p> </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjED8UW3eFi9XwtJ-x-UMgfFDt-zv9oRByKL_ElqL38iZO12YUeU5FqWU6icVLkAvlCyDTFo5i11GaZgZWEDC8zbAw8XxnREsF-gwl0XLguwy0Uejx9brBsznyUu6CeRveyfRrjr9nb_0aH/s1600/auschwitz011.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="343" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjED8UW3eFi9XwtJ-x-UMgfFDt-zv9oRByKL_ElqL38iZO12YUeU5FqWU6icVLkAvlCyDTFo5i11GaZgZWEDC8zbAw8XxnREsF-gwl0XLguwy0Uejx9brBsznyUu6CeRveyfRrjr9nb_0aH/s400/auschwitz011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Today the Church honours a remarkable woman, Edith Stein, S. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was killed in 1942 at Auschwitz. The following is adapted from an article by John Coleman SJ in <b><a href="http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5284">America Magazine</a></b>: </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Edith Stein was born in Breslau on October 12, 1891, the youngest of eleven, as her Jewish family was celebrating Yom Kippur. Edith's mother (widowed when Edith was only two) was a strongly devout Jew. Edith always deeply loved her mother, although as a young woman Edith abandoned any explicit practice of Judaism. "I consciously decided, of my own volition, to give up praying", Edith later said. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have always hoped that the Catholic Church would declare Edith Stein a Doctor of the Church. She studied, first, at the University of Breslau where she was an active member of the Prussian Society for the Woman's Franchise. In 1913, Edith transferred to Gottingen University where she became a teaching assistant to the renowned philosopher, Edmund Husserl. In Gottingen, Stein also met the philosopher Max Scheler who directed her attention to the Catholic faith. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sMtznjuYPivdqhc-aa6bzksxYaduR0bs55gRbfhJ6f7EXtru2yt-mQuh8eOF5TeXsBakQyVWpL2U1npPXaLU5Kl22EaO7N8Iece11wFQN3m5NyS8e3Gi1hJEAwwGyEkR3oSE7GmMcNjD/s1600/Stein01.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sMtznjuYPivdqhc-aa6bzksxYaduR0bs55gRbfhJ6f7EXtru2yt-mQuh8eOF5TeXsBakQyVWpL2U1npPXaLU5Kl22EaO7N8Iece11wFQN3m5NyS8e3Gi1hJEAwwGyEkR3oSE7GmMcNjD/s200/Stein01.jpg" width="145" /></a>During World War I, Edith cut short her studies to serve as a field nurse in an Austrian field hospital, where she treated the sick in a typhus ward and worked in an operating theatre. In 1916, she followed Husserl to the University of Freiburg where she wrote her doctoral thesis on "The Problem of Empathy". During this period of study, she went to the Frankfurt Cathedral where she saw a woman with a shopping basket going to kneel for prayer. "This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant Churches I had visited, people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot." In her doctoral dissertation she had written: "There have been people who believed that a sudden change had occurred within them and that this was a result of God's grace." </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stein had wanted to obtain a professorship but that was not possible in 1918 for a woman. Husserl, however, wrote for her the following reference: "Should academic careers be opened up to ladies, then I can recommend her whole-heartedly and as my first choice for admission to a professorship." </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQNWx4OvNM4pgDT3YSj1uCG3so8op2vBWMfYqjA_cf9FwYNfywACu33LX5JJuFle9Va9-jg8eRxQztIj5hGQr5JtmcwM96zw3VBSUdwqW5raOPXk_ebTJx61wEFAyJ7tgBPwq1roRnZzi/s1600/Stein02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQNWx4OvNM4pgDT3YSj1uCG3so8op2vBWMfYqjA_cf9FwYNfywACu33LX5JJuFle9Va9-jg8eRxQztIj5hGQr5JtmcwM96zw3VBSUdwqW5raOPXk_ebTJx61wEFAyJ7tgBPwq1roRnZzi/s200/Stein02.jpg" width="140" /></a>In 1921, while visiting a friend, Stein read the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. She spent the whole night reading it and said later :"When I finished the book, I said to myself, 'This is the truth.' Later she said of her life; "My longing for truth was a single prayer." In 1922, Stein was baptized on the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, when Jesus himself had entered God's covenant with Abraham. She reflected: "I had given up practising my Jewish religion when I was a 14 year old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God." After her conversion, she taught at a teacher training college in Speyer and was encouraged by a Benedictine Abbot to accept extensive speaking engagements on women's issues. She translated the letters and diaries of Cardinal Newman and translated Thomas Aquinas' Questiones Disputate de Veritate (On Truth). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1931, Stein left the convent school and devoted herself to getting a professorship. She wrote her main philosophical-theological work, Finite and Eternal Being. She was offered a position at the Institute for Educational Studies at the University of Munster in 1932. But in 1933, Hitler's Aryan law made it impossible for Stein to continue teaching. She noted: "I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that God had laid his hand heavily on his people and that the destiny of those people would also be mine." Stein, finally, entered the convent of the Carmelites in 1933. She went home, first, to visit her mother and went with her to the synagogue on The Feast of Tabernacles. Her mother died in 1936. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stein saw continuities between her new Christian faith and Judaism. She once said: "I keep thinking of Queen Esther who was taken away from her people precisely because God wanted her to plead with the king on behalf of her nation. I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who has chosen me is infinitely great and merciful. This is a great comfort."<br /><br />Because of the growing anti-Jewish strictures in Germany, Stein was smuggled across the border to the Netherlands to the Carmelite Convent in Echt. She made there her last will on June 9, 1939: "Even now I accept the death that God has prepared for me in complete submission and with joy as being his most holy will for me. I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world." While in Echt, Stein finished her study of John of the Cross' mysticism, entitled: "Kreuzeswissenschaft - The Science of the Cross". </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In retaliation to the Dutch Bishops' letter, the Gestapo came on August 2, 1942 to arrest Edith and her sister, Rosa, like Edith a convert to the Catholic faith. Edith's final words to Rosa before being deported were: "Come, we are going for our people." A professor friend of Stein's said of her: "She is a witness to God's presence in a world where God is absent." When he beatified Edith Stein in Cologne in 1987, John Paul II said the church was honoring "a daughter of Israel who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people in loving faithfulness." Surely, in honoring her, the church points to her clear bonds to the Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Edith Stein had a prayer which is apt:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">"Who are you, kindly light, </div><div style="text-align: center;">who fill me now </div><div style="text-align: center;">and brighten all the darkness of my heart? </div><div style="text-align: center;">You guide me forward like a mother's hand </div><div style="text-align: center;">and, if you let me go, </div><div style="text-align: center;">I could not take a single step alone. </div><div style="text-align: center;">You are the space, </div><div style="text-align: center;">embracing all my being, </div><div style="text-align: center;">hidden in it </div><div style="text-align: center;">and what name can contain you? </div><div style="text-align: center;">You, Holy Spirit, you, eternal love!"<br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;">**********</span></div><br /></div><b style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Pope St John Paul II's Homily at the Canonisation of Edith Stein on 11th October, 1998:</span></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqNu03tBVIDyX042PVKEbsaDpdRGgjrmq289Wu2MH7jsWvV_3MxHyYE_hECkmev8-jzC7pZ0ODBS4Cv2JVYczCWC0ddpXNkibQQc85UorxcfaVfhchI9FnttujuNeDPsfN8wJ24VM4aRk/s1600/JPII.praying.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="326" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqNu03tBVIDyX042PVKEbsaDpdRGgjrmq289Wu2MH7jsWvV_3MxHyYE_hECkmev8-jzC7pZ0ODBS4Cv2JVYczCWC0ddpXNkibQQc85UorxcfaVfhchI9FnttujuNeDPsfN8wJ24VM4aRk/s200/JPII.praying.jpg" width="135" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>The love of Christ was the fire that inflamed the life of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Long before she realized it, she was caught by this fire. At the beginning she devoted herself to freedom. For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All. Looking back as a Carmelite on this period of her life, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously”.</span><br /><span><br /></span><span>Although Edith Stein had been brought up religiously by her Jewish mother, at the age of 14 she “had consciously and deliberately stopped praying”. She wanted to rely exclusively on herself and was concerned to assert her freedom in making decisions about her life. At the end of a long journey, she came to the surprising realization: only those who commit themselves to the love of Christ become truly free.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>This woman had to face the challenges of such a radically changing century as our own. Her experience is an example to us. The modern world boasts of the enticing door which says: everything is permitted. It ignores the narrow gate of discernment and renunciation. I am speaking especially to you, young Christians, particularly to the many altar servers who have come to Rome these days on pilgrimage: Pay attention! Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface, but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was able to understand that the love of Christ and human freedom are intertwined, because love and truth have an intrinsic relationship. The quest for truth and its expression in love did not seem at odds to her; on the contrary she realized that they call for one another.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>In our time, truth is often mistaken for the opinion of the majority. In addition, there is a widespread belief that one should use the truth even against love or vice versa. But truth and love need each other. St Teresa Benedicta is a witness to this. The “martyr for love”, who gave her life for her friends, let no one surpass her in love. At the same time, with her whole being she sought the truth, of which she wrote: “No spiritual work comes into the world without great suffering. It always challenges the whole person”.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross says to us all: Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>Finally, the new saint teaches us that love for Christ undergoes suffering. Whoever truly loves does not stop at the prospect of suffering: he accepts communion in suffering with the one he loves.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>Aware of what her Jewish origins implied, Edith Stein spoke eloquently about them: “Beneath the Cross I understood the destiny of God’s People.... Indeed, today I know far better what it means to be the Lord’s bride under the sign of the Cross. But since it is a mystery, it can never be understood by reason alone”.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>The mystery of the Cross gradually enveloped her whole life, spurring her to the point of making the supreme sacrifice. As a bride on the Cross, Sr Teresa Benedicta did not only write profound pages about the “science of the Cross”, but was thoroughly trained in the school of the Cross. Many of our contemporaries would like to silence the Cross. But nothing is more eloquent than the Cross when silenced! The true message of suffering is a lesson of love. Love makes suffering fruitful and suffering deepens love.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>Through the experience of the Cross, Edith Stein was able to open the way to a new encounter with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith and the Cross proved inseparable to her. Having matured in the school of the Cross, she found the roots to which the tree of her own life was attached. She understood that it was very important for her “to be a daughter of the chosen people and to belong to Christ not only spiritually, but also through blood”.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24).</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>Dear brothers and sisters, the divine Teacher spoke these words to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. What he gave his chance but attentive listener we also find in the life of Edith Stein, in her “ascent of Mount Carmel”. The depth of the divine mystery became perceptible to her in the silence of contemplation. Gradually, throughout her life, as she grew in the knowledge of God, worshiping him in spirit and truth, she experienced ever more clearly her specific vocation to ascend the Cross with Christ, to embrace it with serenity and trust, to love it by following in the footsteps of her beloved Spouse: St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is offered to us today as a model to inspire us and a protectress to call upon.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>We give thanks to God for this gift. May the new saint be an example to us in our commitment to serve freedom, in our search for the truth. May her witness constantly strengthen the bridge of mutual understanding between Jews and Christians.</span></span><br /><div style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><div><span style="color: #990000;">**********</span></div></div><div><br /></div></div><div style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11px;"><b style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">FROM TODAY'S OFFICE OF READINGS:</span></b></div></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #990000;">From the spiritual writings of S. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross</span></span><br /><span><span style="color: #222222;"><span><br /></span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span>Ave Crux, spes unica!</span></span></span><br /><span><span style="color: #222222;"><span><br /></span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span>“We greet you, Holy Cross, our only hope!” The church puts these words on our lips during the time of the passion which is dedicated to the contemplation of the bitter sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>The world is in flames. The struggle between Christ and antichrist rages openly, and so if you decide for Christ you can even be asked to sacrifice your life.</span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>Contemplate the Lord who hangs before you on the wood, because he was obedient even to the death of the cross. He came into the world not to do his own will but that of the Father. And if you wish to be the spouse of the Crucified, you must renounce completely your own will and have no other aspiration than to do the will of God.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>Before you the Redeemer hangs on the cross stripped and naked, because he chose poverty. Those who would follow him must renounce every earthly possession.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>Stand before the Lord who hangs from the cross with his heart torn open. He poured out the blood of his heart in order to win your heart. In order to follow him in holy chastity, your heart must be free from every earthly aspiration. Jesus Crucified must be the object of your every longing, of your every desire, of your every thought.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>The world is in flames: the fire can spread even to our house, but above all the flames the cross stands on high, and it cannot be burnt. The cross is the way which leads from earth to heaven. Those who embrace it with faith, love, and hope are taken up, right into the heart of the Trinity.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>The world is in flames: do you wish to put them out? Contemplate the cross: from his open heart the blood of the Redeemer pours, blood which can put out even the flames of hell. Through the faithful observance of the vows you make your heart free and open; and then the floods of that divine love will be able to flow into it, making it overflow and bear fruit to the furthest reaches of the earth.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>Through the power of the cross you can be present wherever there is pain, carried there by your compassionate charity, by that very charity which you draw from the divine heart. That charity enables you to spread every where the most precious blood in order to ease pain, save and redeem.