Her "very bowels embraced him "- the Visitation of our Lady

It's Magnificat day ... sharing in what Jeremy Taylor described as a "collision of joys", her visitation to St Elizabeth, Our Lady proclaims the praise of the God of Israel in the words of the Magnificat.

In his defence of the use of the Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in the daily offices, Richard Hooker states:

They are the first gratulations wherewith our Lord and Saviour was joyfully received at his entrance into the world by such as in their hearts, arms and very bowels embraced him (LEP V, 40.3).

There is a wonderful earthiness in Hooker's reference to the Blessed Virgin - her "very bowels embraced him".  Taylor echoes this when he describes her as "she who was now full of God".  It is from this truth, this flesh and blood reality of God Incarnate, that the Magnificant emanates. 

Already by time of the Venerable Bede - and on the very fringes of Europe - he could refer to what was already established as the "excellent and fruitful custom" of saying the Magnificat at evening prayer:

Therefore it is an excellent and fruitful custom of the holy Church that we should sing Mary's hymn at the time of evening prayer ... meditating upon the incarnation in this way.

And that, of course, is precisely what the Magnificat is: a meditation upon the Incarnation by the human being closest to that event.  By the young woman whose "very bowels embraced him".  By the girl from Nazareth "who was now full of God".  With her we sing the Magnificat at Evening Prayer - sharing in her joy at Yahweh's favour and, with Elizabeth and all generations, calling her blessed, the Theotokos.

"A complex and creative process" - why reception takes more than 18 years

Amidst the deluge of commentary accompanying the amendments by the CofE House of Bishops to the legislation permitting the consecration of women to the episcopate, the most recent WATCH press release deserves careful reflection.  Listing various arguments against the amendments, WATCH notes that acceptance of the amendments may result in "the institution of a permanent state of ‘reception’ for women".

The language of the WATCH press release echoes that of the Archeacon of Richmond:

For 18 years the Church of England has been trying out an approach that says, in effect, 'both groups are right'. A lot of us thought we were doing this in the patient expectation that one or other group would eventually become less sustainable. How else are decisions made and people able to move forward? You pray, you argue the rationale, you try things out, you put it to the vote.

18 whole years.  What is disappointing is not only the lack of charity towards faithful Anglicans who adhere to the teaching and practice of the Tradition regarding the relationship between gender and the ministerial priesthood.  Perhaps more significant is the failure to understand "reception".  18 years in one province does not constitute reception.  As ARCIC I's Authority in the Church I stated:

When decisions (as at Nicaea in 325) affect the entire Church and deal with controverted matters which have been widely and seriously debated, it is important to establish criteria for the recognition and reception of conciliar definitions and disciplinary decisions. A substantial part in the process of receptionis played by the subject matter of the definitions and by the response of the faithful. This process is often gradual, as the decisions come to be seen in perspective through the Spirit's continuing guidance of the whole Church (emphasis added).

The Anglican-Orthodox Cyprus Statement provides an excellent summary of what exactly "gradual" means in the process of reception:

Its conclusions are finally expressed by the heads of the local churches as the common faith which, in accordance with the well-known rule of St Vincent of Lerins, has ‘been believed everywhere and always and by all’. Until this point has been reached, the process of reception is not completed; we can speak neither of dogma nor of heresy, in the sense of a deviation from the truth which would justify or even necessitate the rupture of communion. On a sharply controverted issue touching salvation, it may be that only an Ecumenical Council, as the voice of all the local churches, could determine what has been held ‘everywhere and always and by all’. Only then could it be said that the process of reception had been completed.

While the process of reception continues, the theological debate remains open. In this process critique, affirmation or rejection are all possible (Section IX, 19 iv & v).

Against the background of Anglicanism's ecumenical dialogues, WATCH's understanding of reception is woefully inadequate.  18 years in one province - or three decades in North Atlantic provinces - does not constitute reception.  The ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood and the episcopate is a significant development.  The case made for this development cohering with, rather than contradicting, the Tradition has been accepted over the past few decades by a majority of Anglicans in North America, the British Isles and Australasia.  This, however, by no means constitutes "reception" by the church catholic.

For Anglicanism, then, to abide by the understanding of reception which it has accepted in dialogue with its key ecumenical partners, means to charitably continue with the two integrities regarding this development.  Invoking voting majorities in diocesan and national synods over a mere three decade period offers a rationale appropriate for the polities of this world - not the church catholic.  In the words of the Cyprus Statement:

Reception is a complex and creative process, which can be completed successfully only by the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Section IX, 19 v).

After Pentecost?

The move from Pentecost to Ordinary Time is sudden in contemporary Anglican liturgies.  1662 directed that the Whitsun proper preface be used for "six days after" and provided readings for the Eucharist on Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun week.  Following the post-Vatican II Roman liturgical reforms and the suppresson of the Whitsun octave, Anglicans use the nine days between Ascension and Pentecost to reflect on the gift of the Spirit.  For a great example of how this time can be used see Novena2012.

That said, hints of Pentecost remain in some contemporary Anglican provision for these first days of Ordinary Time.  The readings provided for Evening Prayer in the CofI's daily office lectionary for Monday through to Wednesday of this week (Joel 2:18-29 & 1 Cor. 12:4-11; Genesis 11:1-9 & 1 Cor. 12:12-27; Ezekiel 37:1-14 & John 20:19-23) quite clearly reflect on the person, role and gift of the Holy Spirit. 

The evening office lectionary for these days, then, allows for a continuation of the Pentecost theme.  While the Office and the collect may be of Ordinary Time, there is nothing to prevent office hymns and occasional prayers at Evening Prayer echoing the celebration of Pentecost. 

The aim of the liturgical reform's ending of the Whitsun octave was to restore to the Church the notion of sacred time, the nine days of prayer before Pentecost in communion the apostles and the Blessed Virgin.  This, however, is not incompatible with a sense of the Pentecostal gift echoing in the Office in the days after the celebration of the feast.  It does not undermine the unity of the great fifty days of the Paschal Season, but it does ensure that the Church's reflection on the gift continues.  This, after all, is precisely why we celebrate the feasts of the Most Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi in the weeks following the end of the Paschal Season: to prayerfully reflect on the depth of the Paschal mystery in the life of the Church.

"A retrieval of riches" - the potential of a new Oxford Movement

We have to begin, now, to rediscover what it means to be an Anglican Christian.  A new Oxford Movement can do this. There is a desperate need for a movement that takes seriously the issues of the day while committing to delving into the Tradition and carefully reading Scripture. There is a need for a movement that is unabashed in its proclamation of Jesus Christ. There is a need for a movement that sees social service not as a goal of the Church but as a means for us to be drawn closer to the mind of Christ. There is a need for a movement that is grounded in disciplined prayer and lovingly offered worship. There is a need for a movement that sees the Sacraments as the means by which we know the Incarnate Lord. There is a need for a movement that is ready to move beyond zero-sum church politics to transform hearts and souls.

The call by The Curate's Desk for a new Oxford Movement reflects something of the both the challenges faced by catholic Anglicans and the hope carried by our tradition.  Indeed, a New Oxford Movement has emerged about younger catholic Anglicans in England associated with Forward in Faith (see Facebook and Twitter).

