S. Teresa of Avila, Virgin & Doctor of the Church

Today is the feast of S. Teresa of Avila, whose best known writing is a very brief poem known as her “Bookmark”, because it was found in her prayer book when she died:

Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada was born in Avila, Spain in 1515. After her mother's death she was sent to be educated by Augustinian nuns, but became ill and returned to live with her father and other relatives. One of her uncles introduced her to the Letters of Saint Jerome, and these inspired her to consider that she had a vocation to the religious life. At the age of 20 Teresa entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at Avila.

During the sixteenth century many religious communities had lost their original devotion, discipline and openness to God. In many places convent life had become lax. Teresa's convent at Avila was no exception. She tells how she lost her first love for the Lord and embraced the status quo of comfortable convent living. In fact, she struggled with her vocation until after her father's death, and then a number of illnesses. In 1555 she underwent a spiritual renewal in which she saw the risen Jesus, and experienced a mystical transverberation, which she described as the piercing of her heart by an angel. She called this spiritual union with God, her "mystical marriage." She gave herself completely to prayer. 

Teresa began to have more spiritual experiences and visions which she, as well as the clergy she consulted, often thought were delusions. But two confessors believed that her experiences were genuine graces from the Lord, and encouraged her to embrace them as such, and to deepen her life of personal prayer and radical discipleship. More than that, they told her to write down her experiences so as to help others understand contemplative prayer. So she wrote the Life of herself (up to 1562), The Way of Perfection and Foundations for her sisters, and The Interior Castle, as a guide for praying people in general. Her writings are intensely personal spiritual autobiographies, and take their place alongside The Confessions of S. Augustine (which had also been a major influence on her). It was mainly on account of her writings that she was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970. (Teresa had been declared a saint by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.

After many tribulations and much heart-searching, Teresa felt that God was asking her to leave the Convent of the Incarnation and establish St Joseph's, a new monastery that would conscientiously observe the original Rule of Carmel. This she did on 24th August 1562. There was a great deal of opposition to the new Carmel and it was some time before she was able to live there in peace. Many condemned her as having been deceived by her mystical experiences in prayer. Eventually the hostility died down and Teresa was asked to found more of these houses of prayer in other cities of Spain. Over a period of twenty years she founded 15 houses for the nuns and, in association with John Yepes (later known as S. John of the Cross), at least two for the friars. In 1580, the Holy See recognised the Discalced Carmelites as distinct from the other Carmelites. By then Teresa was sixty-five years old, and in very poor health. Even so, she continued her work. The last Carmelite house she founded was at Burgos in July, 1582. On her way from there to Alba de Tormes she became ill. On October 4, 1582, three days after reaching Alba de Tormes, she died, and was buried there.

The parish of All Saints' Benhilton (Sutton) in the south of London, which I serve as Vicar, is in the care of the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev'd Jonathan Baler, according to the provision made available to traditional Catholic parishes following the ordination of women in the Church of England. In October last year, Bishop Jonathan took a group of his priests to Avila in Spain for a week that was really a blend of clergy conference, clergy school and retreat. We were ministered to by Bishop Norman Banks, the Bishop of Richborough, who is the Provincial Episcopal Visitor ("PEV") for many traditional Catholic parishes in the Canterbury Province. Drawing on his own experience, Bishop Norman led us through the spiritual journeys of S. Teresa of Avila and S. John of the Cross. We were fortunate to have been able to visit significant sites that brought alive some of the historical aspects of S. Teresa's life and teaching. Here are some photos. (Click on them to enlarge!)

Here is a photo of the clergy having concelebrated Mass in the Convent of the Incarnation, Avila, where S. Teresa lived for 27 years, and where she was prioress when S. John of the Cross was Confessor, between 1572 and 1576: 

Here is S. Teresa's cell in the Convent:

  

and her kitchen:

After our concelebrated Mass on Thursday 11th October at Alba de Tormes:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

S. TERESA SAID:

I believe that love is the measure of our ability to bear crosses, whether great or small. So if you have this love, try not to let the prayers you make to so great a Lord be words of mere politeness, but brace yourselves to suffer what God's Majesty desires. For if you give God your will in any other way, you are just showing the Lord a precious stone, making as if to give it and begging God to take it, and then, when God's hand reaches out to do so, taking it back and holding on to it tightly. Such mockery is no fit treatment for One who endured so much for us . . .
(From: The Way of Perfection)

Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honey-comb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God.

(From The Interior Castle)  

Do not build towers without a foundation, for our Lord does not care so much for the importance of our works as for the love with which they are done. When we do all we can, His Majesty will enable us to do more every day. 

(From The Interior Castle) 

Love does not consist in great sweetness of devotion, but in a more fervent determination to strive to please God in all things, in avoiding, as far as possible, all that would offend Him, and in praying for the increase of the glory and honour of his Son and for the growth of the Catholic Church.

