Bishop David's Blog

Alec Guinness as King Charles 1 - Execution Scene

2012-01-30T23:04:00.003+11:00

From the film "Cromwell" (1970), starring Richard Harris.

Charles, King and Martyr

2012-01-30T20:13:00.003+11:00

From the website of the Society of King Charles the Martyr:

On the morning of 30th January, 1649 Charles awoke early and told his attendant Thomas Herbert, “this is my second marriage day… for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus.” The winter weather was so severe that the Thames had frozen over. The King was concerned that the cold would make him shiver giving the appearance of shaking with fear, so he asked as he was dressed to be provided with an extra shirt for warmth (one of these shirts is kept at Windsor Castle and the other at the Museum of London).

William Juxon, Bishop of London, arrived to read Morning Prayer with the King and to administer the Sacrament. The Bishop read the lesson for the day, which was the account of the Passion of Christ. Charles thought that this passage had been especially chosen by the Bishop but was told that it was the proscribed lesson in the Prayer Book for that day. The King found this very reassuring.

At ten o’clock Colonel Hacker told the King that it was time to leave for Whitehall. Charles, Juxon and Herbert were escorted on foot from S.James’s Palace. Two companies of infantry guarded the route. The party was led through the inside of several buildings to avoid the gathering crowds. They passed over the upper floor of the Holbein Gate from where Charles would have seen the scaffold below and then into the Banqueting House.

It was intended that the beheading should proceed immediately but the official executioner, Brandon, refused the task in horror. There followed a search to find someone to take his place. The identity of the man who finally wielded the axe remains a mystery, for he and his accomplice wore masks. About three hours had elapsed with cruelly Charles being kept waiting. It is sometimes suggested that the delay was caused by a last-minute sitting of Parliament to pass an Act prohibiting the proclamation of the Prince of Wales as King. However, this had been done the previous Saturday, and anyway, many members of the House had deemed it expedient to be absent from the City that day.

The wait must have been extremely trying for the King but all those around him remarked on his calmness and composure. Midday arrived and a meal was prepared for him, this he refused having resolved to take no food that day other than the Blessed Sacrament. Fearing that the lack of food and passing of time would cause the King to feel faint, Juxon persuaded Charles to eat just a little. He was presented with a small loaf of bread and a glass of claret; thus he had his Last Supper. He spent much time in prayer with the Bishop.

Sometime after one o’clock all was ready on the scaffold. The King emerged from the relative gloom of the Banqueting House, where many of the windows had been boarded up, to the brightness outside, where the sun had broken through the clouds. The street was packed. Ranks of soldiers, on foot and mounted, filled the area near the scaffold preventing any rescue attempt. The public were kept at a distance so that they could see and hear very little. The railings of the scaffold were hung with black drapery to obscure the view further. In the centre of the platform was a low billet of wood with attached ropes and staples in case the King resisted and needed to be secured to the block. A cheap deal coffin, which cost ‘but six shillings’ lay to one side with a black pall to cover it.

With Charles were Juxon, Colonel Tomlinson, Colonel Hacker, the two headsmen and two or three shorthand writers. To the witnesses Charles appeared to be fully confident. He had been denied the right to speak freely at his trial after the sentence was passed and although he realised that few would hear him he spoke to the crowds. He declared himself to be “an honest man, a good king and a good Christian” and that he had not begun the Civil War and that he considered his sentence illegal. He added though that he was receiving just punishment from God, a reference to his allowing the execution of Strafford earlier in his reign to placate the puritans, which he bitterly regretted and repented of.

He said that his desire was for liberty, freedom and the rule of law and government and not for arbitrary rule; for all this, “I am a martyr of the people.” He concluded by saying, “I die a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left to me by my father…I have a good cause and I have a gracious God.”

He then spoke words of forgiveness to the two headsmen and explained that he would give a signal when he was ready for the axe’s blow. Juxon helped the King to tuck his long hair into a cap so that it might not impede the axe.

The Bishop said, “There is but one stage more which though turbulent and troublesome, yet is a very short one; you may consider that it will 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.”

Charles replied, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.” He then passed his George to Juxon and said, “Remember!”

Charles stood for a moment in silent prayer, then lay down with his head on the block. After a few seconds of prayer he stretched out his hands as the sign. The ‘bright axe’ flashed and at one blow Charles’s head was severed from his body. Contemporary accounts record that a great groan went up from the crowd. One of the headsmen held up the blessed martyr’s head and against custom, did so in silence. Sir William Sanderson, who was a witness, recorded that the fatal blow was struck within a minute to two o’clock.

Our dependence on him is absolute

2012-01-29T11:43:00.006+11:00

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was a scholar, a mystic and a well-known spiritual guide. A little out of fashion at the present time, she deserves to be rediscovered by this generation! The following is from her book, The Spiritual Life, pages 34-46.

"There is no real occasion for tumult, strain, conflict, anxiety, once we have reached the living conviction that God is All. All takes place within him. He alone matters. He alone is. Our spiritual life is his affair; because, whatever we may think to the contrary, it is really produced by his steady attraction, and our humble and self forgetful response to it. It consists in being drawn, at his pace and in his way, to the place where he wants us to be; not the place we fancied for ourselves.

"Some people may seem to us to go to God by a moving staircase; where they can assist matters a bit by their own efforts, but much gets done for them and progress does not cease. Some appear to be whisked past us in a lift (elevator); whilst we find ourselves on a steep flight of stairs with a bend at the top, so that we cannot see how much farther we have to go. But none of this really matters; what matters is the conviction that all are moving towards God, and, in that journey, accompanied, supported, checked and fed by God. Since our dependence on him is absolute, and our desire is that his will shall be done, this great desire can gradually swallow up, neutralise all our small self-centred desires. When that happens life, inner and outer, becomes one single, various act of adoration and self-giving; one undivided response of the creature to the demand and pressure of Creative Love."

Fishing

2012-01-28T19:33:00.009+11:00

Fishers of men, by Rex DeLoney (b.1965) Go HERE for gallery

Over at The English Catholic Blog, Father Anthony Chadwick commented graciously on yesterday's post. He was followed up by Deborah Gyapong, who included two characteristically brilliant homilies from Brother Robert Mercer CR (former Bishop of Matabeleland, and then of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, who was recently received into the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (UK) of the Roman Catholic Church).

The point I was trying to make yesterday is that the "sharing of gifts" among the Christian traditions includes our different ways of bringing people to the Lord. I said that one of these precious gifts is Anglican Evensong with its numinous beauty and healing power, and that lots of people have opened their hearts and minds to God as a result of just being there. This is so important in our time when many have either rejected what they imagine is the Christian faith, or have never thought very much about it. We have to accept that people are drawn to the Lord in a variety of ways according to their temperament and background.

Anyway, here is the first piece by Robert Mercer (go HERE for the second one):

A Homily for Trinity 5

My text is one that does not exist. “I am the Big Fisherman.” I derive it from Jesus’ words to St. Peter, “From henceforth thou shalt catch men.”

Some fish live singly, and men catch them with rods. Some fish live in vast great shoals, and men catch them with nets. The Big Fisherman means to have each and every fish that has ever swum, whether fresh water or sea. The Divine Angler knows how to watch and wait for the big old trout that has lurked in the deep dark waters of the Mare Dam. He knows how to play the marlin off Cape Point, lots and lots of reel, time, and patience. He follows the shoals of snoek in the South Atlantic.

Everyone of us is pursued and hunted by the love of Christ. He knows the method which is exactly right, whether to leave us alone, apparently to go our own way, to try this and that, until in an unsuspecting moment we are caught by His watching waitfulness. Whether to let us tire and exhaust ourselves, to struggle against surrender, until He finally pulls us in.

One by one have individuals been caught. The saintly Brother Lawrence, author of the Practice of the Presence of God, by seeing a bare tree in winter. Archbishop William Temple by hearing a piano recital. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, by reading a book while lying in bed with a broken leg. Professor Joad by finding a country parson in cassock and surplice reading Evensong out loud, all alone in a country church on a weekday evening. Individuals have been taken in the oddest and unlikeliest of ways. In future years Jesus may have other odd tricks to play.

In vast great shoals have others been caught. At times and in places there have been enthusiastic movements which captured the hearts and minds of those particular generations. John Wesley and the 18th century revival which fired up the Church of England. The London Missionary Society and the coming of the Light to the islanders of the Torres Strait towards the end of the last century. Billy Graham and his hordes in our own times. In future years Jesus may have other trawlers with other nets.

The difficult thing for humans to remember is that God does know what He is doing. A man may be quite untouched by, repelled even, by a Graham type crusade. But this is not to say that he can’t know or doesn’t know Jesus. Trout are not caught by trawlers. A man may be quite untouched by, repelled even, by solitude and silence. But this does not mean that he can’t or doesn’t know Jesus. Capelin are not caught by rod and reel.

In the 17th century there was a devout layman who personally knew and wrote books about some of the greats of his own time. John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Hooker. But he’s most famous for his book about fishing. The title of Izaak Walton’s book is an apt description of Christ Himself, The Compleat Angler.

Not "either/or" but "both/and"

2012-01-27T01:29:00.012+11:00

Because of the ecumenical experiences of my youth, and subsequent friendships and theological interests, I seem to have been blessed (or cursed - depending on how you look at it!) with a vocation of trying to get different kinds of Christians to appreciate the variety of gifts God has dispersed among his people. So it will not surprise you to know that I am at one with those who see the "arduous journey to Christian Unity" (John Paul II) itself as a "sharing of gifts." It seems to me that with the ecumenical journey now likely to be far longer than most of us imagined forty years ago, it is more and not less important for this sharing of gifts to take place along the way (without, of course, soft-pedalling the things that we believe).

So, parishes need a multi-pronged approach to reaching people. Liturgical churches desperately need to be more evangelistic and cultivate deliberate Gospel ministry, as - in fact - did the Anglo-Catholic "ritualist" slum priests in their era. We must learn what we can from the “Fresh Expressions” crowd as well as from the various renewal movements. Christian people from across the traditions need to learn from each other innovative ways of sharing our faith with family members, with our colleagues at work and with our friends.

But let’s also remember those – young and old alike - who need a bit of space as they begin to explore the life of faith. In this context one of the gifts the Anglican tradition has to share is sung Evensong in which the words of Scripture and the beauty of the music wash over us with their own healing power. It gives many their first vague feeling of connectedness with the things of God as well as a sense of being held in the circle of love by the community of faith. The numinous quality of this worship has enabled thousands to find God who would never have responded to a more aggressive evangelistic approach. Seasoned Christians, too, especially when going through turmoil or trauma in their lives, find enormous spiritual strength in Evensong.

I was reminded of these things yesterday by this short piece written by the concert pianist Stephen Hough on his (UK) Daily Telegraph blog:

'Do not touch me': the wisdom of Anglican thresholds

By Stephen Hough

This past Sunday I went to Westminster Abbey to attend Evensong, their superb choir conducted by James O'Donnell and accompanied by Robert Quinney. Woven between Thomas Cranmer's matchless words was music of Herbert Howells, William Byrd and a sparkling anthem by Jonathan Dove. If you are visiting London and want a perfect slice of England there's no better place to go.

The Church of England's evening service, adapted after the Reformation from the monastic hour of Vespers, is a wondrous phenomenon. Even the word 'Evensong' is poetic, and it seems to chime in perfect harmony with England's seasons: Autumn's melancholy, early evening light; the merry crackle of Winter frost; Spring's awakening, or the lazy, protracted sun strained through the warmed windows of a Summer afternoon.

Evensong hangs on the wall of English life like a old, familiar cloak passed through the generations. Rich with prayer and Scripture, it is nevertheless totally nonthreatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream.

Most religious celebrations gather us around a table of some sort. They hand us a book, or a plate, or speak a word demanding a response. They want to 'touch' us. Choral Evensong is a liturgical expression of Christ's Nolle me tangere – 'Do not touch me. I have not yet ascended to my Father' (St. John 20: 17). It reminds us that thresholds can be powerful places of contemplation; and that leaving someone alone with their thoughts is not always denying them hospitality or welcome.

The Conversion of St Paul

2012-01-25T13:02:00.013+11:00

The Conversion of Saul

Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)

(Fresco, Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican)

Saul, from Tarsus, in present-day Turkey, was at the same time a Roman citizen and a devout Jew, having even studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, the most famous rabbi of the day. He said of himself, “I am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1), "circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee . . . as to righteousness under the law blameless" (Philippians 3:5).

Only a few years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Saul encountered the new Christian movement, and became one of the most its most fanatical persecutors. He was among those determined to stamp out this “dangerous heresy.” Saul is mentioned as having witnessed the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7). We next read of his journey to Damascus to lead further persecution of the fledgling Christian community. On this journey his dramatic conversion took place (Acts 9).

From that day until the end of his life, Paul, as he was then known, gave himself unstintingly in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ and his Church. His special vocation was the conversion of Gentiles. We only have to read the Acts of the Apostles to see the courage and determination with which he established local church communities round the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

His letters to those communities (as well as a few to individuals), are the earliest of Christian writings. They reveal Paul to have been a great interpreter of Jesus' death and resurrection, and an apostle with a real concern for the Church to grow in love and unity. He writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Life wasn't easy for Paul after he became a Christian, on account of so many enemies who tried to destroy his work. He was apparently not an imposing person, but small and insignificant looking. His critics said, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech is of no account” (2 Corinthians 10:10). He had a disability which he had prayed might be taken away from him, and quotes the Lord’s reply, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” In spite of all this Paul continued to fulfil his vocation, preaching the Gospel and caring for the churches. He said, “I will al the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Paul was martyred at Rome in the year 64, during the the emperor Nero's persecution of the Church.

On this feast of the Conversion of St Paul, as is now customary, the closing vespers of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will be held at the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome. Representatives of all the Christian traditions will be there, and Pope Benedict will give the homily. St Paul's is one of my favourite places in Rome, so I share with you five of the photos I took there in July last year:

The approach to the basilica

The interior

The altar and baldachino

From the apse mosaic

The cloister garden

The 1970's Charismatic Renewal

2012-01-24T14:30:00.006+11:00

Here is an article I wrote for New Directions Magazine (UK) ten years ago. Last year in the context of speaking at an ecumenical meeting I revised and enlarged it, and offer it to you during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It deals with the charismatic renewal of the late 1960's and 1970's from a local perspective, and seeks to affirm that many of the realities experienced in the renewal (if not the exact method of experiencing them or language to describe them!) occur in different ways across the Christian traditions, and are one aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit among the people of God.

WHERE HAVE THE CHARISMATICS GONE?

Any narrative of Australian ecclesiastical history must come to terms with the charismatic renewal movement that began to gather momentum in the late 1960’s, a few years later than in the USA. In the 1970’s it impacted the mainstream churches in this country with such a sense of refreshing and restoration that many Christians felt they had experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit of the kind that was known by the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles.

Of course, this movement had its antecedents. They included the visits of well-known healing evangelists of various traditions, and the establishment of pentecostal churches in the first two thirds of the 20th century. Of note in Sydney, the city in which I grew up, there were the large healing services conducted by Canon Jim Glennon in St Andrew's Cathedral, and the remarkable ministry of Father John Hope, Rector of Christ Church St Laurence from 1926 to 1964, who combined a deep understanding of the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit with his leadership of the Anglo-Catholic way in New South Wales and beyond.

During the social upheavals of the 1960’s many baby boomers left the churches. A good proportion of those who remained were touched by the charismatic renewal. Continue reading ...

Prayers for the Church from the Anglican tradition . . .

2012-01-23T12:11:00.010+11:00

These well-used prayers are very suitable for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. (For more prayers like them, go to the link on my website: TRADITIONAL PRAYERS FOR ANGLICAN CATHOLICS.)

PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH

O gracious Father, we humbly beseech thee for thy holy Catholic Church; that thou wouldest be pleased to fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, establish it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of him who died and rose again, and ever liveth to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

Archbishop William Laud (1573-1645)

THANKSGIVING FOR THE CHURCH

O God, most glorious, most bountiful, accept, we humbly beseech thee, our praises and thanksgivings for thy holy Catholic Church, the mother of us all who bear the name of Christ; for the faith which it hath conveyed in safety to our time, and the mercies by which it hath enlarged and comforted the souls of men; for the virtues which it hath established upon earth, and the holy lives by which it glorifieth both the world and thee; to whom, O blessed Trinity, be ascribed all honour, might, majesty and dominion, now and for ever. Amen.

