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The eyes of all wait upon Jesus Christ. Indeed, the eyes of the world, the whole world, wait upon Jesus Christ. For in but a few short days comes the festival of our redemption, the festival of the redemption of the whole world: the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by His most loving presence, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of His mother blessed Mary, was born of her in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man. All eyes are on Jesus Christ because of His Nativity, according to the flesh: that which redeems all humanity, indeed redeems the whole world.
Hence says our patron the Apostle Paul: rejoice! Hence he says rejoice in the Lord always. Why would he have us rejoice? Because the Lord is at hand. Because the Coming One Who is Christ is coming to comfort us. He is coming to reveal His glory. And in revealing Himself, He gives to us His true peace, the peace which passes all understanding, the peace of heaven. He gives us His true peace – which is Him, for as Paul says to the Ephesians, Christ Himself is our peace – He gives Himself as our peace that we would live in Him and He in us. Christ seeks to fill all things living with His plenteousness. He seeks to fill all things with His blessing. He seeks to fill all things with Himself, that He might be all in all, that all things might be in subjection under Him.
We know that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, as Christ spoke through Isaiah. We know His glory will be revealed, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken, and He has spoken clearly: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel. Emmanuel, which means, God with us.
And He shall be with us, on the great festival of our redemption. He shall be with us through the proclamation of the apostles, whose names are written on the walls of Jerusalem above, which is our heavenly citizenship. The apostles proclaim, This is Christ the King, this holy Child is the Son of the Highest, Who comes to us on donkey and foal. To this holy Child has been given the throne of His Father, David. This holy Child reigns over the house of Jacob forever. Of the Kingdom of this Child there will be no end. This holy Child is the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.
And He shall be with us, on the great festival of our redemption, through Scripture opened to Him, in all its pages. For every word of Scripture, what we call the Old Testament, concerns Christ. He comes to us as our daily Bread to be read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested. Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, speaks through all pages of Scripture, that through preaching and prayer we know Him, even He Who passes all our understanding, He Who while conceived in the womb of Blessed Mary, yet the whole world cannot contain.
And He shall be with us in the Blessed Sacrament, administered by holy priests. The Word became Sacrament and dwelt among us. The Word became Sacrament in order that He might dwell in us, for we receive Him – all of Him: body, soul, and divinity – in the consecrated and transformed Bread and Wine, the true Body and Blood of Christ: that we might become what we receive.
(In the words of 20th-century Anglican divine Austin Farrar): Advent is a coming, not our coming to God, but His to us. We cannot come to God, he is beyond our reach; but He can come to us, for we are not beneath His mercy. As S. John teaches, we do not rise to God, but He descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ, in the holy Child about Whom the whole host of Angels sing: that we shall be His people, and He everlastingly our God, our God-with-us, our Emmanuel. He will so come, but He is come already, He comes always: in our fellow-Christian (even in a child, says Christ), in His Word, invisibly in our souls, more visibly in the Blessed Sacrament. Opening ourselves to Him, we call Him in: Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord; O come, Emmanuel: come, He Who is our Saviour, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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In the audio above is the third lecture of the Advent Study Series that I am doing at my parish. The series is called “Foundations of the Church: Introducing the Church Fathers.”
This lecture follows on from the overall introduction to the Church Fathers in my first lecture, as well as the second lecture on Ss Ignatius of Antioch and Anthony of Egypt.
The third lecture looks at three Greek Fathers, through an outline of their lives as well as a sampling of their teachings.
Firstly I look at Origen of Alexandria, who died in 254, and reflect upon a small portion of his Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John.
Secondly I look at Saint Basil the Great, who died in 379, and look at a portion of is Long Rules, also known as his Asceticon.
Thirdly I look at Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, known as the Theologian, who died in 389, and reflect on a portion of his Oration on Pentecost.
Below are the icons and texts displayed during the talk, for you to contemplate along with my own reflections.
The final lecture of this series, coming next week, will look at Saint Maximos the Confessor and the Venerable Saint Bede.
ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA
Commentary on S. John
The Gospel is the firstfruits of all Scripture. In my opinion, there are four Gospels, as though they were the elements of the faith of the Church. . . . But I think that John’s Gospel is the firstfruits of the Gospels. It speaks of Him Whose descent is traced, and begins from Him Who is without a genealogy.
For since Matthew, on the one hand, writing for the Hebrews awaiting the son of Abraham and David, says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and Mark, knowing what he is writing relates “the beginning of the gospel,” perhaps we find its goal in John, when he tells of the Word “in the beginning,” the Word being God. But Luke also having said in the beginning of Acts, “The former treatise I made of all things which Jesus began to do and teach.” Indeed John reserves for the one who leaned on Jesu’ breast the greater and more perfect expressions concerning Jesus, for none of those manifested His divinity as fully as John when he presented Him saying, “I am the light of the world”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “I am the resurrection”; “I am the door”; “I am the good shepherd”; and in the Apocalypse, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”
We might dare say, then, that the Gospels are the firstfruits of all Scriptures, but that the firstfruits of the Gospels is that according to John, whose meaning no one can understand who has not leaned on Jesus’ breast nor received Mary from Jesus to be his mother also. But he who would be another John must also become such as John, to be shown to be Jesus, so to speak. For if Mary had no son except Jesus, in accordance with those who hold a sound opinion of her, and Jesus says to His mother, “Behold your son,” and not “Behold, this man is also your son,” He has said equally, “Behold this is Jesus whom you bore.” For indeed everyone who has been perfected “no longer lives, but Christ lives in him” (Gal 2:20), and since “Christ lives” in him, it is said of him to Mary, “Behold your son,” the Christ.
SAINT BASIL THE GREAT
The Long Rules (Asceticon)
Q: Speak to us of the love of God; for we have heard that we must love Him, but we would learn how this may be rightly accomplished?
A: The love of God is not something that is taught, for we do not learn from another to rejoice in the light or to desire life, nor has anyone taught us to love our parents. In the same way and even to a far greater degree is it true that instruction in divine law in now from without, but, simultaneously with the formation of the creation – man, I mean – a kind of rational force was implanted in us like a seed which, by an inherent tendency, impels us toward love. This germ is then received into account in the school of God’s commandments, where it is wont to be carefully cultivated and skillfully nurtured and thus, by the grace of God, brought to its full perfection. Wherefore, we, also, approving of your zeal as essential for reaching the goal, shall endeavor with the help of God and the support of your prayers, and as power is given us by the Spirit, to enkindle the spark of divine love latent within you. Now, it is necessary to know that, although this is only one virtue, yet, by its efficacy, it comprises and fulfills every commandment. “If anyone love me,” says the Lord, “he will keep my commandments.” And again, “On these two commandments depend the whole law and prophets.”
What is more admirable than Divine Beauty? What reflection is sweeter than the thought of the magnificence of God? What desire of the soul is so poignant and so intolerably keen as that desire implanted by God in a soul purified from all vice and affirming with sincerity, “I languish with love.” Totally ineffable and indescribable are the lightning flashes of Divine Beauty. Words do not adequately convey nor is the ear capable of receiving knowledge of them. The rays of the morning star, or the brightness of the moon, or the light of the sun – all are more unworthy to be mentioned in comparison with that splendor; and these heavenly bodies are more inferior to the true light than is the deep darkness of night, gloomy and moonless, to brightest noonday. This Beauty, invisible to the eyes of the flesh, is apprehended by the mind and soul alone. . . . Men are by nature, then, desirous of the beautiful. But, that which is truly beautiful and desirable is the good. Now, the good is God, and, since all creatures desire good, therefore, all creatures desire God.
SAINT GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS (THE THEOLOGIAN)
Oration on Pentecost
The Holy Spirit fashions together with the Son both the creation and the resurrection. Be persuaded by these texts: “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power” (Ps 33.6); “the divine Spirit created me, and the breath of the Almighty taught me” (Job 33.4); and again, “You will send forth your Spirit and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth” (Ps 101.10).
He also fashions the spiritual rebirth. Be persuaded by the text: “Nobody can see the kingdom or receive it unless he has been born from above by the Spirit” (John 3.3-5), unless he has been purified from his earlier birth, which is a mystery of the night, by a molding in the day and in the light, through which each is molded by his own choice.