(From The Interior Castle) 

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's if we are always criticising trivial actions which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through ignorance of their motives.

(From The Interior Castle) 

How many maggots remain in hiding until they have destroyed our virtues. These pests are such evils as self-love, self-esteem, rash judgement of others in small matters, and a want of charity in not loving our neighbour quite as much as ourselves. Although, perforce, we satisfy our obligations to avoid sin, yet we fall far short of what must be done in order to obtain perfect union with the will of God.

(From The Interior Castle)  

The only remedy for having given up a habit of recollection is to recommence it, otherwise the soul will continue to lose it more and more every day, and God grant it may realise its danger.

(From The Interior Castle)

O Lord, regulate all things by your wisdom, so that I may always serve you in the manner that you will. Do not punish me by granting my desire if it offends your love, for I desire your love to live always in me. Help me to deny myself in order that I may serve you. Let me live for you - who in yourself are the true life. Amen.

God and Man - S. Ephraim the Syrian on the Divine and Human Natures of Christ

“If he was not flesh, 

who was lying in the manger? 

And if he was not God, 

whom did the Angels come down and glorify?”

S. Ephrem wrote many works to teach the Gospel and to defend the Faith of the Incarnation against Arian and Gnostic ideas. He did so with great imagination, making full use of his poetic and musical gifts, often composing poems and songs which the people would sing at home and in the fields while they worked. A number of his poems became part of the liturgy of the Syrian Church. St Ephrem, in fact, became known as the Lyre of the Holy Spirit. His profound love of the Scriptures permeated all his works. He died in 373 A.D., and was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1920.  Those with a bit of extra time will enjoy reading Mary C. Sheridan’s article,  "St Ephrem - Faith Adoring the Mystery.”  

With acknowledgment to Fr Aidan Kimel's blog, I have reproduced here a piece by S. Ephrem the Deacon. Ephrem (or “Ephraem”, or "Ephraim"). was born around 306 AD at Nisbis in the Roman province of Syria, near present-day Edessa, Turkey, not far from the border of Iraq. He became a disciple of S. James, Bishop of Nisibis, and seems to have accompanied him to the Council of Nicea in 325. When Nisibis was conquered by the Persians in 363, Ephrem fled to a remote cave in Edessa where he did most of his writing. We know that he visited S. Basil at Caesarea in 370.

What follows is Ephraim the Syrian on the Divine and Human Natures of Christ, an excerpt from his Homily on the Transfiguration: 

The facts themselves bear witness and his divine acts of power teach those who doubt that he is true God, and his sufferings show that he is true man. And if those who are feeble in understanding are not fully assured, they will pay the penalty on his dread day.

If he was not flesh, why was Mary introduced at all? And if he was not God, whom was Gabriel calling Lord?

If he was not flesh, who was lying in the manger? And if he was not God, whom did the Angels come down and glorify?

If he was not flesh, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes? And if he was not God, whom did the shepherds worship?

If he was not flesh, whom did Joseph circumcise? And if he was not God, in whose honour did the star speed through the heavens?

If he was not flesh, whom did Mary suckle? And if he was not God, to whom did the Magi offer gifts?

If he was not flesh, whom did Symeon carry in his arms? And if he was not God, to whom did he say, “Let me depart in peace”?

If he was not flesh, whom did Joseph take and flee into Egypt? And if he was not God, in whom were words “Out of Egypt I have called my Son” fulfilled?

If he was not flesh, whom did John baptize? And if he was not God, to whom did the Father from heaven say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased”?

If he was not flesh, who fasted and hungered in the desert? And if he was not God, whom did the Angels come down and serve?

If he was not flesh, who was invited to the wedding in Cana of Galilee? And if he was not God, who turned the water into wine?

If he was not flesh, in whose hands were the loaves? And if he was not God, who satisfied crowds and thousands in the desert, not counting women and children, from five loaves and two fishes?

If he was not flesh, who fell asleep in the boat? And if he was not God, who rebuked the winds and the sea?

If he was not flesh, with whom did Simon the Pharisee eat? And if he was not God, who pardoned the offenses of the sinful woman?

If he was not flesh, who sat by the well, worn out by the journey? And if he was not God, who gave living water to the woman of Samaria and reprehended her because she had had five husbands?

If he was not flesh, who wore human garments? And if he was not God, who did acts of power and wonders?

If he was not flesh, who spat on the ground and made clay? And if he was not God, who through the clay compelled the eyes to see?

If he was not flesh, who wept at Lazarus’ grave? And if he was not God, who by his command brought out one four days dead?

If he was not flesh, who sat on the foal? And if he was not God, whom did the crowds go out to meet with glory?

If he was not flesh, whom did the Jews arrest? And if he was not God, who gave an order to the earth and threw them onto their faces.

If he was not flesh, who was struck with a blow? And if he was not God, who cured the ear that had been cut off by Peter and restored it to its place?