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

PRAYER FOR ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men: that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially, we pray for the good estate of the Catholic Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those, who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

Today's Gospel reading: Jesus calls Peter and Andrew

2012-01-22T09:26:00.007+11:00

The Calling of St Peter and St Andrew

James Tissot, 1886-1894. Brooklyn Museum

One of the permanent links on the sidebar of this blog as well as on the Forward Ministry website is to Don Schwager's DAILY SCRIPTURE READING & MEDITATIONS website. It is a very valuable resource for those who want reliable and inspiring reflections on the Scriptures. One of its features is a commentary each day on that day's Mass readings. I look at it quite often, just to make sure that there's nothing obvious that I have overlooked in preparing my own sermon.

I have copied for you below Don's piece on today's Gospel (Mark 1:14-20). When you've read it, I'm sure you will want to check out his website! (By the way, you can read a bit about Don Schwager HERE.)

What is the gospel of God which Jesus came to preach? The word "gospel" literally means "good news". When a king had good news to deliver to his subjects he sent messengers or heralds throughout the land to make a public announcement – such as the birth of a new king or the defeat of an invading army or occupied force. God sent his prophets to announce the coming of God's anointed King and Messiah. After Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan and anointed by the Spirit he begins his ministry of preaching the gospel – the good news that the kingdom of God was now at hand for all who were ready to receive it.

What is the kingdom of God? The word "kingdom" means something more than a territory or an area of land. It literally means "sovereignty" or "reign" and the power to "rule" and exercise authority. The prophets announced that God would establish a kingdom not just for one nation or people but for the whole world. The scriptures tell us that God's throne is in heaven and his rule is over all (Psalm 103:19). His kingdom is bigger and more powerful than anything we can imagine because it is universal and everlasting (Daniel 4:3). His kingdom is full of glory, power, and splendor (Psalm 145:11-13). In the Book of Daniel we are told that this kingdom is given to the Son of Man and to the saints (Daniel 7:14,18,22,27). The Son of Man is a Messianic title for God's anointed King. The New Testament word for "Messiah" is "Christ" which literally means the "Anointed One" or the "Anointed King". God sent us his Son not to establish an earthly kingdom but to bring us into his heavenly kingdom – a kingdom ruled by truth, justice, peace, and holiness. The kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus' mission. It's the core of his gospel message.

As soon as John the Baptist had finished his testimony, Jesus began his in Galilee, his home district. John's enemies had sought to silence him, but the gospel cannot be silenced. Jesus proclaimed that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus takes up John's message of repentance and calls disciples to believe in the gospel--the good news he has come to deliver. What is the good news which Jesus delivers? It is the good news of peace (restoration of relationship with God - Ephesians 6:15), of hope (the hope of heaven and everlasting life - Colossians 1:23 ), of truth (God's word is true and reliable - Colossians 1:5), of promise (he rewards those who seek him - Ephesians 3:6)), of immortality (God gives everlasting life - 2 Timothy 1:10), and the good news of salvation (liberty from sin and freedom to live as sons and daughters of God - Ephesians 1:13).

How do we enter the kingdom of God? In announcing the good news, Jesus gave two explicit things each of us must do to in order to receive the kingdom of God: repent and believe. When we submit to Christ's rule in our lives and believe the gospel message the Lord Jesus gives us the grace and power to live a new way of life as citizens of his kingdom. He gives us grace to renounce the kingdom of darkness ruled by sin and Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44) and the ruler of this present world (John 12:31). That is why repentance is the first step. Repentance means to change – to change my way of thinking, my attitude, disposition, and life choices so that Christ can be the Lord and Master of my heart rather than sin, selfishness, and greed. If we are only sorry for the consequences of our sins, we will very likely keep repeating the sin that is mastering us. True repentance requires a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17) and sorrow for sin and a firm resolution to avoid it in the future. The Lord Jesus gives us grace to see sin for what it really is – a rejection of his love and wisdom for our lives and a refusal to do what is good and in accord with his will. His grace brings pardon and help for turning away from everything that would keep us from his love and truth. To believe is to take Jesus at his word and to recognize that God loved us so much that he sent his only begotten Son to free us from bondage to sin and harmful desires. God made the supreme sacrifice of his Son on the cross to bring us back to a relationship of peace and friendship with himself. He is our Father and he wants us to live as his sons and daughters. God loved us first and he invites us in love to surrender our lives to him. Do you believe that the gospel – the good news of Jesus – has power to free you from bondage to sin and fear?

When Jesus preached the gospel message he called others to follow as his disciples and he gave them a mission – "to catch people for the kingdom of God". What kind of disciples did he choose? Smelly fishermen! In the choice of the first apostles we see a characteristic feature of Jesus' work: he chose very ordinary people. They were non-professionals, had no wealth or position. They were chosen from the common people who did ordinary things, had no special education, and no social advantages. Jesus wanted ordinary people who could take an assignment and do it extraordinarily well. He chose these individuals, not for what they were, but for what they would be capable of becoming under his direction and power. When the Lord calls us to serve, we must not think we have nothing to offer. The Lord takes what ordinary people, like us, can offer and uses it for greatness in his kingdom. Do you believe that God wants to work through and in you for his glory?

Jesus speaks the same message to us today: we will "catch people" for the kingdom of God if we allow the light of Jesus Christ to shine through us. God wants others to see the light of Christ in us in the way we live, speak, and witness the joy of the gospel. Paul the Apostles says, But thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing (2 Corinthians 2:15). Do you witness to those around you the joy of the gospel and do you pray for your neighbors, co-workers, and relatives that they may come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and grow in the knowledge of his love?

"Lord Jesus, you have called me personally by name, just as you called your first disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John. Help me to believe your word and follow you faithfully. Fill me with the joy of the gospel that your light may shine through me to many others."

Pope Benedict on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

2012-01-20T10:39:00.004+11:00

This is a translation from Italian of the address given by Pope Benedict XVI during his general audience on Wednesday 18th January, the start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. As usual the Week will conclude with an ecumenical service at the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul (next Wednesday). You can download a pdf of the service book for that occasion from the Vatican website HERE.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which for more than a century has been celebrated by Christians of all Churches and ecclesial Communities, in order to invoke that extraordinary gift for which the Lord Jesus Himself prayed during the Last Supper, before His Passion: "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:21). The practice of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was introduced in 1908 by Father Paul Wattson, founder of an Anglican religious community that subsequently entered the Catholic Church. The initiative received the blessing of Pope St. Pius X and was then promoted by Pope Benedict XV, who encouraged its celebration throughout the Church with the Brief, Romanorum Pontificum, promulgated Feb. 25, 1916.

The octave of prayer was developed and perfected in the 1930s by Abbé Paul Couturier of Lyon, who promoted prayer "for the unity of the Church as Christ wills, and in accordance with the instruments He wills." In his later writings, Abbé Couturier sees this Week as a way of allowing the prayer of Christ to "enter into and penetrate the entire Christian Body"; it must grow until it becomes "an immense, unanimous cry of the whole People of God" who ask God for this great gift. And it is precisely during the Week of Christian Unity that the impetus given by the Second Vatican Council toward seeking full communion among all of Christ’s disciples each year finds one of its most forceful expressions. This spiritual gathering, which unites Christians of all traditions, increases our awareness of the fact that the unity to which we tend will not be the result of our efforts alone, but will rather be a gift received from above, a gift for which we must constantly pray.

Each year, the booklets for the Week of Prayer are prepared by an ecumenical group from a different region of the world. I would like to pause to consider this point. This year, the texts were proposed by a mixed group comprised of representatives of the Catholic Church and of the Polish Ecumenical Council, which includes the country’s various Churches and ecclesial Communities. The documentation was then reviewed by a committee made up of members of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and of the Faith and Order Commission of the Council of Churches. This work, carried out together in two stages, is also a sign of the desire for unity that animates Christians, and of the awareness that prayer is the primary way of attaining full communion, since it is in being united with the Lord that we move toward unity.

The theme of the Week this year - as we heard - is taken from the First Letter to the Corinthians: “We Will All Be Changed By the Victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ” - His victory will transform us. And this theme was suggested by the large ecumenical Polish group I just mentioned, which - in reflecting on their own experience as a nation -- wanted to underscore how strong a support the Christian faith is in the midst of trial and upheaval, like those that have characterized Poland’s history. After ample discussion, a theme was chosen that focuses on the transforming power of faith in Christ, particularly in light of the importance it has for our prayer for the visible unity of Christ’s Body, the Church. This reflection was inspired by the words of St. Paul who, addressing himself to the Church of Corinth, speaks about the perishable nature of what belongs to our present life - which is also marked by the experience of the “defeat” that comes from sin and death - compared to what brings us Christ’s victory over sin and death in His paschal mystery.

The particular history of the Polish nation, which knew times of democratic coexistence and of religious liberty - as in the 16th century - has been marked in recent centuries by invasions and defeat, but also by the constant struggle against oppression and by the thirst for freedom. All of this led the ecumenical group to reflect more deeply on the true meaning of "victory" - what victory is - and "defeat." Compared with "victory" understood in triumphalistic terms, Christ suggests to us a very different path that does not pass by way of force and power. In fact, He affirms: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Christ speaks of a victory through suffering love, through mutual service, help, new hope and concrete comfort given to the least, to the forgotten, to those who are rejected. For all Christians, the highest expression of this humble service is Jesus Christ Himself - the total gift He makes of Himself, the victory of His love over death on the Cross, which shines resplendent in the light of Easter morning.

We can take part in this transforming “victory” if we allow ourselves to be transformed by God - but only if we work for the conversion of our lives, and if this transformation leads to conversion. This is the reason why the Polish ecumenical group considered particularly fitting for their own reflection the words of St. Paul: “We will all be changed by the victory of Christ, Our Lord” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:51-58).

The full and visible unity of Christians for which we long demands that we allow ourselves to be ever more perfectly transformed and conformed to the image of Christ. The unity for which we pray requires interior conversion, both communal and personal. It is not simply a matter of kindness and cooperation; above all, we must strengthen our faith in God, in the God of Jesus Christ, who has spoken to us and who made Himself one of us; we must enter into new life in Christ, which is our true and definitive victory; we must open ourselves to one another, cultivating all the elements of that unity that God has preserved for us and gives to us ever anew; we must feel the urgency of bearing witness before the men of our times to the living God, who made Himself known in Christ.

The Second Vatican Council put the ecumenical pursuit at the center of the Church’s life and work: “The Sacred Council exhorts all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism” (Unitatis redintegratio, 4). Blessed John Paul II stressed the essential nature of this commitment, saying: “This unity, which the Lord has bestowed on his Church and in which he wishes to embrace all people, is not something added on, but stands at the very heart of Christ’s mission. Nor is it some secondary attribute of the community of his disciples. Rather, it belongs to the very essence of this community (Ut unum sint, 9). The ecumenical task is therefore a responsibility of the whole Church and of all the baptized, who must make the partial, already existing communion between Christians grow into full communion in truth and charity. Therefore, prayer for unity is not limited to this Week of Prayer but rather must become an integral part of our prayer, of the life of prayer of all Christians, in every place and in every time, especially when people of different traditions meet and work together for the victory, in Christ, over all that is sin, evil, injustice, and that violates human dignity.

From the time the modern ecumenical movement was born over a century ago, there has always been a clear recognition of the fact that the lack of unity among Christians prevents the Gospel from being proclaimed more effectively, because it jeopardizes our credibility. How can we give a convincing witness if we are divided? Certainly, as regards the fundamental truths of the faith, much more unites us than divides us. But divisions remain, and they concern even various practical and ethical questions - causing confusion and distrust, and weakening our ability to hand on Christ’s saving Word. In this regard, we do well to remember the words of Blessed John Paul II, who in the Encyclical Ut unum sint, speaks of the damage caused to Christian witness and to the proclamation of the Gospel by the lack of unity (cf. no. 98,99). This is a great challenge for the new evangelization, which can be more fruitful if all Christians together announce the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and give a common response to the spiritual thirst of our times.

The Church's journey, like that of all peoples, is in the hands of the Risen Christ, who is victorious over the death and injustice that He bore and suffered on behalf of all mankind. He makes us sharers in His victory. Only He is capable of transforming us and changing us - from being weak and hesitant - to being strong and courageous in working for good. Only He can save us from the negative consequences of our divisions. Dear brothers and sisters, I invite everyone to be more intensely united in prayer during this Week for Unity, so that common witness, solidarity and collaboration may grow among Christians, as we await the glorious day when together we may profess the faith handed down by the Apostles, and together celebrate the Sacraments of our transformation in Christ. Thank you.

[Translation by Diane Montagna]

In English, Pope Benedict said:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity which begins today invites all the Lord’s followers to implore the gift of unity. This year’s theme – We Will All Be Changed By The Victory Of Our Lord Jesus Christ – was chosen by representatives of the Catholic Church and the Polish Ecumenical Council. Poland’s experience of oppression and persecution prompts a deeper reflection on the meaning of Christ’s victory over sin and death, a victory in which we share through faith. By his teaching, his example and his paschal mystery, the Lord has shown us the way to a victory obtained not by power, but by love and concern for those in need. Faith in Christ and interior conversion, both individual and communal, must constantly accompany our prayer for Christian unity. During this Week of Prayer, let us ask the Lord in a particular way to strengthen the faith of all Christians, to change our hearts and to enable us to bear united witness to the Gospel. In this way we will contribute to the new evangelization and respond ever more fully to the spiritual hunger of the men and women of our time.

Fr Alexander Men - an apostle of unity

2012-01-19T00:01:00.001+11:00

Father Alexander Men (1935-1990) was an influential parish priest in Russia who wrote, lectured widely, and eventually appeared on radio and television, becoming a nationally known figure. He started the first Russian Sunday school as soon as the communist persecution ceased, established a university, made a film, and started volunteer work at a children's hospital. He personally baptized thousands, and though he had a huge following of ordinary people he was called “the apostle to the intellectuals.”

He was assassinated in 1990.

You can go to a website dedicated to him HERE. Of particular note is the article by Irina Yaziova We are Moving into an Age of Love summarising his life and work.

I share with you Father Men’s responses to three questions regarding Christian unity, in an interview translated by Steve Griffin from "Kultura i dukhovnoe voskhozhdenie (Moscow 1992)” Go HERE for the complete article.

As an Orthodox believer what is your attitude towards other confessions?

My attitude was not formed immediately. After considerable thought, interaction and research I've come to be convinced that the Church is in essence one and that divisions have come about through the sin and narrow-mindedness of Christians. This sad fact is one of the greatest reasons for crises in Christianity. Only through brotherly unity and respect for diverse forms of church life can we hope to find strength, peace and God's blessing once again.

Can divisions in the Christian Church be overcome?

Over the centuries of division many differences have accumulated in the areas of doctrine, canon and worship. But I'm convinced that the schism between East and West is bound up with political, cultural and national conflicts. Today only a miracle could bring about real unity. Bur it is still possible to overcome misunderstanding and aggressive attitudes towards one another. If the members of different communities got to know one another better, in time this will bear good fruit.

In your view does Russia have a specific vocation?

The Bible teaches that nations which play an important role in history have a vocation given to them from above. I think that this applies to Russia. Chaadaev thought that Russia's vocation was to synthesize the depth and contemplative way of the East with the dynamism of the West. This thought is very close to my heart.

And here is a challenging section of the last interview Fr Alexander Men gave on 5th September 1990, just four days before he was killed:

“. . . the open model is acceptable to those who are sure of their own ground. Those who stand on shaky ground prefer a closed model because it is easier for them.

“Around fifteen years ago, a young man at my church started making occasional visits to the Baptist Church. I told him, you are Orthodox, of course you can go there because the church is everywhere, Christ is everywhere, the gospel is everywhere. Do both: go to the Baptist Church and don't forget your own spiritual roots. And when I explained the open model to him, he said, Oh dear, how uncomfortable! He ended up by becoming a Baptist.

“That person could only be either a Baptist who did not recognize Orthodoxy, or an Orthodox who cursed the Baptists. He wanted to have a little hole to hide himself away in. Apparently Peter the Great also suffered from a psychological disorder - the fear of open spaces. He built himself tiny little rooms and so on. There is an illness like that - the fear of open spaces. In the history of religion, there is also this fear of open spaces.”

I also share with you a series of extracts from a paper given in 1998 by Maureen Klassen. Go HERE for the paper in its entirety.

“When they passed near the Temple, Jesus stopped. In the morning a worship service would be performed and thousands of people would bring Paschal lambs to the altar. But the sleeping city did not suspect that that night, at the walls of God's house, surrounded by eleven shy Galileans, the High Priest and Saviour of the world was praying. He asked the Father to maintain his small flock among a world hostile to it. I do not pray for these only - but for those who believe in me through their word; that they may be one even as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me (Jn17).

