The Byzantine Anglo-Catholic

Holy Fear(s)

2008-06-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Traditional spiritual writers sometimes speak of "holy fear", a feeling of great awe for God's sovereign power that motivates us--not so much from fear of hell as from a sense of reverence--to avoid sin and live virtuous lives. This post, alas, does not rise to such heights but wallows in the neurotic fears diagnosed by the shrink class as phobias. Specifically, they are religious phobias. The first section is taken from The Phobia List. A major tip of the hat to my wife Nancy for referring me to it.

The second part contains a few distinctly Anglican phobias which I have diagnosed myself. I will propose them for inclusion in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. I am not holding my breath.

allodoxophobia--fear of opinions.
decidophobia--fear of making decisions.
ecclesiophobia--fear of church.
enosiophobia--fear of having committed an unpardonable sin.
epistemophobia--fear of knowledge.
erotophobia--fear of sex.
euphobia--fear of hearing good news.
hadephobia--fear of hell.
hagiophobia--fear of saints or holy things.
hamartophobia--fear of sinning.
hedonophobia--fear of feeling pleasure.
heterophobia--fear of the opposite sex.
hexacosioihexekontahexaphobia--fear of the number 666.
hierophobia--fear of priests.
hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia--fear of long words.
homilophobia--fear of sermons.
homophobia--fear of homosexuality.
ideophobia--fear of ideas.
judeophobia--fear of Jews.
kainolophobia--fear of anything new.
necrophobia--fear of death.
ouranophobia--fear of heaven.
panthophobia--fear of suffering.
papaphobia--fear of the Pope.
theologicophobia--fear of theology.
theophobia--fear of gods or religion.

Now for a few Anglican phobias (not to be confused with Anglophobia, though this plays a role in the current difficulties):

akinolaphobia--fear of Global South bishops with serious attitude.
breederphobia--fear that the worship committee will be completely taken over by heterosexuals. Not a big issue in Anglo-Catholic parishes.
coughupthebucksophobia--fear of the parish stewardship campaign.
iconophobia--fear of icons, especially by people who think Thomas Kincaid is a great artist.
incenseophobia--fear of incense, especially by people who suffer from respiratory diseases only when they go to church.
jeffertsschoriphobia--fear of women bishops with doctorates in marine biology.
rowanophobia--fear of archbishops with out-of-control eyebrows.

Ephrem the Syrian

2008-06-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

Today the Episcopal Church honors Ephrem the Syrian, also known as Ephrem of Edessa (his feast is observed by the Orthodox on January 28). Ephrem was born in Nisibis in the year 306 and is thought to have died in 373 (or maybe 379). He was ordained a deacon and also appointed a teacher. He founded the School of Nisibis, which survived him by several centuries. He is often described as a monk, though there is no evidence he actually took vows. He is known to have lived a very austere life. About ten years before Ephrem's death, Nisibis fell under the control of the Persian emperor, who promptly expelled all the Christians. Ephrem ended up in Edessa.

Ephrem's literary output consisted mainly of hymns, of which over 400 survive. They were written in Syriac, linguistically related to the Aramaic of Jesus and the apostles. He uses these hymns as a medium for the defense of Orthodox theology against Gnosticism, Arianism, Manicheanism, and other belief systems. They are full of rich, frequently earthy, imagery. The sample below is a nativity hymn translated by Sebastian Brock, the distinguished Oxford Syriac scholar (The Harp of the Spirit, Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 1983).

Your mother is a cause of wonder:
the Lord entered into her
and became a servant; he who is the Word entered--
and became silent within her;
Thunder entered her and made no sounds;
there entered The Shepherd of all,
and in her He became the Lamb, bleating as He comes forth.
Praise to You to whom all things are easy, for You are almighty.

Your mother's womb has reversed the roles:
the Establisher of all entered into His richness,
but came forth poor; the Exalted one entered her,
but came forth meek; the Splendrous one entered her,
but came forth having put on a lowly hue.
Praise to You to whom all things are easy, for You are almighty.

The Mighty one entered, and put on insecurity
from her womb; the Provisioner of all entered--
and experienced hunger; He who gives drink to all entered--
and experienced thirst; naked and stripped
there came forth from her He who clothes all!
Praise to You to whom all things are easy, for You are almighty.

Spiritual and Religious

2008-06-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

The phrase "I'm spiritual but not religious" has become one of the iconic hip expressions in 21st century America. It can be found in the mouths of a wide spectrum of folks, including but not limited to so-called bookstore Buddhists, Episcopalian Unitarians in drag, and de facto atheists/agnostics who are simply too pooped to get out of bed on Sunday morning. Abbot Andrew is the leader of St Gregory's Abbey, an Anglican community in Three Rivers, Michigan. In the summer 2008 Abbey Letter (the complete text of which can be found by visiting the site) he has a thing or three to say about "spiritual vs religious":

The Latin root for religion, religare, means "to bind". Religious practices live up to this meaning by making connections that bind people with each other and with God. Practices of spirituality are also capable of making these connections, but if spirituality is separated from religion, then whatever good they do for an individual's well-being, any connections they make with other human beings or God are tenuous at best. Basically, a person who is "spiritual but not religious" follows the spiritual quest alone. The extreme of this would be to live by Plotinus' famous phrase: "The alone to the Alone."

A condescending attitude comes across to me in the claim to be spiritual but not religious. It seems to suggest that religion is beneath one who is really spiritual. I'm sure that is not always the case with everyone who says this, but when I look back on my years of adolescence and early adulthood, I have to admit frankly that this sort of snobbishness was a large ingredient of my own outlook...Maybe my perception at the time that religious people usually weren't all that spiritual was true. I do see a lot more vital interest in spirituality in churches today than I remember seeing then, but there is also a real possibility that my snobbish attitude made it harder for me to see the spirituality that really was present in religious people...

A decisive factor that led to my becoming religious as well as spiritual was a dissatisfaction with the eclectic approach. I reached a point where I realized that, in order for my spirituality to be centered, it had to be rooted in a particular religious tradition. My settling on Christianity, however, was not made with the sense that one choice was as good as another. At the time of decision, Christ, who very definitely willed certain things, such as fellowship with me, became very real to me. God's grace and my choice to to give myself freely to the particular Personhood of Christ were so inextricably entwined that there is no way I can separate one from the other. "Particular" is the key word here. The missing ingredient in spirituality without religion is particularity. Before this conversion, it seemed that believing in an impersonal "god", whose manifestation on earth was not limited to one holy person, preserved my individuality. The irony is, that it is the making of particular choices in terms of friends, a community, and God that has enhanced my own particular individuality.