</span></span><br /><span><span><br /></span><span>The eyes of the Crucified gaze upon you. They question you and appeal to you. Do you wish seriously to renew your alliance with him? What will your response be? “Lord, where shall I go? You alone have the words of life." Ave Crux, spes unica!</span></span></span></div><div style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 11px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-33922685874728141492023-06-09T18:39:00.003+01:002023-06-09T18:39:37.779+01:00THE OLDEST CHURCH IN ROME<div><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">- adapted from an article by Fr John Flader in the Catholic Leader </span></div></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">(Brisbane, Australia) 9 June 2023</span></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPqfuCjDB0fgGMPdMnG39dWrhvr1Ybkwen3_kE41ZczAZpyVhTseOkKwM8dS1GPf4rB13NEa3UI9s2x4QW4V9Jnw1WZYZWdZYnN4irvfA7qAPSDwID5W8I2MTySSXnElvD1z3upO-IEmItGMvEfeN71FkEIVbyW80JjKUqBxyr4v0wT-gU77IR65OsCA/s1200/S.%20Pudentiana01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1057" data-original-width="1200" height="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPqfuCjDB0fgGMPdMnG39dWrhvr1Ybkwen3_kE41ZczAZpyVhTseOkKwM8dS1GPf4rB13NEa3UI9s2x4QW4V9Jnw1WZYZWdZYnN4irvfA7qAPSDwID5W8I2MTySSXnElvD1z3upO-IEmItGMvEfeN71FkEIVbyW80JjKUqBxyr4v0wT-gU77IR65OsCA/w400-h353/S.%20Pudentiana01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Surprising as it may sound, the oldest church in Rome is that of S. Pudentiana. Indeed, it has the rank of a Basilica. It was built in the second century and is dedicated to S. Pudentiana, a second-century virgin martyr, the sister of S. Praxedes and daughter of Pudens, who is mentioned by S. Paul in his second letter to Timothy. S. Paul wrote the letter shortly before his death in Rome, and at the end he passes on greetings from Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brethren (cf. 2 Tim 4:21).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Basilica is recognised as the oldest place of Christian worship in Rome. It was built during the persecutions over a second-century house, probably during the pontificate of Pope Pius I, who was Pope between 140 and 155 AD.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The building was the residence of the Popes until, in 313, Emperor Constantine I offered the Lateran Palace in its stead. In the fourth century, during the pontificate of Pope Siricius, the building was made a Basilica. In the records of the Roman synod of 499 the building bore the title of Pudens (titulus Pudentis), indicating that Mass could be celebrated and the sacraments administered there.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As evidence of its age, the Basilica is situated below the level of the present-day street. Entrance is gained through wrought-iron gates and down steps added in the nineteenth century to a square courtyard in front of the Basilica. The architrave of the entrance hall of the façade, added in 1870, has a marble frieze that used to belong to a portal of the eleventh century. The frieze depicts four people: a man by the name of Pastore, who was the first owner of the building, S. Pudentiana, her sister Praxedes, and their father Pudens. The columns in the nave were part of the original building.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Romanesque bell tower was added in the early thirteenth century. Restorations done in 1388 by Francesco da Volterra transformed the original three naves into one and added a dome, which he designed. On the interior of the dome is a fresco by Pomarancio of angels and saints before the Saviour. The right wall of the Basilica was part of a Roman bath house, still visible, dating back to the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7OPcCM-T_mWYlxRF8LSE1ApKW-PAzUqiP_Tqp4gEQREQQ46tWUVUIOhGfcFI4KGYFQT0X-bjHBZhN8e66nsaZSBa0yttJnF6lFtmn0MrfCJFYSCfdIrv110SP6tgi1UDjebvQf7nN3W1wT1qeAlwv69riRll0LivZeStpPao3BHRac9nLe8FeKYq7g/s990/S.%20Pudentiana02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="990" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx7OPcCM-T_mWYlxRF8LSE1ApKW-PAzUqiP_Tqp4gEQREQQ46tWUVUIOhGfcFI4KGYFQT0X-bjHBZhN8e66nsaZSBa0yttJnF6lFtmn0MrfCJFYSCfdIrv110SP6tgi1UDjebvQf7nN3W1wT1qeAlwv69riRll0LivZeStpPao3BHRac9nLe8FeKYq7g/w496-h284/S.%20Pudentiana02.jpg" width="496" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A magnificent mosaic in the apse is dated to the end of the fourth century or beginning of the fifth. It is among the oldest Christian mosaics in Rome and one of the most striking in the world outside of Ravenna, the Italian city renowned for its mosaics. The nineteenth-century historian Ferdinand Gregorovius regards it as the most beautiful mosaic in Rome.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the mosaic, Christ is represented as a human figure rather than as a symbol, such as a lamb or the good shepherd, as he was in very early Christian iconography. The regal nature of Christ prefigures the majestic bearing of Christ depicted in Byzantine mosaics. He sits on a jewel-encrusted throne, wearing a golden toga with purple trim, a sign of imperial authority and emphasising the authority of Christ and his Church. He poses as a classical Roman teacher with his right hand extended. He wears a halo and he holds in his left hand the text: “Dominus conservator ecclesiae Pudentianae” (The Lord, the preserver of the church of Pudentiana).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the mosaic Christ sits among his apostles, who face the viewer and wear senatorial togas. Two female figures on either side, representing Saints Pudentiana and Praxedes or possibly the Church and the Synagogue, hold wreaths above the heads of Saints Peter and Paul. Above them are the roofs and domes of churches in the heavenly Jerusalem, or in another interpretation, of the churches built by the emperor Constantine in Jerusalem. Above Christ stands a large jewel-encrusted cross on a hill, symbolising the triumph of Christ on Calvary. On either side of the cross are the symbols of the four Evangelists – angel, lion, ox and eagle –, the oldest representations of the Evangelists in existence.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the left side of the apse is a chapel dedicated to S. Peter with part of a table on which Peter celebrated the Eucharist in the house of Pudens. The rest of the table is embedded in the papal altar in the Basilica of S. John Lateran. The Basilica is a “must see” when in Rome.</span></div><br /></span><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-86652298488015539762023-05-16T10:12:00.002+01:002023-05-16T16:57:50.042+01:00THE GREAT FIFTY DAYS<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmfWr1OSz_OZHO2Cu98LILpQ_r7lKVvVJfxKGZJ8bsyakVOa6cNI0kgnfVrN4nAomAOeIs5S3BU-YIzRvfA4BFfD4UcMx8olH4xi-y-J8gzvyW8PpQHZhf3PpTeu2Y95ly0Nezcq4Iy72cAxhPFl0KcRotYszrnKagovgECGX04NO0pJK1W3aHrVMzQ/s4032/20230416%20Paschal%20Candle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmfWr1OSz_OZHO2Cu98LILpQ_r7lKVvVJfxKGZJ8bsyakVOa6cNI0kgnfVrN4nAomAOeIs5S3BU-YIzRvfA4BFfD4UcMx8olH4xi-y-J8gzvyW8PpQHZhf3PpTeu2Y95ly0Nezcq4Iy72cAxhPFl0KcRotYszrnKagovgECGX04NO0pJK1W3aHrVMzQ/w435-h327/20230416%20Paschal%20Candle.jpg" width="435" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">Eastertide at All Saints' Benhilton</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">(click on the photo - twice - to enlarge it)</span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;">During this last week one of my friends said to me, 'Now that Easter is behind us . . .' As you would expect, I took the opportunity to remind him that - strictly speaking - Easter is not a day, or even a long weekend! Easter is a whole season lasting for 50 days, sometimes called 'THE GREAT FIFTY DAYS' of the Church calendar. Easter begins with the Easter Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday and culminates with the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That's why we use the term 'Eastertide' for this time of the year.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="gmail_default">It</span><span style="color: #222222;">’s </span><span class="gmail_default">also </span><span style="color: #222222;">why the big Paschal Candle, a symbol of Jesus the risen Lord, is prominently displayed near the nave altar and lit for all services throughout the entire fifty days. </span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;">Then, when the Easter season comes to an end, </span><span style="color: #222222;">the Paschal Candle</span><span style="color: #222222;"> is moved to a place of honour in the baptistry by the font, where it is lit during baptisms. The candles given to the newly baptised are lit from it, reminding them (and the rest of us!) that in the miracle of baptism Jesus joins us to his dying and rising, and gives us his light to shine in a world where darkness can often seem to have the upper hand. </span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Paschal Candle is brought back to the altar and placed near the coffin during funerals. This is a powerful sign to mourners that the risen Jesus shares his victory over death with all his people, and that even the most tragic death and our deepest grief cannot destroy that victory. The dancing flame of the Paschal Candle reminds us, in the words of S. Augustine of Hippo, that “we are an Easter people, and ‘alleluia’ is our song”.</span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div></div><p><br /></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-48797086955959846742023-04-02T14:14:00.009+01:002023-04-02T15:29:09.542+01:00WHY PALMS ON PALM SUNDAY?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1f90UhdjKpwrRPjGStbBG1HRTouR2QHE-CugU7g1qpkOjt2bu2Hfbnz9eYA25tpmDAQFFl6xUf3kaWebkq7_6qZt1SEDHCYIheyRVmFwz1lim3QFr_dvigjQ2oWOhB9vaAF5XdaaO6f3UKgjX71HGGLRdHioapQpK3R0G7zMiLz5glzHBhTxXYBNlzw/s320/Palm%20Sun%3F.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="320" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1f90UhdjKpwrRPjGStbBG1HRTouR2QHE-CugU7g1qpkOjt2bu2Hfbnz9eYA25tpmDAQFFl6xUf3kaWebkq7_6qZt1SEDHCYIheyRVmFwz1lim3QFr_dvigjQ2oWOhB9vaAF5XdaaO6f3UKgjX71HGGLRdHioapQpK3R0G7zMiLz5glzHBhTxXYBNlzw/s1600/Palm%20Sun%3F.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Here is </span><span style="color: #990000; text-align: start;"><a href="about://"><b><span style="color: blue;">an excellent article</span></b></a></span><span style="text-align: start;"></span><span> from Alice Linsley’s ‘The Bible and Anthropology’ blog about the background to this day, and the meaning of the palms.</span></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">When the Romans invaded Judea in 63 B.C., there were thick forests of date palm trees stretching over a range of 7 miles across the Jordan Valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea in the south. The trees grew to a height of 80 feet and had branches all year round.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In ancient Israel the palm branches were used each year for the festival of Sukkot to make roofing for the booths. Palm branches were used to thatch the roofs of homes and sheep cotes, to create canopies over open market spaces, and for ceremonies like weddings, etc. They were used so extensively that the Judean palms nearly disappeared from the Jordan Valley.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>There are efforts to bring back the Judean date palm. In 2005, </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="text-align: start;"><a href="about://"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>Dr. Elaine Solowey</b></span></a></span><span style="text-align: start;"></span><span> germinated a 2000-year seed that had been recovered decades earlier from an archaeological excavation at the fortified high place Masada. The “Methuselah Tree” (shown below) is growing in a protected environment in Jerusalem. Genetic tests indicate that the Methuselah Tree is closely related to an ancient variety of date palm from Egypt known as </span><span face="-webkit-standard, serif" style="text-align: start;"><a href="about://"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>Hayany</b></span></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: start;">.</span><span style="text-align: start;"></span><span> The ancient flora and fauna of the Jordan Valley and the Nile Valley are similar.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Methuselah date palm is now producing dates. These are the kind of palm branches that would have been used to hail King Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKLkq4DHWM79gPpDWq0eMXD6x-NiUbeegd8M236ZZOYvHSB91lozQM3Owj8ppPWGYD17hKFnPbwLDuN5PI4-9BYYaJyIrpL3JZb4nJQo1nqDlCk3bNUIdT2jhKFi7vm4xhPG0vSbUXyF1p4fbxDnENX3bs4jKIX4k1BecsG7Gr3TY0Qa8Xv9usn9KG/w488-h370/judeandatepalmmethuselah.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="488" /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Methusleah Tree</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Credit: </span><span style="color: #990000; text-align: start;"> </span><b><a href="about://" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: blue;">Benjitheijneb </span></a><a href="about://" style="text-align: start;"><span style="color: blue;">via Wikimedia Commons</span></a></b></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: start;"></span>
</span><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the people greeted Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, they greeted him with palm branches as a king to be enthroned. Ceremonial installation of rulers with palms was an ancient tradition. It had been a practice of the Jebusite people of Jerusalem before David’s time. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fresh palm branches are still used among many peoples of Central and East Africa at the enthronement of a sovereign and a priest of high rank. Even today, fresh palm fronds are used ceremonially at the installation of Ijebu rulers and to decorate places of worship. Jude Adebo Adeleye Ogunade writes in his memoir about growing up Ijebu. He was warned not to touch the leaves of the Igi-Ose tree because, as his Mama Eleni explained, “That tree is the tree whose leaves are used to install Chiefs and Kings of Ijebu and as your grandfather was a custodian of the rites of chieftaincy and kingship you must not play with its leaves.” </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The University of Oxford, Institute Paper, n°7, (1937) on Medicinal Plants lists the leaves of the Igi-Ose as a blood purifier.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Related reading: Trees of the Bible, Tree Grown from 2000 Year Seed Has Reproduced; Jesus Rode on a Donkey; Horticulture in the Ancient World</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; text-align: left;">Related reading: </span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><u><a href="https://asa-cwis.blogspot.com/2017/03/trees-of-bible.html" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span>Trees of the Bible</span></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left;">,</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left;"> </span><a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tree-grown-2000-year-old-seed-has-reproduced-180954746/" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span>Tree Grown from 2000 Year Seed Has Reproduced</span></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left;">; </span><a href="https://teachgoodwriting.blogspot.com/2019/04/jesus-rode-on-donkey.html" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span>Jesus Rode on a Donkey</span></a><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left;">; </span><a href="https://asa-cwis.blogspot.com/2017/04/horticulture-in-ancient-world.html" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span>Horticulture in the Ancient World</span></a></u></span></span></p></div><p><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-36417269681333161672023-04-01T18:27:00.002+01:002023-04-01T18:28:38.009+01:00HOLY WEEK 2023 at ALL SAINTS' BENHILTON<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_edZuvganbj28J-sySh7h_wv_ru1ZanjuIhoMfaGTyXQ-OEeCB0vvEXEpjdrCs5nc7Am4gK05THWzNsGfld6P50aF7NoL41zgVyfPsTsAiukG7I7iao_9kQ3XE65Ha7eOeQ8MsF2pBYrwIXkTovvqXW6VZdaarcb-6BNNu8iApLKBhhSBA0QEV3JfGA/s896/2023%20Hwk%20flyer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="626" height="551" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_edZuvganbj28J-sySh7h_wv_ru1ZanjuIhoMfaGTyXQ-OEeCB0vvEXEpjdrCs5nc7Am4gK05THWzNsGfld6P50aF7NoL41zgVyfPsTsAiukG7I7iao_9kQ3XE65Ha7eOeQ8MsF2pBYrwIXkTovvqXW6VZdaarcb-6BNNu8iApLKBhhSBA0QEV3JfGA/w385-h551/2023%20Hwk%20flyer.jpg" width="385" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">The traditional services of Holy Week are arranged with music, Scripture readings, art, drama and traditional ceremonial so as to draw us spiritually into the suffering, dying and rising of Jesus.