“The Coming Temple of Christ's church was illuminated by the light of the Divine Trinity.” (Son of Man, p.178) 

Father Alexander Men shared this prayer poured out from the heart of his Master on his way to the Cross. And like his Master, the life that he lived among us, the death that he died, and the legacy he left in the lives of his followers all illuminate the profound meaning of that prayer . . .

Alexander Men inspired a large circle of followers and admirers drawn from a wide spectrum of different traditions, from Orthodoxy and Roman Catholic to Baptist and Pentecostals. His legacy in Russia and beyond is the continuance of his many converts in their devotion to his God, their study of his writings and the Word of God and their openness to one another and those beyond their tradition in the wider Body of Christ. Throughout his life, Alexander Men has been introducing people from all walks of life and religious persuasions to the person of Jesus Christ.

Like his Master, his tireless dedication led him to devote himself to a faithful impartation of God's truth in the lives of those who came to him. His teaching ministry reached far beyond the narrow confines of his local parish church at Novaya Derevnaya. For throughout his life from the time of his earliest writings in the sixties until the widespread posthumous popularity we see today, Alexander Men has been introducing people from all walks of life and religious persuasions to the person of Jesus Christ. He, perhaps more than any other person, was a light in a dark place though all the years of Communist oppression . . .

During his life and ministry Alexander Men was uniquely ecumenical, swimming often against the tide of prejudice and suspicion characterizing many of the parts of Christ's Body in Russia. This prevailing spirit of unifying love is evidenced in the nature of the gatherings in his memory which draw people from very diverse faith backgrounds. His witness and influence have truly transcended the walls that divide us. As we celebrate his life among us we are reminded of other lives of the early fathers, the saints of many traditions, martyrs, Protestant and Catholic and those of more recent eras . . .

At the deepest level the life of Alexander Men inspires us in its similarity to that of his Master in the quality of its discipleship. For the servant must be as his Lord . . .

May our fidelity to that spirit hasten the day when "all the different fruits [of our diversity] will flow together in one stream in which will be preserved all the best in the spiritual culture of humanity and of each person who is made in the image and likeness of God.” (Christianity for the Twenty-First Century, p. 163)

Brother Roger of Taizé - an apostle of unity

2012-01-18T13:17:00.007+11:00

(These paragraphs are part of a longer article on the Taizé website.)

Brother Roger of Taizé was for more than fifty years one of the leading figures in the ecumenical movement. He did more than talk about Christian unity; through the community he established, he lived it.

Brother Roger’s ecumenical mission was inspired by his grandmother. A Swiss Protestant, she had lived through World War I, and had been heartbroken to see Christians killing Christians. After the war, though she remained a Protestant, she began going to the Catholic church in her neighborhood to pray, in a silent but powerful gesture of unity which had a profound impact on her grandson. In 1940, as another war was beginning, Brother Roger moved to the tiny village of Taizé in France’s Burgundy region. There, during the war years, he sheltered political refugees, especially Jewish people, and began to develop the idea of an ecumenical community in which men from many different traditions - Catholic, Orthodox, Protestants - would live together under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Brother Roger’s dream became a reality on Easter Sunday, 1949, when the first few brothers, all Protestants, took their vows. Eventually, they were joined by Catholic brothers; today the brothers come from many different Christian traditions and from many different countries.

The mission of the Taizé community is not simply the unity of Christians; they work and pray towards solidarity with outsiders of all kinds, especially those living in extremes of poverty, hunger, or disease. Brother Roger himself traveled all over the world, spending time among the poor in Calcutta, South Africa, Lebanon, Haiti, Madras, Ethiopia, the Philippines, as well as the United States.

Brother Roger hoped that his community would be “a parable of communion,” a living example of how Christians might live together in mutual understanding and respect. As Cardinal Walter Kasper said in his homily at Brother Roger’s funeral: “By his presence, his words and his example, Brother Roger caused love and hope to shine around him, far beyond the barriers and the divisions of this world. A man of communion, he nourished in his heart and in his prayer a deep desire for reconciliation and encounter. With the Brothers of the Taizé community, he wanted to place a ferment of unity in the Church and in the world.”

SOME PRAYERS BY BROTHER ROGER:

O God the Father of all,

you ask every one of us to spread love and reconciliation

where people are divided.

You open this way for us,

so that the wounded body of Jesus Christ, your church,

may be leaven of communion for the poor of the earth

and in the whole human family.

* * *

Like your disciples on the road to Emmaus,

we are so often incapable of seeing that you, O Christ,

are our companion on the way.

But, when our eyes are opened,

we realise that you were speaking to us,

even though perhaps we had forgotten you.

Then the sign of our trust in you is that,

in our turn, we try to love, to forgive with you.

Independent of our doubts or even our faith, O Christ,

you are always there: your love burns in our heart of hearts.

* * *

Christ, you see who I am.

You were familiar with the human condition.

I do not want to hide anything in my heart from you.

You know that I am sometimes pulled in different directions

at the same time.

But when my inner being experiences an emptiness,

the thirst for your presence remains within me.

And when I am unable to pray, you yourself are my prayer.

* * *

Jesus, light of our hearts,

since your resurrection,

you always come to us.

Whatever point we may be at,

you are always waiting for us.

And you tell us:

Come to me, you who are overburdened,

and you will find relief.

Amen.

* * *

Jesus our peace, you never abandon us. 

And the Holy Spirit always opens a way forward, 

the way which consists in casting ourselves into God

as into the depths. 

And astonishment arises: 

these depths are not an abyss of darkness; 

they are God-fathomless depths  of compassion and innocence.

* * *

Come, O Christ,

and fill us with quiet confidence;  

make us realise that your love will never disappear, 

and that to follow you means giving our lives. 

Amen.

* * *

Taizé is, of course, famous for its gentle and powerful worship, musically built around repetitive chants and texts. Here are some words of Brother Roger about this (I'm sure what he says applies to worship in general, whatever the particular musical culture):

Nothing is more conducive to communion with the Living God than a meditative common prayer with singing that never ends, but continues in the silence of one's heart, when one is alone again.

In the common prayer, the spirit of praise gives glimpses of the invisible. And within you comes welling up the wonder of a love.

Singing is one of the most important forms of prayer. A few words sung over and over again reinforce the meditative quality of the prayer. They express a basic reality of faith that can quickly be grasped by the intellect, and that gradually penetrates the heart and the whole being. These simple chants also provide a way of praying when one is alone, during the day or at night, or even in the silence of one's heart while one is working.

Here is Brother Roger speaking about freedom in the image of God:

Cardinal Ratzinger gives Brother Roger Holy Communion

at the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II in 2005

May they all be one

2012-01-17T16:36:00.003+11:00

PRAYER FOR UNITY

by Fr. Sergius Bulgakov

O Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour

thou didst promise to abide with us always.

Thou dost call all Christians to draw near

and partake of thy Body and Blood,

But our sin has divided us

and we have no power to partake of thy Holy Eucharist together.

We confess this our sin and we pray thee,

forgive us and help us to serve the ways of reconciliation,

according to thy will.

Kindle our hearts with the fire of the Holy Spirit,

give us the spirit of Wisdom and faith, of daring and of patience,

of humility and firmness, of love and of repentance,

through the prayers of the most blessed Mother of God

and of all the saints.

Amen.

ACT OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNION

when attending the Eucharist of a Church

whose discipline does not yet allow us

to receive Holy Communion sacramentally

Lord Jesus,

I believe that you are in the Blessed Sacrament.

I love you above all things,

and I long for you in my soul.

Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally,

come at least spiritually into my heart.

As though you have already come,

I embrace you and unite myself entirely to you.

Never permit me to be separated from you.

Lord Jesus, may we all be one

as you and Father are one,

so that the world may believe the Father has sent you.

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles,

'I leave you peace; my peace I give you.

'Look not on our sins,

but on the faith of your Church;

and grant her the peace and unity

which is according to your will;

who live and reign for ever and ever.

Amen.

Becoming part of the prayer of Jesus

2012-01-13T15:37:00.009+11:00

My last post, two days ago, began with these words of Mother Mary Clare SLG: “To stand before the living God, what an adventure; to stand face to face before the living God not in a vague way in a place we call heaven, but in the here and now of our moment to moment living, by, with and in Christ, as we are made part of his prayer and his offering through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

In order to grasp this truth and deepen our understanding of prayer, we must ponder the “tri-unity” that is the inner life of God, a communion of three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, bound together in infinite, self-giving love. “The Trinity is the revelation that God is Love . . . We can only ‘have’ love by loving, by participating in a relationship of love. So, the Trinity is Love Loving – dynamic, unfathomable, inexhaustible, eternally complete and creative.” (Rev. Dr. James Hanvey SJ HERE).

St Gregory Nazianzen and St John of Damascus use the word perichoresis, “going around” or “enveloping” to express this loving union of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity” (Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, A theology of the Holy Spirit). So, we may think of the Trinity as “creative choreography,” a “dance of reciprocal love.” Pinnock says that “as a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive . . . caught up in an eternal dance of reciprocity . . . The persons of the Trinity move with choreographed harmony. The love emanating from within cannot help but create, for it is the nature of love not to harbour and to hoard but to expand and to create . . .”

An important aspect of this relationship is the perfect love, prayer and praise the Son offers to the Father, and which the Gospels show us being played out in time and space. (Actually, the name “Father” was used of God in a metaphorical sense only 15 times in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, however, it is used 245 times. Even that should tell us something important!) A theme running through the Gospels is the intimacy of the relationship of Jesus and the Father. The Gospels make it clear there is a special sence in which God is “my Father” to Jesus. “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18).

Yet St Paul says in Romans 8:15: “. . . you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry ‘Abba, Father.’”

And in Galatians 4:6: “The proof that you are sons (of God) is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’.”

This cry, “Abba, Father,” uttered continually by the Spirit in the hearts of those gathered at the altar, is basic to the Christian understanding of prayer. It is connected to the reality spoken of in the Anglican-Roman Catholic Agreed Statement on the Eucharist, that at the altar we “enter into the movement of Christ's self-offering.”

In other words, it is in the Eucharist that the Holy Spirit intensely renews and deepens our being part of the prayer of Jesus, and we are swept into the eternal movement of love and self-giving between him and the Father. Thus worship, to quote Fr Hanvey again, becomes for us “‘a great cry of wonder’, a “learning to love by participating in Love. Literally, by ‘being-in-Love’.”

“The Eucharist is not simply a matter of our standing outside of Jesus and watching him offer perfect praise of the Father on our behalf. It is a matter of our entering into the perfect praise of Jesus, becoming one with it, making it our own through our identity with Jesus and with his dispositions in offering himself.” (In Fr. Paul Hinnebusch OP in Praise – A Way of Life.)

A powerful testimony to this is in the Letter to the Hebrews, where words from Psalm 22 are placed on the lips of Jesus the High Priest who gathers his people into a great liturgical assembly:

“He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, ‘I will proclaim thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee.’” (Hebrews 2:11-12) The amazing thought here is that Jesus comes to church with us, and he offers praise to the Father from “the midst of the congregation.”

So, “Christian prayer” is NOT primarily the prayer of Christians! “Christian prayer” is the prayer of Jesus. It is the movement of love between him and the Father, to which we are joined by the Holy Spirit. We become part of the prayer of Jesus. ALL our individual prayers are little streams entering this great river of love and praise flowing and swirling between Jesus, the Church and the Father. This is what St Jude means when he says that we should be always “praying in the Holy Spirit.” (Jude 20). It is also why the Eucharistic Prayer – the great prayer of thanksgiving, consecration and offering – always concludes with these or similar words:

‘Through him,

with him,

in him,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

all Glory and honour is yours

Almighty Father,

for ever and ever. Amen.”

Friendship with God

2012-01-11T21:49:00.005+11:00

In her book Encountering the Depths, Mother Mary Clare SLG (1906-1988), wrote: “To stand before the living God, what an adventure; to stand face to face before the living God, not in a vague way in a place we call heaven, but in the here and now of our moment to moment living, by, with and in Christ, as we are made part of his prayer and his offering through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

God loves us, and his purpose is to draw us into an ever-deepening friendship with himself. Do you remember that Abraham is said to have been God’s “friend” (2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23). Abraham was far from perfect, but he loved God, believed his promises, and walked in his way. He is called the “father of all who believe” (Romans 4:11), and throughout the New Testament his trusting response to God is held up as an example for us.

In John 15:13-15, Jesus says to his followers, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

So, friendship is bound up with sacrificial love.

The religious leaders who were upset with Jesus thought it a clever insult to call him the “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). I'm sure that Jesus wore that badge with honour! In the Gospel narratives it is obvious that, far from just “doing his job,” Jesus enjoyed being with these friends of his. The genuineness and mutuality of real friendship was the context in which so many were able to receive from him love, hope, healing and new beginnings. It’s the same today, which is why church communities and individuals who are truly close to Jesus “befriend” those who are most vulnerable and pushed to the margins of our society.

Friendship is the way of communication and sharing. It involves what is often called a “posture of heart,” an open attitude, toward the other person. In our friendship with God this posture of heart includes recognition of our Father’s greatness, his goodness, his power, his love and his mercy. It also includes the response of our heart, the way we speak with him, our use of gestures to express what is in our hearts, and our determination to do what he asks of us. In prayer we speak, we think, and we also listen in the silence. Sometimes we are able just to “be.”

Friendship with God is a “this-worldly” experience, while at the same time it transcends space and time, for it is an entering into the inner life of God, allowing the Holy Spirit to make us part of Jesus’ eternal self-offering of love to the Father. (More next time)

Prayer: sometimes refreshing . . . sometimes a struggle

2012-01-10T21:13:00.011+11:00

I am so thankful for times of prayer that lift the heart and soul; times of spiritual refreshing; times of experiencing the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as a real and powerful anointing; times when the healing balm of the Lord's presence brings joy, comfort and strength. We can have those experiences when we are deeply moved in worship with our church family; and also when we are alone in prayer. Unlike some mean-spirited religious people, I want to tell you that such blessings are a gift from God. My advice to you if you find yourself in a time of refreshing is to linger, allow the Lord to minister to you, and - yes - ENJOY!

Just because we know that there are desert patches through which we will have to trudge doesn't mean that we should feel guilty or immature during times of blessing. It is precisely BECAUSE of the stretch of desert ahead that the Lord will bring us to an oasis for a time. We should drink. We should rest. We should make the most of it. We should thank the Lord for it and intentionally use the blessings of the oasis to prepare ourselves for whatever drought-stricken wasteland lies ahead. That's just the rhythm of life; and it's the rhythm of the spiritual life, too.

The other side of this truth, of course, is that we shouldn't give up praying just because we find it difficult to pray. We know from their writings that most of the great Saints and spiritual guides down through the centuries experienced times of struggle and frustration in prayer. From their lives we learn that whatever physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual blockages might get in the way, God’s love can - and will - win through. Our part is to persevere, especially in times of spiritual dryness.

That's one of the reasons we should have someone - a priest, a pastor, a religious sister or brother, or a lay person who is a little bit further down the track than we are - who can help us try to understand what God is doing in our life. (Even when prayer is NOT difficult, it is still a good idea to have someone like that - a "spiritual guide.")

One of the best "no-nonsence" paragraphs about prayer, in relation to what I have just said, is this passage from the RULE FOR A NEW BROTHER by a Dutch Blessed Sacrament Father, published by Darton, Longman & Todd in 1973:

Sometimes you will taste and see how good the Lord is.

Be glad then, and give him all honour,

because his goodness to you has no measure.

Sometimes you will be dry and joyless

like parched land or an empty well.

But your thirst and helplessness will be your best prayer

if you accept them with patience

and embrace them lovingly.

Sometimes your prayer will be an experience

of the infinite distance that separates you from God;

sometimes your being and his fullness

will flow into each other.

Sometimes you will be able to pray

only with your body and hands and eyes;

sometimes your prayer will move beyond words and images;

sometimes you will be able to leave everything behind you

to concentrate on God and his Word.

Sometimes you will be able to do nothing else

but take your whole life and everything in you and bring them to God.

Every hour has its own possibilities of genuine prayer.

We truly teach the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice . . .

2012-01-09T23:26:00.006+11:00

St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge

From SAEPIUS OFFICIO, the joint declaration of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1897 to Pope Leo XIII defending the validity of Anglican Orders, stating definitively what they believed to be the Biblical and Anglican teaching concerning Eucharistic sacrifice:

We truly teach the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice and do not believe it to be a “nude commemoration of the Sacrifice of the Cross” . . . But we think it sufficient in the Liturgy which we use in celebrating the holy Eucharist,—while lifting up our hearts to the Lord, and when now consecrating the gifts already offered that they may become to us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,—to signify the sacrifice which is offered at that point of the service in such terms as these. We continue a perpetual memory of the precious death of Christ, who is our Advocate with the Father and the propitiation for our sins, according to His precept, until His coming again.