This Spirit, who is most wise and most loving toward humankind, if He takes a shepherd makes him a harper subduing evil spirits by song and proclaims him king of Israel (a Sam 16.12). If He takes a goatherd scraping mulberry trees, he makes him a prophet (Amos 7.14). Consider David and Amos. If He takes a youth with natural talents, He makes him a judge of elder, even beyond his years (Susanna 45-60). Daniel testifies to this, who was victorious over lions in their den (Dan 6.17-23). If He finds fishermen, He catches them in a net for Christ, they who catch the whole world with the line of the Word. Take for me Peter and Andrew and the sons of thunder, thundering the things of the Spirit. If He finds tax collectors, He gains them as disciples and makes them merchants of souls. Matthew says this, who yesterday was a tax collector and today is an evangelist.
If He finds fervent persecutors, He relocates their zeal and makes Pauls instead of Sauls and binds them to piety as much as they had been bound to evil.
This Spirit also is most gentle yet is provoked to anger at sinners. Therefore, let us make His acquaintance as meek, not as wrathful, by confessing His dignity and fleeing blasphemy, and not choosing to see Him implacably wrathful.
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Jesus Christ is our King. Of that we must never have any doubt. Things in the world we can doubt, we can question, we can critique. Things of the world can, as kids today say, be “sus.” (That is shorthand for “suspect.”) Yet of Christ, none of this applies. He is our King, He is our Saviour, He is the Coming One. He is ever seeking to come to us, every day. This is why He came to visit us in great humility; this is why He will come at the end of days to judge both the quick and the dead; this is why He took our human flesh and nature upon Him, so as to be able to come to us in His glorified and sacramental Body as our daily Bread, received through the opening of Scripture and the Breaking of Bread.
We saw this in the teaching of the first two Sundays of Advent. The First Sunday of Advent dramatically illustrated that Christ is the Coming One by the Gospel reading of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem upon the donkey and a foal, in which we are the citizens of heavenly Jerusalem to whom Christ is coming. And the Second Sunday of Advent emphasized His coming to us in the opening of Scripture: that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them: our daily Bread of Christ known and present to us in Scripture.
Today we hear Saint Paul teaching the Church that he and the other priestly ministers of Christ are servants and, more poignantly, are stewards. Paul, the other apostles, even John the Baptist, sent by God to go before Christ to prepare the way in our hearts for Christ’s coming to us, are stewards, Paul says, of the mysteries of God. Let it be clear that this word, which comes down in the Latin then English lineage of our scriptural translations, is in Greek the same word as Sacraments. So the priestly ministers of Christ are stewards of the Sacraments of Christ. This is an important teaching for Paul, which is why he gave it to the Church in Corinth and to the whole, universal Church.
Why is it an important teaching for the Church? It is because Christians need to know, and ever remember, that what priests do is make Christ known. They do so in their ministry of the sacraments. They make Christ known through the sacrament of Scripture in their preaching and in their teaching. And they make Christ known through the sacramental rites both in the Liturgy and flowing from it. In the Liturgy priests are stewards of the dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, as well as the sacraments of Matrimony, Confession, Unction, and with the help of the Bishop, Confirmation. Bishops make possible these sacraments just mentioned, as well as the sacrament of Holy Orders. Each of these is a means and channel of saving grace.
As Jesus taught His disciples to regard Saint John the Baptist differently and uniquely, the Church is to regard priests differently and uniquely. Priests are set apart, which is what consecrated and ordained means. They are called to be servants of Christ so as to know Him deeply and profoundly, not merely for their personal benefit, but for others: that they are able to fulfill their calling to be effective stewards of the mysteries of God, of the sacraments of God, of that which is necessary spiritual food for the salvation of Christian disciples. Jesus and Paul want the Church to regard priests as means by which Christ comes: means by which He Who is the Coming One is known and recognized.
Priests are necessary to God’s plan of salvation, which is why the Church has always had them, and evidence of the existence of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons is shown in the earliest documents we have, documents dating to around AD 100, including letters written by Saint Ignatius of Antioch, a Church Father. Let us pray for the priests of Holy Church, that it may please God to illumine all Priests with true knowledge and understanding of His holy Word, that both by their preaching and living, they may set forth God’s Word, and make Christ known: always that Jesus transform those men called to the priesthood, that by Christ working through them, the hearts of the disobedient are turned to the wisdom of the just, and turned to follow Christ as their Saviour, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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In the audio above is the audio from the second lecture of the Advent Study Series that I am doing at my parish. The series is called “Foundations of the Church: Introducing the Church Fathers.”