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">We do not pass glibly to the joy of Easter Day without treading the road to Calvary with its pain and sorrow. Our journey is measured and reflective. It changes us. Holy Week is always a fresh experience of God's wonderful transforming love, a deeper knowledge of sins forgiven, and a new grasp of the victory God is seeking to win in our lives as we allow ourselves to be transformed by his grace.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">We'd love to have you come and join us for Holy Week. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">(Click on the flyer to enlarge it.)</span></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-24600444914972334112023-03-21T09:20:00.002+00:002023-03-21T09:35:06.900+00:00LIVING WATER - Today's Mass Readings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip7CI3lprQsvAIHJrLCTVgXWJbVakaqme_8WE9o3PYff5VDmbumQ-HGp7RAwbxvyIWxXfalaFsnCw9q9XrZ4iB8tJIvVGSHEmyUkA1-NgffuzXAOuGiROGJR1PVaU7_DxfYrga2DeDUaia/s1600/Bethseda.Jesus.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip7CI3lprQsvAIHJrLCTVgXWJbVakaqme_8WE9o3PYff5VDmbumQ-HGp7RAwbxvyIWxXfalaFsnCw9q9XrZ4iB8tJIvVGSHEmyUkA1-NgffuzXAOuGiROGJR1PVaU7_DxfYrga2DeDUaia/w400-h378/Bethseda.Jesus.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Throughout the Scriptures, water is a very powerful symbol. Sometimes it is a sign of death and destruction such as in the Great Flood (Genesis 6:5 – 10:32) or when the chariots and horses of the persecuting Egyptians were drowned. (Exodus 14:22-31)</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Often, however, water symbolises life, as we see with the Israelites' Meribah in the desert (Numbers 20:1-12) and the writings of the prophets. We are reminded of this at baptisms, because the prayer for blessing the water calls to mind all the ways throughout the Scriptures that God used water to give life to his people.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">In the first reading of today's Mass (Ezekiel 47:1-12, we see the vision of a river that that starts modestly as it flows out from under temple, but eventually becomes a great surging torrent torrent flowing down the valley into the desert, bringing new life and healing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">In St John's Gospel the theme of Jesus as the giver of living water is very important, and we are to keep in mind the Old Testament picture of a flood of healing grace as we study that Gospel's portrait of Jesus. The pool of Bethesda is a place of healing and cleansing. But lying by this pool is a man who has been sick for 38 years. Jesus asks why the man hadn't reached the healing waters, and the man explains, “I have no one to put me into the pool”.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">So Jesus heals him, showing himself to be the fulfilment of the healing waters and the one to whom these Old Testament signs pointed.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">The early Church Fathers saw in this a prefiguring of Christian Baptism, when in the water of rebirth Jesus gives us new life.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">Here is a very short but </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">powerful</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">homily from Metropolitan Anthony, who gives the account his own distinctive application:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We have heard today in the Gospel of a man who for thirty eight years had laid paralysed. The only thing that separated him from healing was the possibility to reach the waters, which the angel brought into motion once a year. Thirty eight years had he attempted to move towards healing but someone else has been quicker than he and stolen healing from him. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">How many are there now in the world, how many have been and will be in this world of ours who need healing, who are paralysed by fear, paralysed by all that prevents us from moving with boldness and purpose towards fullness of life? How many? And who are those who will take them and help them to receive healing instead of seeking it for themselves? Let us look at ourselves, not at each other but ourselves. What have we learnt from the Gospel?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJLMbnFag0sxee1fTzDkPAJ5hur2IQEjl5v1KaRX1Bwd2tMVhTHZgQncU2W86H11bWuI_XbLDmAmzkh2jnkATVhn0aM0Sz47iuIG-eWvXCAa1RvcWP0LcZTUqX8l3rfCL5hMlcjGfdCh8/s1600/metropanthony.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJLMbnFag0sxee1fTzDkPAJ5hur2IQEjl5v1KaRX1Bwd2tMVhTHZgQncU2W86H11bWuI_XbLDmAmzkh2jnkATVhn0aM0Sz47iuIG-eWvXCAa1RvcWP0LcZTUqX8l3rfCL5hMlcjGfdCh8/s1600/metropanthony.jpg" /></a>Christ says that no-one has true love who is not prepared to give his life for his neighbour, and the neighbour, as it is quite clear also from the Gospel, is not the one whom we like, whom we love, who is close to us, it is whoever needs us.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ask yourself this question. There are number of people around you who would believe, who would gladly start a new life, who would bless you and God for giving them courage to move not physical but spiritual limbs that are tied. And let us ask ourselves, what do we do, what have we done, what are we capable of doing to help them? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The waters of Siloam are an image of God, of His healing power. When God comes close, when we become aware that He is there, near, do we look around to see who needs Him more than we do? No. We rush forward, we want to be those who will sit at His feet, we are those who wish to touch the hem of His garment and be healed, we are those - and this is even worse, - we are those who wish to be seen as His disciples and companions so that people may look at us and wonder, admire us, at times almost worship us, the companions of Jesus, the friends of God become man. Who of us is prepared to step aside, to become inconspicuous, or rather to help another to step forward instead of us when we know that we will be the losers in a way, - in a way only because if we do this, we will have lost what is thought we coveted but we will have become disciples of Christ who gave His life that others may live.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Let us reflect on the story. It is not simply an old story about things that happened about two thousand years ago, it is something that is happening every day and we are those who rush forward and prevent others from merging themselves into the healing waters of Siloam. Let us listen to St. John the Divine, the teacher of true love, let us be ready to sacrifice all we long for, all we desire for someone else to have it, to be given it by God, let us be prepared to pay the price of other people’s finding freedom, life on all levels, even on the simplest level of food and shelter and the warmth of an attentive gaze or a loving, sober word. Let us become free of selves, and then how many will be saved, saved from hunger, from homelessness, saved from the dominion of others, saved from all that is fetters and imprisonment of life. Let us become what Christ was - the One that sets free in the name of truth and of life. Amen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span">(</span><span style="text-align: left;">Metropolitan Anthony Bloom 1914-2003) was bishop of the Diocese of Sourozh, the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland. He was a sought-after spiritual director. </span>Go <b><a href="http://www.mitras.ru/eng/eng_archive.htm">HERE</a></b> for more of Metropolitan Anthony's homilies)</span><span style="color: #990000;"> </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTW1_gS7JaD5-aYAmDZbh8_vZdrdikzx93R8XsuUZzYBR5gg69q5nz299NrglstonIyCOIzAFVFDMrg2pcv8Vf7MfNJnbwhocH_GEz2USuf5UmTMGPV-NO-4mOUwB8fEc_0cNQu77VO20/s1600/bethesda-416x312.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitTW1_gS7JaD5-aYAmDZbh8_vZdrdikzx93R8XsuUZzYBR5gg69q5nz299NrglstonIyCOIzAFVFDMrg2pcv8Vf7MfNJnbwhocH_GEz2USuf5UmTMGPV-NO-4mOUwB8fEc_0cNQu77VO20/s320/bethesda-416x312.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000;">The Bethesda Pool, where Jesus heals the paralytic man in the Gospel of John, is today a complex site. It appears to have been a mikveh, or ritual bath. It was built over in subsequent periods with chapels and churches that are still visible today.</span></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-76135837833215657652023-03-17T00:30:00.003+00:002023-03-17T13:53:11.080+00:00S. Patrick, Bishop († 461)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Jc_DQDXNEpgEpHZHjnr4hmRIsebJX5L4ABcqXuNFznMecPDGExW0fh9j5OJ4fyTe61gUkXLwg5YhFsddNdnHbQV4pCb1QBp3hYWsUIG0ZPndUfbphsrvTSKQUiedGa8WyebUOhuYQ8IK3W88e4Pp9HI1aDoHCGU71a7o76nOjWrX0nKWZYDvRuv7hg/s1200/Patrick%20St%20blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Jc_DQDXNEpgEpHZHjnr4hmRIsebJX5L4ABcqXuNFznMecPDGExW0fh9j5OJ4fyTe61gUkXLwg5YhFsddNdnHbQV4pCb1QBp3hYWsUIG0ZPndUfbphsrvTSKQUiedGa8WyebUOhuYQ8IK3W88e4Pp9HI1aDoHCGU71a7o76nOjWrX0nKWZYDvRuv7hg/w320-h320/Patrick%20St%20blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><em style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101);"><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: inherit;">Blessed are the meek (the gentle): they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:4).</span></em></div></em><span><br /></span><div style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to Pope Francis, “Meekness can be seen by how one reacts to a hostile situation. Anyone can appear meek when everything is peaceful, but how does one react if one is under attack, offended, threatened?”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101);"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101);"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Patrick, who is remembered in the Church's Calendar today, knew hostility. He was fifteen when he was captured from his family’s estate in northwest Britain and made a slave to an Irish chieftain. He was not an especially religious boy, but his six-year captivity became a training-ground for prayer. Even as he was tried by hunger, loneliness, and the raw Irish weather, he came to realise his deep dependence on God.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101);"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Inspired in a dream, he escaped at last and returned to his homeland. His family made him promise never to leave again. But then, in another dream, a letter came “from the Irish”: “We beseech you, holy youth, to come and walk once more among us.” Patrick admitted: “I was exceedingly touched in my heart and could read no more.”</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101);"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He was ordained a priest and then consecrated a bishop, and sold his own inheritance to finance the mission. Returning to Ireland, Patrick devoted the rest of his life to serving those who had once enslaved him. He braved all sorts of dangers and hostility to teach, preach, and baptise. He ordained young men and saw many young women consecrate their lives to Christ. The “Apostle to the Irish”, Patrick is venerated worldwide.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><em style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><em><span style="color: black;">All-loving Father, through the intercession of Saint Patrick, help me to serve even those who revile me.</span></em></div></em><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(101, 101, 101); color: #656565;"><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>(From the December 2021 edition of Magnificat. Subscriptions <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://catholicherald.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3Dc9f22213bc06963a5e8df3944%26id%3D32907fa39e%26e%3D9f96e9ea9f&source=gmail&ust=1679037821883000&usg=AOvVaw0iqd21pOkagYE88ZxjFSjX" href="https://catholicherald.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c9f22213bc06963a5e8df3944&id=32907fa39e&e=9f96e9ea9f" style="color: #656565; font-weight: normal;" target="_blank">here</a>.)</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br /></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfZRq5rh8BiNM5xOeKtLy7NqegBJtqj06OPgOfTUjooliZAqO-Nj-cEd7PsPlnjWK1ASGTzbNRbgsrzGgSQNsDkPgK5unaubDnKHWXHv5SIkK8NlG9Fw8X6jQrYIHEVlhMNvc-04rztXKIiLNQVdJGS_6UCTls-g7kuY2D0eFmPec6OXViVPH61C1tA/s731/Patrick%20Christ%20within%20me.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="731" data-original-width="490" height="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZfZRq5rh8BiNM5xOeKtLy7NqegBJtqj06OPgOfTUjooliZAqO-Nj-cEd7PsPlnjWK1ASGTzbNRbgsrzGgSQNsDkPgK5unaubDnKHWXHv5SIkK8NlG9Fw8X6jQrYIHEVlhMNvc-04rztXKIiLNQVdJGS_6UCTls-g7kuY2D0eFmPec6OXViVPH61C1tA/w375-h558/Patrick%20Christ%20within%20me.jpg" width="375" /></a></div><br /><strong><br /></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br /></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br /></strong></div></span>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-72567565697049341542023-02-11T15:45:00.004+00:002023-02-11T15:45:59.457+00:00Our Lady of Lourdes<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJvm_DwKnAQpr-KDjJUe9H-lllIWpfrYbWdU8QJkz7sLC42VP9m5KjUrzHC9RO-zpBufMewo9W4BWguIygSallfGYew-T_gV1Z4i-DEKfLnw_mbB2ySeFdQesJb2IWAJSmMJjxN3nm8xK/s1600/Mary+OLLourdes.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJvm_DwKnAQpr-KDjJUe9H-lllIWpfrYbWdU8QJkz7sLC42VP9m5KjUrzHC9RO-zpBufMewo9W4BWguIygSallfGYew-T_gV1Z4i-DEKfLnw_mbB2ySeFdQesJb2IWAJSmMJjxN3nm8xK/w427-h640/Mary+OLLourdes.jpg" width="427" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O God,</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 20.799999237060547px;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">who in the Blessed Virgin Mary</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">consecrated a dwelling fit for your Son:</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Grant that we, </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">celebrating the appearing of Our Lady </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">to Saint Bernadette,</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">may receive healing both in body and soul;</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">who lives and reigns with you</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">in the unity of the Holy Spirit, </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">one God, for ever and ever.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amen.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/tv-lourdes/" target="_blank">Click HERE to visit Lourdes in real time </a></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/tv-lourdes/" target="_blank">via the television ministry of the shrine</a></b></div><br />Anglicans often try to compare Lourdes and Walsingham; but I think that is wrong. Each of Our Lady's shrines has its own particular charism, its own emphasis, and its unique ministry. I do believe that God has graced the shrine at Lourdes in a special way, and, through the intercession of Our Lady, millions who have prayed in that holy place over the last 162 years have experienced the healing power of Jesus and the refreshing of the Holy Spirit ("the rivers of living water"). Hebrews 11:6 says that God rewards those who seek him. To go on prayerful pilgrimage to this place that he has particularly graced (or other places like it) enables us to be open to his love, and as a result we experience a spiritual renewal or receive some other precious gift from him.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you are ever in France, you MUST visit Lourdes. You can get there on an overnight train from Paris. As well as accommodation for the well-heeled, the town has some very basic and cheap places to stay if you are on a shoestring budget. It's good to book in for for two or three days and join in the pilgrimage devotions. Read, pray, stroll around. You will be blessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Scroll down, and after the photographs there is the homily preached by the then Archbishop of Canterbury at the Society of Mary Lourdes Pilgrimage in 2008.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IGOJ5947LGGN-_jWdDH86gEgzUhvgUPJNYi_Oaf3P-pzhmc2nXjAOEdUGAbYtEl2kegL8CD_xx7n0AaSwAFwRA0Zx6TGC5ynZg7CzgknGOhkuNWLQSpDPLNZLeVPJEpfXOteTY5yth6f/s1600/after+mass61.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IGOJ5947LGGN-_jWdDH86gEgzUhvgUPJNYi_Oaf3P-pzhmc2nXjAOEdUGAbYtEl2kegL8CD_xx7n0AaSwAFwRA0Zx6TGC5ynZg7CzgknGOhkuNWLQSpDPLNZLeVPJEpfXOteTY5yth6f/s1600/after+mass61.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xJLSINrt-eRqJ1iWWQYL9l5fbhzj2tkg19b1AxUIkSIDNtIPbtQj167xKDV-omGSVDX_84EheZ72prGVfWT8bxcnKsvrToXjhODfdbzC23HfWHwYZh8N8cKly6Rgd8xLupro0PNVG0VA/s1600/Lourdes+Ch.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xJLSINrt-eRqJ1iWWQYL9l5fbhzj2tkg19b1AxUIkSIDNtIPbtQj167xKDV-omGSVDX_84EheZ72prGVfWT8bxcnKsvrToXjhODfdbzC23HfWHwYZh8N8cKly6Rgd8xLupro0PNVG0VA/s1600/Lourdes+Ch.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQcw5Ud9rE0dbtTaNg4yA6ssSNXguHGgMRpEdM12ZeuyU_mw08QFKdfHFMM9Dew3Ijs1BIhOHgqBm6hT0lmmZFmedHUDhScvakt4rys3eyV80kG8AMOgr-zFgMaGc0JlXcm4RozE_GreUG/s1600/Lourdes+procession.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQcw5Ud9rE0dbtTaNg4yA6ssSNXguHGgMRpEdM12ZeuyU_mw08QFKdfHFMM9Dew3Ijs1BIhOHgqBm6hT0lmmZFmedHUDhScvakt4rys3eyV80kG8AMOgr-zFgMaGc0JlXcm4RozE_GreUG/s1600/Lourdes+procession.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOX2mvEbPOVXRmO18kVHGGYJ-ZlS7pQqOnFFyB968qFMUrC72gaWZWpEuh1KO9xJFQ27yRaxOkpz4sh4bdcIBSjXaTQBKtOje62nJ99qQrF4kl87KWqYRAlf9d9eF8UXM1l5qTMUKkuEXq/s1600/after+mass87.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOX2mvEbPOVXRmO18kVHGGYJ-ZlS7pQqOnFFyB968qFMUrC72gaWZWpEuh1KO9xJFQ27yRaxOkpz4sh4bdcIBSjXaTQBKtOje62nJ99qQrF4kl87KWqYRAlf9d9eF8UXM1l5qTMUKkuEXq/s1600/after+mass87.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNvi0iVZiQBrxzWspZA5aqs58DuAbfn92_DldddiYXL-zBpflZoDPtjr16DzZsyN9raHN-1e4Ojmi9GBZ0YG3j2ou8ZxEFbnh5-mQV0O2ID9O1Ealw7ikgbI2Q1AL4wqkBHI6gM0rpZzO-/s1600/lourdes,+la+grotte.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNvi0iVZiQBrxzWspZA5aqs58DuAbfn92_DldddiYXL-zBpflZoDPtjr16DzZsyN9raHN-1e4Ojmi9GBZ0YG3j2ou8ZxEFbnh5-mQV0O2ID9O1Ealw7ikgbI2Q1AL4wqkBHI6gM0rpZzO-/s1600/lourdes,+la+grotte.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtIzU48jAUC5hUpA6xR-2KIDhy2FUIkIrZLF-wFuLqeCazWwbB9c2qyC1IPR9pEEuca64qb3rm52be9K4f2yOFjTg7XKxWSPMrYz-mDs1pPynPiEiKcEnjM0uqTEXvKNSQkb75pUrzlAw/s1600/after+mass79.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtIzU48jAUC5hUpA6xR-2KIDhy2FUIkIrZLF-wFuLqeCazWwbB9c2qyC1IPR9pEEuca64qb3rm52be9K4f2yOFjTg7XKxWSPMrYz-mDs1pPynPiEiKcEnjM0uqTEXvKNSQkb75pUrzlAw/s1600/after+mass79.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl6ZBtEUzanlKq78NVowIb7biSeRsAB3o16AqR6vN31IGsKLtm-Ocq2IOqYPSjPab33sv3ZDBKyuNB5nNSw7z-I8R0mHkMTCzNHPLFYI6SyqjihJw392IikyRsneJttOyn-W1HwzzBIuLN/s1600/after+mass76.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl6ZBtEUzanlKq78NVowIb7biSeRsAB3o16AqR6vN31IGsKLtm-Ocq2IOqYPSjPab33sv3ZDBKyuNB5nNSw7z-I8R0mHkMTCzNHPLFYI6SyqjihJw392IikyRsneJttOyn-W1HwzzBIuLN/s1600/after+mass76.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">Archbishop Rowan Williams’ Homily </span></b></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">at the Society of Mary Pilgrimage </span></b></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">to Lourdes, 2008</span></b></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 11px;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>(From the archive of his speeches and sermons </span><br /><span>as Archbishop of Canterbury <b><a href="http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1221/archbishop-of-canterburys-sermon-for-the-international-mass-at-lourdes" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.</span><span>)</span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The babe in my womb leaped for joy.’ (Luke 1.44)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mary comes to visit Elizabeth, carrying Jesus in her womb. The Son of God is still invisible – not yet born, not even known about by Elizabeth; yet Elizabeth recognises Mary as bearing within her the hope and desire of all nations, and life stirs in the deep places of her own body. The one who will prepare the way for Jesus, John the Baptist, moves as if to greet the hope that is coming, even though it cannot yet be seen.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mary appears to us here as the first missionary, ‘the first messenger of the gospel’ as Bishop Perrier of Lourdes has called her: the first human being to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to another; and she does it simply by carrying Christ within her. She reminds us that mission begins not in delivering a message in words but in the journey towards another person with Jesus in your heart. She testifies to the primary importance of simply carrying Jesus, even before there are words or deeds to show him and explain him. This story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth is in many ways a very strange one; it’s not about the communication of rational information from one speaker to another, but a primitive current of spiritual electricity running from the unborn Christ to the unborn Baptist. But mission it undoubtedly is, because it evokes recognition and joy. Something happens that prepares the way for all the words that will be spoken and the deeds that will be done. The believer comes with Christ dwelling in them by faith, and God makes that current come alive, and a response begins, not yet in words or commitments, but simply in recognising that here is life.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When Mary came to Bernardette, she came at first as an anonymous figure, a beautiful lady, a mysterious ‘thing’, not yet identified as the Lord’s spotless Mother. And Bernardette – uneducated, uninstructed in doctrine – leapt with joy, recognising that here was life, here was healing. Remember those accounts of her which speak of her graceful, gliding movements at the Lady’s bidding; as if she, like John in Elizabeth’s womb, begins to dance to the music of the Incarnate Word who is carried by his Mother. Only bit by bit does Bernardette find the words to let the world know; only bit by bit, we might say, does she discover how to listen to the Lady and echo what she has to tell us.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So there is good news for all of us who seek to follow Jesus’ summons to mission in his Name; and good news too for all who find their efforts slow and apparently futile, and for all who still can’t find their way to the ‘right’ words and the open commitment. Our first and overarching task is to carry Jesus, gratefully and faithfully, with us in all our doings: like St Teresa of Avila, we might do this quite prosaically by having with us always a little picture or a cross in our pockets, so that we constantly ‘touch base’ with the Lord. We can do it by following the guidance of the Orthodox spiritual tradition and repeating silently the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy on me, a sinner’. And if we are faithful in thus carrying Christ with us, something will happen, some current will stir and those we are with will feel, perhaps well below the conscious surface, a movement of life and joy which they may not understand at all. And we may never see it or know about it; people may not even connect it with us, yet it will be there – because Jesus speaks always to what is buried in the heart of men and women, the destiny they were made for. Whether they know it or not, there is that within them which is turned towards him. Keep on carrying Jesus and don’t despair: mission will happen, in spite of all, because God in Christ has begun his journey into the heart.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And when we encounter those who say they would ‘like to believe’ but can’t, who wonder how they will ever find their way to a commitment that seems both frightening and hard to understand, we may have something to say to them too: ‘Don’t give up; try and hold on to the moments of deep and mysterious joy; wait patiently for something to come to birth in you.’ It certainly isn’t for us as Christians to bully and cajole, and to try and force people into commitments they are not ready to make – but we can and should seek to be there, carrying Jesus, and letting his joy come through, waiting for the leap of recognition in someone’s heart.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, as often as not, we ourselves are the one who need to hear the good news; we need people around us who carry Jesus, because we who call ourselves believers all have our moments of confusion and loss of direction. Others fail us or hurt us; the Church itself may seem confused or weak or even unloving, and we don’t feel we are being nourished as we need, and directed as we should be. Yet this story of Mary and Elizabeth tells us that the Incarnate Word of God is always already on the way to us, hidden in voices and faces and bodies familiar and unfamiliar. Silently, Jesus is constantly at work, and he is seeking out what is deepest in us, to touch the heart of our joy and hope.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps when we feel lost and disillusioned, he is gently drawing us away from a joy or a hope that is only human, limited to what we can cope with or what we think on the surface of our minds that we want. Perhaps it’s part of a journey towards his truth, not just ours. We too need to look and listen for the moments of recognition and the leap of joy deep within. It may be when we encounter a person in whom we sense that the words we rather half-heartedly use about God are a living and actual reality. (That’s why the lives of the saints, ancient and modern, matter so much.) It may be when a moment of stillness or wonder suddenly overtakes us in the middle of a familiar liturgy that we think we know backwards, and we have for a second the feeling that this is the clue to everything – if only we could put it into words. It may be when we come to a holy place, soaked in the hopes and prayers of millions, and suddenly see that, whatever we as individuals may be thinking or feeling, some great reality is moving all around and beneath and within us, whether we grasp it or not. These are our ‘Elizabeth’ moments – when life stirs inside, heralding some future with Christ that we can’t yet get our minds around.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s very tempting to think of mission as something to be done in the same way we do – or try to do – so much else, with everything depending on planning and assessments of how we’re doing, and whether the results are coming out right. For that matter, it’s tempting to think of the Church’s whole life in these sorts of terms. Of course we need to use our intelligence, we need to be able to tell the difference between good and bad outcomes, we need to marshal all the skill and enthusiasm we can when we respond to God’s call to share his work of transforming the world through Jesus and his Spirit. But Mary’s mission tells us that there is always a deeper dimension, grounded in the Christ who is at work unknown and silent, reaching out to the deeply buried heart of each person and making the connection; living faithfully at the heart of the Church itself, in the middle of its disasters and betrayals and confusions, still giving himself without reserve. All that we call ‘our’ mission depends on this; and if we are wise, we know that we are always going to be surprised by the echoes and connections that come to life where we are not expecting it. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">True mission is ready to be surprised by God – ‘surprised by joy’, in the lovely phrase of C. S. Lewis. Elizabeth knew the whole history of Israel and how it was preparing the way for God to come and visit his people – but she was still surprised into newness of life and understanding when the child leapt in her womb. Bernardette’s neighbours and teachers and parish clergy knew all they thought they needed to know about the Mother of God – and they needed to be surprised by this inarticulate, powerless, marginal teenager who had leapt up in the joy of recognition to meet Mary as her mother, her sister, bearer of her Lord and Redeemer. Our prayer here must be that, renewed and surprised in this holy place, we may be given the overshadowing strength of the Spirit to carry Jesus wherever we go, in the hope that joy will leap from heart to heart in all our human encounters; and that we may also be given courage to look and listen for that joy in our own depths when the clarity of the good news seems far away and the sky is cloudy. </span></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHzDIKpQnAiSFU5EncTsdcjo3WLCWyGDMkJsTZ4oaDhvpc_a46DsCnD1SqD9-PVzGjOt0ee2fj-LU1fRKSa8zKue4ICCLBBKqhB-kBTUU44iGflMd97vgf5eZpWDwoR1EsJwaWSrXOzlV6/s1600/Williams+Lourdes+2008.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHzDIKpQnAiSFU5EncTsdcjo3WLCWyGDMkJsTZ4oaDhvpc_a46DsCnD1SqD9-PVzGjOt0ee2fj-LU1fRKSa8zKue4ICCLBBKqhB-kBTUU44iGflMd97vgf5eZpWDwoR1EsJwaWSrXOzlV6/s400/Williams+Lourdes+2008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-21373454604253907082023-02-02T11:42:00.007+00:002023-02-02T13:30:20.431+00:00Candlemas - Turtledoves and THE Lamb<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uyuAoLm9bTF3c4JcFA0sxQQs4cVnZT-TDh_e0FIAieaOkVJJ1TBmkynaeObl-Q6dAPgPDt_m7dHzGcnJDHpPEWJUvVA6sMYDk93gzOYqIJRV_23xQGEkWoNDmaZohUjjjB85J6PIJ6I3Dn4FB11TP0MkfTk71AjRu3wqwjbIYaaWr2OLNX1GCa8SDQ/s987/candlemas.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="987" data-original-width="915" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-uyuAoLm9bTF3c4JcFA0sxQQs4cVnZT-TDh_e0FIAieaOkVJJ1TBmkynaeObl-Q6dAPgPDt_m7dHzGcnJDHpPEWJUvVA6sMYDk93gzOYqIJRV_23xQGEkWoNDmaZohUjjjB85J6PIJ6I3Dn4FB11TP0MkfTk71AjRu3wqwjbIYaaWr2OLNX1GCa8SDQ/w371-h400/candlemas.jpg" width="371" /></a></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">Forty days after the birth of Jesus, today is often regarded as rounding off the Christmas/ Epiphany season. That's why some churches (and homes) leave their Christmas decorations up until today. It's also why we like to have 'O come, all ye faithful . . .' sung quietly and reverently as a Communion Hymn in today's Mass.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.1px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">The readings and prayers for this day take us back to the birth of Jesus, and they beckon us forward to the beginning of Lent, and then his suffering and death. </span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.1px;">The Gospel reading (Luke 2:22-39) tells of Mary and Joseph going to the temple with the baby Jesus, that they might be purified 'according to the Law,' and Jesus consecrated to the Lord. The old man Simeon, full of the Holy Spirit, discerns Jesus to be God’s Messiah, 'the light to enlighten the nations'. It is for this reason that the blessing and lighting of candles has long been associated with this day. Anna, the old prophetess, who had prayed and fasted every day in expectation of the 'redemption of Jerusalem', saw Jesus and began to tell everyone about him.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Anglo-Saxon times it was <i>'. . . appointed in the ecclesiastical observances that we on this day bear our lights to church and let them be there blessed; and that we should go afterward with the light among Godʼs houses and sing the hymn that is thereto appointed. Though some men cannot sing they can, nevertheless, bear the light in their hands; for on this day was Christ, the true light, borne to the temple, Who redeemed us from darkness and bringeth us to the eternal light.' - </i>The Ritual Reason Why, by C. Walker (1886) page 197.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i></i><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1px;">n the midst of today’s joyful festival, we hear old Simeon’s enigmatic remark to our Lady - <i>'a sword shall pierce your own soul, too'</i> -, reminding us of her participation in all that Jesus suffered for our redemption.</span></span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Orthodox Christians call today’s feast 'Hypapante' (Greek for 'the encounter'), seeing in the juxtaposition of the Child and the old man the encounter of the fading age of the Old Covenant and the new era of Jesus and his Church. </span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is more than a touch of irony in the fact that the poor, if they couldn’t afford a lamb to offer in sacrifice and thanksgiving, could bring turtle doves or even pigeons. Mary and Joseph were poor, and although - according to today’s Gospel reading - they brought turtle doves or pigeons, we know that they actually brought the only Lamb that has ever really mattered: Jesus, 'Mary’s little Lamb', the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Today is our feast of candles, with the warmth of their light pointing to Jesus, the light of the world.<br /><span><br /></span><span>Each of us is given a candle today as a reminder that having received the light of Jesus, which at the very beginning of creation pierced the darkness and which no darkness can overpower, we are to shine in the darkness of our own time that others may find him and be set free to walk in his light.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: justify; widows: auto;"><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">* * * * * * * * * * </span></div><div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: left;">Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699), was a priest of the Church of England, </span><span style="text-align: left;">a Royal Chaplain, and then </span><span style="text-align: left;">Master, successively, of Jesus College and Peterhouse in Cambridge. In this poem he beautifully intertwines the themes of the Candlemas Gospel reading:</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"> </span></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">May we have leave to ask, illustrious Mother,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why thou dost turtles bring</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For thy Son’s offering,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And rather giv’st not one lamb for another? </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It seems that golden shower which th’other day</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The forward faithful East</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Poured at thy feet, made haste</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Through some devout expence to find its way. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O precious poverty, which canst appear</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Richer to holy eyes</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Than any golden prize,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And sweeter art than frankincense and myrrh! </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Come then, that silver, which thy turtles wear</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Upon their wings, shall make</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Precious thy gift, and speak</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That Son of thine, like them, all pure and fair. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But know that heaven will not be long in debt;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No, the Eternal Dove</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Down from his nest above</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shall come, and on thy son’s dear head shall sit.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Heaven will not have Him ransomed, heaven’s law</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Makes no exception</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For lambs, and such a one</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Is He: a fairer Lamb heaven never saw. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He must be offered, or the world is lost:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole world’s ransom lies</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this great sacrifice;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And He will pay its debt, whate’er it cost. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nor shall these turtles unrepayed be,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These turtles which today</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thy love for Him did pay:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thou ransom’dst Him, and He will ransom thee. </span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A dear and full redemption will He give</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thee and the world: this Son,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And none but this alone</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By His own death can make His Mother live.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">(Joseph Beaumont's poem can be found in</span></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 31px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">Thérèse, M. I Sing of a Maiden: The Mary Book of Verse. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947.)</span></div></div></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-85651749545138887612023-01-30T09:34:00.001+00:002023-01-30T09:34:38.199+00:00Professor David Flint on Charles, King and Martyr<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">I invited esteemed Professor David Flint to preach at All Saints’ Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, Australia, at a Solemn Evensong and Benediction on Sunday 30th January, 2000, commemorating the Martyrdom of King Charles 1. I have kept his sermon, and share it with you here.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOhZ-PDtbKr4e-0nc7HvGwUxn61kAnkgGpiuQUf_jam_iNJtWqMHqwwZerNsrau1ytLAgE3mqx4ol6QAWwNUX682YSkUnkKqpwIOaf2Udk4Is6f8Ki34uwZecRqtf5wNgQN2snw8q3_PVc/s1600/charles1901.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOhZ-PDtbKr4e-0nc7HvGwUxn61kAnkgGpiuQUf_jam_iNJtWqMHqwwZerNsrau1ytLAgE3mqx4ol6QAWwNUX682YSkUnkKqpwIOaf2Udk4Is6f8Ki34uwZecRqtf5wNgQN2snw8q3_PVc/s400/charles1901.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">Painting by Ernest Crofts of King Charles</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">being led to his execution (London, UK, 1901)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THAT COLD JANUARY DAY</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On that sad, bitterly cold day 351 years ago, the 30th January 1649, before he was to die, Bishop Juxon offered these words of comfort to King Charles I:- “There is but one stage more . . . which though turbulent and troublesome yet is a very short one; you may consider it will soon carry you a great way; it will carry you from Earth to Heaven, and there you shall find, to your great joy, the prize to hasten you, a crown of glory.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the King replied; “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world”.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">From a corruptible to an incorruptible crown ...</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I take as my text words which were to have been read at the King’s funeral, but which were prohibited. They are from the Fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle of the Blessed Apostle Paul to the Corinthians.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Indeed, they are part of the very lesson prescribed in the Burial Service)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; he last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The theme of this text was no doubt the inspiration for the King, for among his last words were those I have just read:- “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be, not disturbance in the world”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">With your leave, I propose to speak first on the martyrdom of the King. And second on the reasons why it is right that we remember this act of martyrdom.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THE MARTYRDOM OF THE KING</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The 30th January 1649 is a day which, is at one and the same time, a day of infamy, a day of sadness and yet, a day of glory.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is a day of infamy, for the murder of an anointed king shakes the very foundations of civilization.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shakespeare reminds us of the enormity of this crime of, this crime of the murder of a King, of Regicide. Thus Richard II laments:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not all the waters in the rough rude sea</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Can wash the balm from an anointed king;</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The breath of worldly men cannot depose</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The deputy elected by the Lord:”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not all the waters in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed King.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That the unlawful execution of the King constituted a murder - the heinous crime of Regicide - there can be little doubt. Indeed, the King himself reminders his tormentors of this. When the president, Bradshaw, reminds him he was before a court of justice, the King replies, dryly - “I am before a power.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A power. Not a court, a power. And the King throws the proceedings into disarray when he points to its fundamental illegality. Hear the King’s own words:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No earthly power can justly call me (who am your King) in question as a delinquent . . . I would not any more open my mouth upon this occasion, more than to refer myself to what I have spoken, were I in this case alone concerned: But the duty I owe to God in the preservation of the true liberty of my people will not suffer me at this time to be silent.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then the King reminds his tormentors of this fundamental proposition that a prosecution must be ruled by law:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“There is no proceeding just against any man, but what is warranted, either by God’s laws or the municipal laws of the country where he lives . . . Now I am confident this day’s proceedings cannot be warranted by God’s laws . . . Then for the law of the land I am no less confident that no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King . . . One of their maxims is “the King can do no wrong...”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the King reminds the so-called court that it was constituted only by one part of the Parliament, by a vote of the House of Commons. Even then only by a House purged of every member - except those in league with Cromwell. For as the King says:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The major part - are detained or deferred from sitting. But how the House of Commons can erect a court of Judicature which was never one itself (as is well known to all lawyers) I leave to God and the world to judge. And it were full as strange, that they should pretend to make laws without (the) King or Lords’ House...”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then the King, with remarkable prescience, anticipates Cromwell’s response - that the people have an inherent right to overthrow a tyrant. Now this is a right which will be claimed one century later in France and the United States. But it is a right which can be so terribly abused. As it was against Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. And as it was even more grotesquely abused in our own century. At Yekaterinberg. When not only the Tsar and Tsarina but also their children and servants were so brutally slain.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But let us go back to 1649.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THE KING'S TRIAL</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Can Cromwell truthfully say that the trial is justified because the people have risen up against the King?</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Charles anticipates this. Hear again the King’s own words:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And admitting, but not granting, that the people of England’s commission could grant you (this) pretended power, I see nothing to show that; for certainly you have never asked the question of the tenth man of the Kingdom, and in this way you manifestly wrong even the poorest plowman, if you demand not his free consent . . . nor can you pretend any colour for this your pretended Commission without the consent at least of the major part of every man in England of whatsoever quality or condition, which I am sure you never went about to seek, so far are you from having it.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Thus you see that I speak not for mine own right alone, as I am your King, but also for the true liberty of all my subjects, which consist not in the power of government, but in living under such laws, such a government, which may give them the best assurance of their lives, and property of their goods.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the King concludes his impeccable answer, which Cromwell does not rebut and which Cromwell knows he cannot rebut:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Thus having showed you briefly the reasons why I cannot submit to you pretended authority, without violating the trust which I have from God for the welfare and liberty of my people, I expect from you either clear reasons to continue my judgement, showing me that I am error, . . . or that you withdraw your proceedings”.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So the King’s trial was delayed. The trial was of course little more than a show trial of the sort we have seen in Soviet times. Those who sat are well aware of the illegality of their proceedings. And the “judges” are well aware of the monstrous and bloody conclusion that Cromwell demands of them.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Charles was right to say that he stood for the rule of law and the liberty of his people. For under the Lord Protector that liberty was to be snuffed out. Even the simple pleasures of life were proscribed. The Lord Protector controlled the parliament, the council. He was to even take the right to nominate his successor. Palaces and vast areas of London were to be dedicated to his use.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A DAY OF GLORY</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so the 30 January was a day of infamy and it was a day of sadness. But, my brethren, it was also a day of glory.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For Charles died not only defending the rule of law, and, as he saw it, the liberties of his people. He died for more than that. He died so that the Church itself, our Church, might live. That is why he achieved the glory of martyrdom. He was prepared to concede more political power than any Tudor King had. But he would not deny his Faith. He would not preside over the death of the Church.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the struggle with Parliament, it was clear that by 1641 the constitution had been changed to the disadvantage of the King. In fact that Parliament is now much the same position as was to be guaranteed later by the Bill of Rights at the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But although Charles had given up so much, even more was demanded. And that related to the Church.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let us recall that once the English Church had been cut off from Rome in the previous century, it could not fail to be influenced by what Gardiner calls “the tides of opinion flowing in from the perturbed continent”. (Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The Constitution Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, 1979, XV, XVI.) Indeed, at the end of Elizabeth’s reign the doctrine taught by the greater part of the clergy was Calvinist. While Elizabeth insisted on the use of the Book of Common Prayer, she was flexible. For example, she tolerated the refusal of some to wear the surplice. But Elizabeth’s successor, and Charles’ father James I were not so wise.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This festering dispute was more than about the wearing of the surplice. It was about doctrine. It was about discipline. For within the Church there would always be those who would join in the Creed and say with conviction: “And I believe One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. One which attaches special value to the doctrine of sacramental grace and the sacred ministry. One which regards the episcopacy, the bishops, as divinely ordained successors to the Apostles. One which finds comfort and authority in the writings of the Fathers and the early Councils.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The disputes about vestments and ceremony were of course the more visible evidence of a tension within the very bosom of the church, a tension which has lingered these four centuries and which is but a mirror of the whole Church.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So we find in 1628, a House of Commons Committee rails against the placing of the Communion Table, and against praying towards the East, against the use of pictures and candles, against standing during the Gloria, against making the sign of the cross. And there is outrage against the King in his “Declaration of Sports” in 1633. He promises that on Sundays after divine service “our good people not be disturbed, letted or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting or any such harmless recreation, nor from having of May games, Whitsun ales and Morris dances, and the setting up of May poles.” (But there is “. . . still prohibited all unlawful games... as bear and bull baiting and at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling...”)