For first we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving;

then next we plead and represent before the Father the sacrifice of the cross, and by it we confidently entreat remission of sins and all other benefits of the Lord’s Passion for all the whole Church;

and lastly we offer the sacrifice of ourselves to the Creator of all things which we have already signified by the oblations of His creatures.

This whole action, in which the people has necessarily to take its part with the Priest, we are accustomed to call the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Judging our Neighbour

2012-01-09T14:24:00.005+11:00

In thinking about todays first Mass reading I came across this Jewish sermon. Very sensible and moving stuff by Rabbi Mark H. Levin:

Hannah’s guts ached. She was eating her heart out. She could not get pregnant. Not that her husband did not love her, or was unavailable to her. But, she desired children for both herself and for Elkanah. She felt childbearing was her reason to live, and God had conspired to deny her this one source of satisfaction. She intimately knew profound personal loss. But that was not the matter’s entirety. Would that it were! She might be able to cope better with a one dimensional problem.

No, her problems of self reproach revolved also around jealousy. Her husband’s other wife not only bore him children but received additional portions of the sacrifice Elkanah offered to God. Elkanah’s hands were tied; he could do no other. Each member of the family received their rightful share of the sacrificial meat. Elkanah could not deny them their due. But to Hannah it felt like somehow the other wife, Peninah, was holier.

To make matters worse, Peninah, knowing that Elkanah preferred Hannah to herself, tormented her rival about receiving less of the sacrifice and about having no children. “God prefers me over you,” she would taunt in that whining nasal voice of hers each time they traveled as a family to Shiloh. It gnawed at Hannah’s intestines, but there was absolutely nothing she could do. Elkanah assured her of his love, but he did not really understand. He was not a woman. His protestations only worsened matters, for the woman beloved by her husband wants to please him, and Hannah felt Elkanah would like nothing more than a child from his favored wife. Hannah cried herself to sleep nightly, but felt she had no place to turn.

Finally Hannah could take it no more. Go HERE to continue reading.

T.S. Eliot reading his poem "The Journey of the Magi"

2012-01-08T10:20:00.000+11:00

Epiphany - We beheld his glory (Dr. Robert Crouse)

2012-01-08T00:04:00.000+11:00

Robert Crouse (1930-2011) was a noted Patristic and Medieval scholar, and a teacher and priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He was a bulwark of orthodox faith, and was even said to be "the conscience of the Canadian Church". His passion was was the poet theologian Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). From 1990 to 2004 Dr Crouse frequently served as Visiting Professor of Patrology at the Augustinianum of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He was the first non‐Roman Catholic to be invited to this position.

"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." St. John 1.14

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany - that great festival on which Christians, for at least fifteen hundred years, have celebrated the manifestation, or showing forth, of the glory of God in Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God made flesh.

Just as the showing forth of the glory of God in Christ takes many different forms, so our season of Epiphany commemorates many different things. First, the coming of the wise men from the East to worship at the cradle of the Infant Christ; then, the Baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan by John the Baptist, with the voice from heaven declaring that this Jesus is the beloved son of God; then the visit of Jesus, at twelve years old, to the Temple at Jerusalem, where the learned doctors were astonished by his understanding and his answers; and then, a series of Jesus' miracles: the changing of water into wine at the marriage feast at Cana; the healing of a leper, and the centurion's palsied servant; and the calming of the troubled sea. Then, at the end of the season of Epiphany, we have prophetic lessons about the final coming of the Son of God, in power and great glory.

Many different things - a great diversity of commemorations; yet they are tied together by one common theme. They are all aspects of the showing forth, the shining forth, the "Epiphany" of the divine glory of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, the Eternal Word of God, made flesh. Thus these many commemorations of Epiphany make up a continuing meditation upon the meaning of the Christmas miracle - the miracle of God with us, God in our flesh, Emmanuel, God visible to human eyes, God audible to human ears, God tangible to human touch, God manifest in human life, judging, restoring, and transforming it by the grace and truth he brings. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth."

On the Feast of Epiphany itself, tomorrow, we commemorate especially the coming of the wise men. "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."

Those learned travellers - perhaps Chaldean scientists, astronomers (actually, we know very little about them) - came first to Jerusalem, the Royal City, the obvious place to look for the new-born Jewish King. But, instructed by the Scriptures, they were directed further on, to Bethlehem, and it was a strange sort of King they found there: they found a little child there, with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. There, at the manger, they offered their symbolic gifts; god., acknowledging a king; incense, the symbol of God's presence; and myrrh, the ancient funeral spice, recognizing the mortal human nature of the Son of God, destined to suffer and to die in sacrifice for all mankind.

A remarkable performance, really. What was there, after all, about the humble manger scene to suggest the divinity, the kingship, and the sacrificial destiny of the Infant Christ: How was divine glory shown forth there? Surely, it was a glory visible only to the eyes of faith: faith, to see in a helpless infant, who cannot even stutter, the Almighty Word of God; faith, to see the King of Kings, and Lord of all the worlds, in a swaddled baby, who cries for mother's milk; faith, to see the Very Son of God, "God of God, Light of Light", in all the poverty of a cattle stall, exposed to all the bitter winds of human indifference and disdain.

A remarkable performance, certainly; but that, you know, is the proper work of faith, and the pattern of faith for all of us. "Where is he that is born King of the Jews: Where is the Son of God, who comes to save us: Where is that Bread of Life for whom our spirits faint? Faith bids us find him, as it were, in a stable. Faith bids us find the Word of God in human words; faith bids us taste the very life of God in bread and wine; faith bids us see the Son of God in one another - in the least of these his brethren, to see and to declare his glory shining there.

Our human inclination is ever to lust for the spectacular, the novel, the entertaining, the compelling. We look for something new and different, some "gimmick", some new recipe that promises what we call success. But faith ever calls us back, to work out our salvation in the common, everyday life of the Christian fellowship, the disciplined routines of Christian worship, prayer and study, and works of Christian charity.

Christian life is not fundamentally the fevers and chills of emotional excitement: it is rather the careful, thoughtful learning of the Word of God, day by day, year by year; the nutriment of the Christian sacraments, and the deeds of love and mercy which flow from Christian charity. In the normal, everyday things of the Church's life - the words of Scripture, prayers and sermons, the outward signs of sacraments - the world sees only human words, only poor and common things: halting human speech, a bit of water, bits of bread and wine, and so on. But faith has eyes to see in all these things the shining forth, the "Epiphany" of the Son of God, the miracle of God with us, Emmanuel. And faith has gifts to offer him; not much, perhaps, in worldly terms, but by his own grace we have that one best gift, acknowledging his divinity, his kingship, and his sacrifice, the gift he treasures most - the gift of adoration, the gift of the humble obedience of mind and heart.

"Fear not to enter his courts, in the slenderness

Of the poor wealth thou canst reckon as thine,

Truth in its beauty and love in its tenderness,

These are the offerings to lay on his shrine.

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness;

Bow down before him, his glory proclaim;

Gold of obedience and incense of lowliness

Bring and adore him; the Lord is his Name!"

No Wise Man can offer more, and surely faith cannot offer less than adoration; for to the eyes of faith, the everlasting glory of the Father shines forth in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh - "and we beheld his glory", day by day, we behold his glory, "the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Amen. +

We CAN trust him

2012-01-07T18:43:00.005+11:00

It's human nature to want everything to be "just perfect" – in spite of the fact that we all experience life as a combination of joy and pain. There are no exceptions. And the Bible goes out of its way to emphasise this mingling of joy and pain when talking about the first Christmas.

Mary has to tell Joseph that the child within her is not his. Think of trying to convince one’s betrothed that the pregnancy is due to nothing less than the power of God! (God himself had to help convince Joseph!)

The arduous journey to Bethlehem resulted in the birth of Jesus among animals in a cave.

The Holy Family trudged to Egypt as refugees, and stayed there for two years, until it was safe to go home.

The blood of all those slaughtered little boys two years old and younger ran in the streets of Bethlehem while their inconsolable parents wailed in grief.

For thirty years at Nazareth God in earthy human flesh loved, ate, spoke, slept and sweated, his hands bearing the calluses of weariness and work.

The joy of his coming is mingled with pain, for his journey to the cross overshadowed his birth and life. As it was the real world into which he came, the real world he set out to save, it could not be otherwise.

God the Father didn’t smooth out the pathway ahead of Jesus or those who were closest to him. Jesus suffered greatly; and the others shared in his suffering, his poverty, his labour and his pain. This was crucial to God’s way of saving the world. These things are, as we might say “the birth-pangs of the new age.”

Thank God that Christmastide is a time of joy, sharing, singing and praise; a time for exchanging gifts and greetings; a time even for rekindling faith, as treasured childhood memories and religious sentiments are revived by the trappings of the holy season. Let’s celebrate as sumptuously as we can. God would want that.

As long as we don’t forget that Christmas is also for those who find their faith journey a bit of a trudge: those in poverty; those who suffer pain at this time of the year because they have outlived their friends; or their families and other relationships have crumbled; or they are separated by great distance from loved ones; or they struggle with psychological illnesses; or they just - in all honesty - find it so hard to believe.

Gathering at the altar with the spirit-filled community is still the best way of entering into the joy of this season, because every Mass is ANOTHER CALVARY, where the “one perfect sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world” is offered to the Father; and every Mass is ANOTHER BETHLEHEM where Jesus comes among us in as real a way as when he lay in the manger.

Whatever circumstances we face in our lives at this particular moment, we can trust the Lord. In leaping from the throne of glory via the Virgin’s fiat into this world which - for all of its beauty and wonder - we had turned into the gutter of the universe, he has already shown how much he loves us.

Dear reader, he is “the same, yesterday, today and forever,” and if you reach out to him today, you will know his love, his strength, and his healing power supporting and sustaining you . . . in your joy as well as in your pain.

Or, in the words of St Paul: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)

Resurrection and how we know things (N.T. Wright)

2012-01-06T13:48:00.007+11:00

N.T. (Tom) Wright resigned the See of Durham in 2010 in order to take up a Chair in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is a distinguished New Testament scholar, prolific author, and gifted communicator. In particular he has engaged in creative, respectful and effective debate with extremely liberal scholars on their own ground. In 2008 he addressed the Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops on Scripture in the life of the Church. I have read lots of things by Wright, and although I am surprised at his views on some of our current ecclesiological crises, I think that he must be required reading for Christians and others who want to come to terms with the New Testament and the historical claims at the heart of the Christian Faith. I have only recently come across the unofficial website devoted to his works HERE. Today I share with you from that website part of his 2002 essay Resurrection: From Theology to Music and Back Again:

I have spent the last few years, on and off, thinking, praying, reading, lecturing, preaching and writing about the resurrection.[13] Within my own field one of the major questions to be faced here is not just what we can know but, as with Thomas’ question in No. 26, how we can know it. Christian thinkers have been divided for some time on this question. Some have moved, with more or less caution, towards saying that the bodily resurrection is, in some sense, historically verifiable.[14] Others have denied this a priori for two reasons: either because, they say, it is not in that sense a ‘historical’ event (i.e., it was an event only in the minds of the disciples);[15] or because, they say, to assess the truth of the resurrection on the basis of post-Enlightenment historical method is to grant the latter a supreme position — over the resurrection, whereas the resurrection itself must be the starting-point, epistemologically as well as onto-logically, for everything else.[16]

Let me be cautious but clear at this point. I have become convinced that we can and must argue a historical case, to be defended on grounds that people of any faith and none might legitimately recognize, that (a) the tomb of Jesus was empty on Easter morning, and (b) the disciples really did see Jesus alive again in what gave every appearance of being a physical, though transformed, body. Only this will make sense of the fact that the early Christians really did believe Jesus was bodily raised (a point which, though sometimes challenged, is in my view absolutely secure historically). If they had only found an empty tomb, they would have concluded that the body had been stolen; if they had seen Jesus a few times, especially with him coming and going through locked doors and not always being instantly recognized, they would have concluded that they were hallucinating. It was the two together — empty tomb plus appearances — that convinced them that he was truly alive, that he had gone through the valley of death and, after a brief ‘rest’, was fully and bodily alive again, indeed even more so than before, since now death could never touch him again.

Can we move further than that, and if so how? Christian apologists can legitimately challenge their critics to explain how these two things happened on any other supposition except that the early Christians were speaking the truth. It is remarkable how thin, and full of special pleading, are all the alternative explanations that have been offered over the last two centuries by ingenious apologists for a post-Enlightenment world-view, often masquerading as ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ observers or historians.[17] Can a Christian apologetic do any better? Can it, on ‘historical’ grounds alone, compel someone to take the final step and declare that they too now believe Jesus was truly raised from the dead on Easter day? I think not. We can point, like an archaeologist, to two pillars which look, by their shaping at the top, as though they were designed to support a now-missing arch. We can show that, despite years of energetic attempts to suggest an alternative, nothing else explains those pillars nearly as well as an arch; that is, that nothing else explains both the empty tomb and the appearances (which themselves explain early Christian belief) nearly as well as the bodily resurrection. For some that has been sufficient; for instance, the well-known Frank Morison, who wrote Who Moved the Stone as a result.[18] But to this extent I think Frei and others may have at least a grain of truth: the story and fact of the resurrection itself, rather than a post-Enlightenment positivism, carries the power to lead doubting Thomases to declare that they believe the arch really existed. Read the entire essay.

[13] My major work The Resurrection of the Son of God is still in preparation at the time of writing. Advance statements of some parts of the argument may be found in The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (with Marcus J. Borg), London: SPCK, 1999, ch. 7, and The Challenge of Jesus, London: SPCK, 2000, chs. 6-8.

[14] The most impressive case is that of W. Pannenberg, e.g., Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994 (German orig., 1991), pp. 343-63, with reference to earlier discussions. There is of course a more enthusiastic (in both senses) and almost positivist case regularly made by evangelical apologists.

[15] The best known example is Rudolf Bultmann: e.g., ‘The New Testament and Mythology’, in H. W. Bartsch (ed.), Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, New York: Harper, 1961 [1953], pp.1-44; cf. p. 42: ‘The real Easter faith is faith in the word of preaching which brings illumination. If the event of Easter Day is in any sense an historical event additional to the event of the cross, it is nothing else than the rise of faith in the risen Lord . . . The resurrection itself is not an event of past history.’

[16] I think here particularly of the work of Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.

[17] E.g. G. Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, London: SCM Press, 1994.

[18] London: Faber & Faber, 1930

Living Water - St Gregory of Nyssa

2012-01-05T14:11:00.005+11:00

I have been reading Theology and Scriptural Imagination (ed. ‪Jones & Buckley), and particularly enjoyed Robert Louis Wilken’s essay, “In Defense of Allegory.” Not surprisingly, Dr Wilken looks at the Cappadocian Father, St Gregory of Nyssa (331-395 AD), and directs us to his Homilies on the Song of Songs. So, the two extracts` from St Gregory below are via Dr Wilken. In the first, from Homily 9, "living waters" are seen to represent the life of God which is, in turn, “lifegiving":

We are familiar with these descriptions of the divine essence as a source of life from the Holy Scriptures. Thus the prophet, speaking in the person of God, says, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water” (Jeremiah 2:13). And again, the Lord says to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water" (John 4: 10). And again he says: “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:38-39). Here in all these places by “living water” is meant the divine nature. So too in our text the infallible Word declares that the bride is a well of living waters that have flowed down from Lebanon. Now here is a very strange paradox. All wells hold still water; only in the bride is there said to be running water. She has the depth of a well together with the constant flow of a river. Now how can we really do justice to the wonders revealed here in the symbol that is applied to the bride? It would seem that she has no further height to reach now that she has been absolutely compared to the very archetype of all beauty. Very closely does she imitate his source in her own, his life in hers, that living water by hers. God's Word has life, and so too does the soul that receives him. And this water flows from God, as he the source, explained when he said, “From God I proceeded and came” John 8:42). And the bride embraces and holds what flows into the well of her soul, and thus she becomes a storehouse of that living water that flows, or rather, rushes down from Lebanon, as the Word tells us.