One of the particularities of Christianity is that the Holy Spirit makes spirituality religious by binding people and God together. The Holy Spirit is more than "the bond of love" between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is a Person who actively brings the Father and the Son together and also actively brings each one of us, in our own particularity, to the Father and the Son and to each other in that same bond of Love. That Holy Spirit inspires us to love everybody, not in general but in particular. This does not mean that the Holy Spirit give us the impossible task of relating personally with billions of people. Rather, the Holy Spirit inspires us to follow Jesus' commandment to love our neighbors. Our neighbors are the particular people who happen to be present in our lives. With the Holy Spirit binding us together with God in this way, there is no room for binding together by way of collective violence. This is how the Holy Spirit makes religion spiritual.

Living spiritually and religiously requires that we face the challenge of living with our own particularity and the particularity of others. We cannot meet this challenge without commitment: commitment to God and commitment to our neighbors. It is easy to be tempted to shrink from this challenge. I had something of a relapse into being more spiritual than religious when I first considered a monastic vocation. I thought I could relate to God and grow spiritually with little reference to to the other members of the community if they weren't enough to my liking. But I learned very quickly that only by committing myself to the particular monks in this place could I grow spiritually. This is why Benedict puts so much emphasis on commitment in his Rule. Benedict has only disapproval for wandering monastics who hop from place to place without ever settling down. Such people are committed neither to God nor to other people. The Benedictine vow of stability of place is precisely a vow of commitment to God and to the particular people in a particular place, and the land and the trees, to say nothing of the cats. This kind of commitment may not sound as spiritual as attaining "cosmic consciousness', but it is by living with particular people who give us daily opportunities to make little sacrifices that we receive clear indications of when we are living in the Bond of Love of the Holy Spirit and when we are not....

It is true that I made a caricature of people who are spiritual but not religious at the beginning of this article. I know that many such people honestly struggle to participate in connections that the Holy Spirit is forging. Likewise, the notion that religious people are not spiritual is a caricature that blinds one to many of the ways the Holy Spirit breathes life into corporate activities. Both caricatures are harmful when they are used to denigrate other people. These caricatures are of some use, however, if they are turned toward ourselves and used as monitors for religious and spiritual growth. Is there real binding in our spirituality? Does the fire of the Holy Spirit breathe through our prayer and our acts of service to others? When the answer to both these questions is Yes, our hearts are inflamed as we walk with Jesus as did the disciples on the Road to Emmaus.

Hey, I'm a Freakin' Genius!

2008-05-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Alice Linsley of Just Genesis (well worth checking out on a regular basis) for this reference to The Blog Readability Test (http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx) You bring up the webpage, type in the URL of your blog (or any other site you want to check), and the site gets an instant rating ranging from Elementary School to Genius. I have no idea of how the thing works. Frankly, it seems a bit fishy, even if your friendly neighborhood Byzantine Anglo-Catholic did get into the Genius category. Maybe it does some kind of vocabulary analysis. When I'm writing these posts a lot of the arcane theological terms get redlined by Spell-check (including, I notice, the word "redline" itself, which is really not a theological term unless one is a real hardcore Calvinist), so maybe there's a connection of that sort. Quien sabe? I'm a geek, but not a computer geek. I recently installed Haloscan without having to ask anyone for help, which for me is a major accomplishment.

How does this site compare with others? Your intrepid blogkeeper applied the Blog Readability Test to several other sites of interest and came up with the following results:

Anglican Church of Nigeria: HIGH SCHOOL. These guys are in the forefront of the move to split the Anglican Communion. Apparently a high school diploma counts for more in the Global South.
Episcopal Church (national website) and Stand Firm in Faith: both COLLEGE UNDERGRAD. These entities are diametrically opposed theologically and hate each other's guts to boot. At least they hate each other's guts as intellectual equals.
Anglican Communion: GENIUS. Archbishop Rowan Williams probably is a real genius, but that won't prevent the AC from going down the crapper.
Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles: GENIUS. These jokers rejected me for ordination. No way in hell!
Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America: GENIUS. A lot of their people are Anglican converts, so that makes sense.
Convocation of Anglicans in North America: These folks are affiliated with the Nigerian Church and are dead set against the agenda of the Episcopal Church. I tried three times to get a rating and the message each time was "something went wrong..." which sums it up pretty well.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara, Ca: HIGH SCHOOL. This is my own parish. We have an openly gay rector and have been blessing gay unions for years, yet we are at the same level as the Nigerian Church. Hmmm...

Latin Strikes Back

2008-05-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

I was born in 1949 and baptized a Roman Catholic, which means that I grew up with the Latin Mass. I became an acolyte exactly 50 years ago this month, and I've been doing it--in both the Roman and Anglican communions--ever since.

The Latin Mass is currently experiencing a resurgence in Catholicism. This is part of a worldwide trend towards the recovery of tradition that can be seen in all Christian communities, even evangelical Protestantism. An informative source of documentation for this is The New Liturgical Movement, a site run by Catholic guys (they all seem to be guys, at least) who post stories about the Pope's vestments, Gregorian chant workshops, and church remodels in which worship spaces that were realigned in a modernistic fashion after Vatican II are now reverting to their original configurations. Of particular interest are stories of Latin Masses celebrated at Catholic universities such as Georgetown and Notre Dame. A very insightful recent post is "Why is chant making a big comeback?", which is available here.

One reason for this is that the Latin Mass provides an alternative for Catholics fed up with liturgical business as usual. In many Catholic parishes the music is still controlled by aging boomers who still sing pseudo-folk ditties that were already showing signs of wear by 1973. They are aided and abetted by jovial Fr Chuck in his rainbow stole and chasuble with pasted-on butterflies. If I were still RC and the choice was between one of these and the Latin variety, I'd start relearning the Confiteor.

Newark's mea culpa

2008-05-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Thanks to bls of The Topmost Apple for this reference to a website created by the Diocese of Newark. The site deals with the search process for a new bishop that took place a few years ago, resulting in the election and consecration of the Rt Rev Mark Beckwith.

The relevant part of the site is a "confession" listing the various shortcomings of this diocese, at least as its members perceived them. The document is astonishing in its candor and exhibits an honesty almost unique in public church statements, where "spin" is typically the order of the day.

The first item in the list states, "We thought that our spirituality would take care of itself, and so we find ourselves embarrassed and feeling selfish in wanting replenishment for our souls."

Another says, "In the past 33 years...The Diocese...has lost 23,875 communicants (46%) and 23 congregations (16%). During the same period...The Episcopal Church lost only [sic!] 16% of their communicants and increased the number of congregations by 2%. We have not started a new congregation since 1989."