If he was not flesh, who received spittings on his face? And if he was not God, who breathed the Holy Spirit into the faces of his Apostles?

If he was not flesh, who stood before Pilate at the judgement seat? And if he was not God, who made Pilate’s wife afraid by a dream?

If he was not flesh, whose garments did the soldiers strip off and divide? And if he was not God, how was the sun darkened at the cross?

If he was not flesh, who was hung on the cross? And if he was not God, who shook the earth from its foundations?

If he was not flesh, whose hands and feet were transfixed by nails? And if he was not God, how was the veil of the temple rent, the rocks broken and the graves opened?

If he was not flesh, who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”? And if he was not God, who said “Father, forgive them”?

If he was not flesh, who was hung on a cross with the thieves? And if he was not God, how did he say to the thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise”?

If he was not flesh, to whom did they offer vinegar and gall? And if he was not God, on hearing whose voice did Hades tremble?

If he was not flesh, whose side did the lance pierce, and blood and water came out?And if he was not God, who smashed to gates of Hades and tear apart it bonds? And at whose command did the imprisoned dead come out?

If he was not flesh, whom did the Apostles see in the upper room? And if he was not God, how did he enter when the doors were shut?

If he was not flesh, the marks of the nails and the lance in whose hands and side did Thomas handle? And if he was not God, to whom did he cry out, “My Lord and my God”?

If he was not flesh, who ate by the sea of Tiberias? And if he was not God, at whose command was the net filled?

If he was not flesh, whom did the Apostles and Angels see being taken up into heaven? And if he was not God, to whom was heaven opened, whom did the Powers worship in fear and whom did the Father invite to “Sit at my right hand”. As David said, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, etc.”

If he was not God and man, our salvation is a lie, and the words of the Prophets are lies. But the Prophets spoke the truth, and their testimonies were not lies. The Holy Spirit spoke through them what they had been commanded.

The Incarnation itself an act of Sacrifice (Michael Ramsey)

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 over-compartmentalise the aspects of the person and work of Christ

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)

Bishop Frank Weston (1871-1924) - a true apostle

This is my conflation and free adaptation of two historic essays on Bishop Weston - one by Desmond Morse-Boycott in Lead, Kindly Light: Studies of Saints and Heroes of the Oxford Movement, and the other by HFB Mackay from his Saints and Leaders. I also used H. Maynard Smith's Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar. As little as possible of the original style (which some might think quaint by modern standards!) has been altered - only what was necessary to merge passages together. It is along post . . . but it will inspire you!

Here are links to some of Bishop Frank Weston's writings:

The One Christ: An Enquiry into the Manner of the Incarnation. (1907)
Ecclesia Anglicana: For What Does She Stand?(1914)
The Case against Kikuyu: A Study in Vital Principles.  (1914)
Proposals for a Central Missionary Council of Episcopal and Non-Episcopal Churches in East Africa (1914)
Important Declaration from the Bishop of Zanzibar From the London Church Times, April 1, 1915.
The Fulness of Christ: An Essay (1916)
The Black Slaves of Prussia: An Open Letter Addressed to General Smuts (1918)
The Christ and His Critics: An Open Pastoral Letter to the European Missionaries of His Diocese (1919
Our Present Duty, Concluding Address, Anglo-Catholic Congress (1923)
In His Will: Retreat Addresses (1922)
In Defence of the English Catholic (1923)

Frank Weston appears first as a little boy in suburban middle-class surroundings, an affectionate, diffident, delicate child, very highly strung. His nerves bothered him all his life, his courage was not natural to him, but was the result of a disciplined will. He had an Evangelical upbringing and a beautiful mother. Meant for the Army, he failed to pass the eye test at Woolwich. 

That was the first stroke of his discipline; he felt it keenly. Weak sight hindered his reading and baulked his games. In all this, I expected the big round-shouldered, short-sighted, rather awkward Dulwich schoolboy was going through much more self-discipline than people knew. We are told that he went up to Trinity College, Oxford, old for his age, solemn, shy, and rather repelling in manner, all signs of inward suffering.

“Honestly,” he said afterwards, “I have never conceived it possible that anyone would care to like me.” With this agonizing diffidence about himself he combined an almost aggressive certainty about the validity of his beliefs.

But as often happens, the awkward, uncomfortable freshman found himself at Oxford, and grew into a keen, attractive, thoughtful, serious undergraduate. He and his friends formed a debating society, the Moles, and debated all objects under the sun. Frank became a Christian Socialist.

VOCATION

Then came a great night when Bishop Smythies, of Zanzibar, king among men, stood in the pulpit of St. Barnabas, and pleaded for Africa. Weston volunteered next day and was turned down by the doctor.

He spent three years in Oxford, reading theology, overworked desperately, got a good First in the schools, and went to the College Mission at Stratford in London’s East End in the spirit of adventure. Here his powers of leadership began to appear. He had a strong, quiet manner which won the confidence of the bigger boys who called him the Cardinal and made him their confidant.