In this passage from Homily 11, St Gregory refers to the "'spring" in Genesis 2:6 (LXX) that watered the face of the earth; he captures the dynamic sense of God’s revelation of himself to us, as well as the wonder that inspires our response to his love:

As you came near the spring you would marvel, seeing that the water was endless, as it constantly gushed up and poured forth. Yet you could never say that you had seen all the water. How could you see what was still hidden in the bosom of the earth? Hence no matter how long you might stay at the spring, you would always be beginning to see the water. For the water never stops flowing, and it is always beginning to bubble up again. It is the same with one who fixes his gaze on the infinite beauty of God. It is constantly being discovered anew, and it is always seen as something new and strange in comparison with what the mind has already understood. And as God continues to reveal himself, man continues to wonder; and he never exhausts his desire to see more, since what he is waiting for is always more magnificent, more divine, than all that he has already seen.

The defencelessness of good - Bulgakov

2012-01-04T01:26:00.007+11:00

Fr Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, a noted theologian, philosopher, economist, and prolific writer. Exiled by the Communist government of Russia, he became part of the Russian community in Paris, and took part in the founding the of St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute. The following is from his book, Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year (trans. Boris Jakim; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), pages 39–40:

And to us who come, in the midst of the wicked world torn by malice, to venerate the Infant lying in the manger, what law and wisdom of life are given by this miraculous sign? To what do the angels now call those who come to venerate Christ? They call them to receive into their hearts His humiliation, His persecution, His Crucifixion, as the sole sign of the Christian life, as its power and triumph.

For the best self-attestation of the Good is its defenselessness in the face of the power of evil. The best attestation of Truth is silence in the face of much-talkative falsehood. The supreme manifestation of Beauty consists in the unadornment by vain adornment. The power of God triumphs by means of itself, not by means of the power of this world. For the world, there is no power of God. The world does not see and does not know the power of God: it laughs at the power of God. But Christians know that the sign of God is powerlessness in the world – the Infant in the manger.

And there is no need to gild the manger, for a gilded manger is no longer Christ’s manger. There is no need for earthly defense, for such defense is superfluous for the Infant Christ. There is no need for earthly magnificence, for it is rejected by the King of Glory, the Infant in the manger. But there is a need for the authentic revelation of the God of Love. There is a need for the image of all-forgiving meekness, praying for His enemies and tormentors. There is a need for the image of the way of the cross to Christ’s Kingdom, to defeat evil by the triumphant self-evidence of good. There is a need for the image of freedom from the world. And powerless, we are powerful. In the kingdom of this world we desire to serve the Kingdom of God; we believe in, call, and await this Kingdom. For we have come to know the sign of the Infant in the manger. Power in powerlessness, Triumph in humiliation. And let our heart be our manger, in which we bear the divine sign, the sign of the cross.

By this sign reigns the King of kings, the Infant in the manger. In Him and with Him we are united forever by the fact He was made man. We call him Emmanuel – God with us.

Prayer and the words we use

2012-01-03T01:40:00.004+11:00

There is an age-old argument in some circles as to whether in the personal prayer life of Christians "written" or "spontaneous" prayers are best. Famously, Abbot John Chapman said: "Pray as you can; don't try to pray as you can't." Of course, the kind of praying we do changes as we change, and according to our circumstances. But in practice, the personal prayer life of most Christians is a blend of silence, spontaneity and set prayers. This ought not surprise us, for the Gospels clearly indicate that such was the experience of Jesus himself.

In his book, With Pity Not With Blame, Fr Robert Llewelyn (1909-2008), who was a much loved Anglican spiritual director, expressed perfectly the relation between even the most beautiful of our words and the movement of love which is the essence of our praying:

"The important thing is that the intention to pray remains,

ourselves meanwhile attending gently to the words

as the Holy Spirit enables us,

knowing that the heart is at prayer

even though the mind may wander from time to time.

We have to remember

that the real prayer lies beyond the words

in the inclination and the offering of the heart,

and the function of the words

is to set the heart free to pray.

The words may be seen as banks of a river

enabling it to remain deep and flowing.

Without the banks,

the waters would scatter

and become shallow and even stagnant.

A similar danger is open to prayer

when the framework in which it freely flows is removed.

Yet the prayer is not the framework,

but lies beyond.

And just as when the river flows into the sea,

the banks are left behind,

so when prayer flows more deeply into God,

the words,

having served their purpose,

will drop away."

Mary, Mother of God (and Happy New Year!)

2012-01-01T00:01:00.000+11:00

Even during his Anglican years, John Henry Newman felt that the popular exhibitions of devotion that so scandalized Church of England visitors to the Continent - even with what he conceded might be corruptions of “excess” or “superstition” - were preferable to the arid indifference he found among English laity and clergy. After all, said Newman, these devotions to Our Lady derived from the real (versus notional) idea that she was the Mother of God

Nowhere does Newman express himself more beautifully on the true Christian attitude towards Our Lady than near the end of his famous “Letter to the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D., on his recent Eirenicon" (1866). In fact, some regard the following as the most brilliant passage in the whole of his work:

“Did not the All-wise know the human heart

when He took to Himself a Mother?

Did He not anticipate our emotion

at the sight of such an exaltation

in one so simple and so lowly?

"If He had not meant her

to exert that wonderful influence in His Church,

which she has in the event exerted,

I will use a bold word,

He it is who has perverted us.

"If she is not to attract our homage,

why did He make her solitary in her greatness

amid His vast creation?

"If it be idolatry in us

to let our affections respond to our faith,

He would not have made her what she is,

or He would not have told us

that He had so made her;

but, far from this,

He has sent His Prophet to announce to us,

‘A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son,

and they shall call His name Emmanuel,’

and we have the same warrant

for hailing her as God’s Mother,

as we have for adoring Him as God.”

Mary, Mother of God ("Theotókos")

2011-12-31T17:49:00.006+11:00

Because of the sad and time-consuming controversies in the Anglican world, and the apparent cooling of ecumenical dialogue, much of the work of ARCIC-II has gone unnoticed at the grass-roots level. This is particularly true of the final Agreed Statement of ARCIC-II published in 2005, Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ.

The document looks at Mary, firstly in Scripture, secondly in the early traditions of the Church before our divisions, thirdly in the specifically Anglican tradition of the last five hundred years, and it then explores the question of the “Marian dogmas.” ARCIC-II was concerned to break down old stereotypes. This is the reason for the emphasis in the document on salvation being “by grace alone.” In fact, the Agreed Statement relies heavily on an understanding of “prevenient grace” that is to be found in both traditions:

“The holiness which is our end in Christ (cf. 1 John 3:2-3) was seen, by unmerited grace, in Mary, who is the prototype of the hope of grace for humankind as a whole” (paragraph 59).

and

“Mary’s ‘Amen’ to God’s ‘Yes’ in Christ to her is thus both unique and a model for every disciple and for the life of the Church” (paragraph 64).

For me, one of the passages in the document that deserves widespread attention for both its thoroughness and brevity is that which deals with Mary as "Theotókos", "God-bearer" or "Mother of God."

As we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, I share it with you (AND recommend that you read and reflect on the whole document, which can be found online HERE).

Christ and Mary in the Ancient Common Tradition

31. In the early Church, reflection on Mary served to interpret and safeguard the apostolic Tradition centred on Jesus Christ. Patristic testimony to Mary as 'God-bearer' (Theotókos) emerged from reflection on Scripture and the celebration of Christian feasts, but its development was due chiefly to the early Christological controversies. In the crucible of these controversies of the first five centuries, and their resolution in successive Ecumenical Councils, reflection on Mary's role in the Incarnation was integral to the articulation of orthodox faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

32. In defence of Christ's true humanity, and against Docetism, the early Church emphasized Jesus' birth from Mary. He did not just 'appear' to be human; he did not descend from heaven in a 'heavenly body', nor when he was born did he simply 'pass through' his mother. Rather, Mary gave birth to her son of her own substance. For Ignatius of Antioch (†c.110) and Tertullian (†c.225), Jesus is fully human, because 'truly born' of Mary. In the words of the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), "he was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man." The definition of Chalcedon (451), reaffirming this creed, attests that Christ is "consubstantial with the Father according to the divinity and consubstantial with us according to the humanity." The Athanasian Creed confesses yet more concretely that he is "man, of the substance of his Mother." This Anglicans and Roman Catholics together affirm.

33. In defence of his true divinity, the early Church emphasized Mary's virginal conception of Jesus Christ. According to the Fathers, his conception by the Holy Spirit testifies to Christ's divine origin and divine identity. The One born of Mary is the eternal Son of God. Eastern and Western Fathers - such as Justin (†c.150), Irenaeus (†c.202), Athanasius (†373), and Ambrose (†397) - expounded this New Testament teaching in terms of Genesis 3 (Mary is the antitype of 'virgin Eve') and Isaiah 7:14 (she fulfils the prophet's vision and gives birth to "God with us"). They appealed to the virginal conception to defend both the Lord's divinity and Mary's honour. As the Apostles' Creed confesses: Jesus Christ was "conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary." This Anglicans and Roman Catholics together affirm.

34. Mary's title Theotókos was formally invoked to safeguard the orthodox doctrine of the unity of Christ's person. This title had been in use in churches under the influence of Alexandria at least from the time of the Arian controversy. Since Jesus Christ is "true God from true God", as the Council of Nicaea (325) declared, these churches concluded that his mother, Mary, can rightly be called the 'God-bearer'. Churches under the influence of Antioch, however, conscious of the threat Apollinarianism posed to belief in the full humanity of Christ, did not immediately adopt this title. The debate between Cyril of Alexandria (†444) and Nestorius (†455), patriarch of Constantinople, who was formed in the Antiochene school, revealed that the real issue in the question of Mary's title was the unity of Christ's person. The ensuing Council of Ephesus (431) used Theotókos (literally 'God-bearer'; in Latin, Deipara) to affirm the oneness of Christ's person by identifying Mary as the Mother of God the Word incarnate.[6] The rule of faith on this matter takes more precise expression in the definition of Chalcedon: "One and the same Son ... was begotten from the Father before the ages as to the divinity and in the latter days for us and our salvation was born as to the humanity from Mary the Virgin Theotókos." In receiving the Council of Ephesus and the definition of Chalcedon, Anglicans and Roman Catholics together confess Mary as Theotókos.

The Celebration of Mary in the Ancient Common Traditions

35. In the early centuries, communion in Christ included a strong sense of the living presence of the saints as an integral part of the spiritual experience of the churches (Hebrews 12:1,22-24; Revelation 6:9-11; 7; 8:3-4). Within the 'cloud of witnesses', the Lord's mother came to be seen to have a special place. Themes developed from Scripture and in devotional reflection reveal a deep awareness of Mary's role in the redemption of humanity. Such themes include Mary as Eve's counterpart and as a type of the Church. The response of Christian people, reflecting on these themes, found devotional expression in both private and public prayer.

36. Exegetes delighted in drawing feminine imagery from the Scriptures to contemplate the significance both of the Church and Mary. Fathers as early as Justin Martyr (†c.150) and Irenaeus (†c.202), reflecting on texts like Genesis 3 and Luke 1:26-38, developed, alongside the antithesis of Adam/New Adam, that of Eve/New Eve. Just as Eve is associated with Adam in bringing about our defeat, so Mary is associated with her Son in the conquest of the ancient enemy (cf. Genesis 3:15, vide supra footnote 4): 'virgin' Eve's disobedience results in death; the virgin Mary's obedience opens the way to salvation. The New Eve shares in the New Adam's victory over sin and death.

37. The Fathers presented Mary the Virgin Mother as a model of holiness for consecrated virgins, and increasingly taught that she had remained 'Ever-Virgin'.[7] In their reflection, virginity was understood not only as physical integrity, but as an interior disposition of openness, obedience, and single-hearted fidelity to Christ which models Christian discipleship and issues in spiritual fruitfulness.

38. In this patristic understanding, Mary's virginity was closely related to her sanctity. Although some early exegetes thought that Mary was not wholly without sin,[8] Augustine (†430) witnessed to contemporary reluctance to speak of any sin in her.

We must except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honour to the Lord; for from him we know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular was conferred on her who had the merit to conceive and bear him who undoubtedly had no sin. (De natura et gratia 36.42).

Other Fathers from West and East, appealing to the angelic salutation (Luke 1:28) and Mary's response (Luke 1:38), support the view that Mary was filled with grace from her origin in anticipation of her unique vocation as Mother of the Lord. By the fifth century they hail her as a new creation: blameless, spotless, "holy in body and soul" (Theodotus of Ancyra, Homily 6,11: †before 446). By the sixth century, the title panaghia ('all-holy') can be found in the East.

39. Following the Christological debates at the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, devotion to Mary flourished. When the patriarch of Antioch refused Mary the title of Theotókos, Emperor Leo I (457-474) commanded the patriarch of Constantinople to insert this title into the eucharistic prayer throughout the East. By the sixth century, commemoration of Mary as 'God-bearer' had become universal in the eucharistic prayers of East and West (with the exception of the Assyrian Church of the East). Texts and images celebrating Mary's holiness were multiplied in liturgical poetry and songs, such as the Akathist, a hymn probably written soon after Chalcedon and still sung in the Eastern church. A tradition of praying with and praising Mary was thus gradually established. This has been associated since the fourth century, especially in the East, with asking for her protection.[9]

40. After the Council of Ephesus, churches began to be dedicated to Mary and feasts in her honour began to be celebrated on particular days in these churches. Prompted by popular piety and gradually adopted by local churches, feasts celebrating Mary's conception (December 8/9), birth (September 8), presentation (November 21), and dormition (August 15) mirrored the liturgical commemorations of events in the life of the Lord. They drew both on the canonical Scriptures and also on apocryphal accounts of Mary's early life and her 'falling asleep'. A feast of the conception of Mary can be dated in the East to the late seventh century, and was introduced into the Western church through southern England in the early eleventh century. It drew on popular devotion expressed in the second-century Protoevangelium of James, and paralleled the dominical feast of the Annunciation and the existing feast of the conception of John the Baptist. The feast of Mary's 'falling asleep' dates from the end of the sixth century, but was influenced by legendary narratives of the end of Mary's life already widely in circulation. In the West, the most influential of them are the Transitus Mariae. In the East the feast was known as the 'dormition', which implied her death but did not exclude her being taken into heaven. In the West the term used was 'assumption',which emphasized her being taken into heaven but did not exclude the possibility of her dying. Belief in her assumption was grounded in the promise of the resurrection of the dead and the recognition of Mary's dignity as Theotókos and 'Ever Virgin', coupled with the conviction that she who had borne Life should be associated to her Son's victory over death, and with the glorification of his Body, the Church.

Eucharistic devotion for Christmastide

2011-12-30T12:02:00.005+11:00

The 2002 Christmas Crib at All Saints' Wickham Terrace, Brisbane,

with the High Altar and Tabernacle in the background

Before thine altar, O most Holy Child,

we kneel today.

So long ago the shepherds knelt before thy cradle.

And, even as they,

beholding their God

in the face of a little Child,

fell down and worshipped;

so we,

beholding thy sacred Presence

beneath the sacramental veil,

praise and adore our Lord and our God.

We give thee thanks

for thy great mercy.

O Holy Child,

we give thee thanks

for thy great humility.

For in the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

Hosanna in the highest!

And the Word was made flesh,

and dwelt among us;

And we have beheld his glory.

Word made Flesh

pray for us.

Emmanuel, God with us,

pray for us.

Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God

Grant us thy peace.

Murder in the Cathedral

2011-12-29T14:57:00.008+11:00

As part of the international Forward in Faith team at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, for me one of the highlights of the month was being able to experience a wonderful production of T.S. Eliot's play, "Murder in the Cathedral," by "Group 81" (a Canterbury based theatre company). In the context of the emotional and spiritual highs and lows of the Conference itself, set against the background of the greatly troubled Anglican world, it is difficult to overstate the impact of "Murder in the Cathedral" on many of us, especially given the venue - the Crypt of the Canterbury Cathedral!

Thomas Becket was born in London, studied in Paris, and became Chancellor to the King. When he was chosen to be Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162 he underwent a conversion experience and from being "a patron of play-actors and a follower of hounds" became a true "shepherd of souls." He absorbed himself in the duties of his new office, even defending the Church's rights against Henry II. For this he was exiled to France for six years. Upon his return he endured many trials and was murdered by command of the King.

The following is from T.S. Eliot's play. It is the Christmas Day sermon preached by Becket the day before his martyrdom. Elliot at his best:

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear children of God, my sermon this morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate on the deep meaning and mystery of our masses of Christmas Day. For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men"; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overcome by mourning or mourning will be cast out by joy; so that it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason. But think for a while on the meaning of this word "peace." Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples: "My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbors, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember that He said also, "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." So then, He gave to his disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord's Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of his first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world's is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ's birthday, to remember what is that peace which he brought; and because, dear children, I do not think that I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Incarnation itself as an act of Sacrifice (Michael Ramsey)

2011-12-28T11:15:00.003+11:00

These beautiful words, from THE GOSPEL AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (p.21) by Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, remind us not to compartmentalise the aspects of the person and work of Christ so as to isolate them from each other.

