Category Archives: Faith

The undiscovered ends?

01 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by in Faith

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St Mary’s Church, Redenhall, Norfolk

From quiet homes and first beginning,

out to the undiscovered ends,

there’s nothing worth the wear of winning,

but laughter and the love of friends

Hilaire Belloc

One of things about retiring is that it tends to invite something which life’s busy routine denies – that is reflection.

The last eighteen months have been traumatic for so many in so many ways, that it seems almost callous to suggest that it might have had any benefits, but from my own personal point of view it has aided that process of reflection. When the first “lockdown” commenced in March 2020 it meant that after four years of living away from home for at least half the year, I was confined, as it were to barracks. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology and Zoom, it was possible to continue doing my job for St Mary’s from my own study at home. The loss of that “laughter and the love of friends” was a downside, as was not seeing the students and our beautiful campus at Strawberry Hill. I also missed my walks down the Thames path to Richmond and back to Teddington. If there is an occupational hazard to being a bibliophile academic, in my case it is the tendency to sit down and read books for as long as anyone will leave me undisturbed. When one’s children are younger that tendecy is held in check; mine flew the nest some years back. The Thames Path walks were a way of taking a bit of exercise. So I thought I’d do it while cribb’d, cabin’d and confin’d (to an hour a day).

I began to take what I called #norfolkexercise walks. Here in the far south of Norfolk that turned out to consist of a rich network of ancient footpaths, some of which the local farmers had actually left in a walkable condition. The timings were dictated by the demands of my timetable, but the weekends provided opportunties for a really long walk. I quickly found, as those familiar with my Twitter feed will confirm, that my steps tended toward the Church pictured above – St Mary’s, Redenhall. The tower is quite spectacular, built by the powerful de la Pole family in the fifteenth century as an example of their wealth, it is a local landmark much beloved, I am told, by pilots; it is a thing of beauty.

One of the things about long walks is that it gives one time to reflect – and pray. For the first part of every walk I pray my daily Rosary, which gets me in the right frame of mind to contemplate what I see all around me, which is the wonder of the created world. Psalm 8 came frequently to mind:

4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

What indeed? As the Pandemic reminded all of us of the fragility of human life and our powerlessness, the Churches decided, for perfectly obvious reasons, to close their doors. We were soon able to discover the wonder of Zoom church, and watch on-line services all over the world if we had access to a computer and the internet. But we were deprived of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. The Communion of fellowship was gone, and with it the Blessed Eucharist. It was a fast which went way beyond Lent and which drove me, at least, further into the resources of prayer. I had long before adopted the practice of praying the Offices of the Church at the week-end, and I extended this into a daily routine. Anyone getting the message I like my routines will be reading me aright. But without them, at such times, I wonder how I should have managed?

It has been an interesting discipline. The easy habits are to pray when one is joyful or sorrowful, happiness and sorrow tend to remind me of God. The daily routine has been interesting. There have been times when press of business – the ever-demanding Zoom – has made it hard to find the time. There have been times when the “mood” does not seem right. Yet this is, I have discovered, the whole point of regular daily prayer. It has ceased to be about “me” and has become about “Him”. I have found in that both a discipline and a liberation. However I “felt” when I started, I have always felt better when I finished. It has been similar with the walking and the Rosary. I have surprised myself at the extent to which it is possible to pray mindfully while walking. One falls into a rythmn, and it becomes as natural as breathing.

That “destiny” of which Newman spoke, and to which I referred in my last post, may be known only to God, but increasingly I have come to realise that Cavafy had the right of it in his great poem, Ithaka when he concluded that it was the journey, and not the destination which mattered:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

And yes, as Ithaka approaches, Cavafy was right. The ends, in this world, may remain undiscovered, but it is the journey, and what it adds to what you brought to it that matters.

Atque et vale

30 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Education, Faith

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When I started at St Mary’s University in Twickenham in September 2016 I more or less gave up this blog. It was clear to me that participating in the Catholic Culture wars, even inadvertently, was incompatible with my new responsibilities – and anyway, I had a chance to actually do something – that is to help make a Catholic University a strong presence in the Higher Education sector – rather than simply write about these things.