The Curate's Desk offers a ten point summary of the gifts a new Oxford Movement could offer to the Church:

1. A focus on the adoration of God.
2. A focus on careful preparation to receive the Sacraments.
3. A heightened awareness of Healing and Confession.
4. An understanding of the Real Presence in our life together.
5. A renewed focus on the disciplines of daily prayer for all believers.
6. A focus on devotion to Our Lady and all the Saints.
7. A view of the Church as extending through time and across boundaries.
8. A commitment to forming young people in devotion to Christ.
9. A commitment to justice work grounded in the Incarnation.
10. A commitment to fostering a renewed sense of Anglican identity.

Perhaps three of these points are due particular emphasis as defining features of an Oxford Movement for 21st century Anglicanism.

Firstly, eucharistic adoration.  Catholic Anglicanism renewed wider Anglicanism's understanding of the centrality of the Sacrament of the Altar to the mystery of the Church.  Much that has been gained here - not the least of which is the ARCIC I agreement on eucharistic doctrine - has been lost by a post-60s rootlessness.  The Sacrament of the Altar becomes table fellowship.  Communion without Baptism is proposed.  Aspects of Fresh Expressions suggest non-eucharistic liturgies as normative.  Here the vocation of a new Oxford Movement is to restore the Church's prayerful focus on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  This will mean recovering both Benediction and - as in St Paul's, K Street - daily silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Secondly, sacramental confession.  Between a moralistic fundamentalism speaking only judgement and a rootless liberalism proclaiming autonomy, the Catholic tradition brings the hope of metanoia, forgiveness and healing in the sacramental context of confession.  In a culture torn between the two poles of radical autonomy and populist condemnation, catholic Anglicans bring the gift of the sacramental assurance of the Father's forgiveness.

Thirdly, Marian devotion.  The Blessed Virgin is the guarantee of the flesh-and-blood reality of the Incarnation.  When she is venerated and invoked, when she is celebrated in the liturgical year, we are proclaiming the scandalous mystery that the Eternal Word assumed flesh in the womb of 1st century AD Jewish peasant girl.  We do not worship an abstraction because an abstraction does not have a Mother.  In a time when too much Anglicanism is marked by a doctrinal incoherence, Marian devotion orients the Church towards her Christological centre.

If it was Keeble's Assize Sermon which launched the original Oxford Movement, perhaps a New Oxford Movement will look back to Cardinal Kasper's address to the 2008 Lambeth Conference:

It occurs to me that at critical moments in the history of the Church of England and subsequently of the Anglican Communion, you have been able to retrieve the strength of the Church of the Fathers when that tradition was in jeopardy. The Caroline divines are an instance of that, and above all, I think of the Oxford Movement. Perhaps in our own day it would be possible too, to think of a new Oxford Movement, a retrieval of riches which lay within your own household. This would be a re-reception, a fresh recourse to the Apostolic Tradition in a new situation.

Pentecost: "He is the speech of God become a person"

The Spirit whom the Son sends to us from the Father on Pentecost is the Spirit of the eternal dialogue of love between Father and Son.  He is the speech of God become a person.  We are introduced into this language; until now it had been for us a mysterious foreign language, but when the tongues of fire came down upon the Church it became our real "mother tongue".  The first word which we, as children of God, learn to stammer in it is the word "Abba!".

Hans Urs von Balthasar The Threefold Garland.

"We do not presume" - when the rubrics are wrong

The Prayer of Humble Access has shaped the eucharistic spirituality of generations of Anglicans - whether interpreted in the High Calvinist fashion of a 'real feeding' or as a catholic affirmation of the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  Increasingly, however, contemporary Anglican liturgies are omitting this Prayer. 

Although We Are Not Worthy has pointed to its absence from Canada's Book of Alternative Services.  The Church of Ireland's Order Two (2004) includes the text of the Prayer of Humble Access, but does so in a manner which suggests that it should not be used.  The text of the penitential rite comes at the beginning of the Order Two Eucharist, with a rubric allowing for its use before the Peace - something which rarely, if ever, happens.  Then comes the rub.  The rubric before the Prayer of Humble Access states:

If the Penitence comes at this point of the service it may be followed by ...

According to the rubrics, therefore, the Prayer of Humble Access should not normally be prayed.  Some assumptions can be made as to why the rubrics were written in this fashion - some of our liberal brethren dislike the Prayer's pentitential overtones (too much Cranmer, too much Augustine) and some of our evangelical brethren dislike its realist language (therefore siding with Zwingli over Calvin). 

Needless to say, many priests disregard the rubrics at this point and use the Prayer of Humble Access before the Peace.  Others use it at the 1549 point, before reception.  Catholicity and covenant is not one to casually disregard the rubrics, but on this occasion it is difficult not to suggest that the Church is best served by ignoring these particular rubrics.  In defence of this approach, we might suggest that this is not a matter of individual preferences, but is rather about affirming a classical Anglican liturgical prayer.  The fact that the Prayer continues to be widely used in our celebrations of the Eucharist suggests something of its enduring ability to shape Anglican eucharistic devotion, irrespective of the celebrant wearing surplace and scarf or alb and chasuble.

Although We Are Not Worthy also quotes a wonderful excerpt from Edith Humphrey's Grand Entrance, demonstrating how the Prayer of Humble Access is both part of the ancient tradition of Latin and Greek liturgies, and shapes our prayer after the Incarnate Word's encounters with the "sinners":

The action of entering by the way of the Lord is complimented by the idea of God’s entrance into the human realm, a dynamic we have seen everywhere in both Western and Eastern liturgies. Especially prominent in this regard is the prayer of humble welcome, said by both the priest and the faithful prior to the reception of communion. “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof: But only say the word and my soul will be healed.” This prayer, based on the humility of the gentile centurion, may be considered as a Western cousin to the Eastern prayer of reception, which looks to the faith of the thief upon the cross: “Like the thief I will confess you, Remember me, O Lord.” It is also paralleled, in both reverence and its intent, by the Anglican “prayer of humble access,” framed by Cranmer on the basis of several of the preparatory Sarum prayers: “We do not presume to come to this thy table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own goodness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.” The people identify themselves, in these three related prayers, with examples of the faithful from history who have come from marginal backgrounds but who have been received by the deep love of Christ.

It is another profound example of how a particular type of liturgical revision, shaped by the utilitarian concerns of the 1970s and 80s, deprived Anglican (and Roman) liturgy of rhythms of prayer grounded in Scripture and the Church's reflection on the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen One present in the mystery of the Eucharist.  So, yes, in this case ignore those rubrics and pray, "We do not presume ...".

Ecclesial movements and the Anglican future

In a provocative post highlighted by The Ugley Vicar, significant questions about the CofE's approach to priestly ministry have been raised by Elizaphanian.  Noting the existing CofE mechanism for distributing clergy, Elizaphanian suggests that some fundamental issues are being avoided:

We will be asking clergy (and bishops) to do more and more with less and less ... We will end up either with ever-increasing levels of clergy burn-out; or with ever-increasing congregational decline and disillusionment; or, most probably, both. This is exactly the pattern of thinking that led us into our present problems, so why do we expect a different result from continuing with it?