"Membership decline is revealing our growing awareness and discontent with the fact that we often lack spiritual vitality, creativity, vision and direction."

"A vast number of people in the Diocese ignore what happens on a diocesan level (except when they are upset about something) because they have neither time nor energy to focus on anything outside their congregations or daily lives."

For most of this time John Spong was bishop; he was consecrated coadjutor in 1976 and was diocesan from 1979-2000. It would be both unfair and inaccurate to blame Spong for all or even most of this pitiful state of affairs. What is obvious is that Spong's wildly doctrinaire take on liberal Protestantism--in some ways he's to theology as Richard Dawkins is to evolutionary biology--does not result in butts in the pews or bucks in the plate. One of Jack's books is Why Christianity must change or die. Looks like if it changes according to his dictates, it will die anyway.

Amen, Brother, and Pax Vobiscum!

2008-05-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a well-written and richly detailed article by Chris Armstrong in the February 8 2008 edition of Christianity Today. "The Future is in the Past" deals with the recovery by evangelical Christians of aspects of pre-Reformation theology and spiritual practice. I've touched on this subject in previous posts, but this essay provides a very good overview of the entire phenomenon, complete with historical background. A tip of the born-again monastic hood to Haligweorc for turning me on to it.

Theology Lite?

2008-04-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

Fr Greg Jones of the Anglican Centrist wrote this post almost a year ago which only recently came to my attention. It concerns the religious scholars Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Elaine Pagels, plus the retired bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong. These folks collectively could be considered The Four Horsemen (Horsepersons?) of Jesus Seminar pop theology. Their overall agenda, IMHO, is to accommodate Christianity to liberal secularism by watering down the former without trying to engage in an authentic dialog with the latter. They either deny traditional Christian beliefs outright or render them less offensive to secularist sensibilities by reinterpreting them as rather toothless metaphors (this last being Borg's modus operandi). Anyway, read and reflect.

For various reasons I got the piece off another site, Creedal Christian, which is worth a gander or two in its own right.

The Green Patriarch

2008-04-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

His All Holiness Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch (to give him his full title) is the worldwide leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church. His nickname "the Green Patriarch" is well-earned due to his heavy involvement in ecological issues. On November 8, 1997 he visited St Barbara's Greek Orthodox church in Santa Barbara, where he overtly declared environmental destruction to be a sin. On this Earth Day, I think it's appropriate to share some excerpts of his address with you.

We believe that Orthodox liturgy and life hold tangible answers to the ultimate questions concerning salvation from corruptibility and death. The Eucharist is at the very center of our worship. And our sin towards the world, or the spiritual root of our pollution, lies in our refusal to view life and the world as a sacrament of thanksgiving, and as a gift of constant communion with God on a global scale.

We envision a new awareness that is not mere philosophical posturing, but a tangible experience of a mystical nature...Human beings and the environment form a seamless garment of existence; a complex fabric that we believe is fashioned by God.

...The entire universe participates in a celebration of life, which St Maximos the Confessor described as a "cosmic liturgy". ...In the bread and the wine of the eucharist, as priests standing before the altar of the world, we offer the creation back to the Creator in relationship to Him, and to each other. Indeed, in our liturgical life, we realize by anticipation the final state of the cosmos in the Kingdom of Heaven. We celebrate the beauty of creation and consecrate the life of the world, returning it to God with thanks. We share the world in joy as a living mystical communion with the Divine...

Moreover, there is also an ascetic element in our responsibility towards God's creation. This asceticism requires from us voluntary restraint, in order for us to live in harmony with our environment...

Asceticism is not a flight from society and the world, but a communal attitude of mind and way of life that leads to the respectful use, and not the abuse, of material goods. Excessive consumption may be understood to issue from a world-view of estrangement from self, from land, from life, and from God. Consuming the fruits of the earth unrestrained, we become consumed ourselves, by avarice and greed. Excessive consumption leaves us emptied, out of touch with our deepest self. Asceticism is a corrective practice, a vision of repentance...

We are of the deeply held belief that many human beings have come to behave as materialistic tyrants. Those that tyrannize the earth are themselves, sadly, tyrannized...

It follows that, to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for humans to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate; by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for humans to injure other humans with disease; for humans to contaminate the earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life with poisonous substances--these are sins.

in prayer, we ask for the forgiveness of sins committed both willingly and unwillingly. And it is certainly God's forgiveness which we must ask for causing harm to His own creation.

Benedictine Roots

2008-04-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a most interesting article by Robert Hale called "The Benedictine Spirit in Anglicanism". Dom Robert is a Roman Catholic Camaldolese Benedictine monk and a member of the monastery of New Camaldoli, located near Big Sur, California. The Camaldolese tradition is distinctive in Western monasticism in that it allows its monks to alternate between life in a regular monastic community and life as a hermit. Both of these paths can be pursued within the same monastic enclosure. The Camaldolese have a formal ecumenical relationship with the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross, of which I am an Associate.

Dom Robert started out as an Episcopalian but discerned a vocation to the Camaldolese way while still an undergraduate at Pomona College. He is therefore well-qualified to speak authoritatively about Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, and his article is a valuable resource for anyone curious about Anglican origins. I find it so useful that I've added it to the "Favorite Links" section of the sidebar. At the very end of the piece is a link to the New Camaldoli website which is worth a look. I was able to stay briefly at the monastery a number of years ago and can recommend it to anyone seriously interested in Benedictine spirituality.

Papal Fashion Statements

2008-04-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

Michael McGough has a very interesting article in the April 6 Los Angeles Times about Pope Benedict's sense of style. No, not the Prada shoes. We're talking about his recent choices in liturgical vestments. On a number of occasions during Lent and Holy Week His Holiness has presided while attired in chasubles, copes, and other vesture of a style popular between the Counter-Reformation and Vatican II. His revival of these garments has provoked great joy in the hearts of Catholic traditionalists and equally great dread in the already-gloomy souls of post-Vatican II progressives.

Why? It's because liturgical vestments don't just visually differentiate the various actors in the drama of worship; they are also encoded statements of particular theologies. This is true regardless of what church we're talking about. The evangelical megachurch pastor in his Hawaiian shirt; the low-church Anglican in surplice and stole; Pope Benedict XVI in a baroque fiddleback chasuble; all are conveying visually what they think is the purpose of worship, and. indeed, Christianity itself.

There are two major types of chasuble, the large colored overgarment worn by the priest celebrating Mass. The gothic style (seen in the first picture of the Pope) is the older and in fact originates in the early patristic period, when it evolved out of what was essentially a poncho. It tends to be cut very fully.

The Roman style (colloquially known as the fiddleback) seems to have first appeared in the late 15th century and can be though of as a gothic chasuble pared away to what is basically a sandwich-board. Fiddlebacks (seen in the second photo of Benedict) can be very simple, but are somewhat notorious for being made of rich brocade or ornamented with very elaborate embroidery. They are frequently worn with lace albs.

Fiddlebacks passed out of style during the years following Vatican II, when the liturgical language went from Latin to the vernacular, popular music replaced Gregorian chant, and the priest faced the people instead of towards the east with his back to the congregation. Gothic chasubles got even larger than they had been--unless chasubles were eliminated altogether, which happened in more than a few places.

For reasons I don't fully understand, the fiddleback became associated with theological conservatives who accepted Vatican II begrudgingly, or else objected to what they thought were abuses perpetrated in its name. It became one of the party badges of traditionalists who hankered for a return to the Latin Mass and uncompromising ecclesiastical authority.

So when Cardinal Ratzinger--affectionately known to his opponents as "God's Rottweiler" or "Der Panzercardinal"--became Pope Benedict XVI, progressives feared the worst. So far, little liberal blood has actually been spilled, but the Pope has signaled a return to traditional liturgics. Most significantly, he issued a motu proprio--a kind of executive order--last summer making it much easier for local parishes to offer Latin Masses for interested congregants. The Pope seems to want to restore the Tridentine Mass to a place of honor alongside the vernacular liturgy, rather than abrogating the latter.

If clothes make the man, then perhaps in this case vestimentum papam facit.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

2008-04-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

"Emergent Christianity" is a movement that originated among evangelicals during the '90's. This is not the place for a detailed description of what "emergent' is, but in very broad terms it is characterized by postmodern philosophical orientations, egalitarian ecclesiastical organization, a preference for storytelling rather than asserting dogma, and a "generous orthodoxy"--you can believe in the Trinity and still hang out with gays and Jews, which is not exactly a big priority over at Focus on the Family. Also, there is a strong interest in recovering some traditional aspects of Christian spirituality, such as meditation and even (gasp!) icons.

Tony Jones (pictured) is a leader in the emergent movement and has written The New Christians: dispatches from the emergent frontier (Jossey-Bass 2008) which is, I suspect, the best introduction to the subject currently in print. He talks a lot about worldviews, sets of (frequently unacknowledged) a priori assumptions about how the world works, and how Christians all along the theological spectrum get hung up on notions of "truth" that are actually more indebted to enlightenment rationalism than to the Tradition. The following excerpt appears on pp. 154-155.

Liberal brothers and sisters care about truth too, though they sometimes seem squeamish about the truth of the biblical narrative. I had the pleasure of hearing the biblical scholar Marcus Borg speak recently, and in the question-and-answer session after his address, he was asked a question he's surely been asked hundreds of times: "Professor Borg, what about the empty tomb on Easter morning?" After a bit of theological hemming and hawing, Borg responded, "If I were a betting man, I'd bet--my life or one dollar--that the tomb was not empty. Or that there was no tomb."

Why would the resurrection seem unbelievable to Borg? It's because he is beholden to a certain framework for historical truth: if it violates physical laws, it's probably not "true" (at least not in a factual, historical sense; he still considers it "true" in a literary, metaphorical, even spiritual sense.) He is unwilling to entertain two mutually contradictory ideas simultaneously: (1) that the physical laws by which the universe operates hold unremittingly and (2) that events that break those laws--such as resurrection, miraculous healings, and transfigurations--really did happen. In his talk, Borg referred to those who hold the latter as "fideists," people who allow faith to trump reason.

But Borg has fallen into the other gutter of the bowling alley, allowing reason to trump faith--his, we might say, is a "faith in reason." But the problem with reason is that what we human beings have considered "reasonable' (a geocentric universe, slavery, healing with leeches) has often been overturned.

John Piper, who stands on the opposite end of the theological spectrum, is beholden to a similarly modern framework. After the Interstate 35 bridge collapse in August 2007, Piper wrote about the tragedy, which happened just a mile from his church in Minneapolis. "The meaning of the collapse of this bridge," he wrote, "is that John Piper is a sinner and should repent or forfeit his life forever." He went on to explain that God (seemingly not beams and girders) holds up every bridge in the world, and if one ever falls, God has a perfect reason for it.

What's ironic is that both Borg and Piper want an airtight understanding of God, a God that makes perfect sense. For Borg, it's a God who does not defy the physical laws of the universe. For Piper, it's a God whose sovereignty requires his personal responsibility for all calamities. Each man is constricting God by forcing God to play by certain rules: the rules of physics or the rules of sovereignty. And each is attempting to squeeze all the paradox out of God.

But emergents don't fear paradox; they embrace it. God can be the creator of the universe and the breaker of the rules of physics. God can be sovereign yet not the author of evil.

So, again, the emergents are left to chart a middle course, one between the fideism (in human reason) of the left and the fideism (in the supernatural) of the right. As is so often the case, the "truth" lies in between, in a person (Jesus the Christ) who was truly human and truly divine--in faith, not fideism.

John Donne

2008-03-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

John Donne (1572-1631) was what we would today call a second-career priest. He came to the priesthood following a very turbulent early life in which he wrote racy love-poems, studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Inns of Court, served in Parliament, and sought the sponsorship of various powerful men as a wannabee courtier. It did not help matters that he was a Roman Catholic or that he secretly married the niece of an erstwhile mentor. Eventually he made his peace with the Church of England and took Holy Orders, seemingly in part because he needed a steady job.

These negatives notwithstanding, Donne became one of the great English poets; it is largely by way of his poems that he is recognized today as a great Anglican theologian as well. Since he died on March 31, his feast often gets bumped from the liturgical calendar as it falls so close to Easter. This year he just manages to scrape by, and I'd like to share two of his works with you. Meditation XVII is poignant in light of the ongoing meltdown of the Anglican Communion; Holy Sonnet X is totally appropriate in this Easter season.

Meditation XVII

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tools for thee.

Holy Sonnet X

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, Kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
and better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Paschal Proclamation

2008-03-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

St John Chrysostom (347-407) was successively Patriarch of Antioch and Constantinople. A man of exceptional erudition and eloquence--his surname mean "golden-tongued"--he is credited with writing (more likely compiling) the eucharistic liturgy bearing his name, the one most frequently used in the Eastern churches. His paschal sermon is read aloud in all Orthodox churches on Easter Sunday.

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Is there anyone who is a grateful servant? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting? Let them now receive their wages! If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; if any have come after the third hour, let them with gratitude join in the Feast! And they that arrived after the sixth hour, let them not doubt; for they too shall sustain no loss. And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let them not hesitate; but let them come too. And they who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let them not be afraid by reason of their delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to them that come at the eleventh hour, as well as to them that toiled from the first. To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows. He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor. The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden! Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith. Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let none grieve at their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let none mourn that they have fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when he descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said, "You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive. Hell took a body and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated! Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down. Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is Risen, and life is liberated! Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

Bulgakov on the Incarnation

2008-03-05T21:32:00.000-08:00

Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944) was possibly the most preeminent Russian Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. Born into a clergy family, he went through a Marxist phase during his studies of law and economics at Moscow University but later recovered his faith. He was eventually ordained a priest but left Russia soon after in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution. He spent the remainder of his life in Paris where he taught at the Institute St Serge, a seminary founded by White Russian exiles. He wrote a number of books that are dense and controversial in equal measures. I recently came across a not-so-dense quote on the Incarnation that I'd like to share with you. It appears originally in Du verbe incarne' and was translated by the English theologian Andrew Louth, who includes it in his essay "The place of theosis in Orthodox theology", which in turn appears in Partakers of the Divine Nature (Christensen and Wittung, eds., Baker Academic 2007).

God wants to communicate to the world his divine life and himself to "dwell" in the world, to become human, in order to make of human kind a god too. That transcends the limits of human imagination and daring, it is the mystery of the love of God "hidden from the beginning in God" (Eph 3:9), unknown to the angels themselves (Eph 3:10; 1 Pet 1:12; 1Tim 3:16). The love of God knows no limits and cannot reach its furthest limit in the fullness of the divine abnegation for the sake of the world: the Incarnation. And if the very nature of the world, raised from non-being to its created state, does not appear here as an obstacle, its fallen state is not one either. God comes even to a fallen world; the love of God is not repelled by the powerlessness of the creature, nor by his fallen image, nor even by the sin of the world: the Lamb of God, who voluntarily bears the sins of the world, is manifest in him. In this way, God gives all for the divinization of the world and its salvation, and nothing remains that he has not given. Such is the love of God, such is Love.

Such it is in the interior life of the Trinity, in the reciprocal surrender of the three hypostases, and such it is in the relation of God to the world. If it is in such a way that we are to understand the Incarnation--and Christ himself teaches us to understand it in such a way (Jn 3:16)--there is no longer any room to ask if the Incarnation would have taken place apart from the Fall. The greater contains the lesser, the conclusion presupposes the antecedent, and the concrete includes the general. The love of God for fallen humankind, which finds it in no way repugnant to take the failed nature of Adam, already contains the love of stainless humankind.

And that is expressed in the wisdom of the brief words of the Nicene Creed: "for our sake and for our salvation." This and, in all the diversity and all the generality of its meaning, contains the theology of the Incarnation. In particular, this and can be taken in the sense of identification (as that is to say). So it is understood by those who consider that salvation is the reason for the Incarnation; in fact, concretely, that is indeed what it signifies for fallen humanity. But this can equally be understood in a distinctive sense (that is to say, "and in particular," or similar expressions), separating the general from the particular, in other words, without limiting the power of the Incarnation nor exhausting it solely in redemption. The Word became flesh: one must understand this in all the plenitude of of its meaning, from the theological point of view and the cosmic, the anthropological, the Christological and the soteriological. The last, the most concrete, includes and does not exclude the other meanings; so too, the theology of the Incarnation cannot be limited to the bounds of soteriology; that would be, moreover, impossible, as the history of dogma bears witness....

The Incarnation is the interior basis of creation, its final cause. God did not create the world to hold it at a distance from him, at that insurmountable metaphysical distance that separates the Creator from the creation, but in order to surmount that distance and unite himself completely with the world; not only from the outside, as Creator, nor even as providence, but from within: "the Word became flesh". That is why the Incarnation is already predetermined in human kind.

George Herbert

2008-02-27T17:52:00.001-08:00

Herbert was born in 1593 and became University Orator at Cambridge. He was quite ambitious and hoped to parlay this position into a brilliant career at court. He was elected to Parliament in 1624 but nothing much came of that. Within a couple of years James I and two of George's most influential patrons all died, and public life lost a lot of its allure. He decided to act on a long-suppressed vocation to Holy Orders. He became a priest in 1630 and was made vicar of Bemerton. He threw himself into the priesthood with total abandon, and soon earned his parishioners' sobriquet "Holy Mr Herbert." Alas, this only lasted until 1633, when he died at the age of 39.

George left behind a body of poetry(his chief claim to fame in the secular world) as well as A Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, a sort of how-to-do-it for parish life in 17th century England. I've chosen a short bit from the latter (it fits me too well), in addition to one of his best poems, set to music by Vaughn Williams in his Five Mystical Songs. If you haven't heard this piece yet, do so by all means.

Scholar's Temptation

Curiosity in prying into high speculative and unprofitable questions is another great stumbling block to the holiness of scholars.

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here."
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?'

"Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Reinventing the Monastic Wheel

2008-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

The January 26 2008 edition of the Los Angeles Times has an interesting article by Stephanie Simon titled "What chores would Jesus do?" It describes a small commune of evangelical Christians in Billings, Montana, and their efforts to live the Gospel more fully.

The group started out with two married couples, a single man, and a total of five children. They shared a two-bedroom house in a very average suburban neighborhood (the single guy slept in the basement). The community still exists after a year, though with some changes in personnel.

This group is part of the so-called New Monasticism, itself an outgrowth of the Emergent evangelical movement. Useful references to the New Monasticism can be found here and here.

For well over thirty years now I've been interested in alternative communities and monasticism, and manage to practice a form of the latter within the limits of my married, householding lifestyle. What are my reactions to this article?

For starters, the community has no rule of life. A rule sounds restrictive at first blush, but it sets out what members owe to the community in terms of commitments of money, labor, and time. It also specifies what the members can expect from the community. Christian monasticism has a 1700-year track record in large part because it has rules (preeminently the Rule of Benedict in the West) and adheres to them consistently. Rural America is littered with the ruins of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of communes that tanked because everyone was too busy getting enlightened to take out the garbage.
Aside from group Bible studies, there is apparently no formal public worship and no emphasis on other spiritual practices (I'd think that lectio divina would be a natural for evangelicals. But have these folks even heard of lectio divina?

On a more mundane but very practical level, these people don't have enough living space. They're on top of each other most of the time when they're not asleep, and this naturally leads to stress and conflict. There was a '60's commune in Colorado (called Red Rock, I think) where several dozen people (and their kids) lived in a big geodesic dome--with no interior partitions. They were trying to create a new society from scratch. I wonder how many of them have MBA' s by now. There's a very good reason Benedictine monasteries transitioned from open dormitories to individual cells during the middle ages.

These folks could learn a few lessons from the Old Monasticism without compromising either their evangelicalism or their status as laypeople. If you insist on reinventing the wheel, you must be prepared for a wobbly ride.

Anglican Hermits in the Big Apple

2008-01-18T21:46:00.000-08:00

The January 13 2008 issue of New York Magazine has a substantial and well-researched article on Episcopal solitaries. "A Hermit of the Heart" by Paul O'Donnell profiles three New York Episcopalians who combine life in this quintessence of urban madness with a deep commitment to contemplative prayer. These folks have real jobs and live alongside "normal" people yet manage to spend several hours per day in meditation and other forms of prayer. They are under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and are answerable on some level to the bishop of New York, yet they are not part of a monastic community. Each is, in effect, "a contemplative order of one." Since we observed the feast of St Anthony of Egypt on January 17, this topic is especially relevant.

The article is available here. A tip of the hood to Episcope for turning me on to it.

Sweetman on Faith and Reason

2008-01-04T23:24:00.000-08:00

Brendan Sweetman teaches philosophy at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. He has recently published Religion: key concepts in philosophy (London and New York, Continuum, 2007). This is a very basic and useful introduction to the philosophy of religion, especially if, like me, you are somewhat philosophically challenged. The following excerpt deals with the notion of religion and secularism as worldviews. This is relevant to those of us in the mainline churches who are confronted with liberal Protestant theology, particularly the variety exemplified by the Jesus Seminar or Bishop Spong, which tends to uncritically accept the truth-claims of post-Enlightenment secularism and reinterprets the tradition to accommodate secularism. The following quote is found on pages 10-11.

It is very common in the United States, but less so in other countries, to use the term 'faith' to describe religious belief. But this term can be quite misleading. The word 'faith' has unfortunate connotations, especially today, and can be used to set up a somewhat artificial distinction between faith on the one hand and reason on the other. The term frequently carries with it the connotation that religious beliefs are outside reason, or that religious believers are not interested in the rationality of their views, or worst of all, that religious beliefs are not even reasonable. This is often how secularists use the term, but it is also sometimes used this way by religious believers themselves.

The most important sense of the term from the point of view of philosophy of religion is the cognitive or propositional sense which refers to holding a belief for which the evidence is less than 100 per cent certain or decisive. Religious beliefs involve propositions about God, about God's relationship to the world and human beings, and about morality, among many other propositions. The religious believer cannot prove these propositions to be true in the sense of giving a scientific proof, or presenting decisive evidence for them. But he can at least try to show that they are rational to believe. This is the most appropriate use of the term 'faith' in philosophy of religion and marks the best understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. A religious believer holds many things on faith, but he hopes that it is a rational faith (not an irrational faith), and the work of philosophy of religion is, among other things, an attempt to investigate the rationality of religious belief.

On this understanding of the term 'faith', it is the case that all worldviews--religious or secularist--involve faith in this cognitive sense. That is to say, all worldviews hold beliefs about the nature of reality, the nature of the human person and the nature of morality, to which the adherents of the worldview pledge their commitment, but which they cannot prove decisively. Although it may be possible to back up some of these beliefs with rational arguments and evidence, it is still necessary to commit to them, since any arguments we have will fall short of proof, because of the subject matter involved. The subject matter of worldviews, which involves the three subjects mentioned, does not admit of scientific proof. This is true for all worldviews, secularist ones as well as religious ones. So if one accepts various beliefs about the nature of reality, or the human person, or morality, this acceptance will involve a commitment to these beliefs: a movement of the will as well as of the intellect. So, in fact, a religious believer and a secularist are in the same boat in this respect, a point frequently overlooked. We are often inclined simply to accept it as true without giving much thought to the matter that it is only religious belief that involves faith, but not secularism. But now that secularism is a positive worldview in itself, and a major cultural player to boot, it is no longer appropriate to overlook the fact that it is a worldview with many controversial beliefs that are the subject of contentious debate, and that its adherents accept many of these beliefs at least partially on faith.

Eucharistic Quotes: Anglican

2007-12-06T20:57:00.000-08:00

Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) Response to Cardinal Bellarmine

Christ said "this is my body." He did not say "this is my body in this way". We are in agreement with you as to the end; the whole controversy is as to the method. As to the "This", we hold with firm faith that it is. As to the "this is in this way", (namely by the Transubstantiation of the bread into the body), as to the method whereby it happens that it is, by means of In or With or Under or By transition there is no word expressed [in Scripture]. And because there is no word, we rightly make it not of faith; we place it perhaps among the theories of the school, but not among the articles of the faith...We believe no less than you that the presence is real. Concerning the method of the presence, we define nothing rashly, and I add, we do not anxiously inquire, any more than how the blood of Christ washes us in Baptism, any more than how the human and divine natures are united in one Person in the Incarnation of Christ.

Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent

...while I believe the consecrated elements to become, by virtue of his consecratory words, truly and really, yet spiritually and in an ineffable way, His Body and Blood, I learnt also to withhold my thoughts as to the mode of this great Mystery, but as a Mystery to adore it. With the Fathers, then, and our own great Divines...I could not but speak of the consecrated elements as being what, since He has so called them, I believe them to become His Body and Blood...

M. R. Carpenter-Garnier (The Divine Guest)

The principal underlying the Incarnation is that spirit is expressed through matter, the inward through the outward, the invisible through the visible. So God became man. So Christ entered into human life, and lived and loved as a man...It is in line with this that, when he gives to his people this divine gift, this gift of himself, he should use the same method. As once at Bethlehem he hid the divine glory through uniting with it the weakness of our nature, so now that self-same life he hides under simple material forms. It is, then, to God Incarnate that we come in Holy communion.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) Worship

In the Christian sacrifice, the Logos enters the time-series and is self-given under fugitive species to the creature, that by feeding on Reality the creature may be transformed: receiving by infusion the gift of charity to strengthen, purify, and at last supernaturalize his own imperfect love, and thus bring a little nearer that transfiguration of the world in Christ which is the creative goal of Christian worship.

Rowan Williams (1950- ) Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel

The Eucharist demonstrates that material reality can become charged with Jesus' life, and so proclaimed hope for the whole world of matter. The material, habitually used as a means of exclusion, of violence, can become a means of communication. Matter as hoarded or dominated or exploited speaks of the distortion and ultimate severance of relationship, and as such can only be a sign of death...The matter of the Eucharist, carrying the presence of the risen Jesus, can only be a sign of life, of triumph over the death of exclusion and isolation...If the Eucharist is a sign of the ultimate Lordship of Jesus, his "freedom" to unite to himself the whole material order as a symbol of grace, it speaks of creation itself, and the place of Jesus in creation.

Marilyn McCord Adams (1943- ) Christ and Horrors

God' unitive aims in creation lead not only to the evolution of the material into the personal, but also to Incarnation, to God's expressing divine love for material creation by becoming a human being. But God loves material creation by loving us. The Inner Teacher is omnipresent and ever helpful but difficult for personal animals to recognize or pay attention to. As animals we focus easily on what is sense-perceptible, on what we can see and touch and handle, on what is concrete and locatable in space and time. To grow up and flourish as human beings, we need embodied persons to care for us, to be role models of how to be embodied persons, of how to personify matter in wholesome ways. In the Incarnation, God enters into personal intimacy with material creation, not just through His Divine nature and across the metaphysical size-gap, but through His human nature. Jesus relates to Peter, James and John, to the women suffering from hemorrhage and spinal curvature, to blind men and lepers, embodied person to embodied person...Christ's earthly career climaxing in His passion, death, and resurrection...does not bring an end to our need or the benefit to us as human beings of contacting God, embodied person to embodied person--of seeing, touching and handling God in a determinate place and time. Our need for concrete interaction is all the more urgent given that our being embodied persons in a material world such as this exposes us to horrors. To suppose that God--even God Incarnate--is aloof from horrors while we continue to be exposed to them is alienating. If we are vulnerable to God and to the world, but God is now impassible in all His natures, then God is no longer meeting us on our own level as He once did.

Wouldn't, why wouldn't, a God Who loved material creation, and who loves us as a way of loving material creation, want--in Luther's language--to continue the Incarnation by becoming really present for us in the very sacrament that rivets our attention on horrors by showing forth the Lord's death?

Daily Readings from the Rule of Benedict

2007-11-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

I've recently resumed the practice of reading a short excerpt from St Benedict's monastic Rule every day. I don't read the whole thing, just those parts I think are most relevant to a married Anglican layperson living in the so-called real world. So, for example, I skip Chapter 9, which deals with the arrangement of the Night Office (Vigils). The Book of Common Prayer makes no provision for a Night Office, and if it did, I wouldn't get up to do it anyway. But if you ever visit a monastery where it is done, by all means go to it, even if just for one time. The trauma of getting up at such a Godly hour shocks the psyche into being more receptive to the message of the psalms and canticles than it might otherwise be on a full night's sleep.

But I digress. The suggested readings below are based on the RB 1980, published in the same year by the Liturgical Press. This edition of the Rule contains the original Latin text, an excellent English translation on the facing page, and enough critical apparatus to keep a graduate student amused for years. IMHO, this is the gold standard for English-language critical editions of the Rule. The numbers in the citations refer to the versification in this edition. So, good reading and Pax et bonum.

Day 1 Prologue: 1-20

Day 2 Prologue: 21-38

Day 3 Prologue: 39-end

Day 4 Chapter 2 : 1-22

Day 5 Chapter 2 : 23-end

Day 6 Chapter 3

Day 7 Chapter 4: 1-43

Day 8 Chapter 4: 44-end

Day 9 Chapter 5

Day 10 Chapter 6

Day 11 Chapter 7 : 1-30

Day 12 Chapter 7: 31-43

Day 13 Chapter 7: 44-54

Day 14 Chapter 7: 55-end

Day 15 Chapters 19 and 20

Day 16 Chapter 27

Day 17 Chapter 31

Day 18 Chapters 33 and 34

Day 19 Chapter 36

Day 20 Chapter 48: 1-13

Day 21 Chapter 48: 14-end

Day 22 Chapter 49

Day 23 Chapter 52

Day 24 Chapter 53

Day 25 Chapter 57

Day 26 Chapter 58

Day 27 Chapter 62

Day 28 Chapter 68

Day 29 Chapter 71

Day 30 Chapter 72

Day 31 Chapter 73

St Ignatius Brianchaninov on the Jesus Prayer

2007-11-28T20:37:00.001-08:00

Ignatius lived from 1807 to 1867. He was born into a noble landowning Russian family. After study at a military academy at St Petersburg he received a commission in the Tsar's army as an engineer. A few years later he resigned due to illness, and after recovering his health became a monk. He was soon recognized for his piety and became abbot of a monastery near St Petersburg when he was only 26. At the age of 50 he was consecrated a bishop but quite sensibly resigned his bishopric after only four years to become a hermit (Anglican bishops take note). He spent the remainder of his life as a spiritual father, often guiding his directees by means of letter-writing. He was canonized by the Russian Church in 1988. Here are two of his comments on the Jesus Prayer:

The name of our Lord Jesus Christ is a divine name. The power and effect of that name are divine, omnipotent and salvific, and transcend our ability to comprehend it. With faith therefore, with confidence and sincerity, and with great piety and fear ought we proceed to the doing of the great work which God has entrusted to us: to train ourselves in prayer by using the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...

Novices need more time in order to train themselves in prayer. It is impossible to teach this supreme virtue shortly after entering the monastery of following the first few steps in asceticism. Asceticism needs both time and gradual progress, so that the ascetic can mature for prayer in every respect. In order that a flower might bloom or the fruit grow on a tree, the tree must first be planted and left to develop; thus also does prayer grow out of the soil of the other virtues and nowhere else. The monk will not quickly gain mastery of his mind, nor will he in a short time accustom it to abide in the words of the prayer as if enclosed in a prison. Pulled hither and thither by its acquired predilections, impressions, memories and worries, the novice's mind constantly breaks its salvific chains and strays from the narrow to the wide path. It prefers to wander freely...to stray aimlessly and mindlessly over great expanses, though this be damaging to him and cause him great loss. The passions, those moral infirmities of human nature, are the principal cause of inattentiveness and absentmindedness in prayer...The passions are brought under control and mortified little by little by means of true obedience, as well as by self-reproach and humility--these are the virtues upon which successful prayer is built. Concentration, which is accessible to man, is granted by God in good time to every struggler in piety and asceticism who by persistence and ardor proves the sincerity of his desire to acquire prayer.

Animal Saints

2007-11-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Here are some excerpts from a great post published today by Christopher on his site at http://thanksgivinginallthings.blogspot.com/. The title is "Creation laughs back: animals, theology and animal saints".

I now know what others must feel, after having been laughed at for mentioning animal theology in a conversation. I have long heard others talk about derisive and dismissive encounters with "serious" theologians and scholars when the topic of animal theology is mentioned.

Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or Sanctification. Indeed, to set up one's "serious" theology in such a way that one can ignore, dismiss, or deride creatures great and small, organic and inorganic, is a sign of the Fall and the effects of sin, alienation, and division. The rest of Creation pays dearly and regularly for our lack of relational recognition and failures in thankfulness...

When I'm driving and I notice a dead deer, raccoon, seagull, squirrel, or the like, I offer a prayer of thanks to God for the life of this creature and that God will greet him or her in His Kingdom...

I am part of a strand of tradition, the Benedictine, that honors this connection to the rest of Creation and is not threatened by the suggestion that God cares for each creature. A raven, after all, is God's messenger to Abba Benedict in his early monastic life and is often shown in iconography as friend and companion. We may not know the name of that raven, but given the desert penchant to understand that Christian life was to be lived in return to the Garden, I can imagine that Abba Benedict gave the raven a name. And as the icon shows, I'm certainly within tradition to imagine that not only Abba Benedict, but also the raven is raised up, is a saint.

Eucharistic Quotes: Roman Catholic

2007-11-11T21:35:00.001-08:00

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

This is what happens by divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of bread is converted into the whole substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of wine into the whole substance of the blood of Christ. Hence this conversion is not formal, but substantial; nor is it contained within the categories of natural motion, but may be called by its proper name, transubstantiation.

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

In the presence of Jesus in the Holy Sacrament we ought to be like the Blessed in heaven before the Divine Essence.

Odo Casel (1886-1948)

When we go with Christ in his way he becomes contemporary with us. He is neither past nor to come but present to us; he is always with us. And not only his person but also his saving act belongs to this present. There can be no deeper communion of living than that we should share the essential life and action of another.

Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Vatican II)

...the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the fountain from which all her power flows.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

1325. The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
1396. Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body--the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. In Baptism we have been called to form but one body. The Eucharist fulfills this call: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor 10: 16-17).
1404. The Church knows that the Lord comes even now in his Eucharist and that he is there in our midst. However, his presence is veiled. Therefore we celebrate the Eucharist "awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of our savior, Jesus Christ, asking to share in your glory when every tear will be wiped away. On that day we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you forever through Christ our Lord.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

The humility of Jesus can be seen in the crib, in the exile of Jesus, in the inability to make people understand him, in the desertion of his apostles, in the hatred of his persecutors, in all the terrible suffering and death of his passion, and now in his permanent state of humility in the tabernacle, where he has reduced himself to such a small particle of bread that the priest can hold him with two fingers. The more we empty ourselves, the more room we give God to fill us.

When you look at the crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.

Eucharistic Quotes: Patristic

2007-10-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a string of short texts dealing with the Eucharist that I think would be useful to have in one place. They are not meant to be a research tool for academic theology but rather as aids for spiritual contemplation. Regular participation in the Eucharist is a crucial part of my own spiritual practice and I go on the assumption that Jesus is somehow really present in the consecrated bread and wine. When we receive the Eucharist we establish a mystical but very real connection with Jesus, and since Jesus is divine, with God himself. The Eucharist is thus a path to theosis or union with God. I will try to follow this up with other posts dealing with Anglican and Roman Catholic Eucharistic teaching.

Ignatius of Antioch (d. between 110-117)

Each one individually and all of you together are united in one and the same faith in Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, in obedience to the bishop and the priests, in harmony, breaking one loaf of bread which is the medicine of immortality, an antidote to death that gives eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Irenaeus of Lyons (130-208)

As far as we are concerned, our thinking accords with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in its turn confirms our thinking. We offer to God what is his own, as we proclaim the communion and union of flesh and Spirit. For in the same way that earthly bread, after having received the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread but Eucharist, made up of two components, one earthly the other heavenly, so our bodies that share in the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, because they have the hope of the resurrection.

Ephraim of Syria (306-373)

Fire and the Spirit are in our baptism. In the bread and the cup also are fire and the Spirit.

Cyril of Jerusalem (315-387)

We pray God to send the Holy Spirit on the gifts laid here, to make the bread the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ. For the Holy Spirit sanctifies and transforms all that he touches.

Gregory of Nyssa (330-395)

What then is this remedy? Nothing other than that glorious body which showed itself stronger than death and has become the source of life for us. Just as a little leaven, according to the Apostle's words, is mixed with all the dough, so the body that was raised by God to immortality, once it is introduced into our body, wholly changes it and transforms it into his own substance...

The Word of God...once it became incarnate...provided his body with the means of subsistence in the usual suitable ways: he maintained its substance with the help of...bread. Even in normal conditions, when one sees bread, one sees in a sense the human body, since bread absorbed by the body becomes the body itself. So here, the body in which God had become incarnate, since it was fed on bread, was in a sense identical with the bread--the food transforming itself, as we have said, to take on the nature of the body. It was recognized, in fact, that this glorious flesh possessed the property common to all human beings: like them it was maintained with the help of bread. But this body partook of the divine dignity because of the indwelling of the Word. We are therefore entitled to believe that the bread hallowed by the Word of God is transformed to become the body of the Word...

As the bread transformed into that body was thereby raised to divine power, a similar change happens to the bread of the Eucharist. In the former case the grace of the Word hallowed the body that drew its substance from bread, and in a sense was itself bread. Likewise in the Eucharist the bread is hallowed by the Word of God and prayer...It is transformed at once into his body...as expressed in these words: "This is my body"...

That is why, in the economy of grace, he gives himself as seed to all the faithful. His flesh composed of bread and wine is blended with their bodies to enable human beings, thanks to their union with his immortal body, to share in the condition of incorruptibility.

Ambrose (334-397)

You here it said that every time the sacrifice is offered, the Lord's death, resurrection and ascension are represented, the forgiveness of sins is offered, and yet do you not receive this bread of life every day? Anyone who is wounded looks for healing. For us it is a wound to be liable to sin. Our healing lies in the adorable heavenly sacrament...

If you receive it every day, every day becomes for you Today.

If Christ is yours today, he rises for you today. Today has come.

John Chrysostrom (344-407)

On high, the armies of the angels are giving praise. Here below, in the Church, the human choir takes up after them the same doxology. Above us, angels of fire make the thrice-holy hymn resound magnificently. Here below is raised the echo of their hymn. The festival of heaven's citizens is united with that of the inhabitants of earth in a single thanksgiving, a single upsurge of happiness, a single chorus of joy.

Just as the head and the body constitute a single human being, so Christ and the Church constitute a single whole...This union is effected through the food that he has given us in his desire to show the love he has for us. For this reason he united himself intimately with us, he blended his body with ours like leaven, so that we should become one single entity, as the body is joined to the head.

Do you wish to honor the body of the Saviour? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside you are leaving it numb with cold and naked. He who said, "This is my body", and made it so by his word, is the same that said, "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me." Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.