His selfhood is so laid down, that His power and authority centre in His humiliation. Such is the impression of the earthly life of Jesus. But this seIf-abandonment does not belong to that earthly life alone, for it is the expression in history of the self-giving of the eternal God. Saint Paul makes it clear that the first and great act of humiliation is the act whereby the Son of God is made man.

“Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:5-7)

Thus, before the humiliations of the Messiah in His life and death upon earth, there is the divine self-emptying whereby He "came" and “was sent." For St. Paul the Incarnation is in itself an act of sacrifice than which none is greater; Christmas is as costly in self-giving as is Good Friday. Only the crucifixion is the deepest visible point of the divine self-giving which entered history at Bethlehem and which begins in heaven itself. "There was a Calvary above which was the mother of it all." #

# Here Ramsey quotes the Congregationalist P. T. Forsythe (1848-1921)

Her Majesty - an Evangelist

2011-12-27T14:06:00.003+11:00

If you haven't seen the Queen's Christmas Message yet, I recommend that you watch it. This year, without doubt, Her Majesty outshone all our Church leaders:

". . . Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves - from our recklessness or our greed.

"God sent into the world a unique person - neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive . . ."

The entire text is HERE

Those bloody days after Christmas

2011-12-26T11:58:00.006+11:00

The martyrdom of St Stephen

It is not unusual for priests who celebrate Mass every day to find the Octave of Christmas a chilling reality, for, while most of the people are enjoying a well deserved holiday break with their families, we and a handful of stalwarts are back at the altar immersed in a remarkably bloody week.

Today we honour St Stephen, the first Christian Martyr. He was the deacon, full of the Holy Spirit and full of love for the people, who was stoned to death for his witness to Jesus. (Not forgetting, of course, the 10th century Duke Wenceslaus who went out “on the feast of Stephen,” and was martyred by his own brother.)

On Wednesday we have the Feast of the Holy Innocents, all those little boys under two years of age who were slaughtered by the deranged King Herod in his desperation to kill Jesus. I, personally, find it hard to stand at the altar on Holy Innocents’ Day and not hear the wails of the mothers, or see the blood running in the back streets of Bethlehem.

Then on Thursday we celebrate St Thomas Becket, the tough-nosed 12th century ecclesiastical bureaurocrat who became Archbishop, had a real conversion to the Lord, and was subsequently martyred in Canterbury Cathedral.

But we mustn’t think of all that suffering as something that contrasts with the essence of Christmas. It is the REAL world that God wants to save. It is REAL people - sinful, selfish, flawed in character, full of conplexes and contradictions - whom he wants to heal and restore. He loves us, sinful as we are, with all of our problems, and our propensity to hurt one another and cause pain.

This baby, God in human flesh, came to reveal the unconditional love with which we are loved. And that love cost him everything. He came to die for us.

From one end of the Bible to the other, the tapestry of God’s revelation is held together by a bloodied thread. Let’s never forget that. Jesus came to this world, ultimately to die, and – in the words of Balthasar - not just to die, but to experience the hell of God-forsakenness, before being resurrected from the abyss and exalted to the right hand of the Father WITH and FOR us, transforming all things – you and me included - with his suffering love. This is the mystery at the heart of our salvation; this is the mystery at the heart of the Church. This is the mystery that can reconcile families, communities and even nations if only we will stop pushing God away from us.

The blood of this strange week reminds us of the blood of the martyrs flowing down through the Christian centuries.

It reminds us, too, that even in our day, the most astonishing signs of the presence of Jesus are in the midst of extreme suffering. Nowhere is this more so than in Iraq, where Canon Andrew White, the (Anglican) Vicar of Baghdad, and his people are a healing and reconciling presence in that suffering city. You can do a google search and find all kinds of articles on the love of God incarnated in that ministry.

But perhaps the most moving is this 30 minute clip which gives us a bird’s eye view of the ministry of St George's Baghdad and Canon Andrew White.

If you would like to add that work to your regular intercessions, you could sign up to Canon Andrew White’s Facebook page.

During this week, our emotions are stretched between the polarities of the joy of the manger, the crib, the angels singing, memories of Christmasses past, family celebrations, the happiness of the children . . . and on the other hand the sobbing, tears and pain, not just of the martyrs, but of their loved ones, and all who suffer illness, loneliness, forsakenness and even despair. As we look forward to a new year, may all church communities – and each of us in our daily lives – allow the Lord Jesus to use us to touch and bless the bloodied world into which he came that first Christmas.

Hitchens called Mother Teresa "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud," but her Order is praying for him

2011-12-26T11:45:00.006+11:00

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India's Missionaries of Charity order said it would pray for British writer Christopher Hitchens' soul, despite his aggressive campaign against its Nobel prize-winning founder, Mother Teresa.

"We will pray for him and for his family," spokeswoman Sister Christie told AFP on Friday, upon hearing of Hitchens' death at the age of 62 after a battle against cancer of the oesophagus.

Asked whether Hitchens, an avowed atheist, would welcome such prayers, she declined to comment.

The iconoclastic Hitchens, who enjoyed great success as a columnist, was among the strongest critics of Roman Catholic saint-in-waiting Mother Teresa, calling her "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud".

In his 1995 book "The Missionary Position" and a 1994 documentary called "Hell's Angel", Hitchens accused the nun of being a political opportunist who struck friendships with dictators and corrupt financiers in exchange for donations to her order.

Go HERE to read the rest of this article from THE WEST AUSTRALIAN.

Some great quotes for Christmas Day

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000+11:00

Let's go

". . . down to that littleness, down to all that

Crying and hunger, all that tiny flesh

And flickering spirit - down the great stars fall,

Here the huge kings bow.

Here the farmer sees his fragile lambs,

Here the wise man throws his books away.

"This manger is the universe's cradle,

This singing mother has the words of truth.

Here the ox and ass and sparrow stop,

Here the hopeless man breaks into trust.

God, you have made a victory for the lost.

Give us this daily Bread, this little Host."

- Elizabeth Jennings (1926 - 2001)

"The King of Angels

and Lord of heaven and earth

who in marvellous humility

and astounding poverty

lies in a manger."

- St Clare of Assisi (1194 – 1253)

"The Word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,

yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;

he is that he was and for ever shall be,

but becomes that he was not, for you and for me."

- H. R. Bramley (1833-1917)

"The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us,

and we beheld his glory."

- St John the Apostle, in John 1:14

"Something that has existed from the beginning,

that we have heard,

and that we have seen with our own eyes;

that we have watched

and touched with our own hands:

the Word, who is life - this is our subject.

That life was made visible:

we saw it and we are giving our testimony,

telling you of the eternal life

which was with the Father

and has been made visible to us."

- St John the Apostle in 1 John 1:1-2

"He is little and weak,

that you may be great and strong;

He is bound in swaddling clothes,

that you may be unbound from the fetters of death;

He is on earth,

that you may be in heaven."

- St Ambrose of Milan (337? – 397)

"The Word was made man

in order that we might be made divine."

and

". . . he deified what he put on; and more than that,

he bestowed this gift on the race of men."

- St Athanasius of Alexandria (296? - 373)

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

that though he was rich,

yet for our sakes he became poor,

so that by his poverty

you might become rich."

- St Paul, in 2 Corinthians 8:9

"'Tis mystery all: th'Immortal dies:

Who can explore His strange design?

In vain the firstborn seraph tries

To sound the depths of love divine.

'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,

Let angel minds inquire no more.

"He left His Father's throne above

So free, so infinite His grace -

Emptied Himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam's helpless race:

'Tis mercy all, immense and free,

For O my God, it found out me!"

- Charles Wesley (1707 – 1788)

". . . the great mystery of the Incarnation

is that true man is in the God

whom no suffering can touch,

and true God in the human flesh

that is subject to pain and sorrow.

By this wonderful exchange

man gains glory through shame,

immortality through chastisement,

life through death.

For unless the Word of God were so firmly joined to our flesh

that the two natures could not be parted even in death,

we mortals would never be able to return to life.

But when the Lord became man and died for our sake,

death lost its everlasting hold over us;

through the nature that was undying in Jesus Christ,

the nature that was mortal was raised to life."

- Pope St Leo the Great (391? – 461)

"I have come that you might have life, life in all its fulness."

- Jesus, in John 10:10

Last year's "white Christmas"

2011-12-24T13:32:00.006+11:00

Today I'm sharing with you a few photos I took last year during the only "white Christmas" I have ever experienced. The parish at St Luke's, Kingston Upon Thames really honour the coming of Jesus among us (as you can see).

All my friends at St Lukes . . . I'm thinking of you as we sweat it out Down Under!

Blessings!

It really did snow!

St Luke's Parish School had a Carol Service in the church

The parish Carol Service on the Sunday night before Christmas (with the Canbury Singers)

The children's Crib Service

The Christmas Crib set up at the All Souls' altar

The Vicar, Father Martin Hislop, at the Consecration during Midnight Mass

CHRISTMAS

by Sir John Betjeman (1906 – 1984)

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Dickens and the Construction of Christmas - Bishop Geoffrey Rowell

2011-12-22T09:50:00.009+11:00

The title page of the first edition of A CHRISTMAS TALE, by Charles Dickens (1843)

This article, published in HISTORY TODAY on 21st December, 1993, was written by Geoffrey Rowell, who was at the time Fellow, Chaplain and Tutor in Theology at Keble College, Oxford. He is now the Church of England Bishop of Europe. Widely renowned as a specialist in 19th century Church history in general, and the Oxford Movement in particular, Bishop Rowell gives us a fascinating thumbnail sketch of the English observance of Christmas, emphasising the role of the Oxford Movement in its development.

The entire article is well worth reading. It is HERE. What follows is a few paragraphs on the special Christmas celebrations at Dr Pusey's church, St Saviour's Leeds:

Although Christmas was a time of festivity its church celebration in the nineteenth century owed much to the Oxford Movement. A significant feature of the concerns of the Tractarians was the revival and enrichment of the Prayer Book forms of service, and a proper observance of the seasons and festivals of the church calendar. It was no accident that John Keble's influential book of poems of 1827 entitled The Christian Year, providing verses and meditations on the Prayer Book services and on the Sundays and holy days observed by the Church of England. At St Saviour's, the church built by Dr Pusey in the slums of Leeds, a midnight Eucharist was celebrated on Christmas Eve in contrast to Leeds Parish Church where W.F. Hook had begun a mid- night Eucharist on New Year's Eve, as an Anglican response to Methodist watch-night services. J.H. Pollen, who served as a curate in the parish, wrote of the St Saviour's Christmas in 1849. The church was decked with boughs, banners and flowers:

Large brass candelabra were placed before the altar full of lights; three tapers were put in the place of one in the sconces of the chancel; red hangings on the walls, a rich carpet on the floor, flowers on the altar screen, a white embroidered altar frontal.

. . . The Evensong was at nine with a meditative Sermon. At twelve, the Eucharist was celebrated and a Sermon preached on the mystery of the Incarnation. The Church was lighted, and before the Service the whole choir proceeded round the Church two and two, singing the hymn –

Ye faithful, approach ye,
Joyfully triumphing,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.

(The unfamiliar opening of '0 come, all ye faithful', is from the translation of Adeste fideles made by Frederick Oakeley in 1841 for use at the Margaret Chapel in London.)

St Saviour’s also laid on a Christmas feast:

Here was a vast tree fifteen feet high, all covered with lights, and hung with pictures, lolly-pops, 'spaice whistles', [i.e. barley-sugar whistles], &c. &c... On the steps at the end, a rough picture... of a 'Presepio' (i.e. a nativity scene) was covered round with green boughs, and lighted up.

Hostile observers were to misinterpret this picture as implying the worship of 'Adam and Eve' or 'Cain and Abel'. The 'Presepio', or nativity scene anticipates the Christmas 'crib', a custom going back to Francis of Assisi, which began to appear in English churches in the later nineteenth century. So accepted has this become that the word 'crib', which originally meant the 'manger' or 'rack' in a stable, and then a child's bed, is now used simply to refer to the representation in churches at Christmas of the birth of Christ at Bethlehem.

Read the entire article.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Waiting is an art

2011-12-20T10:41:00.009+11:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a well-known and greatly loved Christian pastor, seminary teacher, and theologian who was imprisoned and eventually executed by the Nazis for his resistance to Hitler. Bonhoeffer was the author of the widely read classics: "The Cost of Discipleship", "Life Together, " and "Letters and Papers from Prison."

The following is from a letter Bonhoeffer wrote to his fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer, from prison on December 13, 1943. It is in God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas‬, published last year. It was translated by O.C. Dean, and edited by Jana Riess. Go HERE for more details or to purchase the book.

Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them. Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting—that is, of hopefully doing without—will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.

Those who do not know how it feels to struggle anxiously with the deepest questions of life, of their life, and to patiently look forward with anticipation until the truth is revealed, cannot even dream of the splendour of the moment in which clarity is illuminated for them . . .

For the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait. It happens not here in a storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting, giving, and becoming.

Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of our love this Christmas-tide. We shall both experience a few dark hours - why should we disguise that from each other? We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand . . . And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from Cod. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succour in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.

The YES that changes everything

2011-12-18T00:05:00.000+11:00

The Annunciation, by James C. Christensen, b. 1942

Patti Gallagher Mansfield has been an international leader of the Charismatic Renewal in the Roman Catholic Church since 1967. She was asked by the Pontifical Council for the Laity to thank Pope Benedict XVI on behalf of all the ecclesial movements and new communities before a crowd of 400,000 people in St. Peter’s Square on the vigil of Pentecost, 2006. In this extract from one of her teachings, she encourages us to say "yes" to God, as Mary did.

Here is Mary, the woman of prayer, attentive and responsive to God. Here is Mary with hands open and empty before God, not clinging to any previous plans, not dictating any conditions. A simple fiat . . . "Yes. Be it done to me according to your word." Indeed, "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord" (Luke 1:45).

By faith she permitted the Father to fulfill his plan. By faith she welcomed the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. By faith she embraced the Word made flesh in her womb. We know that "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews11:6) and that Mary found favour with him by her faith.

So must we, at this juncture in our lives . . . kneel before the Father in a radical poverty of spirit and learn to pray with hands open and empty . . .

We have received great graces, but I'm afraid that too often our hands have been full instead of empty. I sense that there are new "annunciations" being given for a new move of the Spirit, but that many of us don't really want God to be God. We still want him on our own terms . . . a God who will fit into a prescribed pattern of acting. We don't want the Living God, the God who is, the God who turned Mary's life upside down. Let's be careful!

By her faith, Mary permitted God to "create a new thing upon the earth" (Jeremiah 31:22). As I've asked Mary to be my mother and teach me to pray with hands open and empty, this is what I am learning to say to the Father, "With Mary, I want to be for you all YES, only YES, always YES."

Mary's "yes"

2011-12-15T19:48:00.004+11:00

O Virgin . . . the angel awaits an answer; . . . We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.

The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life.

Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet . . .

Answer quickly, O Virgin . . . See, the desired of all nations is at your door, knocking to enter. If he should pass by because of your delay, in sorrow you would begin to seek him afresh, the One whom your soul loves. Arise, hasten, open. Arise in faith, hasten in devotion, open in praise and thanksgiving.

Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word.

- St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

The real Santa Claus

2011-12-14T16:03:00.006+11:00

Last week I let St Nicholas' Day go by without mentioning him on this blog. I more than make up for that today by passing on to you a wonderful homily preached last Sunday by the amazing Father Alexander Tefft, priest of St Botolph's Antiochian Orthodox parish in London (founded by the late Father Michael Harper). In fact, if you have some spare time during the Christmas break, one of the best places to linger is the website of St Botolph's parish. You will earn a lot. You will be inspired . . . and challenged, too!

“Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6.23)

‘Wherever Christ went’, said a bishop once, ‘they threw rocks. Wherever I go, they serve tea’. Wherever Christ preached, the eyes of murderers, harlots, and con men streamed with tears. ‘Wherever I preach’, says a vicar, ‘bankers and stock brokers yawn’. ‘Ha!’ says an Orthodox priest. ‘I’ve solved that problem. I don’t preach!’ Wherever Christ went, a filthy crowd of blind beggars, homeless cripples, bleeding women, naked men racked with the demons inside and bound in chains, trailed along. Whining and pleading, throwing up on the soil. Wherever his ministers go these days, they are lucky to find a seat on the train. Bishops are meant to be discreet these days. Priests, all the more so. Unseen, unheard. Hidden away. Orthodox priests are not immune. Some hide by dressing up like the vicar in a little white dog collar peeping up through a black clergy shirt. A soft, beardless face. Perfectly incognito. Passing through the blind, jostling crowds on Oxford Street, heaving a sigh of relief: ‘Thank God, no one knows I’m Orthodox. No one guesses I’m a priest!’ You can hide effectively behind a smokescreen of incense, in words mumbled into your beard in a dead language. You leave well enough alone. Hide away discreetly from the snickering laughter and cold stares. This season, you can hide in a little wooden crèche. A tree decked with tinsel. Best of all – the fat jolly elf with a snow-white beard, the merry old gentleman in red and white called … Santa Claus. A friendlier face than the icon of Christ, with those piercing eyes. No one throws rocks at Santa Claus. More tea, vicar?

It is easy to forget the gulf that separates ‘Christendom’ and Christ. Or Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas.

Christendom is pretty. A nice, white, clapboard or stone Victorian church, very suitable for concerts. A place to fawn over newly-christened babies; or cut business deals, make matches, get a tip on a property investment; or arrange the quiet funeral for the ‘dearly departed’ – at which no one cries. Christ is not ‘pretty’. He had no beauty that we should desire him. Pierced, crushed. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. The voice that prostitutes loved and Pharisees hated. Born not in a rich suburb but in an animals’ cave. Christendom is pleasant. Well-trained choirs, hardbound hymnals. A ‘talk’ about … well, after all, if all else fails, butterflies. Nothing too controversial. Christ is not ‘pleasant’. His first words in the Gospel according to Mark: ‘The time is fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel’. Is this a pall of sorrow – a heavy, wet blanket laid on those poor losers called Christians? By no means. It is joy. Pure joy. So pure that the heart pounds in your chest, your breath surges upward. The soul leaps inside you, the eyes flash, and prayer shoots forth from your lips. Joy – real joy – is not the absence of sorrow. It is the presence of life. Life, bubbling up, erupting, streaming out and giving life to the dead.

Life that dares to take on everything. And everyone. A life like that of Saint Nicholas.

Bishop of a town near the mouth of the River Mýros, in the rocky little county of Lycia, a few miles ashore from Rhodes. They are poor, the people of Myra. Tombs, hewn out of solid rock, hold the dead. Like the cave in Bethlehem that held an ox, an ass, and a very unusual Child; and the cave outside Jerusalem that could not hold his Body, taken down from the Cross. Poor people. And a bishop, who is anything but discreet.

A poor man sits up all night, unable to give a dowry for his three daughters. His heart is heavy at the thought of them selling themselves, night after night, on the streets. After sleep overwhelms him, three sacks of gold drop ‘indiscreetly’ into three pairs of sandals left by the fireplace. Who else dropped them through the window but Nicholas, that most indiscreet of bishops? All night at the inn outside town, the remains of three schoolboys lie rotting in the barrel where the innkeeper hid the pieces. At dawn, three boys are alive again. Who prayed for them all night but Nicholas, the bishop who would not leave well enough alone? A judge, with a splitting headache, releases the three condemned felons from custody. Why go through with a death sentence when that meddling bishop stands over you for three hours defending the innocent? A calm sea and a safe voyage to the Holy Land. Who would know that gale-force winds whipped the little ship only last night, until the sailors gave up hope? No one but them – and Bishop Nicholas, who would not remain unseen, unheard, hidden away, but prayed up on deck until the storm ceased. A bishop who never held a word back, when the lives of poor, maimed, blind, lame souls, entrusted to his care, were placed at risk.

No soft, beardless face in a dog collar. A bishop that everyone on the street recognised. A bishop that some called evil – especially Arius, that pious priest, when he denied that Christ is God, and Bishop Nicholas slapped him in the face.

What? Santa Claus hit someone? Assault and battery, with intent. But at dawn, those politically correct bishops found Nicholas in his jail cell. The vestments that they stripped off him the night before, all perfectly in place. Bishop Nicholas had no time for excuses. The man who negotiated a field or five head of oxen. That young man who just had his wedding in church. No time for Communion. Nicholas had no time for ‘Christendom’. He had Christ on his mind, the poor in his heart. The maimed, the blind, the lame: all those wounded in body or spirit. The homeless from the highways and the hedges. The losers in the sight of this world, who need the Precious Body and Divine Blood offered here, at the banquet of the Master, who vested Nicholas that night – as they need Life Himself.

Excluded, reviled, his name cast out as evil. Or at least, indiscreet. Nicholas of Myra is a bishop that you throw rocks at and seldom have home to tea. But, beloved in Christ, he leaps for joy this season – whenever you have the eyes to recognise him under his red coat and white muffler, his snowy beard, his eyes twinkling with the pure flame as they always did. His voice – rich, round, and full – that never holds back a word of Life.

Holy Hierarch Father Nicholas, pray to God for us!

The closed-mindedness of Phillip Adams

2011-12-12T20:33:00.005+11:00

Today the Australian Broadcasting Commission ("ABC") has posted an article on its Religion and Ethics Website by Greg Clarke of the Centre for Public Christianity in response to a particularly bitchy piece Phillip Adams wrote in his column in The Australian last weekend. Now I must say that in so many ways I really like Adams, but he does have a "thing" about theists. So, it's worth reading Greg's article. If you want to read Adams' original (and you should) then it is HERE.

THE CLOSED-MINDEDNESS OF PHILLIP ADAMS

Greg Clarke

Christmas approaches, so it must be time for Phillip Adams to reestablish his reputation as a no-God-botherer.

In last weekend's column in the Weekend Australian, Adams used the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Physics to local astronomer Professor Brian Schmidt as an opportunity to claim a few certainties for atheism. It always stuns me when the columnists come down firmly on the questions that the academics are still wrestling with. (Note to self: remember to apportion claims in columns to actual knowledge.)

Adams suggests that Schmidt's discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate provides the lay-down misere for the nothingness of existence, the victory of nihilism and the bullet in the Godhead.

"The facts are in," writes Adams, "more than ever He, She or It is a redundant notion." With his usual confidence, Adams implies that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is not worth answering, and that the "something" is a mere blip on the way back to the "nothing."

This question has fascinated the pointy heads since forever. Most of the ancient Greeks didn't believe in "nothing" as a possibility: they were convinced the universe is eternal. The rise of science modified this belief, such that in the medieval period it was slowly replaced by belief in an eternal Being as the source of all things.

Modern science, with its theories of the origins of the universe, actually did put the nail in the coffin of the eternal universe theory. We now know that the universe did have a beginning.

But it did not sound the death knell for the eternal Being theory. Thomas Aquinas's argument in the thirteenth century that God is the uncaused cause of the universe still warrants attention.

Islamic thinkers "improved" this approach, with the Kalam cosmological argument stating that all things that exist have a cause, and since we now know the universe had a beginning, it must have a cause (other than itself). This leads many thinkers towards notions of God.

Furthermore, many find satisfaction in the arguments about the fine-tuning of the universe (such as Professor Alvin Plantinga), the unlikely nature of human intelligence and information theory (Professor John Lennox) and game theory approaches to the probability of the universe (Professor Richard Swinburne), and feel similarly led by their minds to the notion of a God.

So is Schmidt's research a game-changer, as Adams suggests?

To finish reading the article (and also follow the debate in the comments) go HERE.

Watch for the signs

2011-12-11T14:06:00.005+11:00

From the website Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Living is this powerful Advent message:

One of the things that used to be fun about driving to Heathrow Airport was, as you approached the airport, the road took you through a tunnel under the main runway, and as you entered the tunnel there was this large airport notice on the side of the road – “WATCH FOR THE SIGNS.” We used to laugh because this road sign sounded so much like an apocalyptic warning, such as we hear during the season of Advent.

In this second of our Advent preaching series, the word I have been given to reflect on, is the word watch. It is amazing how often this word comes up in Scripture, and it is clearly one of the main characteristics of a faithful Christian disciple, that we WATCH. So why watch? What does it mean, to watch, and why should we watch?

To watch is not the same as to look, or to see – it is rather, looking attentively for something – keeping alert and awake so as not to miss it – like watching for the signs for Terminal 2 at the airport. Watching is hard – it takes effort. If you remember driving to Logan Airport during the Big Dig, when every week the layout seemed to change, keeping your eye on the road and watching for the signs to your terminal was extremely difficult, and you really had to be alert – or you would miss it. So watching demands attention, focus, being awake, keeping alert.

To keep reading go HERE.

Searching for God in the Desert . . .

2011-12-10T21:30:00.003+11:00

Sinai Desert

Here is a bit more about the wilderness. It is by Father Pat McNulty, Priest of Madonna House, in Combermere, Ontario, Canada.

If I remember correctly, it seems to me that I have written at least one Advent article a year in this newspaper about the desert. Many of the details of my time in the Sinai back in 1976 are somewhere in all those articles; so I won’t bore you by repeating them.

But if you remember any of those articles, you already know that Patrick of Combermere was no Lawrence of Arabia, even though, like Lawrence, I did travel in the desert on a camel.

Well, actually I traveled into it by foot tied to a man who was on a camel. The camel wouldn’t let me mount, and since we were traveling at night, my Bedouin guide, not wanting me to get lost, had a long cord connecting my wrist to his.

Thankfully, with his stick to inspire the camel, we moved very, very slowly. But even in the dark at that speed, I knew I was in the desert—big time!

Advent is filled with the imagery of desert from whence John the Baptist came to "prepare the way of the Lord." I guess that’s why Advent always takes me back to my time in the desert.

Anyhow, my Bedouin guide took me to an area five hours into the desert by camel, and while I stayed there, he came once a week to bring me food.

In that area was the cave where I stayed and total, absolute silence. My guide stayed with me the first day to get me settled. Then when he "drove off into the sunset" on his 1976 camel, I learned what a panic-attack is.

There I was, alone in the middle of the Sinai Desert, without camels, curds, or a clue where I was! This wasn’t a movie! This was for real! What had I done? "Patrick," I said to myself, "You are in deeeeeeeep trouble!"

Click HERE to read the rest of Fr McNulty's article.

Catherine Doherty on Advent

2011-12-09T19:47:00.004+11:00

Among those whose causes for official sainthood are being worked on at the moment in Rome is Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985), the foundress of Madonna House in Combermere, Canada.

She survived — and her love of God was tested and grew — through two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression. She experienced being a refugee, knew the pain of a broken marriage and the struggles of single parenthood. She knew the privileged life of aristocratic wealth, as well as the grinding poverty and uncertainty of a refugee.

Through it all, her faith in God and love for him remained intact and led her to work with the poor in small, humble ways, forsaking material comforts in order to do so. Her work in social justice in both Canada and the United States lead to the establishment of Friendship House, and later the community called Madonna House.

You can read about her, and the present ministry of Madonna House HERE.

What follows is is a meditation adapted from DONKEY BELLS: ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS by Catherine Doherty. It is available from Madonna House Publications in hard copy or as an online pdf for printing out.

(Above is the Madonna House Chapel of Our Lady of the Woods.)

Advent — a word meaning “coming” — indicates that something or someone is arriving soon. We become expectant and interiorly alert. The Advent of Christmas is a beautiful season, a time of renewal. The new Church year begins with the first Sunday of Advent, and every time it comes around, my heart thrills anew.

Advent lasts about four weeks and is the Church’s preparatory time for Christmas, for the coming of Our Lord as a Child on earth, for his incarnation in time. It is the time of expectation. True, Christ has already come upon earth. He has been crucified, and has risen. He is with us now, in his Church. And yet, as the season for commemorating his birth approaches, something stirs in us, something deep and profound, as if we are expecting a great miracle.

As Christmas approaches, everyone feels a certain something that cannot be put into words, for there are no words that fit. We begin to realize that we are expecting Someone and we become aware of an interior “burning” in our heart. If we allow the expectation that is within us to come forth, we will be filled with joy.

Advent is meant to be a time of faith. Do you have faith that Our Lady is coming? Do you hear the donkey’s bells as she nears Bethlehem? Do you have faith in her pregnancy? Do you have faith that the Child who will come from her womb is God?

Here is another mystery wrapped up in Advent: the call to give of oneself as Our Lady did. Oh, we’re willing to give of ourselves for a little while, doing good works or helping our neighbour, but not at a very big cost to ourselves. However, that doesn’t work before the Child in the manger, before the utter gift of Jesus Christ to us, as a Child. This giving of self is like a restlessness within the heart, like waves beating on the shore. The person who says, “I cannot rest unless I really surrender myself to God” eventually does just that. What we have to do is surrender to him.

Do you act towards your neighbour as if he or she were Christ? Christ said, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to Me” (Matthew 25:40). Let every day be the day of beginning again, of loving Christ a little more, of hungering for him a little more, of turning our face to him. To do this, all we need to do is to look at the person next to us. We must never forget that we shall be judged on love alone.

Even while Christ is yet coming, he is already with us in many ways, for incredible Love that he is, he could not separate himself from us. He is with us in the tabernacle. He walks among us in all his priests. Through them, he multiplies himself in the Hosts so that they can feed us with the Bread of Life: himself.

If we remember that a woman held in her arms a Child, and that that Child was God, then we will be givers of peace.

Advent is especially a time for forgiveness because God brings his forgiveness to us in the shape of his Son. Let this Christmas be for us a turning point. Let us kill selfishness. Let us become childlike enough to kneel at the crib. “For unless you become as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Honouring God's grace in Our Lady

2011-12-08T11:16:00.006+11:00

Father Ross Northing, Vicar of St Mary & St Giles, Stony Stratford, preaching in the Chapel of Pusey House, Oxford, on 8th December, 2008:

“The woman you gave to be with me; she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.”

In most parishes of whatever tradition there always seems to be someone who takes delight in being of a different tradition. Essentially it seems to boil down to a similar condition to that of a rebellious teenager who rebels against the status quo. In nearly every Anglo-Catholic parish that I have known there have been people who claim to be evangelical and who attempt, with hardly any success, to bring people round to their way of thinking. In a strange sort of way they seem to thrive on being the odd one out.

There is a true story, told to me recently, of such a lady in a parish in the north of England. An evangelical lady, so she claimed, in a very spikey parish. As a card-carrying evangelical she attended, as a matter of duty, the Parish Bible Study Group, in order that proper biblical teaching could be defended against error. On one occasion the Group was discussing the matter of sin, and, in particular the matter of sin after baptism or conversion. In rather earnest tones she declared before the assembled group, “I can honestly say that since I gave my life to the Lord Jesus I have never done anything to offend him.” Apparently, from that moment on she was known in the parish as “The Immaculate Exception!”

If we are going to consider Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, that is her being free from sin . . . click HERE to continue reading

Donald G Dawe, from his article in The Way magazine, The Immaculate Conception in Ecumenical Perspective.

When a powerful spring breaks forth from the earth, its waters spread in all directions from it. A great pond is formed from which streams flow out to water a parched earth. Right around the spring there is verdant growth where its abundant waters bring forth a beauty only faintly intimated in the surrounding countryside. The grace of God came into human history at a particular time and place through the coming of Jesus. And like a mighty spring this grace abounding flowed forth in all directions transforming whatever it touched. It flowed with particular fullness into Mary because of her unique closeness to her Son. It flowed backward in time to Mary to prepare her for her role in the Incarnation. This is what is celebrated in the Immaculate Conception. The grace of God in Christ flows forward in time to fulfil in Mary the promise made to all the saints for their full salvation of soul and body in the kingdom of God. This is what is celebrated in her Assumption. Such a metaphor suggests the basis for an ecumenical vision of Mary and for ecumenical prayers of thanksgiving and hope.

From Dr John Macquarrie's book, Mary For All Christians, 68-72:

Children, unfortunately, are sometimes conceived in drunkenness, sometimes in lust, sometimes by accident, and such children, alas, from the very moment of conception have been made victims of human sin. If we could imagine a child conceived out of pure love before God, would not such a child from the very moment of conception—I mean, conceived in the loving desire of the parents for the child even before they came together in sexual union—would not such a child be from the beginning the recipient of grace? This is no mere sentimentality but simply the recognition that human beings are personal beings, not just biological organisms, the recognition that sees the creative moment of conception, whether for good or bad, in the personal relation subsisting between the parents rather than in the biological phenomenon of a fusion of cells. Even before birth, a child growing into relation with its mother, and from the very beginning is receiving influences that help to mould it one way or another. Already that child is becoming an individual person within the community of persons to which it belongs . . .

. . . Instead of putting the dogma of Immaculate Conception in the negative form by stating that Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin, we may put it in an affirmative way and say she was preserved in a right relatedness to God. An equivalent affirmative expression would be to say that she was always the recipient of grace. She was surrounded with grace from her original conception in the mind of God to her actual historical conception in the love of her parents.