So what is to be done? One answer is to 're-imagine ministry' - along the lines that Bishop Stephen is calling for here in Chelmsford Diocese. I strongly support what +Stephen is attempting to do, but I suspect that we are still not digging down into the real roots of the problem. Do we: change our understandings of priesthood; change our understandings of lay ministry; or - increase the numbers of clergy?

Elizaphanian proposes a number of measures to re-orient our understanding of priestly ministry - a new approach to formation for ordination, a realisation that effective pastoral ministry requires a priest-people ratio of 1:100, abolition of the parish share system, and (I think I am right in summarising this) a post-establishment mindset.

It is worth considering Elizaphanian's reflections alongside thoughts from other parts of the church catholic.  The Curate's Desk considers matter from an Anglo-catholic perspective in TEC:

We cannot be a Church of all things to all people and expect to exist let alone thrive.

This points in the direction of a renewal of the spirituality of Common Prayer, of praying Word, Psalter and Sacraments together in the discipline of local community:

The Church has the means to pray together and this is our blueprint for the future. Neither congregationalism nor forced centralism offer hope for the body of the faithful. The Prayer Book is not a force of its own. It is given life by our common use of it – by our commitment to be brought together as a praying community that has agreed on it as our way of adoring Christ together.

From an Australian Roman Catholic viewpoint, Tracey Rowland (author of the excellent Ratzinger's Faith and Benedict XVI), has suggested that while some Australian RC dioceses are going about renewal and evangelisation, others are somewhat moribund:

The vibrant orders of religious and new ecclesial communities will need to be invited into these areas to lead the work of renewal and rekindle hope.

It does make one wonder what the Anglican equivalent is of "vibrant orders of religious and new ecclesial communities".  Is it HTB's church planting?  Is it the still somewhat uncertain but exciting beginnings of the new monasticism?  Is it the Benedictine Companions in St Paul's, DC?  The answer surely must be, yes, these do have the potential to be or contribute towards new ecclesial communities within Anglicanism.

Also to be borne in mind in an English context is the Reform network.  Yes, I know it is a very different expression of Anglicanism to that practised by catholicity and covenant, but its success in evangelisation and growing disciples cannot be denied.  The Ugley Vicar recently pointed to the statistics associated with the Reform churches involved in Proper Provision:

They have provided 367 ordinands over the past 10 years and have, on average, more than doubled their congregration and planted 68 new churches or congregations in the past 10 years.

Neither Reform nor its opponents are likely to regard the network as a "new ecclesial community", but in at least some sense this is what Reform is: a distinct spirituality; relationships which nourish and build leadership; the fostering of vocations etc. 

Today's commemoration (in the Common Worship calendar) of John and Charles Wesley is a good time to reflect on these matters.  Was the Gospel served by either the response of the English episcopate to the Wesleys or by the subsequent Methodist schism?  Allowing a diversity of contemporary ecclesial communities and movements to flourish is probably pretty fundamental to the future of an authentically catholic and evangelical Anglicanism living out the Great Commission.

WATCH, culture wars and episcopacy

As chief pastors they [i.e. bishops] share with their fellow bishops a special responsibility to maintain and further the unity of the Church ...

The above words from the rite for the Consecration of Bishops in the Church of Ireland's 2004 Ordinal are repeated in various forms in ordinals across the Anglican Communion.  They echo ARCIC II's understanding of the ministry of the episcopate:

For the nurture and growth of this communion, Christ the Lord has provided a ministry of oversight, the fullness of which is entrusted to the episcopate, which has the responsibility of maintaining and expressing the unity of the churches (The Church as Communion, 45).

It is instructive to read yesterday's statement by WATCH (Women And The Church) against this background of Anglicanism's understanding of episcopal ministry.  Rejecting the amendments made by the CofE's House of Bishops to the Synod legislation permitting the ordination of women to the episcopate, WATCH declared:

Their decision to intervene in this way will significantly undermine the credibility of the House of Bishops both inside and outside the Church (emphasis added).

The Statement went on to quote the WATCH chair:

The House of Bishops’ intervention will be an enormous blow to the morale of women clergy who were looking to their bishops for clear affirmation of their ministry as a welcome gift to the Church (emphasis added).

What exactly is WATCH saying here?  Is the episcopate meant to be silent and submissive before the Synodical process?  Does an elected majority trumph the episcopate's apostolic authority and its vocation to "maintain and further the unity of the Church"? 

That a majority of English Anglicans support the ordination of women to the episcopate is not in doubt.  That a robust theological rationale exists for this - grounded in a reading of Scripture and Tradition rather than a secular discourse of 'justice' - is also evident.  Alongside this reading, however, exists another integrity, so powerfully demonstrated in the Proper Provision petition of English Anglican women.  In this context, it is not 'interference' for the episcopate to seek to amend the relevant Synodical legislation in order to "maintain and further the unity of the Church": it is the vocation of bishops to do so.  (Whether the bishops' amendments have sufficiently done this is, of course, another matter.)

The alternative to a generous provision which promotes unity and communion was spelt out by a well-known TEC figure in her comments on the matter on Thinking Anglicans:

If they want to go, Let. Them. Go. The Anglican Church may be the roomiest room in all of Western Christendom, but there's no room for prejudice and bigotry and oppression in the Household of God.

There you have it.  A reading of Scripture and Tradition which has shaped the Church's experience since the Apostolic era and which continues to shape the great Churches of Rome and Orthodoxy, is dismissed in cavalier fashion as a "bigotry" which has no place in Anglicanism. 

Such are the consequences of enthusiastically engaging in Anglicanism's culture wars.  Political strategies and tactics become more important than ecclesiology, and we end up attacking bishops for daring to "intervene" to promote the Church's unity, and we desire to expel faithful Anglicans from our Communion. 

The theological development that is the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood and the episcopate is still in its infancy.  Barely decades old within Anglicanism, not accepted as a legitimate development by Rome, Orthodoxy and a not insignificant minority of Anglicans, giving space to the two Anglican integrities on this matter is no mere pragmatism.  It gives Anglicans of both integrities a means to pray, reflect and discern alongside one another.  In the midst of the pain of division and disunity, therefore, it can be a sign of communion.

Update: Forward in Faith have responded to the Bishops' amendments.

Ascension and sacred time

Anglican Down Under recently reflected on the Anglican and Roman trend of celebrating Ascension Sunday rather than Ascension Day, the forthieth day of Easter:

Why has Ascension Day been downgraded in importance? Is it because we have focused on the event of Ascension Day, Jesus' final words prior to lift off, and determined that event is not so significant to warrant a mid-week celebration? If, by contrast, we focus on the significance of the Ascension of Jesus, we have something to celebrate of greater, if not infinite magnitude.

This 'downgrading' of Ascension Day also has another significant aspect.  At the Catholic Herald, Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith notes how removing Ascension from the forthieth day of Easter to the more convenient Sunday following, colludes with "the disappearance of sacred time".  This rupturing of sacred time results in the Paschal Season not fully reflecting the Scriptural narrative - the forty days with the Risen Christ, the Ascension, the nine days of prayer with the Blessed Virgin and the apostles, then the descent of the Holy Spirit.