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Archbishop Laud’s (and the King’s) great mistake was the failed attempt to impose the Anglican liturgy on Scotland. This encouraged the English puritans who dominated parliament to want not only to remove all political powers from the King; they were determined to change the fundamental nature of the English Church so that it would no longer be part of that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, in the Grand Remonstrance of 1641, which the Commons published, with studied discourtesy, even before the King had seen it, the Puritans call for the suppression of “oppressive and unnecessary ceremonies” and that the bishops lose their right to vote in parliament. Then there is a call that the King abridge “their immoderate power usurped over the clergy and other your good subjects which they have perniciously abused to the hazard of religion, and (the) great prejudice and oppression to the laws of the Kingdom, and just liberty of your people”.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But soon the Parliament wants even more. Civil War is now inevitable. In 1642 they effectively demand that all government be in their hands. Parliament would have unlimited powers. It would be a dictatorship. Early in the war, in the Oxford Propositions the Parliament insists the King agree to a Bill:- “for the utter abolishing and taking away of all Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissioners, Deans... Chapters, Archdeacons, Canons... Chanters... Sacrists... Vicars Choral and Choristers of any Cathedral or Collegiate Church.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The English puritans are now in the ascendant. They have tasted blood. Not only do they call for Sabbath observance, there is a Bill for the perpetual suppression of stage plays. The religious enemy is now not only Popery, but to this is added “Prelacy”. Prelacy - that is the very concept, the truth of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. That now is the target.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But prelacy, the Apostolic Succession is fundamental to the King. So, the King, now in captivity, replies to the Speaker, in 1647, in these words:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“That for the abolishing Archbishops, Bishops, His Majesty clearly professeth that he cannot give his consent thereunto, both in relation as he is a Christian and a King; for the first he avows, that he is satisfied in his judgement that this order was placed in the Church by the Apostles themselves, and ever since their time hath continued in all Christian Churches throughout the world, until this last century of years; and in this Church in all times of change and reformation it hath been upheld by the wisdom of his ancestors, as the great preserver of doctrine, discipline and order in the service of God. As a King at his coronation, he hath not only taken a solemn oath to maintain this order, but His Majesty and his predecessors in their confirmations of the Great Charter (the Magna Carta), have inseparably woven the right of the Church into the liberty of the subjects”.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But he offers a compromise. This is the continuation of the existing de facto presbyterian government of the church for three years. That is not enough for Cromwell.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And that is the King’s stand. He will not surrender on this point. On this he is firm.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now in captivity he writes about this to his Roman Catholic wife, Queen Henrietta Maria who is in France. But she has little sympathy with his “tiresome conscience”. Surely, she argues, any promises he makes need not be permanently binding. And surely it is better in the end to be a Presbyterian King than no King at all. After all, it is not as if he were a Roman Catholic (Christopher Hibbert, Charles I, 1968 p.240)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the King will not give way. His conscience will not allow him to abandon the Church. He will not renounce his belief, the belief in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so he is to die for this, to die, he says, as a “Christian according to the profession of the Church of England.” And a martyr.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">REASONS FOR REMEMBERING </span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">THE KING’S MARTYRDOM</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, I come to the second part of my address. Why should we observe what was Charles’ final admonition - “Remember”? And what is all this to us, in a distant land and at another time?</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My dear brethren. The King’s martyrdom is of living significance for this reason. His sacrifice was not only for those who profess the Anglican faith, but all who affirm the Creeds. And while Anglicans may disagree on ceremony and on doctrine, they are united in their support for the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Constitution of the Anglican Church in Australia contains three Fundamental Declarations. So fundamental they cannot be altered (s.66). They are:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">First, “The Anglican Church of Australia, being a part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, holds the Christian Faith as professed by the Church of Christ from primitive times and in particular as set forth in the creeds known as the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Second, “This church receives all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as being the ultimate rule and standard of faith given by inspiration of God and containing all things necessary for salvation.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Third, “This Church will ever obey the commands of Christ, teach His doctrine, administer His sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, follow and uphold His discipline and preserve the three orders of bishops, priests and deacons in the sacred ministry.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His Grace the Archbishop of Sydney (Donald Robinson, Archbishop, 1982-93) in 1986, sitting on the Church’s Advisory Tribunal, held that the phrase “the three orders of bishops, priests and deacons... indicates that both ‘the sacred ministry’ and ‘the three orders’ in that ministry are well-known and require no further definition within this Chapter.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It is not enough to recognize merely some form of ministry, or to preserve the names of the three orders, or three orders of anyone’s devising. ‘The three orders of bishops, priests and deacons in the sacred ministry’ can only be the ministry and orders referred to in the Thirty-Nine Articles (see for example articles 19, 23, 26, 32 and 36) and in the Book of Common Prayer, especially the Ordinal. Just as ‘the canonical Scriptures’ in Section 2 of the Fundamental Declarations depend on the Thirty-Nine Articles for their correct definition (see Section 74), so ‘the three orders...in the sacred ministry’ depend on the Articles and Prayer Book for their correct definition. This definition claims catholic and apostolic, not merely Anglican, status for the three orders. The orders are in fact common to the Anglican, Roman and Orthodox communions. The sacred ministry itself is declared in the Ordinal to have been ‘appointed for the salvation of mankind’, and the orders in that ministry are said to have been in Christ’s Church ‘from the Apostles’ time and to have been appointed by God’s divine providence.’</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His Grace concludes:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“There can be no doubt that what Section 3 commits this Church to preserve are these orders in this sacred ministry.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the carefully considered opinion of the Archbishop of Sydney. In it, His Grace points out that the three orders of the sacred ministry are not merely Anglican, they are common to the Anglican Roman and Orthodox communions.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So the reason all Anglicans (indeed all Catholics, Roman and Orthodox) should give thanks for the life and service of the Martyr King is that he stood his ground. He could have surrendered. He could have washed his hands. As Pilate did. Then there would be no Church of England as we know it, as an integral part of that Holy Catholic and Apostolic church. It would not have been only the King who died on that day in January 1649. It would have been that link, the Apostle Succession, which comes to us through Augustine. That line from Augustine would have ended. As well that precious jewel the Book of Common Prayer would not have survived. It certainly would not have made its equally indelible stamp on our liturgy. And It would not have made its indelible stamp on the language and culture of the whole English speaking world. My brethren: we must therefore be eternally grateful to the Martyr King that by his life he saved these treasures for us.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">CONCLUSION</span></b></div></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I return to that sad, bitterly cold day in London. That day of infamy. The trial had been delayed because of the King’s brilliant and irrefutable argument that the trial is illegal. Cromwell has put pressure on those charged with the execution to sign the Death Warrant.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Its cruel words come down to us today:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Whereas Charles Stuart, King of England, is, and standeth convicted, attainted, and condemned of high treason, and other high crimes; and sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which sentence, execution yet remaineth to be done; these are therefore to will and require you to see the said sentence executed in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon of the same day, with full effect. And for so doing this shall be your sufficient warrant. And these are to require all officers, soldiers, and others, the good people of this nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“To Col. Francis Hacker, Col. Huncks, and Lieut.-Col. Phayre, and to everyone of them.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the death warrant bears the signatures of the men whose hands are to be forever soaked in blood:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Given under our hands and seals.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John Bradshaw</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thomas Grey</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oliver Cromwell &c. &c.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so on that bitterly cold day, the 30th January the King woke between five and six.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I will get up”, he says to his servant, “I have a great work to do this day. I fear not death, death is not terrible to me. I bless my God that I am prepared.” He speaks with Bishop Juxon for an hour, and then receives the Sacrament. The Second Lesson at Mattins on 30 January is especially relevant. it is the 27th Chapter of St. Matthew, the Passion of Our Lord.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then he is taken in procession with drums beating to Whitehall. He probably sees the scaffold. It is half past ten. The King waits in his room for the knock at the door which will signal the walk to the scaffold. He waits and he waits. He is to wait until almost two. And why this final torment to the King? Two reasons are suggested. Those to whom the death warrant is directed have then to sign the order of execution. One, Colonel Huncks, loses his nerve. Cromwell intervenes. He shouts at him - he is a “peevish fellow”. But still he will not sign. Cromwell decides to go ahead without his signature.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The other reason is that the republicans forget the elementary proposition that they can kill the King. But they cannot kill the Crown. They forget the law of royal succession expressed in the acclamation: “The King is dead. Long live the King.” The Crown passes immediately on the death of the King to the Prince of Wales. And there is no time to pass legislation to declare a republic. This is to be done later. So they pass a so-called law making it an offence for anyone to proclaim a new king. In this they are to fail dismally. It has no effect. Charles II’s reign begins on that same day, the 30th January 1649.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, near two o’clock, they finally bring the King to the scaffold.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Divided by ranks of soldiers from the crowds, he addresses some words to those who can hear. He begins by forgiving his murderers. He declares that he has forgiven all the world, “and even those in particular that have been the chief causers of my death: who they are, God knows, I do not desire to know, I pray God forgive them.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I wish that they may repent, for indeed thy have committed a great sin in that particular; I pray God, with St. Stephen, that this not be laid to their charge. Nay, not only so, but that they may take the right way to the peace of the Kingdom: for my charity commands me not only to forgive particular men, but my charity commands me to the last gasp the peace of the Kingdom...”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He addresses himself to the role of the people: “Truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever; but I must tell you their liberty and freedom consists in having of government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own”.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And finally, he affirms his faith: “that I die a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England, as I found it left me by my father . . . I have a good Cause and I have a gracious God; I will say no more”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then Bishop Juxon says, “There is but one stage more, which though turbulent and troublesome, yet it is a very short one; you may consider it will soon carry you a very great way; it will carry you from Earth to Heaven; and there you shall find, to your great joy, the prize you hasten to, a Crown of Glory.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And the King replies, and once more, listen to his wisdom, his grace: “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He now takes off the insignia of the Garter, the last of his jewels; he gives it to the Bishop with the one word, “Remember.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The King stands for a moment raising his hands and eyes to Heaven and praying in silence, then slips off his cloak and lies down with his neck on the block. The executioner bends down to make sure that his hair is not in the way, and Charles, thinking that he was preparing to strike, says, “Stay for the sign.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I will, an’ it please Your Majesty,” says the executioner.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A fearful silence falls on the little knot of people on the scaffold, on the surrounding troops, and on the crowd. Within a few seconds the King stretches out his hands and the executioner on the instant and at one blow severs his head from his body.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A boy of seventeen, standing a long way off in the throng, sees the axe fall. And he remembers as long as he lives the sound that broke from the crowd. (C.V. Wedgwood, The Trial of Charles I, Collins, London, 1964)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“The blow I saw given and can truly say with a sad heart at the instant whereof there was such a groan by the thousands present as I never heard before, and desire I may never hear again.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such a groan... as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again...</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The executioner seizes the Kings head and holds it up, saying, “Behold the Head of a traitor!”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The cavalry disperse and scatter the people.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The body is taken to Blackfriars. The King’s head is sewn on and the body embalmed.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cromwell will not allow the body to be buried in King Edward’s chapel. This is far too dangerous - it may become a shrine. The King is buried secretly at Windsor. The use of the Book of Common Prayer is already prohibited by Parliament. No exception is allowed. Bishop Juxon is not permitted even to read the burial service. He carries the Book of Common Prayer with him - closed. He refuses to extemporize in the Puritan fashion.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In that vault lies the body of Henry VIII. On one side, his third wife, Jane Seymour. His sixth wife and widow Katherine Parr was to have been buried on Henry’s other side. But she married again and is buried elsewhere. That is to be King Charles’ tomb.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so, the King’s body was lowered into the vault in silence.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As Redmond observes, they are strange companions in death: “The King who broke the Church of England from the Roman communion to gain political advantage and to satisfy his sexual appetite, and the King who died because he saw in the Anglican faith the best and purest form of the Christian doctrine and the Church Militant on earth.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so on that day of infamy, that day of sadness, and that day of glory, the King goes from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let us recall the concluding words of the lesson from St. Paul, the lesson which was not permitted to be read at the King’s burial:-</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality; then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Charles went, as he said, from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown. He died that the Church might live.</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let us pray (according to the Collect for the Order for Evening Prayer on the 30th January)</span></div><div style="line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And now, to Almighty and Everlasting God, whose righteousness is like the strong mountains, and thy judgements like the great deep; and who, by that barbarous murder (as on this day) committed upon the sacred Person of thine Anointed, hast taught us, that neither the greatest of Kings, nor the best of men, are more secure from violence than from natural death: Teach us also hereby so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom, and grant, that neither the splendour of any thing that is great, nor the conceit of any thing that is good in us, may withdraw our eyes from looking upon ourselves as single dust and ashes; but that, according to the example of this thy blessed Martyr, we may press forward to the prize of the high calling that is before us, in faith and in patience, in humility and in meekness, in mortification and in self-denial, in charity and in constant perseverance unto the end: And all this for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ his sake; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end.” Amen.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><p> </p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-42713680879546647012023-01-27T12:47:00.004+00:002023-01-27T12:52:52.837+00:00Two 'seed' parables - Pope Benedict's homily for today's Gospel (from 2012)<p> </p><p><span style="color: #050505;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFre9Wvkc891GO1x4rpWC8othRFWl-m4XQWQ_BqnBsZU42q2Og-KJaK7Ao6OntCIWODEtyIVV9mAJp7p3KwNDC3HdJ1nixr5gtzZPxq6LC9woEPR4t5dAVpWJ9ISG-vOLftOZpm3ZRf5sFuOJqU0iQEzThKO-8wXVYInX6q9krsqDKM1St4u0k6nW17A/s300/gospel%20seed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="213" data-original-width="300" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFre9Wvkc891GO1x4rpWC8othRFWl-m4XQWQ_BqnBsZU42q2Og-KJaK7Ao6OntCIWODEtyIVV9mAJp7p3KwNDC3HdJ1nixr5gtzZPxq6LC9woEPR4t5dAVpWJ9ISG-vOLftOZpm3ZRf5sFuOJqU0iQEzThKO-8wXVYInX6q9krsqDKM1St4u0k6nW17A/w400-h284/gospel%20seed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Today’s liturgy presents to us two short parables of Jesus: the parable of the seed that grows of its own accord and the parable of the mustard seed (cf. Mk 4:26-34). With images taken from the farming world the Lord presents the mystery of the Word and of the Kingdom of God, and points out the reasons for our hope and our dedication.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">In the first parable the focus is on the dynamism of the sowing: the seed that was scattered on the land sprouts and grows by itself, whether the peasant is awake or asleep. The man sows with the trust that his work will not be fruitless. What supports the farmer in his daily efforts is specifically trust in the power of the seed and in the goodness of the soil. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">This parable recalls the mysteries of the creation and of redemption, of God’s fertile work in history. It is he who is the Lord of the Kingdom, man is his humble collaborator who contemplates and rejoices in the divine creative action and patiently awaits its fruits. The final harvest makes us think of God’s conclusive intervention at the end of time, when he will fully establish his Kingdom. The present is the time of sowing, and the growth of the seed is assured by the Lord. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">Every Christian therefore knows well that he must do all he can, but that the final result depends on God: this awareness sustains him in his daily efforts, especially in difficult situations. St Ignatius of Loyola wrote in this regard: “Act as though everything depended on you, but in the knowledge that really everything depends on God” (cf. Pedro de Ribadeneira, Vita di S. Ignazio di Loyola, Milan, 1998).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">The second parable also uses the image of the seed. Here, however, it is a specific seed, the mustard seed, considered the smallest of all seeds. Yet even though it is so tiny, it is full of life; it breaks open to give life to a sprout that can break through the ground, coming out into the sunlight and growing until it becomes “the greatest of all shrubs” (Mk 4:32): the seed’s weakness is its strength, its breaking open is its power. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">Thus the Kingdom of God is like this: a humanly small reality, made up of those who are poor in heart, of those who do not rely on their own power but on that of the love of God, on those who are not important in the world’s eyes; and yet it is through them that Christ’s power bursts in and transforms what is seemingly insignificant.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">The image of the seed is especially dear to Jesus, because it clearly expresses the mystery of the Kingdom of God. In today’s two parables it represents “growth” and “contrast”: the growth that occurs thanks to an innate dynamism within the seed itself and the contrast that exists between the minuscule size of the seed and the greatness of what it produces.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">The message is clear: even though the Kingdom of God demands our collaboration, it is first and foremost a gift of the Lord, a grace that precedes man and his works. If our own small strength, apparently powerless in the face of the world’s problems, is inserted in that of God it fears no obstacles because the Lord’s victory is guaranteed. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;">It is the miracle of the love of God who causes every seed of good that is scattered on the ground to germinate. And the experience of this miracle of love makes us optimists, in spite of the difficulty, suffering and evil that we encounter.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #050505;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUu83RRWIb8IagjQRIRv1O9vNFDblcOGUhMjYboe6RJPHey3gLI0GYRw3eSE-aHJ0zJqhBScUpSmPmcALI3lFEU2w55mdKjvfsqY1P3WfSFg5HACwox1VC9zK_B2QHvIi95Euz39pa-V1qmxSJ-JyZDzxd-tztIXNJVsT88cpABKygK0Dx3Ac9K9d42Q/s960/Benedict%20Pope%20Emeritus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="702" height="379" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUu83RRWIb8IagjQRIRv1O9vNFDblcOGUhMjYboe6RJPHey3gLI0GYRw3eSE-aHJ0zJqhBScUpSmPmcALI3lFEU2w55mdKjvfsqY1P3WfSFg5HACwox1VC9zK_B2QHvIi95Euz39pa-V1qmxSJ-JyZDzxd-tztIXNJVsT88cpABKygK0Dx3Ac9K9d42Q/w277-h379/Benedict%20Pope%20Emeritus.jpg" width="277" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><p></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-3490218227512613712023-01-17T13:03:00.003+00:002023-01-17T13:30:32.656+00:00S. Anthony of Egypt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5scOteXqWc2fTds_mXHsExq78iFg2hy8yg3OVOCKc90mIE-vUQYQZx5xspW-ZQ2Qs-3wngRsDOIB_DSHPRyPcfYKiMfmkjbf-N5DeffO_Mssxbe0MRadBLg0gFahBncptalw0DFHpYaXIBiOCLtvPzMF1ZPAskPvca8O2W5ogwcG6Hs97qN_bBgmZ0g/s1597/Anthony%20of%20Egypt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1597" data-original-width="853" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5scOteXqWc2fTds_mXHsExq78iFg2hy8yg3OVOCKc90mIE-vUQYQZx5xspW-ZQ2Qs-3wngRsDOIB_DSHPRyPcfYKiMfmkjbf-N5DeffO_Mssxbe0MRadBLg0gFahBncptalw0DFHpYaXIBiOCLtvPzMF1ZPAskPvca8O2W5ogwcG6Hs97qN_bBgmZ0g/w260-h486/Anthony%20of%20Egypt.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Most of what we know about S. Anthony is thanks to S. Athanasius, his friend, who wrote his biography. Anthony was born in 251 at Coma, a village near Great Heracleopolis in central Egypt, where he grew up in a very protective and well-off family.</span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the death of his parents, he inherited a large estate. Then, in church one day, he heard the words of the Gospel: 'Go, sell what you have and give to the poor' (Matt 19:21). He took the words as addressed to himself and sold off the whole of the estate, only keeping what he felt he needed for his sister and himself. Later, he heard the call, 'Do not be anxious about tomorrow' (Matt 6:34). This led him to give away what he still had, he put his sister in a convent and, still only 21 years of age, became a hermit. He lived alone, working with his hands, praying and doing religious reading. He only ate bread with salt and only drank water. He slept on a rush mat. He was soon seen as a model of humility, holiness and self-discipline. He was assailed by many temptations, some very persuasive, during this period but managed to resist them all.</span></div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For many years, Anthony lived in a tomb near his birthplace but, at the age of 35, moved to the ruins of an old castle on top of a mountain. There he lived for almost 20 years, seeing no one except a person who brought him food every six months! At the end of that time he set up his first monastery, which consisted of separate cells, each occupied by one monk (like the Carthusians today). But he still lived mainly on his own, only visiting the monastery when necessary.</span></div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In spite of his austere life, he always gave the impression of being energetic and joyful. People could pick him out from among the other monks simply by his cheeriness. Many came long distances to speak with him. And he was as ready to learn from them as they came to learn from him.</span></div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the age of 60, during a time of religious persecution, he went to Alexandria hoping to earn martyrdom, but was not arrested. Later still, he returned to Alexandria to refute the Arians, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ but, in spite of being asked to stay on in the city, he returned to his life as a hermit.</span></div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He died about the year 356, traditionally on 17, January. He is said to have lived to the remarkable age of 105, never having been sick, still with good sight and sound teeth. He is regarded as the 'Father of Monks'. Several groups of Eastern monks may still be following his teaching, and he certainly influenced later development of monastic life in the Church.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #990000;">(The above is from the LIVING SPACE website.)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></span></div></span></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-34294563472003434172023-01-13T13:54:00.004+00:002023-01-13T20:18:55.367+00:00S. Hilary of Poitiers, 'the Athanasius of the West'.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQGZnPlhWwO_9r1UG02EsLeOpApjQFcjLnztShjmQEazw5iAh2tHto7ipulDcFwsg2fEmgqxHVxhuQ6D2wQcZnth27R1d_mDzmX4J0Hs0b-pmQHqdLEwaYb6JTGSj4XfgvYkQFigEdKUAX/s1600/hilary01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQGZnPlhWwO_9r1UG02EsLeOpApjQFcjLnztShjmQEazw5iAh2tHto7ipulDcFwsg2fEmgqxHVxhuQ6D2wQcZnth27R1d_mDzmX4J0Hs0b-pmQHqdLEwaYb6JTGSj4XfgvYkQFigEdKUAX/w238-h320/hilary01.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><br /></div><span style="color: #990000;"><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">St Hilary of Poitiers (315-368) was born into an aristocratic family in Poitiers, Gaul, (i.e. France), and was highly educated. He married and raised a family. In due course his natural curiosity and enquiring mind led him to study the Scriptures. That's when the created order began to make sense to him. No longer able to accept that all things were the result of random acts of nature, he came to believe in a single Creator God. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reflecting on his faith journey, Hilary recalls that when he read the Lord's words to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM' (Exodus 3:14), 'I was frankly amazed at such a clear definition of God, which expressed the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in words most suited to human intelligence.' He also discovered God’s power, love and beauty expressed in the Psalms, Prophets and the rest of Old Testament salvation history. He grew to understand God's love for him as a deeply personal reality.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His reading of the Gospels convinced him that Jesus Christ was his Saviour, the Word made Flesh. Embracing the full Catholic Faith, he was baptised about 345 A.D. He was soon ordained, and then elected bishop in Poitiers (against his will!) around 350 A.D.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the emperor Constantius II attempted to impose Arianism on the western Church, Hilary led a vigorous opposition. He was exiled to Phrygia (in modern day Turkey) in 356. There he became such a defender and champion of orthodox teaching about Jesus that the emperor decided it would be less trouble to let him return to his diocese. Hilary continued to fight against Arianism until his death in 368.</span></div></span><br /><br /><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is a passage from S. Hilary's <u>On The Trinity</u> XII: 55-56: PL 10, 468-472)</span></div></span><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to the apostle, Lord, your Holy Spirit fully understands and penetrates your inmost depths; he also intercedes on my behalf, saying to you things for which I cannot find the words. Nothing can penetrate your being but what is divine already; nor can the depths of your immense majesty be measured by any power which itself is alien or extrinsic to you. So, whatever enters into you is yours already, nor can anything which has the power to search your very depths ever have been other than your own. </span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your Holy Spirit proceeds through your Son from you; though I may fail to grasp the full meaning of that statement, I give it nonetheless the firm assent of my mind and heart.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I may indeed show dullness and stupidity in my understanding of these spiritual matters; it is as your only Son has said: Do not be surprised if I have said to you: You must be born again. Just as the wind blows where it pleases and you hear the sound of it without knowing where it is coming from or going to, so will it be with everyone who is born again of water and the Holy Spirit. By my regeneration I have received the faith, but I am still ignorant; and yet I have a firm hold on something which I do not understand. I am born again, capable of rebirth but without conscious perception of it. The Spirit abides by no rules; he speaks when he pleases, what he pleases, and where he pleases. We are conscious of his presence when he comes, but the reasons for his approach or his departure remain hidden from us.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John tells us that all things came into being through the Son who is God the Word abiding with you, Father, from the beginning. Paul in his turn enumerates the things created in the Son, both visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth. And while he is specific about all that was created in and through Christ, of the Holy Spirit he considers it enough simply to say that he is your Spirit.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Therefore I concur with those chosen men in thinking that just as it is not expedient for me to venture beyond my mental limitation and predicate anything of your only begotten Son save that, as those witnesses have assured us, he was born of you, so it is not fitting for me to go beyond the power of human thought and the teaching of those same witnesses by declaring anything regarding the Holy Spirit other than that he is your Spirit. Rather than waste time in a fruitless war of words, I would prefer to spend it in the firm profession of an unhesitating faith.