As I retire, after forty-three years in Higher Education, five of them at St Mary’s, it is time to take up the reins again, not to participate in any culture wars – as my more recent posts here should have made clear, I long ago tired of that, but rather to reflect on Christianity in the public square. But first, and here, some reflections as I say “hail and farewell”.

I entered the world of Higher Education, as it then was not generally called, in September 1979 as a lecturer in the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglian in Norwich. I was even more blessed than I thought at the time. I knew jobs were going to become scarce, but none of us had any idea they would become so scarce that by 1983 even Mrs Thatcher’s Government, not well-disposed to the sector, would pump some money into what were called “new blood” posts, just to stop the situation becoming impossible. So many of my contemporaries who have jobs, got them then. The Thatcher Government distrusted Universities. It distrusted our claims of professionalism and self-governance, seeing in them little more than self-interested excuses for doing what we wanted rather than what we should be doing. The problem with this was that the Government was not terribly sure what that was, a problem shared by successive administrations, whose interventions would, but for the profesisonalism and resilience of the Sector, have totally wrecked things.

As it is, what successive Governments have managed to do is to load the Sector with a regulatory system which the old USSR would have envied, where the question “quis cusodiet ipsos cusdodes?” (who guards the guardians themselves?) is answered by the creation of ever more guardians; if this was a deliberate job-creation scheme for graduates, it would almost be admirable. As it is, even the present Government (surely in an unhappy catalogue the worst in living memory?) has realised it needs to cut back on the number of guardians. But it still has no idea what Higher Education is for. It seems, if one is to believe its rhetoric (itself an interesting philosophical question, can one believe a word that the Prime Minister utters when he so obviously has no conception of the distiction between truth and whatever suits his purpose?), it would seem that it wants “value for money degrees” and “useful knowledge.” Mr Gradgrind is back; in truth her never went away.

And yet, how ignorant this view of Higher Education is, as the University from which I am retiring has shown. With an Employability rate in the 90% range, in a university which takes more than 60% of its students from backgrounds where no one in the family has been to university, no one could accuse St Mary’s of not caring about getting good career prospects for its students. My academic colleagues put in longer hours than anyone would pay them for before they believe in the real mission of the university; they know our real Mission.

It is that mission which brought me to St Mary’s and it is that mission which took me into Higher Education, and it is a mission with a heavy religious dimension. It is best expressed in St John Henry Newman’s words:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons

Newman

And that, in a nutshell, is what we do in Higher Education. Our job is simple but complex, it is to help every student who is capable of studying and wants to study, to become the best “them” they can be. It’s not our job to say how many scientists, lawyers etc. the country is going to need. No one can know that. Jobs which the Government might say are essential today, may not exist in twenty years time, and jobs no one ever thought of will exist. What is needed are people who know how to think and people who are rounded individuals. Newman got it right in his Idea of a University and it is that mission which St Mary’s has continued.

St Mary’s is a special place because embedded in its DNA is a commitment to teaching. It was founded in 1850 to provide teachers for “Catholic Poor Schools.” It was not founded by any Government, it was founded by the Catholic Church to help train teachers for the Irish immigrants and other Catholics in London. That great and much-understimated man, Cardinal Manning, would not allow the construction of a cathedral in London until every parish had a school. Education pulled men and women out of poverty – and poverty took, and takes many forms.

After the Pandemic, no one can doubt that communities in this country are still blighted by material poverty, and the Churches, Anglican and Catholic, have played a noble part in helping alleviate the suffering it causes. But there is spiritual poverty, there is cultural poverty, there is the poverty of a life lived simply for work, where the riches of family and friends take second-place to the “toad work” as Larkin put it:

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork

And drive the brute off?

Philip Larkin: Toads

One of the purposes of a University education is to help each invidual find that destiny for which God has selected them, and to equip them with the wherewithal to achieve it. But that destiny has never been just to get rich. We can see what God thinks of such people not only by those to whom he gives riches, but by what he has to say about them in Scripture. Life is a gift, and teaching at any level is a privilege because we get the chance to help others become what is in them – education is about that “leading out” process.

It ws with this faith that I entered Higher Education forty-three years ago and as I retire from my Provostship I can say as St Paul did

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

I now hand on that torch, with confidence, to my successors. There is a very great deal of rubbish talked about what goes on in our universities most of it from people who are not in them. For sure, as we are fallen creatures, not all is Eden, but I thought, as I looked out with pride at my last graduation ceremony as Provost, that of all the ways of spending the life given to me by God, this was one of the better ones. My teachers made a difference to me they could never have imagined, and if by God’s Grace I have been able to do likewise, that is sufficient.

None Dare Call it Apostasy

03 Monday May 2021

Posted by in Abortion, Church/State, Faith

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I’m not going to comment my opinions on this article, although I suspect you all know them, but I do want to bring it to your attention. It deals with the Catholic Church in the United States. I expect many Americans of other churches and other nationalities of almost all churches will see something familiar in it. By George Neumayr in The American Spectator.

The post-Vatican II Church has bred many of her own destroyers. Joe Biden is the premier example of this phenomenon. He is the anti-Catholic “Catholic” who persecutes his own church. He represents a political class of bad Catholics that grows larger with each passing year. […]

The U.S. bishops, as a whole, lack the will to withhold Communion from Biden, even though canon law says that they not only have the right but the duty to do so. Canon 915 “obliges the minister of Holy Communion to refuse the Sacrament” to those in “manifest grave sin.” If Biden’s direct facilitation of the killing of unborn children doesn’t fall into that category, what does?

For decades, dust has gathered on the unused canon law books of the bishops. We are not Eucharistic gatekeepers, they have said over the years, explaining why they don’t enforce canon law against enemies of Church teaching. Such a claim would have come as a surprise to the Church’s first bishops. Jesus Christ told the apostles that the good shepherd watches the gate, lest his flock be eaten. […]

Of course, no such dialogue ever happens. This is the so-called “pastoral” approach that has emptied out the pastures of the Church and exposed the flock to wolves. Future historians may find it perplexing that the most pro-abortion administration ever was headed up by a “Catholic,” but it is not. This scandal was a long time coming. Through laxity and heterodoxy, the bishops allowed a class of pro-abortion nominal Catholics to crop up, from Mario Cuomo to Joe Biden. And even at this late date, even as Biden takes direct aim at the Little Sisters of the Poor and other Catholics, the bishops still won’t take decisive action against him.

Do read it and comment here, this is something that matters to all orthodox Christians.

And so, to the Garden

01 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by in Faith, Lent

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And so, today and tonight the story moves to the Last Supper, a Seder meal remembering that God had set the Jews free from the Eqyptian Captivity, and for us, that is not unconnected, for that tradition moved into Christianity, and has led to the unparalleled freedom we have enjoyed and defended against all others. That freedom is one of the fruits of Christianity, it has never existed except where Judaism and Christianity ruled, and it still doesn’t.

From the time when Christians were the wonder of the ancient world as they disregarded the all but universal practice of leaving unwanted infants to die of exposure to this very day as we fight against the horrors of infanticide whose proponents use the euphemism of abortion to hide their crime. It is all down to Judeao-Christians honoring God’s promise.

But tonight Jesus will go to Gethsemene to camp one last time (in the flesh) with His disciples. There Judas will find his chance to betray the Lord and will take it.

In 2013 Jessica published an excellent meditation on Judas here on her blog. It starts like this.

Even the first time he appears, Judas’ name is associated with the betrayal which makes him infamous and immortal in history. We have two accounts of how he met his end: St Matthew tells us he hanged himself in a fit of shame and remorse; in Acts, Luke tells us ‘Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.’ He has become the epitome of the false friend. Why did he do it?

The Synoptic Gospels agree that Judas was bribed. Greed then, 30 pieces of silver; was it for this that the Saviour of the World was handed over to the torturers? John goes further, telling us that Judas ‘was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it.’  He objected to Mary using expensive, scented oil to anoint the feet of the Lord, giving us one of the few other insights we have into his behaviour.

I heartily recommend it, Jess does these better than almost anyone ever has. On that same day, on my blog, she was also speaking of Judas, and while you would do well to read the whole post, I’ll give you some of her conclusions.

Judas had clearly had enough. Though the Synoptic Gospels tell us he betrayed Jesus for silver, John gives us the clue that it was Mary’s use of expensive oil to anoint Jesus’ feet which pushed him over the edge. It might, of course, be, as John said, that he had been tipping into the till and helping himself to money, but his taking offence was clear enough evidence of what type of man he was.  He was a zealot, a puritan – how dare Jesus allow people to waste oil which could have been spent to help the poor. He, Judas, knew what was right, and he had lost patience with Jesus.

Simon Peter was headstrong, and didn’t always get it right. After supper, when Jesus had said He was going to wash the feet of the disciples, Peter protested and said He wouldn’t allow it. But when Jesus told him that if he didn’t, he couldn’t be with Him, Peter didn’t ask for an explanation, he told Jesus he wanted to be washed all over.

Caiaphas and Judas reasoned their way through to a conclusion based on their own insights, and they saw, as we all do, only so far. Peter also reasoned his way to what seemed to him a sensible conclusion, but the love he felt for Jesus opened his heart and he saw further than he had with his intellect. Jesus warned him that he had been handed over to Satan to be ‘sifted’. Peter declared he never would deny Jesus – but Christ knew what was coming.

As the disciples slept and the Romans and the Jewish guard came closer, the silence of that dark night was broken only by the anguish of Jesus. His time had come.

And so it was foretold, and so it happened.

Wednesday: Holy Week

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Early Church, Easter, Faith, fiction, Lent

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Today was a relatively quiet day in Jerusalem all those years ago – the major event we still recognize was that Judas Iscariot met with the Jewish leaders and received his 30 pieces of silver. But why? We’ll look at that tomorrow.

Today on Neo, there is a new post by Jessica, one of her series of historical fiction speculating about the life of Mary Magdalene. She wrote it last fall ane I saved it for Holy Week. It is, I think, one of the best posts she ever wrote, so I’m going to cheat a bit and post it here as well. Do reflect carefully on what she says ere, an excellent guide for us all. Here, from my dearest friend.

A Harlot’s Way: 5 The Cross

I have tried three times to write this.I can’t. I told Luke what he wanted to know. I am told Matthew and Mark have written an account of that awful day. If John would write it then maybe, in his hands, it could lift you up – of us all, he is the true mystic. But John is long gone, I heard of him last in Ephesus, and the Romans have killed so many of us. Here, where I am, on the very outskirts of Empire, we may be safe, but one never knows – and if it be His will that we should die for him, we shall. None of which helps me with what happened after I anointed the feet of Jesus.

If this is ever read it will be by people who know the story: the entry into Jerusalem; that last supper; the agony in Gethsemane; the farce of a trial; the cruel death; the blackest despair. All made bearable by what happened next. Indeed, only what happened next makes sense of it, but in that making sense, we risk losing something – that is the sacrifice Jesus made. It isn’t as though he did not have a choice. He need not have gone to Jerusalem for the Passover. He need not have done what he did in the Temple. At that last supper, he could have slipped out as Judas did. There were those at Gethsemane who would have fought to keep him safe. It is the fact that there were those options – and that he did not take them – which bear witness to his definition of love. It is easy (which is why men do it so often) to talk of love when what is really meant is a longing for something or someone to please us; but the love that took him to that awful place on Golgotha – that is something else.

It was John Mark running back to the upper room which alerted us to what had happened. Nearly naked, we could see from that, and from the horror in his voice that something awful had occurred. I gave him some wine and calmed him down. He told us what had happened in the garden. Mary of Bethany said, bless her, that they would realise there had been a mistake and he would be released; mother Mary looked as though her heart was breaking, and shook her head. She knew, I knew, we all knew in our hearts that this was that sacrifice of which he had spoken. I knew, mother Mary and others knew, that he had rebuked Peter for saying it should not be so. But not all the knowing it was his will and destiny could stop our tears and fears. We put a look-out at the window, and we were ready to decamp at a moment’s notice. We need not have worried, it was him they wanted; they had him.

It was the worst attempt at a night’s sleep any of us ever made. Every step on the street outside caused alarm, and in the end, I made us a very early breakfast. It must have been towards dawn that the men began to return. John was in tears, Philip and Andrew in shock. But it was Peter whose appearance shocked me most. He looked as though he had aged ten years in as many hours. His hair seemed whiter, his eyes tired and tearful. When Andrew asked him what had happened he shook off his comforting hand, swore, and went into a corner where he muttered angrily at himself. It was dear John who brought him round. Then Matthew came and said that a crowd was gathering near the Governor’s palace. I offered to go with Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Salome the doula.

When we got there we found a huge mob. From the balcony, Pilate was talking – offering to release Jesus or Bar-Abbas, the robber. The crowd, stirred on by the Pharisees demanded the latter. Mary and I gripped each other tight as Jesus appeared on the balcony. He looked tired and drawn. When Pilate announced he would release the robber, he asked what he should do with Jesus? The cry went up: “Crucify him!” Mary clung to me and wept. A man next to us turned on us:

“Are you one of his supporters?”

I looked him in the eye with the stare I had always used on men of his sort:

“Yes, what of it? Were you not there the other say hailing him as king of the Jews?”

The man blenched and turned away. I had guessed right. How many of those blowhards who now cried for his death had celebrated him only days before?

We returned to the house.

Mother Mary asked us for news, so we gave it straight. We knew what we had to do. He would be crucified on Golgotha, we needed to get there so we could be with him at the last. Peter looked at me as though I was crazy:

“They will take you and Mary, what are you thinking, woman!”

“I am thinking, Peter, that if you want to stay here and hide, do so, I am not ashamed or afraid. They are not going to strip me naked and hang me on a tree!”

John said he would come with us.

So it was we watched that sad last walk as, battered and bruised almost beyond recognition, he tried to drag that cross up the hill. But his strength failed, and Alexander and Rufus’ father carried it for him. We got close enough for mother Mary to mop his brow. I told the soldiers who we were and the centurion, who seemed to admire my courage, allowed us to stand at the foot of the cross.

We watched as they mocked him. We heard his words. He commended mother Mary of John’s tender care – and how marvelously he fulfilled that charge. Then he gave up his spirit and we cried as though tears had no end. The sky grew black. When those soldiers came to check whether the three men on the crosses were dead, there was no doubt about him. We asked for his body; they gave it to us.

Oh, oh, oh of that I cannot write. To see that life whose entry into the world I had seen thirty-three years earlier now broken, battered and lifeless is more that I can bear. I kissed that bloody brow and washed him with the water brought by Joseph’s men. Joseph’s men told us we could use his tomb and showed us where.

As we got there, it was almost time for the Passover. We finished washing him. We anointed him with herbs. I took the winding cloth which I had brought back with me from Babylon and we wrapped him in it, with a cloth to cover that battered face. Then, we each kissed him and headed for the exit. The soldiers rolled a great stone across the entrance and stood guard. We went back home in silence. What could be said? He had gone. He had said he would return. Deep, deep inside me that small flame burned bright.

Crossposted from: Nebraska Energy Observer

A Modern Passion Play

29 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by in Faith, Lent

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As we work our way into the second year of lockdown to flatten the curve, many of us remain more or less forcibly unchurched. Well, I was that way in college, since there was no local church of my denomination, nor did I have a car available. So it was time to improvise, adapt, and overcome, as it is now for people of faith.

Our forebearers had their passion plays to act out parts of the story of the Bible, most especially the Passion of Christ. And in fact, there is a modern one that was my mainstay in college. It’s certainly not as good as the services we normally would attend this week, but it is much better than nothing, or perhaps for some of us, even reading the words and being unable to visualize what this sacrifice the God himself made to save us was like.

I hope and yes, pray, that this will remind some of you, as it did me years ago, about how much God loves us all, no matter how we have behaved. Oh, and enjoy as well, for it came out of a burst of creativity rarely seen.

Friday Thoughts

12 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in Faith

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John Chrysostom: Homily 42

I am conscious that I have not written here since last weekend. Aside from generally not being in the mood to write after a normal day’s work, I have struggled to find something to say that is appropriate. The news is continually a source of anger as we go from one controversy to another. Readers at NEO will note the bleak tone of my recent comments there.

There are trivial things I could write about, such as food, but readers of this blog typically expect something of spiritual, ethical, or political significance. Christians also disagree about our approach to the world: some say that if we ignore it, we become introverted and selfish, while others say that if we pay it attention, it is apt to distract us from Christ and the everlasting kingdom that the righteous shall inherit. In truth, there is no general answer: managing one’s mental health depends upon one’s circumstances and temperament.

I have set out below part of John Chrysostom’s homily on John 6 (taken from the Catholic site, New Advent):

“Beloved, let us not contend with violent men, but learn when the doing so brings no hurt to our virtue to give place to their evil counsels; for so all their hardihood is checked. As darts when they fall upon a firm, hard, and resisting substance, rebound with great violence on those who throw them, but when the violence of the cast has nothing to oppose it, it soon becomes weaker and ceases, so is it with insolent men; when we contend with them they become the fiercer, but when we yield and give ground, we easily abate all their madness. Wherefore the Lord when He knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, went into Galilee, to quench their envy, and to soften by His retirement the wrath which was likely to be engendered by these reports.”

There is wisdom here. There is a time for resisting, but also a time for retiring. In Ecclesiastes, it says: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…a time of war, and a time of peace” (3:1,8). Wisdom lies in knowing what time it is. Some people will not be persuaded, no matter how hard we try. Sometimes, the best thing is to retire.

God has a great day of judgment in store. Though we may not be vindicated in this life, though the war on truth may continue apace, that does not mean there is no reckoning, no rebuke. Each person must stand before God at the Last Day and answer for their words, thoughts, deeds, and omissions. Nor will God abandon this world to the god of this age. One day Christ will return and the kingdoms of this world will become His. He will reign in glory from Jerusalem and delegate the rule of the nations to His faithful saints.

Why I like traditional Anglican liturgy

I’m not really an Anglican, although I have spent many a Sunday at Anglican services (not to mention some Friday morning communion services). Traditional services provide a quiet space for reflection. They tend to avoid the excesses that I have seen in various contexts.

This is important. Sobriety and focussing on God are a necessary balm in these difficult times and form a stark contrast to certain forms of churchmanship that have a tendency distract and misplace our focus. YouTube is filled with videos of people who have left churches (whether to join other ones or to become atheist or agnostic) because of cultures and doctrines that were detrimental.

Traditional liturgy also helps the Christian to feel part of the wider church, both spatially and in terms of the chain of history. Its ancientness reminds us that Christians of times past have faced persecution and difficulties, but overcame through their faith in Christ. Its stately solemnity reminds us that the vicissitudes of this life are temporary. God’s kingdom is everlasting.

The Anglo-Catholic manner of conducting it (and even the less ornate choir-dress style) reminds us that our brethren are found in all denominations. We may disagree on various points, but we all worship the Holy Trinity and confess that Christ died for our sins and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Online Church

07 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Faith

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If you are looking for an online church, whether because of lockdown, ill health, or any other reason, please consider St Barnabas Anglican Church in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). This church is not affiliated with the blog in any way, but has proved a source of comfort and fellowship to some of its members.

Saint Barnabas is an Anglo-Catholic church, which may be suitable for a number of readers of this blog, especially those who would like to attend something more traditional but feel unable to follow a Latin liturgy. St Barnabas broadcasts its services live and offers Zoom bible study sessions. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, so that you are notified of services in advance, and to visit their website. If you live in the UK, don’t forget the time-zone difference: the morning Sunday Eucharist service is broadcast at 15:55 UK time.

The intention of this post is not to recommend a particular church over another, and so contributors and readers of the blog are welcome to put links to other church services that they have found helpful in the comments below, whether of their main, pre-lockdown church, or one they discovered after the inception of the pandemic.

I am mindful that for many, their own normal church may not provide online services or they may feel that they were in any event looking to explore something different. This pandemic has given many of us pause and, indeed, forced some churches to close where they were not able to put sufficient financial support structures in place.

Online church is, of course, not the same as attending in person. For those of us in the UK who await in-person services again, the return to these, once authorised again, may not be straightforward. My own “mother church”, if you like, is Baptist. Accordingly, the return to in-person services, though led by the leadership team, will be in consultation and collaboration with the members, who elect the leaders and vote on important matters.

As we look forward to gathering once again, many of us will be pensive, reflecting on where our walk with God will lead, and what the communal aspect of that walk will look like. For some, the focus will be on receiving the sacraments again; for others it will be about the public worship of God through our prayers and hymns; for others still, it will be about outreach ministries in various forms.

But there will also be those who are new to the faith, nervous perhaps about attending a church in person for the first time (or the first time after a long absence). In addition, there will no doubt be those whose faith has been challenged by the pandemic (or had their pre-existing concerns forced to the surface by it). Returning to “normal life” for these two groups may mean attending an Alpha Course or some other appropriate structured meetings or sessions to learn the fundamentals of Christianity (or have them re-examined and re-affirmed).

I hope that this blog will be of use to people in all of the above circumstances and that we all continue to support one another in any way we can.

Saturday Thoughts

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in Faith

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Return of the sun

So here we are and the days are lengthening. Soon the clocks will go forward. Mothering Sunday approaches and daffodils are open or opening in our gardens. This is the time of year when the sky is a watery blue, and we crawl out of the wreckage of winter, cradling hope for something new, something better.

Perhaps more than many a previous year, we cling on, awaiting the easing of restrictions, a fall in infection and death rates, and an end to the caution, fear and anger that have riddled us. Soon it will be exactly a year since the first lockdown was imposed in the UK.

Hope is not an easy thing to keep hold of. It also comes unexpectedly upon us, returning like a ray of light penetrating a dark place. It reveals our vulnerabilities, the fact that we are in God’s hands. Yes, we make choices and are responsible for them – but much of life is beyond our control. Things happen to us and we are faced with the challenge of overcoming them, sometimes in ways that seem contrary to logic.

Martyrs

The martyrs, following the footsteps of Christ, have overcome evil with their own death. When one chants, hears, or recites the Litaniae Sanctorum, especially in the presence of icons or other images of the saints and the Saviour, one is struck by the amount of violent death in Christian history.

Saint Stephen was stoned. Under Nero, the Roman matryrs were burned as “torches” in the night and killed by beasts in the arena; Saint Peter was crucified upside down; and Saint Paul was beheaded. Saint Sebastian was pierced with arrows. Saint Ignatius was thrown to the beasts. Saint Polycarp was burned at the stake and pierced with a spear, and Saint Laurence is traditionally held to have been burned to death on a gridiron.

Martyrdom has persisted throughout the history of the Church. Today Christians suffer terrible persecution at the hands of Islamists and Communists and other totalitarians. Their witness haunts us and surrounds us – but in heaven they are seated with Christ in glory. Sometimes it is good to look at paintings and icons of them seated with Christ, inspired by the imagery of Revelation and other parts of Scripture, as a reminder to us that, though they suffered terrible things, they have obtained everlasting glory and will one day rule the earth with Christ when He returns.

The Exodus and Cherubim

I have been watching videos on the YouTube channel, “Ancient Egypt and the Bible“, which are put out at least once per week. The host is an academic and holds to a Ramesside date for the Exodus (Late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age). The videos are interesting and reminded me to re-examine a depiction of the Ramesses II’s camp tent, as many scholars consider that to be useful as context for understanding the Tabernacle of Meeting raised by Moses.

It is interesting to note that the cartouche of the Pharaoh in the inner room of the tent (which analogically corresponds to the Holy of Holies) is flanked, or “overshadowed” by two falcons (representing Horus) with open wings. The terms “Cherubim” is essentially a functional one referring to the spirits that surround the throne of God and draw His chariot.

They are described in different ways in Scripture, which suggests that, although the basic concept of what they are remained static, the conceptualisation of their appearance was most likely conditioned by cultural context. Accordingly, having spent years in Egypt, the Israelites most likely conceived of their appearance in Egyptian iconographic terms following the Exodus and for many years after (i.e. as sphinxes, falcons, Isis and Nephthys, etc.). (Similarly, the “Seraphim” of Isaiah were most likely imagined in Egyptian terms because of the cultural influence of Egypt over Judah in the days of Isaiah. Seals from the period have images of cobras with many wings, derived from the Egyptian uraeus.) By contrast, during the Babylonian Exile, Ezekiel’s Cherubim clearly owe more to Mesopotamian iconography than they do to Egyptian. It is also possible that Abraham, having come from Mesopotamia, conceived of these throne-guardians in similarly Mesopotamian imagery.

Josephus believed the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant resembled birds. One might naturally assume this, given the biblical text explicitly refers to their wings. However, this may be a tradition that accurately recorded the fact that they were modelled on the Egyptian falcon iconography. We may never know as the Bible says the Ark will never be built again, and it may never be recovered, if indeed it still exists.

Internet

03 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Audre, Faith

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During this Covid season, there has been much talk about how terrible ‘internet church’ is. There is, of course, nothing that takes the place of actually going (or being allowed to go) to church. Like the Bible – it’s one thing to hear stories from it, it’s an entirely different thing when one reads the Bible for one’s self. It is a living, breathing thing, as is the church.

I have no problem with internet church. It does what church is supposed to do – it reaches people. We always say that Jesus will meet you wherever you are – and that includes the internet. Long, long, long before covid, we’ve had our ‘shut ins’. They depended on the ability of the priest to make his rounds of visitations and then the shut-ins were alone again until the next month. Not so today. We are able to attend church even if we can’t attend church; we fellowship even if there are no coffee or cookies; we encourage each other even if we can’t reach out and pat someone’s hand in support and compassion.

My dearest friend Alys is in the UK and on lockdown – as is the whole country. She attends church with me on our church’s YouTube channel every week. We both attend Bible study with Bishop Chad via Zoom. We are doing Stations of the Cross every Friday at noon during Lent using Face Book video chat.

The chat feature is open on the church’s YT channel and if you promise not to tell the Bishop, I’ll tell you we chat – only during announcements of course (wink). I’ve been so pleased to be able to do Stations, I put my email address on the chat and invited anyone who is interested to join Alys and me when we do Stations. Sure enough – I received an email from a woman in Louisiana that wants to do Stations with us. In chatting back and forth via email, she mentioned she’s in hospice with stage four lung cancer. Going out is not an option for her. Were it not for the internet, she’d not be able to do Stations – I sent her the prayers so she can read a Station if she wants to or just follow along as Alys and I take turns with the readings.

There is no Holy Communion for us. Again, nothing takes the place of receiving Communion in both kinds. But the Church, in her wisdom, has given us a form for Spiritual Communion. Is it second to the real thing? Of course it is, but it is far, far better than to have nothing; ‘Spiritual Communion’ can be as fortifying as taking it – almost. But it is fulfilling and curbs the yearning in the heart for the real thing. Our friend in Louisiana did not have the form and just sort of waited online until the tech guy (God bless Dave and his devotion to serving the online congregation) comes back from receiving Communion and turns the church’s cameras back on. Now that she has the form, she, Alys, and I have our spiritual communion as the rest of the congregation have their actual communion. We are apart – but we are not apart. The congregation and the online congregation are one – we all pray together; that we are not sitting next to each other is meaningless. We are together.

The internet, just like any kind of technology, can be a blessing or a curse. I have found great blessing – and fellowship and encouragement – using the internet and the different technologies. So … no; I have no problem with the internet or internet church or internet fellowship. Wherever two or more are gathered in His name, there He is also.