It is not, after all, the case that Anglican liturgy does not provide an Ascension-tide theme for the Sunday after the Ascension.  The classical collect for the Sunday - used in many contemporary Anglican liturgies - has explicit reference to the Ascension:

you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ
with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven ...

Alongside this, much contemporary provision also echoes 1662 in providing for the proper preface of Ascension to be used for "seven days after".  In other words, maintaining the rhythm of sacred time and the integrity of the Paschal Season by celebrating the Ascension on the fortieth day, the Thursday, does not mean that those who do not share in the Eucharist on the Thursday forego celebrating the significance of the Ascension in salvation history.

Liturgical time is a means for the Church to be counter-cultural, to proclaim that the rhythms of Market and State, leisure and commerce, do not shape our time.  By gathering to celebrate the Eucharist on the forthieth day of Easter, we proclaim that our time is shaped by the Crucified, Risen and Ascended Lord.

Stations of the King's Cross - update

In Lent, catholicity and covenant drew attention to the Stations of the King's Cross, a marvellous example of how contemporary artists can contribute to the new evangelisation.

The original art work is now up for sale - it is possible to bid for the each of the Stations here.

Next Saturday - the eve of Pentecost, as the Paschal season comes to a close - an exhibition of the the original art work of the Stations opens.  This will be preceded by ecumenical Evening Prayer in the Church of St Mary, Eversholt Street (near King's Cross).

The proceeds from the auction will go towards three charities - Mary's Meals (providing daily meals to chronically hungry children in local schools), SVP (the anti-poverty organisation) and the Bard School (a community supporting faith-based artists).

The exhibition continues in St Mary's until 4th June.

"To embrace the very life of God in God ..."

Christ is gone up.  The mystical body extends, through Christ its head, to embrace the very life of God in God.  Mary, lifting her hands among the disciples, prays in Jesus' words, in Jesus' mind.  What she asks is what he asks, it is asked by God from God.  The prayer of her love is a movement of the heart in the Blessed Trinity, it is the converse between the divine Persons, the asking and granting of filial desire.  And so it is, when at one with Mary and all saints, we pray in Jesus' name.

Austin Farrer on the second glorious mystery of the Rosary in Austin Farrer on The Rosary.

"Christ's exaltation is our promotion": Leo and Hooker on the Ascension

Hooker reflects on the meaning of words from the Te Deum, "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven unto all believers":

We cannot better interpret the meaning of those words than Pope Leo himself expounds them whose speech concerning our Lord's ascension may serve instead of a marginal gloss, "Christ's exaltation is our promotion, and whether the gory of the head is already gone before thither the hope of the body also is to follow.  For as this day we have not only the possession of paradise assured unto us, but in Christ we have entered the highest of the heavens.

Hooker then adds:

His opening the kingdom of heaven and his entrance thereinto was not only to his own use but for the benefit of all believers (LEP V45.2).

Eve of Ascension

He who for our sake became like us in order to make us his brothers and sister, now presents to his true Father his own humanity in order to draw all his brothers and sisters up after him.

From St Gregory of Nyssa's Oration 1 'On the Resurrection'.

Rogationtide thoughts

Anglican liturgical revision of the 1970s and 1980s took delight in the excision of the Rogation days from the liturgical calender.  The utilitarian spirit which animated such revision in those decades was offended by the 'messy' and antiquated nature of beseeching God's blessing on the fruit of the land during the Easter season.  As The Rector's Corner states:

The most recent lectionary of the Episcopal Church has determinedly removed almost every possible reference to the venerable tradition of Rogationtide just as the need for it in our liturgical life has become so clear.

So, while Earth Day is promoted by some in the Church and others are bent on adding a politically preachy “Creation Season” to the calendar, the very practical and down-to-earth (literally) customs of Holy Church are forgotten.

Thankfully, more recent liturgical revision has recognised that such utilitarianism is both liturgically and theologically impoverished.  Both the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 and the Church of England's Common Worship restored Rogationtide to the calendar and made appropriate provision for these days.

The Ugley Victor has posted a Rogation Sunday sermon - "Does God really send the rain?" - surveying the view of the relationship between God and nature in Genesis and Job, then reflecting on cosmologist Paul Davies' The Goldilocks Enigma.  The Ugley Vicar then points to why we should indeed be praying for rain or sunshine, for blessing on the fruits of the earth:

It is no great stretch of the imagination to see that our interaction with God, and God’s interaction with us, can have implications for the physical world ... In a ‘scientific’ world where we might think there is no room for a God who sends rain, there may actually be a surprising amount of room for divine action according to the biblical view of the world as something where God is in every part.

(Unfortunately the inner Puritan in The Ugley Vicar ends by somewhat contradicting himself in declaring that the weather "isn’t going to change because we beat the bounds of the parish [to pray the Litany!] or hold fasts to appease God’s anger".)

The 'messy' nature of Rogationtide which so annoyed modernist liturgical revisers actually - as is often the case with the Church's ancient patterns of prayer - embodied deep theological truth.  Praying for God's blessing on the fruits of the earth in Eastertide is a profoundly anti-Gnostic practice, declaring that the Resurrection of the Incarnate Word is the redemption of the world not from the world.  It embodies Athanasius' great proclamation:

The renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.  There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation.

As The Rector's Corner says of Rogationtide:

None of this is done because it is “quaint.” It is entirely the result of one thing: a call to know Christ in every aspect of our life, receiving in gratitude and offering in joy to our God. Perhaps the Church will see fit to review its estimable tradition and renew its commitment to Rogationtide as an act of justice, spiritual integrity, and moral leadership.

(The photograph is of farming land near home, Rogation Wednesday 2012.)

Catholic-minded Anglicans and that CofI Synod motion

So how should catholic-minded Anglicans in the CofI respond to the successful General Synod motion on "Human Sexuality in the Context of Christian Belief"?  Leading Affirming Catholicism Ireland figures were involved in arguing against the motion and have been publicly critical of it in the aftermath of the Synod.  A highly respected CofI figure has stated that those who believe "there is widespread acceptance of the determination as shown by the votes in Synod, have not read or have chosen to turn a blind eye to the comments in the various discussion forums within the Church’s membership which have commented on the synod".  And the media perception, of course, is of a victory for a somewhat narrow conservative evangelicalism.

A catholic-minded response might, however, choose to highlight a different approach to "Human Sexuality in the Context of Christ Belief".

Firstly, the motion should be read against the background of the ongoing work of ARCIC III.  The Bose communique from ARCIC III's initial meeting explicitly emphasised that how the Churches approach matters of ethical teaching was now central to the ARCIC process:

In response to the Programme set forth by Pope Benedict and Archbishop Rowan Williams in their 2006 Common Declaration, discussions have focussed on the interrelated issues: the Church as Communion, local and universal, and how in communion the local and universal Church come to discern right ethical teaching.

The motion contributes to the work of ARCIC III by reaffirming the conciliar teaching of the Anglican Communion (Lambeth 1.10) and, indeed, the relevant teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  In view of the significance that catholic Anglicans attach to the ARCIC process and to the hope of reconciliation with the See of Peter, a failure by the Synod to have supported the motion would have signalled the CofI's (at best) indifference to ARCIC III and to our most significant ecumenical relationships - with Rome and Orthodoxy.