This lecture follows on from the overall introduction to the Church Fathers in my first lecture, which you can find here.
The second lecture looks at two early Church Fathers. For both I provide an outline of their lives as well as a sampling of their teachings.
Firstly I look at Saint Ignatius of Antioch, an Apostolic Father who died in the early 2nd century, and I reflect on portions of his Epistle to the Romans.
Secondly we look at Saint Anthony the Great (also known as the Great), a Desert Father who died in the fourth century. We reflect both on a portion of S. Athanasius’ Life of S. Anthony as well as portions from The Letters of Saint Anthony the Great.
Below are the icons and texts displayed during the talk, for you to contemplate along with my own reflections.
Next week’s lecture will look at Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. The final lecture of this series, in two weeks, will look at Saint Maximos the Confessor and the Venerable Saint Bede.
SAINT IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
* S. Matthew 18:1-4
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
* Ignatius’ Epistle to the Romans (2.2)
Do not allow me anything other than being poured out for God, while there is an altar still prepared, so that forming a chorus of love you may sing out to the Father in Jesus Christ, because God has made the bishop from Antioch worthy of being found at the setting of the sun, after being sent from where it rises. It is good for me to sink to God from the world, so that I may rise up to Him.
* Epistle to the Romans (4.1)
I am writing to all the church and I am instructing everyone that I am willingly dying for God, unless you prevent me. I beseech you, do not become an unseasonable kindness to me. Leave me to be bread for the beasts, through which I may be able to attain to God. I am God’s wheat and through the beasts’ teeth I shall be found to be pure bread for Christ.
* Epistle to the Romans (5.3)
Grant me this: I know what is right for me. Now I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing, visible or invisible, show jealousy towards me, only let me attain to Jesus Christ. Fire and cross, packs of wild beasts, cutting, rendings, the scattering of bones, the chopping up of limbs, the grinding of the whole body, the evil torments of the devil can come upon me, only let me attain to Jesus Christ.
* Epistle to the Romans (6:1-2)
Neither the ends of the world nor the kingdoms of this age profit me anything. It is better for me to die in Jesus Christ than to reign over the ends of the earth. Him I seek, the one who died on our behalf. Him I desire, Him Who rose up for us. The birth-pangs are laid upon me. Grant me this, brothers: do not hinder me from living, do not wish that I should die. Do not give the world the one who wishes to be God’s, nor charm him with the material. Allow me to receive the pure light. When I have arrived then I will truly be human.
SAINT ANTHONY OF EGYPT
* Third Epistle
The advent of Jesus helps us to do what is good, until we have destroyed all our vices. Then Jesus will say to us, ‘Henceforth I call you not servant, but brethren.’ When therefore the Apostles attained to receiving the Spirit of Adoption, then the Holy Spirit taught them to worship the Father as they ought.
* Third Epistle
And to me, this poor prisoner of Jesus, this time to which we have come has brought joy and lamentation and weeping. For many of our generation have put on the robe of religion but denied its power. As for those who have prepared themselves to be set free through the advent of Jesus, over them I rejoice. But those who do business in the Name of Jesus, and do the will of their heart and their flesh – over such I lament. Those who have looked at the length of the time, and their heart has failed them, and they have put off the robe of religion, and are become beasts – for them I weep. Know therefore that for such men the advent of Jesus becomes a great judgment. But you, my beloved in the Lord, know yourselves, that you may also know this time, and prepare to offer yourselves as a sacrifice acceptable to God.
* Third Epistle
And to me, this poor prisoner of Jesus, this time to which we have come has brought joy and lamentation and weeping. For many of our generation have put on the robe of religion but denied its power. As for those who have prepared themselves to be set free through the advent of Jesus, over them I rejoice. But those who do business in the Name of Jesus, and do the will of their heart and their flesh – over such I lament. Those who have looked at the length of the time, and their heart has failed them, and they have put off the robe of religion, and are become beasts – for them I weep. Know therefore that for such men the advent of Jesus becomes a great judgment. But you, my beloved in the Lord, know yourselves, that you may also know this time, and prepare to offer yourselves as a sacrifice acceptable to God.
* Third Epistle
He who knows himself knows God: and he who knows God, knows also the dispensations [gifts of grace] which He makes for His creatures. Let this word be manifest to you: it is not bodily love that I have towards you, but a spiritual, religious love, for God is glorious in His Saints. Prepare yourselves while you have intercessors to pray to God for your salvation, that He may pour into your hearts that fire which Jesus came to send upon the earth (Lk 12.49), that you may be able to exercise your hearts and senses, to know how to discern the good from the bad, the right from the left, reality from unreality.
* Fourth Epistle
My children, we are dwelling in our death, and staying in the house of the robber, and bound with the bonds of death. Now therefore, give not sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids, that you may offer yourselves a sacrifice to God in all holiness, which none can inherit without sanctification.
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I concluded my preaching for the First Sunday of Advent with these words: “Recognizing that Christ is always the Coming One is the basis of life in Christ’s Kingdom, and thus the basis of Kingdom culture.” How is He the Coming One? In Advent we especially recognize that Christ is the Coming One by means of Scripture and by means of Sacrament. The knowledge that He is the Coming One through Scripture and Sacrament makes for a truly lively faith, a life in the Holy Spirit. And I said that the apostles, whose names are inscribed on the walls of the foundation of heaven, preached Christ the Coming One so that all who hear it with faith may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to the coming presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit: living and moving and having our being within the Kingdom of our King.
The Second Sunday of Advent is particularly given over to celebrating, savoring, and wondering at the fact that Christ always seeks to come to us through Holy Scripture. Hence the famous and beautiful Anglican collect for this Second Sunday of Advent: Blessed Lord, Who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: grant that we may in such wise (wise is the old word for way: that we may in such way) hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Through the Scriptures, inwardly digested, Christ is known. Indeed, Christ took on our human nature in significant part because in doing so He would be known through the opening of Scripture: the opening of it, and our reception of Him, inwardly digesting Him because as He said, “I am the Bread of life.” This Bread, our daily bread, is received both through opening Scripture and by the breaking of bread. And we know Christ, the Eternal Word of God, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, took on our human nature to be known and received as our daily Bread because on the very day of His Resurrection, He taught the disciples to interpret Scripture as always concerning Him and to receive Him in the Eucharist.
Hence we have Saint Paul teaching the Romans: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” What kind of instruction? Paul specifies and says, “that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Because Christ is our hope, then we are to read Scripture to know Christ in the Scriptures, and in knowing Him in Scripture, we may together with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Paul says that Christ took on our human nature, the nature of a servant, to show the truthfulness of God the Father. In reading Scripture – in marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Christ as He is known through Scripture – the root of Jesse will come, and through His coming by the opening of Scripture, the God of hope will fill us with joy and peace, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may abound in hope.
Let us “inwardly digest” Christ through Scripture. That phrase “inwardly digest” has taken on a special meaning unique to Anglican tradition. The Anglican Divine blessed John Keble has this to say about “inwardly digesting”: “When something is digested, it agrees with him, nourishes him, is changed, as it ought to be, into the substance of his body. So the word and commandments of God, made known in Holy Scripture, are inwardly digested, when a man so receives them, as that they shall enter into his character, become, as it were, part of himself. How may that be? There is but one way. We must actually do as God bids us.” And this is a strong echo of the words of Saint James in his Epistle, that we must not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. To be a doer of what God commands us to do, and what He reveals of His Son through Scripture as our daily bread, is what it means to inwardly digest. Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction – our instruction in how to pray, how to love, how to worship, how to be humble, how to be a disciple, how to live a godly life of Scripture and Sacraments through the Liturgy: how to live, in other words, in Kingdom Culture, taken up into the life of the Holy Spirit, as He teaches us all things and guides us into the Truth Who is Jesus as He seeks to come to us and be known through the opening of Scripture and the Breaking of Bread: He who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the same Holy Spirit: ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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In the audio above is the audio from the first lecture of the Advent Study Series I am doing at my parish. The series is called “Foundations of the Faith: Introducing the Church Fathers.”
In the lecture I reference the icon above, which is of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which happened in AD 325.
In the part of the talk not included in the audio above, I went through many of the major Church Fathers. The text of the slides I showed during that part of the lecture are reproduced below.
The Apostolic Fathers – 1st and 2nd centuriesSaint Clement of Rome (d. 100)Saint Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110)Saint Polycarp (d. 155)
Uncertain authors:The DidacheThe Epistle of BarnabasThe Epistle to DiognetusThe Shepherd of Hermas
The Desert Fathers – 3rd and 4th centuriesSaint Anthony the Great (d. 356)Saint Athansius the Great (d. 373, also a Greek Father)Saint John Cassian (d. 435)Saint Macarius of Egypt (d. 391)Saint John Chrysostom (d. 407, also a Greek Father)Many others, collected in books of “Sayings” and anthologies such as the Philokalia
The Greek Fathers – 2nd through 8th centuriesSaint Justin Martyr (d. 165)Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202)Saint Clement of Alexandria (d. 202)Origen of Alexandria (d. 254)Saint Basil the Great (d. 379)Saint Gregory Nazianzus (d. 389)Saint Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395)Saint Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444)Saint Maximos the Confessor (d. 662)Saint John of Damascus (d. 749)
The Latin Fathers – 3rd through 8th centuriesSaint Tertullian (d. 222)Saint Ambrose of Milan (d. 397)Saint Jerome (d. 420)Saint Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)Saint Leo the Great (d. 440)Saint Gregory the Great (d. 604)Saint Bede the Venerable (d. 735)
The Syriac Fathers – 4th through 8th centuriesSaint Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373)Saint Isaac of Ninevah (d. 700)
Click here for lecture two, on Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Anthony of Egypt.
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As is mentioned in the Service Bulletin and described in more length in the December Parish Journal, starting today with the First Sunday of Advent we are using the traditional one-year lectionary for the Scripture readings for Sundays and Holy Days throughout the year, and doing so with the permission of Bishop Justin Holcomb, which is required. We are one of five parishes in our diocese doing this three-year experiment, to gain knowledge and experience of this lectionary which goes back to at least the 7th century – yes, this venerable cycle of yearly readings is one thousand, four hundred years old – so as to decide with our Bishop whether to make it our normal lectionary. More details about this can be found in this month’s Parish Journal, so give it a look.
I mention this upfront in my sermon as a way to acknowledge that the Gospel reading today might be disorienting to hear. The Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem we normally hear during Holy Week, for this episode in the life of Christ is the kickoff to Palm Sunday and the procession we make from the Resurrection Garden outside into our Church, holding blessed palms and singing All Glory, Laud, and Honor. The entrance into Jerusalem of our Lord on a lowly donkey is one of the stations that make up the liturgical extravaganza of Holy Week: one station to the next, from the Raising of Lazarus to the Raising of Christ in His glorious Resurrection. In hearing this Gospel today, at a great distance liturgically from Holy Week, the point of it being the Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent is not to think so much about Holy Week. But if that is not the point, what is the point? In what way are we to understand our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem and then into the Temple?
Whereas in Holy Week on Palm Sunday we read of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem in the literal way, and focus on that literal reading, as we hold blessed palms and accompany Him, in Advent we must read it on the spiritual level, as symbolic of our spiritual life, which is the life of receiving Christ into our mind and heart. For this we ask these questions: what is the Jerusalem into which Christ enters, and what is the Temple? Other parts of Scripture provide answers that illustrate the profound symbolism of this passage in Advent.
To identify what Jerusalem is, we have Saint John and the Revelation or Apocalypse which He recorded. Revelations 21:14 speaks of the New Jerusalem when it reads: “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Christ enters this Jerusalem – and on the walls of its foundation are the names of the apostles.
As far as the Temple, Saint Paul teaches what the Temple is. The Temple is us. As he said to the church in Corinth: “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” He also said, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.” And he said, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.”