It was the heyday of Christian Socialism and growing Anglo-Catholicism. Frank went from the College Mission to St. Matthew’s, Westminster.

Two sayings had always stuck in his mind.

When he was a boy at Dulwich, the Headmaster, one day said to him, a propos of nothing, “Weston, if Jesus Christ asked you to give Him your overcoat would you go and fetch Him your shabbiest?” Weston said, “No, sir,” and he proved as good as his word. And when he was at Stratford and was speaking one night in Oxford about the Anglo-Catholic desire to “build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land,” a Don said to him, “Weston, do you believe in the heavenly Jerusalem?”

“Yes,” said Weston.

“I wish I did,” said the Don; “and if I did I don’t think I should talk about anything else.”

The saying shook Weston’s mind into a new perspective. After sorting his ideas, praying and meditating and developing his work as a priest in the orderly devotional atmosphere of St. Matthew’s, he volunteered again for Central Africa, was accepted and went out to Zanzibar.

TO ZANZIBAR

He went out with the highest ideals, and with theories to put to the test of experience. When he got out he found himself dissatisfied at every turn. He thought the life and discipline of the mission was too relaxed. He was to train some of the teachers for ordination under conditions which he thought impossible.

He disliked the tendency to Europeanise the Africans, for he had come out intending to help the Africans to plant an African Church and develop through its power an authentic African civilization. Some people would have come home, other people would have submitted, others, again, would have begun to question their own judgment. Weston did none of these things. He attacked everything he objected to and started to build a theological college. At the same time, it became clear that he was ill suited to the climate, and so his labours were interspersed by sharp bouts of fever.

A TRUE AFRICAN

All that side of Weston which had made him a red hot socialist at Stratford gave itself to the Africans. To the Africans he became an African to an extraordinary degree. Not only was he the first Swahili orator and scholar, but he came to think in Swahili, which latterly affected to some extent his English style. Many men who have given themselves to be Africanised have deteriorated, but when he died the British Administrator at Tanga wrote, “I think the Bishop was the very impersonation of our race at the highest to which it can attain.”

Frank enjoyed looking after the Small Boy’s Home. They were delightful and most affectionate children, but at once he had to face huge moral problems in a form which wrung his heart. It was not difficult to make these children religious, it was very difficult to keep them at all decent in conduct, and it was immensely difficult to make them see that the one had anything to do with the other.

A TRUE CATHOLIC 

The Catholic missionary bears in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. From the children at Kilimani the young missionary began to receive the wound in the Sacred Heart. He led a very ascetic life with his theological students when he got them round him. He found, like St. Francis de Sales, that he must make the Blessed Sacrament the centre of their lives. When he told us that we must fight for our tabernacles he spoke out of this experience. He instituted the service of Benediction and drew his students into a real love of the Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

Weston was constantly being called upon to give missions and retreats, but  the high personal cost (as we would say today) as well as the loneliness and weariness of his ministry can be felt in a rare comment: “Nobody does anything for me.”

After a while he was made Principal of the elder boys’ school at Kiungani. His fellow-priests here, like himself, were anxious to try their vocation for the Religious Life, and they petitioned the Bishop to allow them to do so, but he refused.

A GROWING MINISTRY

Weston was a great success at Kiungani and had happy years there. He dominated the whole place, and the boys were devoted to him. But he returned from furlough in England to find a sort of revolt going on against his authority, and a layman in his place. The layman soon retired, and Weston resumed work, but this was a bitter trial. The boys had wavered and Weston thought his fellow-missionaries had turned against him. It was not really so, but he was shy and sensitive and formidable, a difficult combination.

During this time he lived very much to himself among the Africans, whose company he preferred to the Europeans. As it turned out, this was all part of his training. It was his Gethsemane in which he came especially close to our Lord, and from henceforth his special devotion was the loneliness of Christ. In it he found his way deeper into the African heart and mind.

The period ended by his being made Canon and Chancellor of the Cathedral, with charge of the educational work of the diocese, and the duty of lecturing to the European residents in Zanzibar.

It was after this that he visited England to appeal for men, and made his great speech at the Livingstone Commemoration in the Senate House at Cambridge. It was a great occasion, the Vice-Chancellor in the chair, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Public Orator, many of the great personages of Cambridge present. Weston’s speech was a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. The entire audience more deeply moved. The Bishop of Manchester, who also went over from Oxford, says that he was still trembling when he got into the train to go home. Nothing but the spirit of a life of martyrdom can so shake strong men.