Godly wisdom from St Ambrose

2011-12-07T09:25:00.004+11:00

WE SPEAK OF CHRIST
When we speak about wisdom, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about virtue, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about justice, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about peace, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about truth and life and redemption,

we are speaking of Christ. 
(From Explanation of the Psalms 36:65-66)

WE DEPEND ONLY ON CHRIST
I will glory not because I am righteous

but because I am redeemed;
I will glory not because I am free from sins

but because my sins are forgiven me.
I will not glory because I have done good
nor because someone has done good to me
but because Christ is my advocate with the Father
and because the blood of Christ has been shed for me.
(From Liber de Jacob et Vita Beata, ch. 6; quoted by Martin Chemnitz in Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I p. 507)

FAITH IS MORE THAN "INTELLECTUAL ASSENT"
The woman [with the issue of blood - Luke 8:43-48] was immediately healed, because she drew to him in faith. And do you with faith touch but the hem of his garment. The torrential flow of worldly passions will be dried up by the warmth of the saving word, if you but draw near to him with faith, if with like devotion you grasp at least the hem of his garment. O faith richer than all treasures! A faith stronger than all the powers of the body, more health-giving than all the physicians!
(From De Virginitate 100, quoted in F. Holmes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), Vol. II, p. 628)

New Lectionary to be the English Standard Version

2011-12-05T10:11:00.005+11:00

I have just noticed HERE that Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra, chairman of the committee preparing the new lectionary for English speaking Roman Catholics outside the USA, has announced that the new lectionary will be based on the English Standard Version (ESV), a revision of the RSV by conservative evangelical scholars who saw the need for both accuracy and the retention as far as possible of the cadences that are part of our language and culture via the King James Bible and preserved in the RSV. That is fantastic news for all who use the three year cycle of Sunday Readings!

For some time the absence of an ESV version of the Apocrypha precluded its being considered for the lectionary. But that has been remedied. Furthermore, the copyright holders of the ESV are amenable to Catholic needs and the proposed small modifications. The ESV is widely available now in various formats. Often smaller hardback editions can be found remaindered at excellent prices. Of course, you can look at it online.

I wrote an article for New Directions (UK) on the English Standard Version back in 2004. You can read it HERE.

Crying in the wilderness

2011-12-04T18:47:00.011+11:00

I want to share with you from today's Mass readings an aspect of what God does in our lives. If you read this blog regularly, you will know that I believe in the “life in all its fulness” that Jesus gives us – the peace and joy, the love, the strength to get through difficult times, the healing and encouragement that come to us as a people through the Word, the Sacraments, and the working of the Holy Spirit in so many different ways. So, I’m NOT saying that living as a Christian is doom and gloom or anything like that.

But what follows has to be said. And although it is is not a “cosy” message, all of us who try to follow Jesus - and especially those who presume to guide others in the Way – need to be encouraged when we go through phases of experiencing the dealings of God in our lives.

The wilderness is not a walk in the park!

It has all kinds of connotations in both Old and New Testaments. We think of the wandering of the Israelites after the exodus, and all those metaphorical uses of wilderness language by the prophets, striking real resonances with people who lived in the Middle East. They knew that the wilderness is a frightening, lonely and dangerous place.

Have you ever thought with sympathy about John the Baptizer? Sometimes we have a kind of sanitized stained-glass window idea of him, concentrating on his being filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb, or merely as a colourful adornment to the story of Jesus.

The Gospels present him as the last of the Old Testament prophets, and a “wild man” at that, who didn’t fit into the relatively refined world of Roman Judea. But I have often wondered just what it was like for him to be faithful to God and the ministry to which he was called. Whether or not he had any contact with or was part of the Essene community near the Dead Sea (as debated by scholars), the fact is that John the Baptizer – the cousin of Jesus – was a man of the wilderness, a rough man, a REAL man, whose ministry prepared the way for Jesus, and whose end was ignominious.

Karl Rahner (1904-1984) has written:

“He [John the Baptizer] is in the wilderness. Obviously because he finds these surroundings appropriate to his life - the parched solitude, the endless spaces, where no one can feel at home. Inevitably we keep discovering that we too are in the wilderness, the wilderness of a great city, the wilderness of isolation, a wilderness that seems to have no center, a wilderness we cannot feel at home in. And we are also men and women who would live in a wilderness if we have to give our outward environment the shape of that which is within us . . .

“All I am, says the precursor, is the voice of one crying in the wilderness. How strange! this is a quotation from Isaiah, and here is the voice from the wilderness where everything is swallowed up by the wind, where nothing has any settled shape, where the cry is lost upon the air. Dies away, that is, but is not lost. For though it reaches nothing else, it does reach the one to whom it is addressed.” Sermon for Advent 3(B) from The Great Church Year

Was John the Baptizer’s life one of loneliness and brokenness? That’s the implication of the story. Perhaps his forthright preaching of repentance and his harsh words to the religious leaders are only the recorded aspects of a much more varied ministry. Might not his role as an Old Testament prophet figure have been one also of consoling the poor and afflicted (on account of whom he spoke the way he did to those who acted with injustice and hypocrisy)? I have my own mental picture of a man struggling with and brooding over his aloneness a lot of the time. For the experience of most who have been called to various forms of ministry down through the ages, and the witness of the great spiritual directors, confirms that being lonely and even brought to a kind of brokenness in the wilderness is part of what it takes for us to be able compassionately to reach out to others with hope and blessing, as well as – on occasion – with prophetic exhortation.

So, I’m pretty sure that John the Baptist’s wilderness was not just a matter of his physical surroundings, any more than are the wildernesses in which we sometimes find ourselves. For while the wilderness speaks of encounter with God, it also speaks of extreme loneliness, of spiritual crisis, and of encountering the powers of darkness.

When we seek to prepare for ministry, and also when we desperately seek spiritual renewal in our ministry, God in his love and wisdom allows us lengthy times of spiritual wilderness in which we are tried and tested, and sometimes even “broken” as we come to a new place of surrender. What breaks us most, of course, is the discovery he allows us to make of how much our ministry is done out of human ambition and selfishness, and how little real love is there for those to whom we have been sent. Well, GOD loves them so much that he has no choice than to deal with us in this way. So, we have a real battle on the inside; the things that have enabled us to operate in our own strength and for our own ends are torn from us, and as our life is brought under scrutiny, we try to make it through to a new reliance on God alone.

In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis described this kind of experience:

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial he makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

Well, that’s one side of it. But we mustn’t lose sight of the reason why this work goes on in our lives. And no-one puts it better than Jean Vanier In The Broken Body:

"Our brokenness is the wound through which the full power of God can penetrate our being and transfigure us in God. Loneliness is not something from which we must flee but the place from where we can cry out to God, where God will find us and we can find God.

"Yes, through our wounds the power of God can penetrate us and become like rivers of living water to irrigate the arid earth within us. Thus we may irrigate the arid earth of others, so that hope and love are reborn."

And from Isaiah 35:

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

and rejoice with joy and singing." (1-2)

"For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,

and the thirsty ground springs of water." (6b-7a)

"And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way." (8a)

"And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." (10)

-Isaiah 35:1-2, 6b-7a, 8a, 10

Waiting and expectancy

2011-12-02T00:19:00.005+11:00

The following passage is from WAITING IN HOPE, an article by Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, a Carmelite sister who lives as a solitary at the Carmelite friary at Aylesford, Kent. She is the author of numerous books including Every Pilgrim's Guide to Walsingham. The entire article is HERE.

We all need times of waiting and expectancy in our lives in order to savour the joy of fulfilment. We need to live with the night and darkness before we can appreciate the coming of dawn. And this is written into nature if only we have eyes to see and hearts attentive to life's mysteries. The expectant mother must wait nine long months before she sees the face of her child. The seed must be buried and broken open in the dark earth before it can emerge into the light of day as a new green shoot. A project needs to mature from the stage of being a mere idea hidden in someone's mind to finding practical expression in reality.

We all have times of Advent in our own lives, just as in the liturgical season of Advent we remember the waiting of Israel through the ages, and the waiting of Mary as she carries her child in her womb. We are sure she will bring him forth once again on Christmas day for our contemplation, and we are ready to relive once again the story of the shepherds and the birth at Bethlehem. It is all so familiar and yet all so new each time Christmas comes round. And every year we are invited to reach a more profound depth in our own lives as we contemplate the birth of the Son of God among us.

The Carmelite writers love to dwell on the fact that we must wait until God's time for fulfilment. It cannot be rushed. We cannot wrest from God in a moment what God desires that we wait for. This is so that we realise that all is gift, 'all is grace' (St. Thérèse).

This cycle of waiting and birthing is not just a past incident in the life of a Jewish maiden who lived long ago in far away Palestine. It is a story that is re-lived in our contemporary world whenever a child is conceived, whenever there is a cry of joy at a long awaited birth, whenever there is a longing for liberation from tyranny, whenever there is a gleam of hope and a striving for something beyond the obvious and immediate. And it happens whenever we ourselves rise to the challenge to bear Christ in our own flesh and offer him to our contemporary world; whenever we become, with Mary, Christ-bearers and Christ-sharers.

Advent in a nutshell

2011-12-01T07:55:00.004+11:00

GATHERED AROUND THE WORD

One of the features of Advent in many parishes is the service of Lessons and Carols. We love all those familiar Old Testament readings which the early Christians (following the example of Jesus himself - Luke 24:27) understood as prophecies announcing the coming of God's Messiah.

Since the invention of printing and then the development of literacy skills across the whole population in western societies, we have got used to the idea that reading our Bibles at home individually is the primary way in which we hear God speak. This is not as it was for most of the Judeo-Christian sweep of history, in which the community "gathered around the Word" and experienced God in a corporate act of humble listening and waiting. In our culture the richness of the Scripture portions in the "Lessons and Carols" service, as well - of course - as the prophetic readings we hear at the Sunday Mass, renews for us this sense of hearing God together.

In his book Finding My Way Home, Henri Nouwen puts it this way:

"Our waiting is always shaped by alertness to the Word. It is waiting in the knowledge that someone wants to address us. The question is, are we home? Are we at our address, ready to respond to the doorbell? We need to wait together, to keep each other at home spiritually, so that when the Word comes it can become flesh in us. That is why the Book of God is always in the midst of those who gather. We read the Word so that the Word can become flesh and have a whole new life in us." (page 107)

ADVENT IN A NUTSHELL
Do you want to send your friends something that says it all in two minutes? Well, watch this YouTube clip. It is the very best!

Be patient till your wings are grown - Francis de Sales

2011-11-30T22:57:00.000+11:00

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary,
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
(Isaiah 4:28-31)

BUT, SOMETIMES . . .

Be patient till your wings are grown. I fear very much that you are too vehement and headlong in your wishes and attempts to fly. You see the beauty of spiritual light and good resolutions; you fancy that you have almost attained, and your ardor is redoubled; you rush forward, but in vain, for your master has chained you to your perch, or else it is that your wings are not grown; and this constant excitement exhausts your strength. You must indeed strive to fly, but gently, without growing eager or restless. You resign yourself, but it is always with a BUT; you want this and that, and you struggle to get it. A simple wish is no hindrance to resignation; but a palpitating heart, a flapping of wings, an agitated will, and endless, quick, restless movements are unquestionably caused by deficient resignation. Do you know what you must do? You must be willing not to fly, since your wings are not yet grown. Do not be so eager with your vain desires, do not even be eager in avoiding eagerness; go on quietly in your path - it is a good path.

Francis de Sales Biography And Works

Just "being"

2011-11-29T01:20:00.005+11:00

For our Advent meditation, an excerpt from The Spiritual Life, the transcript of three talks given on the BBC in 1936 by well-known Anglican spiritual writer, Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941):

. . . when we lift our eyes from the crowded by-pass

to the eternal hills;

then, how much

the personal and practical things we have to deal with are enriched.

What meaning and coherence

comes into our scattered lives.

We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs:

to Want,

to Have,

to Do.

Craving, clutching, and fussing,

on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual

—even on the religious — plane,

we are kept in perpetual unrest:

forgetting that none of these verbs

have any ultimate significance,

except so far as they are transcended by and included in,

the fundamental verb, to Be:

and that Being,

not wanting, having and doing,

is the essence of a spiritual life.

But now,

with this widening of the horizon,

our personal ups and downs, desires, cravings, efforts,

are seen in scale:

as small and transitory spiritual facts,

within a vast, abiding spiritual world,

and lit by a steady spiritual light.

And at once,

a new coherence comes into our existence,

a new tranquillity, and release.

Like a chalet in the Alps,

that homely existence gains atmosphere, dignity, significance

from the greatness of the sky above it

and the background of the everlasting hills . . .

TODAY'S SECOD VIGILS READING

From an Oratio of St Gregory Nazianzen

The Son of God himself, who is before all ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the bodiless, the beginning from the beginning, the light from the light, source of life and immortality, image of the archetype, immovable seal, unchangeable image, the Father’s definition and Word, he it is who came to his own image and took to himself flesh for the sake of our flesh. Then he united himself with an intelligent soul for my soul’s sake, purifying like by like. He took to himself all that is human, except sin. He was conceived by the Virgin who was first purified in body and soul by the Spirit. It was necessary both that childbearing be honoured and that virginity be honoured still more highly.

He came forth as God with what he had taken to himself. Out of two contraries, flesh and spirit, he made one. The Spirit conferred the godhead on the flesh that received it. He who enriches others becomes poor. He took to himself the poverty of my flesh so that I might obtain the riches of his godhead. Click HERE to continue reading . . .

An Advent treat - Bogoroditse Devo

2011-11-28T14:47:00.005+11:00

This is the choir of Wells Cathedral singing Bogoroditse Devo from Rachmaninoff's Vespers

BOGORODITSE DEVO,

Raduisya, blagodatnaya Mariye,

Gospod s toboyu.

Blagoslovenna Ty v zhenakh,

i blagosloven plod chreva Tvoyego,

Yako Spasa rodila esi dush nashikh.

REJOICE O VIRGIN

Theotokos, Mary full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women,

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,

for thou has borne the Saviour of our souls.

TODAY'S SECOND VIGILS READING

From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx

Let us take a look at ourselves and our city. Our way of life is a strongly fortified city surrounded on all sides by sound observances which, like walls and towers, rise up to prevent our enemy from deceiving us and enticing us away from our Emperor’s army. What a wall poverty is! How well it defends us against the pride of the world, against harmful and ruinous vanities and superfluities. What a tower silence is! It repels the assaults of contention, quarrelling, dissension, and detraction. What about obedience, humility, cheap clothing? What about a restricted diet? They are walls, they are towers against vices, against the attacks of our enemies. In this city we declare ourselves, not Romans, but angelic beings. For these observances demonstrate that we belong to the fellowship of the angels and are not among the slaves of the Romans. When we make profession of this way of life the words of Isaiah are fulfilled: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles. Then he goes on: Nation shall not lift sword against nation nor ever again be trained for war. Click HERE to continue reading . . .

Are the Gospels unhistorical???

2011-11-25T14:41:00.007+11:00

Long-time readers of this blog know that I like the work of the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney, and keep an eye on their video clips. So today, because of the soundbites we often hear from liberal scholars and theologians, I have posted a short interview Simon Smart did with Professor Craig Keener on the genre, writing and historicity of the Gospels. More material of this kind is available from the Centre's web site.

Father, make us one . . . that the world may know . . .

2011-11-24T02:02:00.007+11:00

This photograph (thank you, Josue Cornejo) was taken on 27th October during the Pope's Pilgrimage to Assisi. May the Holy Spirit be poured out afresh across all Christian communities, bringing renewal, unity and peace. (Except as otherwise noted, the prayers and petitions below are based on the writings of the Abbé Paul Couturier.)

PRAYERS FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

For the bad examples in our conduct,

which have slowed down, diminished or destroyed

the effects of grace in the souls of others:

We ask you to forgive us, Lord.

For forgetting to offer prayer, frequent, friendly, fervent,

on behalf of our fellow Christians:

We ask you to forgive us, Lord.

Above the frontiers of language, race and nation,

through all our rich difference and diversity:

Unite us, Lord Jesus.

With Christians who are persecuted and in need,

with our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters

across the world and in our midst:

Unite us, Lord Jesus.

Above our ignorance, our prejudices,

or any unconscious hostility,

through better understanding and ever closer communion:

Unite us, Lord Jesus.

Above our different spiritual and theological traditions,

in one spirit, one Bread and one Body:

Unite us, Lord Jesus.

O God, for the increase of your glory: