Tag Archives: Christianity

Christmas Eve Almost Friends

24 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in Christmas, Faith

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Well, it’s been a tough year, for all of us, our blogs, and our countries. I’ve lost dear friends, to death, and to internet silence, the vaccine madness, and I’ve dearly missed my friends on All along the Watchtower, so this Christmas Eve let’s join again in fellowship.

I was reminded today of Winston Churchill’s Christmas message in 1941 from the White House, to us all, Briton, American, and the rest of the Anglophone world. We were then engaged in a mighty endeavor to save our nations and our freedom. So it is again. (h/t Victory Girls)

24 December 1941

Washington, D.C.

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome,  convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.  Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.  Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.”

In that same broadcast Franklin Roosevelt reminded us:

Our strongest weapon against this war is the conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas Day signifies—more than any other day or any other symbol.”

He continued, “Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care for us and all men everywhere.”

From me, Audre, and Nicholas, and all who frequent NEO

Merry Christmas to all

with our hopes and prayers for the renewal of this, one of our favorite places on the internet.

 

Good? Friday

02 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in Lent, Salvation

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When I was a child, I always wondered how the day when Jesus suffered murder by the state could be called Good. As I grew up and put away childish things and thoughts, I came to understand the story. It is the ultimate story of servant leadership. It is the story of how God himself came down in the guise of a man, to show us the way. Here’s a part of the story.

And so now we come to the climax. We have seen Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we have seen the Last Supper with its echoing call “Do this in Remembrance of Me”, we have seen the arrest during prayers in the garden.

We have seen Peter, renamed Cephas (the Rock) deny the Christ 3 times. We have seen the trial before the Sanhedrin, and the passing of the buck to the Roman, Pontius Pilate who could find no fault in this man but allowed him to be condemned according to Roman practice.

We have even seen the treachery of Judas, paupers who for 30 pieces of silver betrayed his Lord, soon repented, attempted to return the reward (which ended up funding paupers cemetery), and his death as a suicide.

And so now we come to the fatal procession from Jerusalem to Golgotha.

In one way or another, we will all walk the Via Dolorosa. One of the mottoes I use to keep trying to do the right thing, “No one, not even Christ, ever got out of life alive”. For me, that about sums it up. You may as well do the right thing, you might not get the reward on earth that you were striving for, but at the judgment seat, you will be rewarded.

Here is the story according to St. Matthew:

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. And sitting down they watched him there. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross, and the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew.

And the chief priests said unto Pilate, It should be written and set up over his head, his accusation, This is he that said he was Jesus, the King of the Jews. But Pilate answered and said, What I have written, I have written; let it alone.

Then were there two thieves crucified with him; one on the right hand, and another on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it again in three days save thyself. If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now; if he will save him, let him save him; for he said, I am the Son of God.

One of the thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. But the other rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation; and this man is just, and hath not sinned; and he cried unto the Lord that he would save him. And the Lord said unto him This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli,lama sabachthani?(That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?) Some of them that stood there, when they heard him, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let him be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.

Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice, saying, Father, it is finished, thy will is done, yielded up the ghost. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and the bodies of the saints which slept, arose, who were many, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, heard the earth quake, and saw those things which were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him for his burial; among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.

Now, remember this was on Friday following the triumphant entry the prior Sunday. How the mighty had fallen, from the crowd’s hero, one might say a rock star, to an executed criminal buried in a borrowed grave in a week.

This was the man many had expected to free Israel from Rome, there would be others for that mission, it would culminate at Masada and in the destruction of Jerusalem and the diaspora. The next ruler of the city, after Rome, would be Islam, contested by the Crusader knights. But until our own time, Jerusalem would not be ruled again by the Jews.

And so the Messiah, the King of the Jews died. The lesson would seem to be not to upset the applecart, to go along to get along, even to sit down and shut up, wouldn’t it?

It’s a pretty sharp lesson too. One of the most cruel methods of execution ever devised by man.

And so ends the story;

or does it?

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

Tuesday of Holy Week

30 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Easter, Lent

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Tuesday of Holy Week is a day we don’t talk about much these days. There are no special (and memorable) services such as many of the other days of this week have. But it has a drama all its own. For it is full of advice for us and warnings for mankind. Not to mention more than a few parables.

I’m only going to repeat a small part of it, you can find these in any of the Gospels, they are part of the bedrock of Christianity, but this is a specific warning that Jesus gave to the people and his disciples, from The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 23, in the Authorized Version

23 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2 saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: 3 all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. 5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, 6 and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. 15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! 17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? 18 And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. 19 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? 20 Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. 21 And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. 22 And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30 and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35 that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Audre is speaking today on my blog about a new, more masculine church arising, I agree with her, and here is the foundation of that church, in Christ’s Examination in the Temple. Here is Jesus, both man and God, and the most glorious example of masculinity, no matter the consequences ever seen on this earth or anywhere else for that matter. Take heart for the Master is always with us.

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.

Back Again Into the Wasteland

17 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Church/State, Lent, poetry, Tolkien

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The Hollow Men 5A note from Neo

Well, I’m back again, not that I really left, I’ve been posting on the Neo blog, as many of you know, because that has been more appropriate to my thoughts lately. I have been thinking of you though, there are a fair number of us here, but we tend to be, I suspect a good bit alike, and if you’re like me, you feel very much like a sojourner in a strange land.

Today is, of course, Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, when we traditionally give up things by which we commemorate Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, as we prepare ourselves for Easter.

I first republished this article of Jessica’s on Ash Wednesday in 2015, it is from 10 March 2013 originally on NEO and is quite similar to the one here also on 10 March 2013 called Mere Anarchy. I found the NEO version a bit more understandable, but I link them both because you may well differ. At the time I reblogged this well, it was a troubled time in my life, you who knew Jessica then will know that this was while she was at the Convent recovering from cancer, and our contact was severely limited. But God be praised that worked out. Here is Jessica’s post.

Into the Wasteland

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

The opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem speak with eloquence to any age and people who feel disconnected from what they feel is a calamitous and collapsing socio-political world.

Eliot was writing in the aftermath of the most catastrophic war in the history of the Western world. It was the war when hope died. How could one believe in progress after the Somme and the horrors of the Western Front? And what had all of that slaughter been for? A settlement at Versailles which few believed would really bring peace to the world.  Men like Wilson and Hoover, or MacDonald and Baldwin, seemed small men facing giant problems, and sure enough, within fifteen years the world had once more descended into the abyss.

Does the fault lie in our leaders? They do, indeed, seem to be hollow men, with heads stuffed with straw. The words of Yeats’ Second Coming seem apposite to our times:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

Writing in 1919, Yeats wondered:   

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand

But it was not so. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes he did not live in the time he did, when such dreadful things were happening. Gandalf’s reply is for all of us:

So do I,’  said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’

It is not for us to decide such things. All each of us can do in the end is to decide how we live our lives and by what star we steer. Those of us with a Christian faith, like Tolkien himself, know we are strangers in this world, and we know by whose star we steer. We can rage all we like against the way the world seems to be going, so did our forefathers, and so will our descendants. Eliot ends with a dying fall:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

But Yeats, in best prophetic mode wondered:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

For me, Eliot’s words in Ash Wednesday ring truest:

Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

That’s pretty much what the world feels like, increasingly to me, at least, it seems that we may have to simply burn it down and try to rebuild in the ruins. but I continue to hope not, so we will see.

In many ways, Kipling asked the question I think our political, and a fair share of church, as well, leadership should have to answer

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

But as Jess said above, we don’t get to pick the era in which we live, we are simply called to do the best we can. And so we shall, God willing.  NEO

There Is Something About Mary

24 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Faith, Marian devotion

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In her first post here, Jessica said this:

Our Lord Jesus Christ (OLJC) told the Apostles that men would know His followers by their love for each other, and He counselled them to be united; knowing us as He does, He can’t have been all that surprised that we’ve fallen away from those ideals. Perhaps if we were better at them there would be less for the polemicists to reproach us with? Great crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity, that is true, as it is of any great cause entrusted to fallen mankind. It is in our fallen nature to pervert whatever good things we have from God. In our folly we use the consequences of our own sinful state to reject the opportunity to reach out for God’s love; and in our pride erect a superstructure of Pharisaism on OLJC’s words, before proceeding to live in it rather than the love of Christ.

How very true that is we demonstrate each and every day. Yet there are things that we revere that bring us closer together. Today our Catholic brethren will celebrate Our Lady of Walsingham. That dream of Richeeldis de Faverches, A Saxon noblewoman who founded the shrine in 1061. It prospered all through medieval times visited by every King of England from William the Conqueror to Henry VIII. It was destroyed in the second round of the Dissolution of the Monasteries with its renowned statue of Mary being taken to London to be burnt, either in Chelsea or at Smithfield along with many other statues from the monasteries. or was it?

In an article on his blog, Dr. Francis Young summarizes an article he and Fr Michael Rear wrote for the Catholic Herald a year or so ago, on the circumstantial evidence they have found that a statue of the Virgin and child (apparently 13th century) referred to as the Langham Madonna, (pictured above) now at the Victoria and Albert Museum may, in fact, be the statue that once adorned the Holy House at Walsingham. He really doesn’t go into enough detail for me to have an opinion in his blog post, and the Catholic Herald article comes up 404. But he makes a pretty good case for it. Apparently, it was a common form at that time and this is the only one that survived. It’s worth your time to read and wonder. Walsingham has always had something of the miraculous about it, as you’ll know if you’ve read our various posts about it.

It started with Jessica’s Pilgrimage there in 2012 only a couple months after starting this blog, which she detailed here, here, and here. She gives a very good outline history of the shrine in the course of these posts, and in a personal note, she did indeed light candles for her readers, and at that almost precise time, I felt a great peace go through me, and that is when our friendship became deep and unshakable.

The shrine is also connected with us in other ways, including her miraculous cure from cancer.

The Shrine which has been so central to this blog (if you search for ‘Walsingham” you will find many articles, from Jessica, from Chalcedon, and from me dealing with it. But the main thing bout it seems to me to be a unifying force for Christians of all types and places.

There is a Catholic Shrine at the Slipper Chapel which is historically connected with it, there is an orthodox Shrine and Methodist and (I think) even Coptic chapels. And that is also what we for eight years have attempted to do here, to be ecumenical without being syncretic. In the main, we have succeeded.

In a post on Our Lady Day in Harvest, in 2017 A Clerk of Oxford gave us a very good reading as to what Mary meant to our forbearers.

Though they contain plenty of miracles and marvels and angels, they’re somehow very human and ordinary. At the heart of them is a woman, loving and much loved, whose life is traced from the first wonder of her conception to her peaceful death. In a sequence like that at Chalgrove, or in Ely’s Lady Chapel, or in the Book of Hours or the plays, Mary’s life is mapped out through domestic, everyday scenes: parents rejoicing in the birth of a longed-for baby; a little girl learning to read with her mother, or climbing the steps to the temple like a child on her first day at school; a teenage Mary with her female friends, happy with her baby, at her churching, or in the last days of her life. These were familiar rituals of childhood and motherhood which resonated with medieval audiences – with women especially, but not only women. They are completely relatable, not only for mothers like Margery Kempe but for anyone who has ever had a mother, ever been a child, and there’s something beautiful about elevating such ordinary family relationships to the dignity of high art. In these scenes Mary is not an unapproachably distant figure but a woman imagined in relationship to others: a daughter, wife, mother, friend. In particular, the story of her passing is full of other people and their love for her – the apostles and her friends gathering around her bedside, Christ cradling her soul in his arms like a child. She is unique, but never alone.

Personally, I always like to end these posts with these words from St Isaac the Syrian

In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

“Believe It and You Have It”

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Lutheranism

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If you were to ask Martin Luther, the most famous question in American Evangelicalism, “Are you born again?” He would say, “Of course I am a born-again Christian, I am baptized.” As do many of us to this day. We are Christians, we have always been (as far as we can remember). What is this tosh about born again?

What this is all about is why Lutherans (and I suspect in some ways it applies to all of the older churches), at least those who use the phrase, “One Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church” as we do. we tend to be not wholly Protestant.

That is why there is no revivalism in Lutheranism, or indeed in the Orthodox or Catholic traditions, where we teach baptismal regeneration and practice infant baptism. Let’s look at some differences, shall we?

For Luther, justification isn’t tied to any single event but happens as often as we repent and return to the power of baptism. Justification by faith alone happens in the Catholic context of the Catholic sacrament of penance. Sorry, it’s not a once in a lifetime deal. This doesn’t eliminate choice (one can always refuse to believe).

Luther’s beliefs parallel the Catholic belief in sacramental efficacy, which places salvific power in external things. Without this, we must rely on faith as well, in other words, the fact that I believe.

Luther often says, “Believe it and you have it”, in many variations. This is not because faith earns it or achieves anything, it is simply because God keeps his word.

This is certainly not because of the perception of the mind, this is purely rigorously objective truth, God does not lie. Our certainty is based upon that, not on our faith. In Why Luther Is Not Quite Protestant,¹ Phillip Cary writes.

Whoever believes and is baptized is saved” (Mark 16:16) Luther teaches that the baptismal formula, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” is the word of Christ.  Luther is emphatic on this point: the words spoken in the act of baptizing are Christ’s own, so it is Christ who really performs the baptism.  Most importantly for the logic of faith, the first-person pronoun in the baptismal formula refers to Christ, so that it is Christ himself who says to me, “I baptize you….”  Ministers are merely the mouthpiece for this word of Christ, just as when they say, “This is my body, given for you.”

Making that decision for Christ or a conversion experience actually detracts from, the point about faith alone. We are justified by believing what Christ says is true. In short, God does not lie.

In brief, it is all based on the truthfulness of God, and we (and Luther did as well) like Paul’s saying in Romans 3:4 “Let God be true and every man a liar.”

And that every man includes us. We can put no faith in our own words, not even in our confession of faith. That is one reason for infant baptism, it’s pretty shaky ground to baptize on the basis of a believer’s confession of faith because we never really know what we believe. Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone means that Christians can’t rely on faith. Faith itself doesn’t rely on itself but only Christ’s promise,

This is the well known Lutheran pro me. The emphasis is not on our experience but on what God said. It’s quite unreflective.

More to come in this series, as I get it sorted myself.

¹Pro Ecclesia 14/4 ((Fall 2005)

The Cathedral of Divine Wisdom

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Early Church, Faith, Islam

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A little over three years ago Chalcedon described the last day of Constantinople. I have nothing to add to his moving account, which is here.  Some of us of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian stock may remember 29 May 1453 as the day when Emperor Constantine XI dies amongst his household which included the Varangian Guard, his personal guard recruited from Scandinavia since Viking times and joined by Anglo-Saxons after the Conquest of England. Truly was Constantine reputed to have told his nobles and his household both that:

Constantine told his hearers that the great assault was about to begin. To his Greek subjects he said that a man should always be ready to die either for his faith or for his country or for his family or for his sovereign. Now his people must be prepared to die for all four causes.

He spoke of the glories and high traditions of the great Imperial city. He spoke of the perfidy of the infidel Sultan who had provoked the war in order to destroy the True Faith and to put his false prophet in the seat of Christ. He urged them to remember that they were the descendents of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome and to be worthy of their ancestors.

For his part, he said, he was ready to die for his faith, his city and his people

But Constantinople and it’s wondrous cathedral, Hagia Sophia, the Cathedral of Divine Wisdom of the title. had been on the front lines of the jihad for centuries. Indeed Mohammed himself lusted after the city, which capturing would open the road into Europe.

Raymond Ibrahim wrote last week in FrontPage Magazine about one, perhaps the greatest effort to capture the city, and it’s Cathedral.

At the head of 120,000 jihadis, Maslama crossed into Christian territory and, with “both sword and fire, he put an end to Asia Minor,” wrote a near contemporary chronicler.   On August 15, 717, he began bombarding the city, which was defended by Leo III, formerly a general.  Just weeks earlier, and because he was deemed the ablest man, Leo had been consecrated in the Hagia Sophia as new emperor.

Unable to breach the cyclopean walls of Constantinople, Maslama waited for 1,800 vessels containing an additional 80,000 fighting men to approach through the Bosporus and completely blockade—and thus starve—the city.

Suddenly Leo ordered the ponderous chain that normally guarded the harbor cast aside. Then, “while they [Muslim fleets] hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity . . . the ministers of destruction were at hand.” Leo sent forth the “fire-bearing ships” against the Islamic fleet, which was quickly set “on fire,” writes Theophanes the chronicler: “some of them were cast up burning by the sea walls, others sank to the bottom with their crews, and others were swept down flaming.”

Matters worsened when Maslama received word that the caliph, his brother Suleiman, had died of “indigestion” (by reportedly devouring two baskets of eggs and figs, followed by marrow and sugar for dessert). The new caliph, Omar II, was initially inattentive to the Muslim army’s needs. Maslama stayed and wintered in.

Unfortunately for him, “one of the cruelest winters that anyone could remember” arrived, and, “for one hundred days, snow covered the earth.” All Maslama could do was assure his emaciated, half-frozen men that “soon! Soon supplies will be here!” But they did not come; worse, warlike nomadic tribesmen known as Bulgars—whence the nation of Bulgaria—accustomed to the terrain and climate began to harry any Muslim detachment that left the starving camp in search of food.

By spring, Muslim reinforcements and provisions finally arrived by land and sea. But the damage was done; frost and famine had taken their toll on the Muslims encamped outside the walls of Constantinople. “Since the Arabs were extremely hungry,” writes Theophanes, “they ate all their dead animals: horses, asses, and camels. Some even say they put dead men and their own dung in pans, kneaded this, and ate it. A plague-like disease descended on them, and destroyed a countless throng.”

I’ve little to add to his account, it’s well out of my field, but he wrote a fascinating article on it that I urge you to read.

But I can read a map, and Constantinople blocked the easiest route into Europe, thus blocking the easy early conquest. Not long after this Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours blocked the western path up through what is now Spain. Thus in the eighth century was Europe saved for all we know to develop.

In the sixteenth century, the twin battles of the Siege of Warsaw, featuring King John Sobieski and his cavalry, and the naval battle of Lepanto, again checked aggressive Islamic moves on Europe.

This allowed the modern world we know to develop, with all the advances we have made.

Malcolm wrote about his visit to Hagia Sophia here.

I wrote about the amazing acoustics designed into the cathedral here.

The Cathedral of Divine Wisdom indeed.