</span></div><div style="min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I beg you therefore, Father, to preserve in me that pure and reverent faith and to grant that to my last breath I may testify to my conviction. May I always hold fast to what I publicly professed in the creed when I was baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. May I worship you, the Father of us all, and your Son together with you and may I be counted worthy to receive your Holy Spirit who through your only Son proceeds from you. For me there is sufficient evidence for this faith in the words: Father, all that I have is yours, and all that is yours is mine, spoken by Jesus Christ my Lord who remains, in and from and with you, the God who is blessed for endless ages. Amen.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Ym1wWsPlcn1qTc-x53oinr1lutJCZUB3jaWF2M-sZFKPpy01fvfLi6v9K7wDvYdEj0Jiak3D3KxL_tjWkqJMinSxM7hgWZGuVxw4DqmOKs6af2clQlIhazLSTHS_bhLTgCaXJ7Rx1R8j6dXb2W3aEynsk_8DA_YmCEE9T5enWLINdVFJvDAgWT3T9Q/s914/Hilary%20for%20FB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="851" data-original-width="914" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Ym1wWsPlcn1qTc-x53oinr1lutJCZUB3jaWF2M-sZFKPpy01fvfLi6v9K7wDvYdEj0Jiak3D3KxL_tjWkqJMinSxM7hgWZGuVxw4DqmOKs6af2clQlIhazLSTHS_bhLTgCaXJ7Rx1R8j6dXb2W3aEynsk_8DA_YmCEE9T5enWLINdVFJvDAgWT3T9Q/w400-h373/Hilary%20for%20FB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-51985721021025474212023-01-07T17:22:00.002+00:002023-01-07T17:23:57.032+00:00“Stars cross the sky, wise men journey from pagan lands, earth receives its Saviour in a cave” (S. Basil the Great)<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEw-VyYFKcqij-n_3hkpFigdwIiE9MIjlC6T7Hu3oJwhnC6AoksbZ42dVCmiGweFJlIoKleCkjTWNAG1f2kq9RrktcQiRXFLNT5jho99mlWx1U5fRBXQTQYxHFwvTkch6zHJBOk9YSt32j/s1600/Epiphany+%2528gold%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="803" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEw-VyYFKcqij-n_3hkpFigdwIiE9MIjlC6T7Hu3oJwhnC6AoksbZ42dVCmiGweFJlIoKleCkjTWNAG1f2kq9RrktcQiRXFLNT5jho99mlWx1U5fRBXQTQYxHFwvTkch6zHJBOk9YSt32j/s400/Epiphany+%2528gold%2529.jpg" width="332" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Basil was born in Caesarea of Cappadocia in 329. The persecution of Christians had ceased, but his parents had lived through those difficult times. He studied at Athens from 351 to 356 in order to become a lawyer and orator. But his sister, Macrina, influenced him to embrace a monastic life, and he founded a community. He stayed with them for five years, ensuring that their life was one of mutual love and service. In 367 a famine hit Cappadocia, and Basil sold his family's land in order to buy food for the starving, actively preparing the food himself. In addressing this crisis, he refused to allow any distinction between Jews and Christians. He also built a hospital, housing for the poor, and a hospice for travellers.</span></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">Basil was ordained in 362, and became Bishop of Caesarea in 370. The Emperor visited Caesarea in 371 and demanded Basil's submission to the prevailing Arian heresies. The latter refused, of course, leading to an ongoing dispute between the two of them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His writings deal with the created world as a revelation of the God's splendour. They vigorously defend the divinity of Christ; they also defend the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, who is to be worshipped with the Father and the Son. </span></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #990000;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Basil is said to have died from exhaustion at the age of 49 on 1st January, 379. </span></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">The following passage is from his <i>Homily 2 on the Holy Birth of the Lord</i> (as quoted on pages 39-40 of </span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;"><i>Celebrating Sundays: Reflections from the Early Church on the Sunday Gospels</i>, compiled by Stephen Holmes, and published in 2012 by Canterbury Press):</span></div></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"The star came to rest above the place where the child was. At the sight of it the wise men were filled with great joy”</i> and that great joy should fill our hearts as well. It is the same as the joy the shepherds received from the glad tidings brought by the angels. Let us join the wise men in worship and the shepherds in giving glory to God. Let us dance with the angels and sing: <i>“To us is born this day a savior who is Christ the Lord. The Lord is God and he has appeared to us,”</i> not as God which would have terrified us in our weakness, but as a slave in order to free those living in slavery. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Could anyone be so lacking in sensibility and so ungrateful as not to join us all in our gladness, exultation, and radiant joy?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This feast belongs to the whole universe. It gives heavenly gifts to the earth, it sends archangels to Zechariah and to Mary, it assembles a choir of angels to sing, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">“Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.”</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Stars cross the sky, wise men journey from pagan lands, earth receives its saviour in a cave. Let there be no one without a gift to offer, no one without gratitude as we celebrate the salvation of the world, the birthday of the human race. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now it is no longer, <i>“Dust you are and to dust you shall return,”</i> but <i>“You are joined to heaven and into heaven you shall be taken up.”</i> It is no longer, <i>“In sorrow you shall bring forth children,”</i> but, <i>“Blessed is she who has borne Emmanuel and blessed the breast that nursed him.” </i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; and dominion is laid upon his shoulder.”</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Come, join the company of those who merrily welcome the Lord from heaven. Think of shepherds receiving wisdom, of priests prophesying, of women who are glad of heart, as Mary was when told by the angel to rejoice and as Elizabeth was when John leapt in her womb. Anna announced the good news; Simeon took the child in his arms. They worshiped the mighty God in a tiny baby, not despising what they beheld but praising his divine majesty. Like light through clear glass the power of the Godhead shone through that human body for those whose inner eye was pure. Among such may we also be numbered, so that beholding his radiance with unveiled face we too may be transformed from glory to glory by the grace and loving kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honor and power for endless ages. Amen.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span></span>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-15807882571028313512022-12-14T18:58:00.005+00:002022-12-14T18:59:34.686+00:00S. John of the Cross - Poet of God's Love<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMArGfvpomfa3IklKiMGCusLwia0UPLyakrLFeUi9DGPdch42uNUXkQOt_-E-6P9ADReKSZCShvYTwc1_xm0kn2TXWSte_QShNvj4-wtn0dS3Y_asMsVy6tQBAS880LXy5l-0bkT7Hpco7/s1600/John+of+the+Cross.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="319" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMArGfvpomfa3IklKiMGCusLwia0UPLyakrLFeUi9DGPdch42uNUXkQOt_-E-6P9ADReKSZCShvYTwc1_xm0kn2TXWSte_QShNvj4-wtn0dS3Y_asMsVy6tQBAS880LXy5l-0bkT7Hpco7/s400/John+of+the+Cross.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Today the Church gives thanks to the Lord for Juan de Yepes, known to us as S. John of the Cross, who was born in Spain in 1542. From the beginning of his life he understood the mystery of love and sacrifice. His father, from a wealthy Spanish family, was disowned and disinherited when he married the daughter of a poor weaver. Then, just after John was born his father died. John’s mother, utterly destitute, managed to keep her homeless family together as they wandered in search of work. When he was fourteen, John got a job in a hospital, looking after patients who suffered from incurable diseases and madness.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, it was in the context of poverty and suffering that he sought to know God. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1563 John took the habit of the Carmelite friars in Medina. The following year he was professed and went to the University in Salamanca to study arts and theology. In 1567 he was ordained to the priesthood, and in the same year Teresa of Avila asked him to help her Reform movement. John supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But many Carmelites and their sympathisers felt threatened by the Reform, and on 2nd December 1577 some members of John’s own order kidnapped him. At the Toledo priory he was locked in a cell six feet wide and ten feet long for nine months, with no light except that which filtered through a slit high up in the wall. During those months of darkness, John could have become bitter, vengeful, or filled with despair at the rejection of his ministry. But instead, he remained open to God, knowing that there was not a prison anywhere that could separate him from God’s love. During this time he had many experiences and encounters with the Lord in prayer. He described them in his poetry. He later forgave those who had imprisoned him, saying, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.” </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After nine months, in 1578, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard. Taking only the spiritual poetry he had written in his cell, he climbed out a window using a rope made of strips of blankets. With no idea where he was, he followed a dog to civilization. He hid from pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the nuns. He went to southern Spain to join the reformed Carmelites, and devoted his life to helping people discover the transformative power of God’s love. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The best known of his books are: <span style="color: #990000;">The Ascent of Mount Carmel</span>, <span style="color: #990000;">The Dark Night of the Sou</span>l and <span style="color: #990000;">A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ</span>. He is regarded as a great spiritual guide in the Catholic tradition, understanding the reality of God's love in the human experience of light as well as darkness. He is also regarded as a significant Spanish poet. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">St John of the Cross died at the age of 49 on 14th December 1591 at Ubeda as he was preparing for assignment to Mexico. He was canonised in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII, and is a Doctor of the Church.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here are a few of his sayings:</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” <span style="color: #990000;">(From The Dark Night of the Soul)</span></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.” <span style="color: #990000;">(From Sayings of Light and Love 64)</span></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.” <span style="color: #990000;">(From Sayings of Light and Love 110)</span></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“In tribulation immediately draw near to God with confidence, and you will receive strength, enlightenment, and instruction.” <span style="color: #990000;">(From Sayings of Light and Love 64)</span></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">THE LIVING FLAME OF LOVE</span></b></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O living flame of love</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">that tenderly wounds my soul</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">in its deepest centre! Since</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">now you are not oppressive,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">now consummate! if it be your will:</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O sweet cautery,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O delightful wound!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O gentle hand! O delicate touch</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">that tastes of eternal life</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and pays every debt!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In killing you changed death to life. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">O lamps of fire!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">in whose splendours</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the deep caverns of feeling,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">once obscure and blind,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">both warmth and light to their Beloved.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How gently and lovingly</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">you wake in my heart,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">where in secret you dwell alone;</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and in your sweet breathing,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">filled with good and glory,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">how tenderly you swell my heart with love. </span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #990000; font-family: inherit;">From THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE</span></b></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My Beloved is like the mountains.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like the lonely valleys full of woods</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The strange islands</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The rivers with their sound</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whisper of the lovely air!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The night, appeased and hushed</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">About the rising of the dawn</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The music stilled</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The sounding solitude</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The supper that rebuilds my life.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And brings me love.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our bed of flowers</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Surrounded by the lions’ dens</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Makes us a purple tent,</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Is built of peace.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our bed is crowned with a thousand shields of gold!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fast-flying birds</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lions, harts and leaping does*</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mountains, banks and vales</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Streams, breezes, heats of day</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And terrors watching in the night:</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By the sweet lyres and by the siren’s song</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I conjure you: let angers end!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And do not touch the wall</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But let the bride be safe: let her sleep on!</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Go <b><a href="http://onetruename.com/StJohn.htm" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> to read the entire poem.</span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 37px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1083077248630884853.post-23405307864627088702022-12-06T18:22:00.000+00:002022-12-06T18:22:19.865+00:00All Saints' Benhilton Lessons & Carols<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPl8xnaETzxFWj2I97O5vSlztIOA4007lkV1jXtuXrkZTdCf_1goChC5PsmdLys5cJnkG95r9kdYCK9T15ppxm-2xJBTMZs9uKbdMRPZ1H2PALl9tSxT0oW6H8f2DoC-Laqs784ul9X73pMVRwYQyj5vMLMWldFyzbH4UPLBxcot8LSgC8bk5EIHXzzQ/s567/9%20Lessons%20&%20Carols%202022%20flyer.5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="398" height="576" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPl8xnaETzxFWj2I97O5vSlztIOA4007lkV1jXtuXrkZTdCf_1goChC5PsmdLys5cJnkG95r9kdYCK9T15ppxm-2xJBTMZs9uKbdMRPZ1H2PALl9tSxT0oW6H8f2DoC-Laqs784ul9X73pMVRwYQyj5vMLMWldFyzbH4UPLBxcot8LSgC8bk5EIHXzzQ/w405-h576/9%20Lessons%20&%20Carols%202022%20flyer.5.jpg" width="405" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>David Chisletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16798657034517527174noreply@blogger.com0