A GODLY BISHOP

In 1907 Frank Weston was consecrated Bishop of Zanzibar. He landed on November 6th and was enthroned that afternoon. Next day, the Bishop sang Pontifical High Mass in his cathedral; before him stretched a brilliant mass of colour, white and black people mingled together in brilliant garments. Next day the Bishop delivered his charge, and on the days following he presided over the Synod. He issued a Pastoral in Swahili to the African people beautifully suggestive of Apostolical times, and soon began his episcopal visitation of the vast tropical diocese on foot; in one six months he walked nine hundred miles. His Apostolic labours were truly like those of St. Paul.

He fought with witchcraft in various forms and came up against forces which are sometimes said to lie latent and suppressed in countries of Christian culture. This contest with the principalities and powers St. Paul talks of drew out forces in the Bishop’s personality. Things happened such as are recorded in the lives of saints.

After walking all day through country which was leafless, remember, because the sun had withered up the leaves and in which, after rain, the grass grew twelve feet high, the Bishop would pray under the stars half the night. “Of all that he taught me,” said an African priest, “of all that I watched him do, this was the greatest wonder to see how he prayed.”

We are not surprised then at the tale that when he was confronted after mass by a non-Christian chief who implored him to pray for rain, he gathered the Christians together and prayed in the presence of the chief, and that day torrential rain fell; and that when he prayed vehemently by a woman far gone in death, her soul was drawn back and she confessed her sins and was absolved, and then died. When the Catholic life is lived in its fullness and in the power of the Holy Spirit, such things, explain them as you will, occur.

As Bishop Frank had to sit as judge, hear cases, and impose public penance. But he always did so with such a love of souls that he became the father and consoler of all his black children. There is a story of a rebellious sinner and his excommunication from the altars of the Church. The awful ceremony proceeded, the lighted candles were hurled down on the ground and extinguished, and the Bishop came to the final sentence, “We do hereby cut you off-” and then burst into a torrent of tears, and amid the sobs of the Bishop, priests and people, the church bell tolled out the news that the doom had been pronounced.

KIKUYU

A Bishop must expect to find his work imperilled by the assaults of the Devil; he ought not to have to encounter the assaults of the Bishops and Priests of his own communion, but such was Bishop Weston’s lot, and the result was his battle of Kikuyu and his battle with Modernism.

The Church, the Apostolic Succession and the Sacraments were at stake in the Kikuyu controversy, in which the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda had sought to establish a conclave with the various protestant denominations working in the region. Using arguments from Scripture and the ancient Fathers (similar to those we have had to use with regard to the “ordination” of women), Weston won his chief points, and we like to think of his departure from the second Kikuyu Conference to the sound of his opponents’ cheers. His presence, speech and charm were irresistible.

THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS

With regard to Modernism (what today we more often call “liberal theology”) - in which the issue was the Person of our Lord - Bishop Weston was in a position to see where it would lead. The Muslims of Cairo were deluging Zanzibar with proselytising tracts in which they pointed out that the liberal Anglicans in England were teaching a doctrine of our Lord’s Person indistinguishable from Mohammed’s view of Jesus, and that the Church’s learned men were now making it perfectly clear that Mohammed had been right all the time!

The Anglican world was startled by a document which Frank Weston pinned upon the door of his cathedral in Zanzibar, announcing that he and his diocese were no longer in communion with John, Bishop of Hereford, and all who adhered to him. Here was a first-class crisis.

Dr. Perceval defended himself in the columns of The Times, and gravely rebuked a junior bishop for being a junior. In a headmasterly manner he went out to rap the knuckles of an irresponsible schoolboy, not realizing that to point to the youth and inexperience of his opponent was merely to trail a red-herring across the track.

Then, to Frank Weston, came the crowning blow. Dr. Hensley Henson - one of the leading liberal theologians of the day - was made a bishop, after a stormy protest by many Churchmen. Modernism had seemingly triumphed.

Frank Weston replied by writing his book Christ and His Critics, and began to think of retiring from his See to live a simple Christian life among his African friends.

Most people at home, whipped up by the press, assumed that he was a firebrand, in love with excommunications and anathemas. They called him the Zanzibarbarian.

In reality he was far more complex: he had the heart of a little child, the mind of a master theologian and the courage of a Christian warrior.

WARTIME SERVICE

Then the War broke out, and the Bishop, who was in England, got back to his people. He discovered that he was cut off from the greater part of his diocese, which was in German territory. The disorder which war brings had reached Zanzibar; two of his African priests had to be deposed for immorality. This nearly broke the Bishop’s heart, for he found it to be of long standing and concealed from him by the many of the others. The Bishop flung himself into the work of the cathedral, saying the Masses, hearing the confessions, preaching most of the sermons.

Then came a press gang searching for porters; the Africans fled and hid, but the Bishop rose and said, “I will get you porters if I may command them.” He was given leave, and the men flocked to him, Christians, Muslims, heathen. The Bishop drilled them and took them to the mainland.

Experienced officers used to gape in amazement at the way in which he controlled an awkward squad of two thousand men. Whatever he was commissioned to do, that he did. He received the O.B.E. Yet it was only through the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury that he received his war medals. He was a constant fighter of injustice.