Secondly, catholic Anglicans should see in the motion an affirmation of the sacramental life in its fullness:

The Church of Ireland is mindful that for all who believe 'there is no distinction' and that 'all have sinned and come short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:22 - 23) and are in need of God’s grace and mercy. We seek to be a community modelled on God’s love for the world as revealed in Jesus Christ. We wish that all members of the Church, through the teaching of the scriptures, the nourishment of the sacraments, and the prayerful and pastoral support of a Christian community will fulfil their unique contribution to God’s purposes for our world.

Notice the choice of words: "We wish that all members of the Church, through ... the nourishment of the sacraments".  As Hooker reminds us (LEP V, 57.6), "we receive Christ Jesus in baptism once as the first beginner".  By contrast, in the sacrament of the Eucharist we receive Christ "often as ... by continual degrees".  We are given life in Baptism: we are nourished in the Eucharist.  To be 'nourished by the sacraments', therefore, recalls the use of the term 'sacrament' as mentioned in the Homily Of Common Prayer and Sacraments - how "the ancient writers have given this name ... [to] certain other rites and ceremonies".  It does, in other words, suggest that the Christian community is nourished by the other sacramental rites alongside the Eucharist.

The fact that this paragraph of the motion commences by pointing to the broken nature of every Christian's life and witness would be interpreted by catholic Anglicans as highlighting the role of sacramental confession.  It is in sacramental confession that I am lovingly confronted by that 'no distinction' and my "need of God's grace and mercy".  In the words of Austin Farrer:

Many tears, much shame, continual repentance, this is the lot of those who pledge themselves to God.  A paradoxical pledge; we learn to keep it by breaking it.  True confessions, bravely and sincerely made to our confessor and absolved with the word of Christ, these are the means by which we learn distrust of ourselves, and trust in God alone.

Thirdly, the motion was evidence of the episcopate exercising its teaching authority.  In the words of +Down and Dromore's speech to Synod, "the essential contents of this motion have emerged from the corporate thinking of the bishops".  ++Armagh's presidential speech to the Synod had described how the episcopate's teaching authority should interact with Synod:

Our reverence for the voice of the laity is not about some form of democracy. The Church does not neglect, but neither does it unthinkingly glorify, the contemporary opinions of good men and women. Rather, we seek, in the Church and specifically in the meetings of the General Synod, to hear from faithful people and to find, if possible, even in matters controversial, common ground for agreement. Let me, therefore, say again: the role of those charged with the service of leadership [i.e. the episcopate] in such circumstances is not to impose a determination in authoritarian fashion, but to guide and assist the church in finding a common mind through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

Albeit catholic Anglicans would desire a more robust statement of the episcopate's teaching authority, nevertheless both ++Armagh's words and the fact that the motion "emerged from the corporate thinking of the bishops" point to an understanding of vocation of the episcopate infinitely preferable for catholic Anglicans to the vox populi, vox dei approach often heard from within TEC's General Convention.

Amidst the pain associated with the debate over human sexuality in the Church of Ireland, there is much for catholic Anglicans to affirm in "Human Sexuality in the Context of Christian Belief".  The motion is consistent with a catholic understanding of the Church, of the sacramental life, of the gift of the episcopate, and of the call to unity.  It is in this context that the Church of Ireland can then reflect on the mystery and gift of human sexuality, the experience and the pain of those with same-sex orientation, and the shaping of a pastoral approach to sexual relationships in postmodernity. 

"The autonomous solution would ultimately destroy our unity": a United Methodist reflection on ecclesiology

Thanks to The Creedal Christian for drawing my attention to a reflection from a United Methodist source on why an ecclesiology shaped by autonomy rather than communion should not be countenanced in the midst of the present debates on human sexuality. 

The author begins by rejecting a proposal that each United Methodist Conference (somewhat akin to an Anglican diocese) should have the autonomy to determine its own approach to human sexuality issues:

We are a connectional body — and we are grateful and even proud of that reality. One of the reasons we are United Methodists is because we believe that a divided church is less than what Christ desires and prayed for in John 17. In the past we have bemoaned the fragmented nature of the Church Universal and have been dismayed that there are so many “independent” congregations that are autonomous and accountable to no body greater than themselves.

Now, some are trying to make us United Methodists what we have never been to solve a matter of biblical interpretation and ecclesiastical accountability. Annual Conferences and individual churches are not autonomous when it comes to paying apportionments, infant baptism, or women’s ordination — and they shouldn’t be. It means something to be United Methodist. And we cannot violate our very nature to solve a problem simply because we want it to go away.

The autonomous solution would create chaos. Could an elder ordained in one Annual Conference be denied appointment in another Conference because the second Conference has different ordination standards?

The autonomous solution would ultimately destroy our unity. This would be the first step toward a balkanization of the church that would cause us to drift further apart as time passes. This compromise intended to “keep us together” would insure, over time, just the opposite.

There is much here for Anglicans to reflect upon.  It is a timely reminder that the an ecclesiology which proceeds from the ethic of autonomy results in a denial of the Church's fundamental nature as communion, depriving the Church of the gifts of peace and unity. 

The real challenge for Anglicanism is that a sizeable section of the Communion has espoused an ecclesiology of autonomy, the GAFCON-aligned provinces have indicated their rejection of the "grammar of obedience" (a fundamental aspect of communion ecclesiology), and in the absence of the Covenant the practice of the Communion continues to be determined by the ethic of autonomy.  Which leaves us with the stark warning:

The autonomous solution would ultimately destroy our unity.

Rogation: "our life's parched landscape now grows green"

You should see the splendours of the resurrection as flowers of the age of grace that has now been inaugurated, blossoms of a new springtime of creation which, in the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time, will bear an abundant and eternal harvest ...

For, sown in death, his body in his resurrection has flowered anew.  To greet its budding fragrance our life's parched landscape now grows green, the glaciers within us melt, and the dead return to life.

From St Bernard of Clairvaux's On the Love of God.

Cranmer, the daily office and the Latin tradition

Catholic Herald columnist Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith has a quite extraordinary assault on that dastardly Anglican practice of ... Evensong:

Yesterday I was in a cathedral city in the south of England, and having time to spare, and because it was raining, I decided to visit the cathedral and stay for Evensong. I am, like so many in this country, familiar with Evensong; I find it both beautiful and alien at the same time. I both love it and hate it. I only go to Evensong to listen to it, never to take part.

It is an odd position for any Roman Catholic to take, not least in light of the face that successive pontiffs since the beginning of the ARCIC process have participated in Anglican Evensong.  The reason for Fr. Lucie-Smith's antipathy towards Evensong is his view of Cranmer's intention in revising the Offices:

Cranmer’s liturgical reforms were not reforms in any true sense, they were a wrecking of the monastic offices and their replacement with something superficially like yet utterly alien.

"Utterly alien"?  A "wrecking of the monastic offices"?  Benedictus and Magnificat?  The ordered recitation of the Psalter and reading of Scripture? The four daily morning and evening collects taken from the Sacramentary of Gelasius and the Sarum Breviary?

What is more, Cranmer's reforms of the Office were to be echoed by Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium:

By the venerable tradition of the universal Church, Lauds as morning prayer and Vespers as evening prayer are the two hinges on which the daily office turns; hence they are to be considered as the chief hours and are to be celebrated as such ... Readings from sacred scripture shall be arranged so that the riches of God's word may be easily accessible in more abundant measure ... Pastors of souls should see to it that the chief hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and the more solemn feasts. And the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually (89-100).

Cranmer's intention in revising the Offices, in combining Matins and Lauds, and Vespers and Compline, was to ensure that Matins and Evensong would be "daily ... said and used throughout the year" by clergy and laity, preferably "in the accustomed place of the Church".  This was no "wrecking of the monastic offices" but - as with Sacrosanctum Concilium - a revision of the daily office so that "its ancient and venerable treasures are to be so adapted that all those to whom they are handed on may more extensively and easily draw profit from them" (90).

For any Roman Catholic to declare Cranmer's reform of the daily office "a wrecking" and "utterly alien" is to reject his or her own liturgical heritage and patrimony.  Whatever the flaws in Cranmer's reform of the eucharistic liturgy - and contemporary Anglican eucharistic liturgies at least implicitly accept that such flaws existed as they now conform to the norms of the historic Western liturgy - his daily office reforms ensured that Anglicanism continued to pray in the tradition of the great Church of the Latin West. Or, to use the words from Benedict XVI's homily at Evensong in Westminster Abbey during his visit to Great Britain in 2010, it is part of "our common heritage of faith".

"We are 'many'": the Narrative of Institution and the Church's self-understanding

Contained in the Liturgical Advisory Committee report considered by this week's Church of Ireland General Synod is a criticism of the new translation of the Roman Missal:

There was a general feeling of disappointment amongst committee members at the departure by the Roman Catholic Church in its new missal, from the previous internationally and ecumenically agreed texts, and the implications for future ecumenical occasions.

It is a somewhat churlish comment.  After all, the vast majority of ecumenical occasions are (at present) non-eucharistic in nature, meaning that the new missal translations are a moot point for such occasions. What is also unfortunate, however, is the failure of the LAC to recognise that one key change in the new Missal translation actually brings Roman eucharistic prayers into line with classical and contemporary Anglican liturgies - the move from "for you and for all" to "for you and for many" in the eucharistic prayers.

1662, of course, is "for you and for many".  The vast majority of contemporary Anglican liturgies similarly retain this formula - for example, TEC 1979, Ireland 2004 and Common Worship. 

In a recent letter to the German Roman Catholic episcopal conference, Benedict provided a liturgical catechesis on the significance of the "for many" translation, now common to both the Roman and Anglican traditions.  He first addresses the relationship between "for you" (Matthew and Mark) and "for many" (Luke and Paul):

“For you” makes Jesus’ mission quite concrete for those present. They are not simply anonymous elements within some vast whole: each one of them knows that the Lord died precisely for me, for us. “For you” covers the past and the future, it means me, personally; we, who are assembled here, are known and loved by Jesus for ourselves. So this “for you” is not a narrowing down, but a making concrete, and it applies to every eucharistic community, concretely uniting it to the love of Jesus. In the words of consecration, the Roman Canon combined the two biblical formulae, and so it says “for you and for many”.

So what then is the significance of the "for many"?

The Church has taken this formula from the institution narratives of the New Testament. She says these words out of deference for Jesus’ own words, in order to remain literally faithful to him. Respect for the words of Jesus himself is the reason for the formulation of the Eucharistic Prayer. But then we ask: why did Jesus say this? The reason is that in this way Jesus enables people to recognize him as the Suffering Servant of Is 53, he reveals himself as the figure to whom the prophecy refers. The Church’s respect for the words of Jesus, Jesus’ fidelity to the words of “Scripture”: this double fidelity is the concrete reason for the formulation “for many”. In this chain of respectful fidelity, we too take our place with a literal translation of the words of Scripture.

It is to be noted in this context that both the RSV and NRSV (and the latter is the most widely-used translation amongst English-speaking Anglicans) retain the "for many" in Isaiah 53.  The use of "for many" in the eucharistic prayer thus grounds the Church's central prayer in the Incarnate Word's self-understanding of his mission.

Concluding, Benedict examines the relationship between "many" and "all":

How the Lord in his own way reaches the others – “all” – ultimately remains his mystery. But without doubt it is a responsibility to be directly called to his table, so that I hear the words “for you” – he suffered for me. The many bear responsibility for all. The community of the many must be the lamp on the lamp-stand, a city on the hilltop, yeast for all. This is a vocation that affects each one of us individually, quite personally. The many, that is to say, we ourselves, must be conscious of our mission of responsibility towards the whole ... In today’s society we often feel that we are not “many”, but rather few – a small remnant becoming smaller all the time. But no – we are “many”: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues,”, as we read in the Revelation of Saint John (7:9). We are many and we stand for all. So the words “many” and “all” go together and are intertwined with responsibility and promise.

"For many", then, goes to the heart of the Church's identity and her calling to be grounded in the mission of the Incarnate Word. 

All of which suggests that perhaps the Church of Ireland's Liturgical Advisory Committee should have demonstrated greater imagination in its response to the new translation of the Roman Missal.  Now, in the centre of the Church's central prayer, Romans and Anglicans together proclaim of the saving sacrifice of the Incarnate Word "for you and for many".

The Daily Office and reading Scripture as the Church

George Weigel has highlighted the causes for the failure of an increase in Biblical literacy in post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism:

One of the disappointments of the post-Vatican II period has been the glacial pace of the growth in Catholic biblical literacy the Council hoped to inspire. Why the slow-down? Several reasons suggest themselves.

The hegemony of the historical-critical method of biblical study has taught two generations of Catholics that the Bible is too complicated for ordinary people to understand: so why read what only savants can grasp? Inept preaching, dissecting the biblical text with historical-critical scalpels or reducing Scripture to a psychology manual, has also been a turn-off to Bible-study.

It is an excellent summary of how too often in contemporary Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism the Church has forsaken reading Scripture as the Church in order to conform to the Academy's reading of ancient Hebrew and Christian texts.

What aids the Church in retrieving the practice of reading Scripture as the Church?  The praying of the Daily Office has a significant role to play here.  In his Preface of 1549, Cranmer emphasised the need for the Daily Office lectionary to restore the patristic practice of reading Scripture in the light of salvation history:

These many years passed, this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected ... that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, after three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.  And in this sort the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima; but were only begun, and never read through.

Cranmer here reaffirms the ancient practice of reading Isaiah in light of the Incarnation and Genesis in light of the Cross and Resurrection.  The meaning of Isaiah is not to be found in the Academy's examination of the contexts of First, Second and Trito-Isaiah.  The meaning of Genesis is not to be found in the Academy's determinations on the relationships between the Yahwist, Elohist and Priestly sources.  It is, rather, in the Church's reading of Scripture in the context of the liturgical year's Christological centre that we understand Isaiah and Genesis.

All of which suggests the theological significance of the communal and - where necessary - individual praying of the Daily Office.  Here the Church's Babylonian captivity to the Enlightenment and the Academy is undermined.  Here the Church learns to read and inwardly digest Scripture in light of Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection.

Beyond the flatlands: liturgy and the vision of human flourishing

+London's sermon at the recent celebration in St Paul's Cathedral, London to mark the 350th anniversary of the 1662 BCP reflected on the ability of traditional liturgy to provide an authentically richer vision of human flourishing to that of the homo economicus of the marketplace in postmodernity:

We live at a time when there is an urgent need to articulate a fresh narrative about the English nation now enriched as it is in this great cosmopolitan city with people who bring their own distinctive narratives. After the financial crisis what we seem to be offered so frequently is the prospect of a return to “normality” defined in exclusively economic terms. Is it not already clear that we must prepare for a new normal, a narrative about Our Island Story which is realistic about our changed place in the world but which contains the seeds of hope?

The Book of Common Prayer which immerses us in the whole symphony of scripture; which takes us through the Psalms every month; which makes available in a digestible but noble way the treasury of ancient Christian devotion has a beauty which is ancient but also fresh. If our civilisation is to have a future the roots must be irrigated and the texts which we choose to pass on to our children have the power to create a community which does not merely dwell in the flatlands of getting and spending but which sees visions with prophets, pursues wisdom with Solomon and lives with the generosity of the God who so loved the world that he was generous and gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Julian of Norwich - a gift from, to, and for the Church

On the commemoration of Julian of Norwich, it is appropriate to point to Denys Turner's excellent Julian of Norwich, Theologian.  Turner demonstrates that Julian's reflections can be deemed to be theology "by the most demanding standards of comparision with her medieval peers - Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonventure and Thomas Aquinas".  He insists that Julian cannot fit into the modern conception of a "mystic": that is, she did not consider her "shewings" (visions) to have "some character of epistemic independence relative to the common teaching of the Church".

Instead, Julian is a model of spiritual insight and theological reflection in the service of the Church as the Body of Christ:

Understood in these terms as charismatic interventions of the Spirit into the life of the Church ... Julian's shewings are, as Paul further insists (if no more emphatically than Julian herself), subordinate not only to the greater rule of charity, but also to the Christian community's discretion of spirits ... Whichever way one takes her shewings, that is, whether one considers them from the point of view of the readership for which they are intended - namely, her 'evenchristen' [ordinary Christians] - or as measured against the rule of last heremeneutical resort - namely, charity - or as measured by the Church's responsibility for doctrinal discernment, it is clear that for Julian there are no grounds at all for any form of independent appeal to those shewings, as if they could draw either on any authority of even any significance expect within an ecclesial role.  Christian charisms are no Promethean fire stolen from the gods by heroic individuals.  They are the gifts of the Spirit given through the Church, to the Church, and for it, and thus, as Julian likes to put it, they are communications by an 'evenchristen' to her 'evenchristens' within their shared reality as the Church of Christ.

Update: see Into the Expectation for a wonderful prayer practice based on Julian's shewing with the hazelnut - "made, loved, kept".

Futures: creedal catholicity or liberal protestantism?

From the States, two starkly contrasting visions of the future of the Church in the postmodern West.  First, Tim Keller - of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC - summarises the views of Ross Douthat in his provocative Bad Religion:

First, it would have to be political without being partisan. That is, it would have to equip all its members to be culturally engaged through vocation and civic involvement without identifying corporately with one political party. Second, it would have to be confessional yet ecumenical. That is, the church would have to be fully orthodox within its theological and ecclesiastical tradition yet not narrow and harsh toward other kinds of Christians. It should be especially desirous of cooperation with non-Western Christian leaders and churches. Third, the church would not only have to preach the Word faithfully, but also be committed to beauty and sanctity, the arts, and human rights for all. In this brief section he sounds a lot like Lesslie Newbigin and James Hunter, who have described a church that can have a "missionary encounter with Western culture."

It is a fine description of how the Church should undertake the new evangelisation and the fact that this summary comes from a renowned Reformed source is evidence of the extent to which creedal orthodoxy empowers differing confessional traditions to cohere around the Christological centre in mission.

The second vision comes from a recent sermon by a United Church of Christ pastor, carried by both Episcopal Cafe and the Huffington Post:

The divisions that we face within our denominations, the decline of the mainline church over the last generation, and the changing realities we face in a society more pluralistic than ever beg the question of whether or not we are -- any of us, regardless of denomination -- doing church in the right way ...

Within the mainline tradition there is a growing consensus moving our churches in a progressive theological direction. We read the Hebrew Scripture and the stories of the Prophets, and their battles for economic justice resonate with our own times. As we reflect on the life and ministry of Jesus as shared with us in the Christian New Testament we hear God calling us further to be a people of justice concerned with the "least of these" and with those on the margins. Jesus' own teachings have called many of us to embrace movements of liberation for Africans, Latin Americans, women, and gays and lesbians. We believe that those who use the Bible to justify discrimination or who wield Holy Scripture as a partisan political weapon to divide are the heirs of those who just a generation ago used the Bible to justify Jim Crow laws and worse. Those of us who still hear God speaking -- a slogan of the United Church of Christ that can also be explained as feeling the Holy Spirit opening up our hearts in new and exciting ways just as Jesus did for his community and time -- need to band together and live out the unity that we are called to live in Christ in new and more substantial ways.

The contrast is indeed stark and, to some extent, embodies the current debate over Anglican futures: creedal catholicity oriented towards the new evangelisation or liberal protestant community of inclusion?

"He calls us into Galilee"

Christ did not remain lying dead, but he rose up; he did not come back, but passed over; he did not establish himself afresh, but he raised up his dwelling-place aloft; and ... this Pasch we are celebrating does not mean Return but Passing-over: and that Galilee in which he who rose up promised to let us see him does not mean that he stayed behind, but that he had changed his dwelling ...

If Christ the Lord, after the consummation on the Cross, had lived again to return once more to our mortal nature and sufferings of our present life, I should say most certainly, my brethren, that he had not passed over, but that he had come back; that he was not established in a higher state but that he had taken up his pilgrimage again in his former state.  On the contrary: he is now raised up to a new life, and that is why he calls us too to the Passing-over, he calls us into Galilee.

From an Easter Sermon of St Bernard, quoted in De Lubac's Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (1947).

Broken bread and Reformation era saints

Today the Common Worship calendar commemorates the English Saints and Martyrs of the Reformation Era.  With a slight revision, the collect can be used throughout the UK and Ireland:

Merciful God,
who, when your Church on earth was torn apart
by the ravages of sin,
raised up men and women in these islands
who witnessed to their faith with courage and constancy:
give to your Church that peace which is your will,
and grant that those who have been divided on earth
may be reconciled in heaven
and share together in the vision of your glory ...

The words of the collect - "when your Church on earth was torn apart by the ravages of sin" - capture something of the confusions which flowed through these islands during the Reformation era.  There was nothing neat or tidy about the allegiances of these years.  Henry VIII's wrath created both catholic and protestant martyrs.  The papal legate in Marian England - Cardinal Pole - died after being recalled by Rome with accusations of Lutheranism hanging over him.  Elizabeth I, as David Starkey's work demonstrates, had deep contempt for the protestant martyr Latimer who spoke out against her place in the royal succession. 

Alongside the martyrs, however, were - as Eamon Duffy brilliantly demonstrated in his evocative The Voices of Morebath - the vast majority of clergy and laity conformed under Henry VIII, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth.  Such conformity shared something of the Benedictine spirit of "stability", living out the Cross and Resurrection in the particular parish communities to which clergy and laity belonged, even as turmoil raged around them.

Amidst the confusions, the violence, the divisions, saints and martyrs across these islands bore witness to the Crucified and Risen One.  It is in the very brokeness of the Church during the Reformation era that we see Him manifested.  There is, then, a eucharistic character to the Church's commemoration of these saints and martyrs.  In the words of the Didache:

As this broken bread scattered on the mountains was gathered and became one, so too, may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.

It is a sanctified irony that it is in the Eucharist - a cause of bitter division amongst 16th Christians in these islands - that their martyrdoms and witness are most fully caught up and given their deepest meaning as a sign of the Church's hope and unity.

The daily office and the vocation of the cathedral

The New Liturgical Movement site has a great reflection - from a Roman perspective - on the significance of the daily office to the vocation of the cathedral.  Regretting that most Roman cathedrals in the States are "mass factories for workers, tourists, and the local parish community" in which the daily office is neglected, NLM contrasts this state of affairs with the intention expressed by Cardinal Vaughn for the new Westminster Cathedral in 1895:

From the date of its establishment, the prayer of the Church—as embodied by the singing of the daily Divine Office—was inextricably intertwined with the design of the new cathedral. Cardinal Vaughn saw the Office as essential to the efficacy of “a live Cathedral,” a missionary presence at the heart of a very secular city, “functioning […] on behalf of others and winning them graces.” In the foundational documents of the College of Chaplains he established specifically to carry out this liturgical apostolate, he argued that this public prayer was “the highest function of the apostolic calling.”

Most Anglican cathedrals in the British Isles have maintained the saying or singing of the daily office, with Choral Evensong retaining particularly popularity (and still broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 3).  The growing appeal of the cathedral daily office is seen in the doubling since 2000 of mid-week attendance at Church of England cathedrals.  This reflects something of NLM's view of how the cathedral's praying of the daily office contributes to the new evangelisation:

Besides the spiritual graces attendant on placing the full Office at the heart of a diocesan community, there is also considerable evangelical and apostolic merit to the practice. With our urban centers coming to life again as families, gentrifying pioneers, artists and would-be artists move back downtown (many frequently unchurched but not immune to the beauty of holiness), such a living, breathing exemplar of the movement of sanctified time could be a lightning-rod for an explosion of religious revival. It would also represent a tangible way of fulfilling the Second Vatican Council's goal of encouraging the faithful to regularly participate in the Liturgy of the Hours, and the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement's desire to transform the Office into more than a perfunctory priestly duty.

The same social dynamic at work in American cities - the renewal of urban centres - can also be seen in many European cities.  It is here that the cathedral's praying of the daily office has particular evangelical potential, offering as ++Rowan has recently said an introduction to the Christian faith without 'facing a doctrine exam at the door'.  In the Church's reflective praying of the Psalms and Scripture - amidst the cathedral's silence, music and architecture which speak of the beauty of grace - the residents of the postmodern city can be brought to know the Story proclaimed by the Church.

(The picture is of Festal Evensong for the feast of St Ethelflaeda at Romsey Abbey.)

Athanasius and the Christological Centre

The reading for the daily office provided in Celebrating the Saints for the memorial of St Athanasius is an excerpt from his De Incarnatione:

The Word of God, incorporeal, incorruptible, and immaterial, entered our world ...In the loving kindness of God the Word came to us, and was revealed among us openly.

These words give us some idea of how Athanasius' confession of the reality and fullness of the Incarnation stands at the heart, the centre of the Church's mission.  Our Christological centre, in other words, defines and gives meaning to the Church's mission: without this Christological centre, our mission begins to disintegrate.  It is because the God who is "incorporeal, incorruptible, and immaterial, entered our world", that the Church evangelises. The imperative to evangelise lessens when the Word is deemed to be homoiousios rather than homoousios - because then God's gracious commitment to this world is lessened.  Then it was not the One who is fully and truly God who "entered our world ... and was revealed among us openly".

But the Word is homoousios.  And the Church's mission, of course, is shaped by the missio Dei.  God fully and truly entered this world for the world's salvation.  From this Christological centre flows the Church's mission in the world.

++Rowan puts it this way:

The phrase in the Creed, 'being of one substance with the Father' or 'of one being with the Father, can sound a bit chilly and technical - even worse in the form 'consubstantial' ... Yet it ought to be one of the most exciting words in our vocabulary, telling us that what is happening in the person and activity of Jesus of Nazareth, the workman from the backwater town, is one with the essence of God and nothing less.

Benedict similarly points to the significance of Athanasius' theology:

The fundamental idea of Athanasius' entire theological battle was precisely that God is accessible.  He is not a secondary God; he is the true God, and it is through our communion with Christ that we can truly be united to God.  He has really become 'God-with-us'.

The Church proclaims God to the world, because God - not one 'similar' to God - entered the world for the world.  In his introduction to a 1944 edition of De Incarnatione, C.S. Lewis provocatively suggested that Arian Christianity was "one of those 'sensible' synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergyman".  The specialists on Arius might recoil at Lewis' language, but surely he was (again) onto something.  If the One who entered this world was not fully and truly God, there are weighty ramifications for the Church's mission.  If God found this world too distasteful to fully and truly embrace, so will the Church. 

The heart of our mission is the Christological centre.  It is, then, entirely appropriate that De Incarnatione should commence with a declaration of the evangelical nature of the scandal of the Incarnation:

Thus by what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognise Him as God.

Apostólicam Ecclésiam

On the feast of Ss Philip and James, words from Irenaeus to help us reflect on what it means to confess apostólicam Ecclésiam:

The Lord of all gave to His apostles the power to preach the Gospel.  It is through them that we have come to know the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God.  The Lord says to them: 'He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me and the One who sent me'.  We have come to know the dispensation of our salvation through none other than those through whom the Gospel came to us. First of all, they preached the Gospel; then, by the will of God, they transmitted it to us in the Scriptures to be the foundation and pillar of our faith ...

The tradition of the apostles, which has been manifested throughout the world, can be examined by all who want to see the truth.  We can enumerate the bishops instituted by the apostles in the Churches, and their successors down to our own day ...

With such proofs as these, we do not need to seek the truth elsewhere; it is easy to obtain it from the Church.  In the most thorough way, the apostles have amassed in the Church, as in a treasure chest, all that pertains to the truth, so that everyone who desires may drink the water of life.  She is the entrance to life; all the others are thieves and robbers.  We must, therefore, reject them, but love with the greatest zeal everything to do with the Church and lay hold of the tradition of truth.

Adversus Haereses III 1, 3 & 4

(Check out The Rector's Corner for Tertullian's reflections on apostolicity.)