“Truly our Lord Bishop is a great man,” wrote an African afterwards, “for he came over the sea with us, and when we reached the mainland he marched with us, he slept with us, he ate with us, and when we lay down at night did he not pray with us? And when we rose in the morning did he not pray with us again? At the end did he not take us into camp? Truly he is a great man.”

The Muslims were deeply affected; they realized that the Bishop was a Holy Man, such a Holy Man as could lead a Holy Way among themselves, and for the first time they got a glimpse of the supernatural character of Christianity.

DEFENDING AFRICANS

The war left the Bishop two battles to fight which cost him more than those terrible marches. He fought the people who wanted to return her colonies to Germany, in a pamphlet called The Black Slaves of Prussia, and he fought his own country when he feared that England was going to treat his beloved native Africans with vengeance, in another pamphlet called The Serfs of Great Britain. In the end Winston Churchill had to issue a despatch which satisfied the Bishop!

LAMBETH 1920: A VISION FOR UNITY

At the Lambeth Conference in 1920 Frank Weston came into his own. This followed the first Anglo-Catholic Congress in which he had played a seemingly insignificant part, but the unforgettable scenes which took place in the Albert Hall, when a vast number of men and women pledged themselves to the service of Christ, and cast jewels and riches into the alms-sacks, renewed his confidence in the Church of England.

He went from the Albert Hall to dominate and sway the counsels of the bishops assembled at Lambeth. He entered the assembly a suspected and discredited prelate. He chose a seat, and sat, and listened. He rose at length to speak. One can picture the solemn prelates of every clime and country leaning forward to see and hear the tiresome enfant terrible, in anticipation of a storm of wordy criticism. They were given the surprise of their lives. Here was no thin-lipped, harsh, narrow-minded bigot, intent on grinding a diocesan axe in and out of season, but a bronzed and finely built man who spoke as never man spoke before.

There was something about him which made them listen and learn. He addressed them with learning, common sense, humour and a friendly tenderness which took their breath away. He spoke to them, some of them aged, and most of them steeped in the spirit of autocracy, as a father might speak to his sons, but with such a winning gentleness that they were impelled, in the end, to see a vision and send out the famous appeal for unity. He left them under a spell.

ANGLO-CATHOLIC CONGRESS - LONDON, 1923

A few years passed by, and he was back again, worn out, but engrossed with the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923. Here he became the leader of the Anglo-Catholics, such a leader as the movement lacked since Newman had left the Church of England. His musical voice could be heard all over the Albert Hall (there were no microphones in those days).

Every gesture he made evoked a storm of cheering. Many who saw him there speak in terms of coming face to face with an Apostle.

None but he could have sent the famous telegram of greetings to the Pope and survived it.

“Sixteen thousand Anglo-Catholics in congress assembled offer respectful greetings to the Holy Father, humbly praying that the day of peace may quickly break.”

The next day he was torn to pieces not only by the press, and the Protestant underworld, but also by mainstream Anglicans and even friends, but he never regretted his action.

THE END

“I am very tired,” he said, as he went back to Africa. He died not long afterwards, on November 2, 1924, at the age of fifty-three. There has been none like him for Apostolic unction in the history of the Catholic Movement within the Anglican world, and since his passing none has led as he.

That is the man Anglican Catholicism must resemble; it must be persevering and dauntless, and not afraid of making mistakes; it must do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently; it must be great-hearted, whole-hearted, eager-hearted; it must be to the end of a life of self-sacrifice and many disappointments, it must retain the heart of a child. That is the charm of Frank Weston. He never lost the simplicity and joy of a child. 

He died on the march, marching and working with the illness on him which caused his death. At last it struck him down, but twice he rose from his death-bed to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation. Next day he could rise no more. It was all very simple, merely the next thing to be done in a life lived to the glory of God. His priests came to him and gave him the last Sacraments, and in four hours he passed away.

“Crowds of people,” says the African account, “all crowded up, Christians and those not Christians, that they might see the face of the father for the last time. Then arose an exceedingly great lamentation. It was a wonder.

“Everyone you looked at - he was crying, but we returned to the church afterwards to thank the God who had given us a good father, and had now carried him to a place of greater peace that he might rest from the trouble of the world.”

But one of the little black schoolboys of the Kiungani, writing of him after his death, had a clearer vision.

“You will know that he is a loving man, for his mouth is always opened ready for laughter, for he is still laughing, and he will laugh for ever.”

The Grand Miracle - A great C.S. Lewis piece for Easter Day

St Jude on the Hill, London

In April 1945 years ago at the Church of St Jude on the Hill, London, C.S. Lewis preached a sermon called “The Grand Miracle.” It was published two weeks later in The Guardian, (and today in God in the Dock). It continues to resonate as one of Lewis’ most important essays.

Here is the essay. If you prefer, you can listen to it while watching the DOODLE, which is, in fact, very clever! (Scroll to the end of the essay to find the YouTube Doodle) 

One is very often asked as present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who ask it say, “freed” from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals.

But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, which is uncreated, eternal, came into Nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing Nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian.

Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all well-established Christian miracles are part of it. That they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just like every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point in space of time, so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation.

Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you will again have indigestion).

Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once. So one must apply to it a quite different kind of standard.

I think we are rather in this position. Supposing you had before you a manuscript of some great work, either a symphony or a novel. There then comes to you a person, saying, “Here is a new bit of the manuscript that I found; it is the central passage of that symphony, or the central chapter of that novel. The text is incomplete without it. I have got the missing passage which is really the center of the whole work.”

The only thing you could do would be to put this new piece of the manuscript in that central position, and then see how it reacted on the whole of the rest of the work. If it constantly brought out new meanings from the whole of the rest of the work, if it made you notice things in the rest of the work which you had not noticed before, then I think you would decide that it was authentic. On the other hand, if it failed to do that, then, however attractive it was in itself, you would reject it.

Now, what is the missing chapter in this case, the chapter which Christians are offering? The story of the Incarnation is the story of a descent and resurrection. When I say “resurrection” here, I am not referring simply to the first few hours, or the first few weeks of the Resurrection. I am talking of this whole, huge pattern of descent, down, down, and then up again. What we ordinarily call the Resurrection being just, so to speak, the point at which it turns.

Think what that descent is. The coming down, not only into humanity, but into those nine months which precede human birth, in which they tell us we all recapitulate strange prehuman , subhuman forms of life, and going lower still into being a corpse, a thing which, if this ascending movement had not begun, would presently have passed out of the organic altogether, and have gone back into the inorganic, as all corpses do.

One has a picture of someone going right down and dredging the sea bottom. One has a picture of a strong man trying to lift a very big, complicated burden. He stoops down and gets himself right under it so that he himself disappears; and then he straightens his back and moves off with the whole thing swaying on his shoulders.

Or else one has the picture of a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green, and warm, and sunlit water into the pitch-black, cold, freezing water, down into the mud and slime, then up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get. This thing is human nature; but, associated with it, all Nature, the new universe.

Now, as soon as you have thought of this, this pattern of the huge dive down to the bottom, into the depths of the universe and coming up again into the light, everyone will see at once how that is imitated and echoed by the principles of the natural world; the descent of the seed into the soil, and its rising again in the plants.

There are also all sorts of things in our own spiritual life where a thing has to be killed, and broken, in order that it may then become bright, and strong, and splendid. The analogy is obvious.

In that sense the doctrine fits in very well, so well in fact that immediately there comes the suspicion, Is it not fitting in a great deal too well? In other words, does not the Christian story show this pattern of descent and reascent because that is part of all the nature religions of the world? We have read about it in The Golden Boughs. We all know about Adonis, and the stories of the rest of those rather tedious people; is not this one more instance of the same thing, “the dying god”? Well, yes it is. That is what makes the question subtle.

What the anthropological critic of Christianity is always saying is perfectly true. Christ is a figure of that sort. And here comes a very curious thing. When I first, after childhood, read the Gospels, I was full of that stuff about the dying god, The Golden Bough, and so on. It was to me then a very poetic, and mysterious, and quickening idea; and when I turned to the Gospels never will I forget my disappointment and repulsion at finding hardly anything about it at all. The metaphor of the seed dropping into the ground in this connection occurs (I think) twice in the New Testament,[2] and for the rest hardly any notice is taken; it seemed to me extraordinary. You had a dying God, Who was always representative of the corn: you see Him holding the corn, that is, bread, in His hand, and saying, “This is My Body,”[3] and from my point of view, as I then was, He did not seem to realize what He was saying. Surely there, if anywhere, this connection between the Christian story and the corn must have come out; the whole context is crying out for it. But everything goes on as if the principal actor, and still more, those about Him, were totally ignorant of what they were doing.

It is as if you got very good evidence concerning the sea serpent, but the men who brought this good evidence seemed never to have heard of sea serpents. Or to put it in another way, why was it that the only case of the “dying god” which might conceivably have been historical occurred among a people (and the only people in the whole Mediterranean world) who had not got any trace of this nature religion, and indeed seemed to know nothing about it? Why is it among them the thing suddenly appears to happen?

The principal actor, humanly speaking, hardly seems to know of the repercussions His words (and sufferings) would have in any pagan mind. Well, that is almost inexplicable, except on one hypothesis. How if the corn king is not mentioned in that book, because He is here of whom the corn king was an image? How if the representation is absent because here, at last, the thing represented is present? If the shadows are absent because the thing of which they were shadows is here?

The corn itself is in its far-off way an imitation of the supernatural reality; the thing dying, and coming to life again, descending, and reascending beyond all Nature. The principle is there in Nature because it was first there in God Himself. Thus one is getting in behind the nature religions, and behind Nature to Someone Who is not explained by, but explains, not, indeed, the nature religions directly, but that whole characteristic behavior of Nature on which nature religions were based. Well, that is one way in which it surprised me. It seemed to fit in a very peculiar way, showing me something about Nature more fully than I had seen it before, while itself remaining quite outside and above the nature religions.

Then another thing. We, with our modern democratic and arithmetical presuppositions would so have liked and expected all men to start equal in their search for God. One has the picture of great centripetal roads coming from all directions, with well-disposed people, all meaning the same thing, and getting closer and closer together. How shockingly opposite to that is the Christian story!

One people picked out of the whole earth; that people purged and proved again and again. Some are lost in the desert before they reach Palestine; some stay in Babylon; some becoming indifferent. The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear-a Jewish girl at her prayers. That is what the whole of human nature has narrowed down to before the Incarnation takes place. Very unlike what we expected, but, of course, not in the least unlike what seems, in general, as shown by Nature, to be God’s way of working.

The universe is quite a shockingly selective, undemocratic place out of apparently infinite space, a relatively tiny proportion occupied by matter of any kind. Of the stars perhaps only one has planets: of the planets only one is at all likely to sustain organic life. Of the animals only one species is rational. Selection as seen in Nature, and the appalling waste which it involves, appears a horrible and an unjust thing by human standards.

But the selectiveness in the Christian story is not quite like that. The people who are selected are, in a sense, unfairly selected for a supreme honor; but it is also a supreme burden. The people of Israel come to realize that it is their woes which are saving the world. Even in human society, though, one sees how this inequality furnishes an opportunity for every kind of tyranny and servility.

Yet, on the other hand, one also sees that it furnishes an opportunity for some of the very best things we can think of — humility, and kindness, and the immense pleasures of admiration. (I cannot conceive how one would get through the boredom of a world in which you never met anyone more clever, or more beautiful, or stronger than yourself. The very crowds who go after the football celebrities and film stars know better than to desire that kind of equality!)

What the story of the Incarnation seems to be doing is to flash a new light on a principle in Nature, and to show for the first time that this principle of inequality in Nature is neither good nor bad. It is a common theme running through both the goodness and badness of the natural world, and I begin to see how it can survive as a supreme beauty in a redeemed universe.

And with that I have unconsciously passed over to the third point. I have said that the selectiveness was not unfair in the way in which we first suspect, because those selected for the great honor are also selected for the great suffering, and their suffering heals others. In the Incarnation we get, of course, this idea of vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of another person. In its highest form that is the very center of Christianity. And we also find this same vicariousness to be a characteristic, or, as the musician would put it, a leitmotif of Nature.

It is a law of the natural universe that no being can exist on its own resources. Everyone, everything, is hopelessly indebted to everyone and everything else. In the universe, as we now see it, this is the source of many of the greatest horrors: all the horrors of carnivorousness, and the worse horrors of the parasites, those horrible animals that live under the skin of other animals, and so on.

And yet, suddenly seeing it in the light of the Christian story, one realizes that vicariousness is not in itself bad; that all these animals, and insects, and horrors are merely that principle of vicariousness twisted in one way. For when you think it out, nearly everything good in Nature also comes from vicariousness. After all, the child, both before and after birth, lives on its mother, just as the parasite lives on its host, the one being a horror, the other being the source of almost every natural goodness in the world. It all depends upon what you do with this principle.

So that I find in that third way also, that what is implied by the Incarnation just fits in exactly with what I have seen in Nature, and (this is the important point) each time it gives it a new twist. If I accept this supposed missing chapter, the Incarnation, I find it begins to illuminate the whole of the rest of the manuscript. It lights up Nature’s pattern of death and rebirth; and, secondly, her selectiveness; and, thirdly, her vicariousness.

To get you started in Advent . . .

OUR SOWING TIME

Our short lives on earth are sowing time. If there were no resurrection of the dead, everything we live on earth would come to nothing. How can we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally if all the joys and pains of our lives are in vain, vanishing in the earth with our mortal flesh and bones? Because God loves us unconditionally, from eternity to eternity, God cannot allow our bodies - the same as that in which Jesus, his Son and our savior, appeared to us - to be lost in final destruction.

No, life on earth is the time when the seeds of the risen body are planted. Paul says:  “What is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). This wonderful knowledge that nothing we live in our bodies is lived in vain holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.

The wonderful knowledge, that nothing we live in our body is lived in vain, holds a call for us to live every moment as a seed of eternity.

- Henri Nouwen (Bread for the Journey, Harper SanFrancisco.)

ADVENT JOINS MEMORY AND HOPE

Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope… It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger 1986 (Pope Benedict XVI)  - Seek That Which Is Above (Ignatius Press)

THE GRAND MIRACLE

The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.

~ C.S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle”  - God in the Dock