Thus we put the symbolism together in this spiritual interpretation. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, as read on the First Sunday of Advent, is His entry into the proclamation of the Gospel by the Apostles. His coming into the Temple is His coming into our inward contemplation, into our soul, into our heart. And this matches the Collect prayer for all Advent, that “Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.” The living Church and its lively faith rests on apostles and their apostolic proclamation, which makes Christ known to us and shows that Christ is always the Coming One, seeking to come to us, in every moment of every day of our earthly life. All God wants is the human heart, and He comes to our heart on a lowly donkey.
Christ in His great humility seeks to enter our heart through the preaching and teaching of the apostles recorded in the New Testament, and He desires to drive out from the Temple (which is us) all that mucks it up and gets in the way of us perceiving Christ the King of all Creation and King of us. He demands that His house, that is, His temple, that is His Body, which is us, to be a house of prayer. Hence we must keep the commandments as Saint Paul writes to us today in his epistle the Romans: let us love our neighbor as yourself, which sums up the Law, as Jesus taught, indeed because love fulfills the law. This is what keeps our Temple clean, and allows us to recognize Christ Who is the Coming One, coming to us, or in Paul’s phrase: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” Nearer to us, because Christ has come closer to us, having cast off the works of darkness which we wore as newborns babe in Christ having put on more of the armor of light.
Recognizing that Christ is always the Coming One is the basis of life in Christ’s Kingdom, and thus the basis of Kingdom culture. He is the Coming One by means of Scripture and by means of Sacrament. He is the Coming One through the Liturgy of the Church, which arranges Scripture and provides the Sacraments. The knowledge that Christ is always the Coming One makes for a truly lively faith, a life in the Holy Spirit: a life of constant wonder, constant awe, ever looking for the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure. The apostles, whose names are inscribed on the walls of the foundation of heaven, preached Christ the Coming One so that all who hear it with faith may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to the coming presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit: living and moving and having our being within the Kingdom of Christ the King: He Who is before all things, and in Whom all things hold together, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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I want to bring together threads that have occupied my preaching these last Sundays. These threads included reflections on the Holy Spirit, the image of our parish as a garden, our dedication of this holy house and ourselves with the clear and singular purpose of giving God the love which He is owed, and having a living faith.
I spoke of how the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of Life: the giver of growth, and the only giver of growth, the only giver of increase. Our parish is a garden; this was my theme all throughout the Stewardship season. Gardens in the world have a culture of biological and microbial activity; without that microbial culture, little to no plant growth happens; the soil is not fertile. If a parish is a garden it will grow, therefore, if it has the right culture: that culture is life in the Holy Spirit, that is, genuine spiritual activity. A parish will grow if its culture is of the Holy Spirit and His Kingdom – indeed, if it has a “Kingdom Culture,” within which our Saviour Jesus Christ lives and reigns as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lamb of God around Whom worship all the Angels and all the Saints.
I spoke last Sunday about the fact that for the same reason Our Lord came to the Temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the Temple, and overturned the tables, so we celebrate the Feast of Dedication. That is, as a reminder of our fundamental purpose as catholic Christians in the ancient tradition of Anglicanism. And that purpose must always be God. Our primary purpose of worshiping in this church to love God because He is God and is owed our love, owed our adoration, which we realize through prayer and most prominently through liturgical prayer, the daily and weekly Liturgy of the Church throughout the year, that God might grant us in this world knowledge of His truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. In our worship, in the Liturgy, we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, and this, says Saint Paul our patron, is our spiritual worship
Genuine spiritual worship means a lively faith, here in this parish. A lively faith is life in the Holy Spirit: constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Christ Who is the image of the invisible God, through Whom all things were created, and for Whom all things were created. In Christ, the fullness of the Father dwells. How can that not throw us into awe, a lively faith? This is the Gospel, and joy it brings us!
Undoubtedly this is what happened to Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael. About this Jesus of Nazareth, was said “Behold the Lamb of God!” – words of S. John the Baptist. We can hear in their words awe and wonder and joy, the stirrings of a lively faith in them: “We have found the Messiah,” said Saint Andrew to Saint Peter. “We have found Him of Whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” said Saint Philip to Saint Nathanael (later renamed Saint Bartholomew). This was He who was foretold by the Prophets, such as Jeremiah, Who heard Christ speak to him and say, “Behold the days are coming, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and He shall reign as King.”
Thus their lives took on a new level of spirituality. Their life in the Holy Spirit sprang forth as their relationship with God became a lively faith, a true life in the Holy Spirit: a life of constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. And these and all the apostles preached so as to proclaim the Gospel that all who hear it may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to the presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. They preached and proclaimed with all their heart that people might be stirred up into inhabiting Kingdom culture, where the very soil of the parish is the life in and of the Holy Spirit; stirred up to a living faith; stirred up with the singular purpose of loving God; stirred up to be gardeners in the garden of Christ, living and moving and having their being in a Kingdom culture in which Jesus Christ is King: He Who is before and things, and in Whom all things hold together, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Our gospel story gives us again the beautiful, simple, and touching story of the poor widow. And it is held up in our lectionary in our stewardship season, as it is reaching its conclusion. And that is so very fitting. Because Christian stewardship, for as much as I have said about it in my recent preaching, really is as simple as the poor widow. Just as she put in everything she had, her whole living, so are we to give our time, talent, and treasure for the glory of God and for the benefit of this parish church. Giving to the church her whole living, everything she had, means she gave her heart.
It means that her intentions in giving could not be but pure and godly. She was humble like the Tax Collector; she made no pretense of long prayers or showiness like the Pharisee. Her offering meant everything to her, and God beheld her offering and lifted it up to heaven, lifted it into glory for all to behold. I wish we knew the name of this poor widow. We are not told her name. But if we were told it, I am certain she would have the word “Saint” before her name and a feast day on the calendar. She surely was full of the Holy Spirit, and she shares that dual-quality of the Saints: that in all things she is to be admired, and that we should imitate her how we can. We admire her for her humility and her faith; let us imitate her in giving to the Church all we can: our heart.
In all things of the Christian life, the Saints are always to be remembered, celebrated, and venerated. I spoke these words about the Saints last Sunday: The Saints are examples to us of genuine stewardship. We can speak of the Saints as gardeners, in that they are dedicated to helping growth happen. Likewise the Saints certainly show humility before Almighty God, Who alone gives the increase. Saints are filled with the awe and fear of God, of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. And the Saints know that in Christ’s garden, which is the Church, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. The Saints themselves do not imitate the Pharisee, who does works to be rewarded by God, but rather they imitate the Tax Collector, the Publican, who is pure humility falls to his knees before God and asks simply for His mercy.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we say that we believe in the Communion of Saints. We say that because the Saints are the living foundation of the Church. They are the living foundation of the Church, the living foundation of the Body of Christ, because Christ lives in them. Certainly Christ was living in the poor widow. He lives in all the Saints. And Christ lives in the poor widow and all the Saints because the Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. We remember the Saints, we celebrate the Saints, we venerate the Saints, because in looking with the eyes of faith upon the Saints who are our fellow wayfarers, our friends, our contemporaries, our colleagues, the “Hall of Fame” Christians: in looking upon the Saints we see people whose ordinary lives were transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ into extraordinary lives of virtue, of faith, hope, and love, and divine wisdom. But it really is as simple as this: the Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. They were full of the Holy Spirit during their existence on earth, and they remain full of the Holy Spirit having run with patience the race set before them, and set before us, they have been taken up into heaven and received the crown of glory that fades not away, the same crown promised to all those who maintain a lively faith in Jesus Christ.
I say “lively faith”—not just “faith,” but faith that is “lively.” What do I mean by that? A lively faith is life in the Holy Spirit: constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If a parish takes seriously Christian stewardship, it becomes a garden with gardeners seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of Life: the giver of growth, and the only giver of growth, the only giver of increase. Gardens have a culture of biological and microbial activity; without that microbial culture, little to no plant growth happens. A parish is a garden that will grow if it has the right culture, as well: a culture of genuinely spiritual activity. A parish will grow if its culture is of the Holy Spirit and His Kingdom – indeed, a “Kingdom Culture,” within which our Saviour Jesus Christ lives and reigns as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lamb of God around Whom worship all the Angels and all the Saints, through Whom all things are made, and Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.12
While the King was on His dining couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance. My Beloved is to me a bundle of myrrh that shall lie between my breasts. My Bloved is to me a grape-cluster from Cyprus in the vineyards of Engaddi.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Surely the Church, having received such gifts or promises from her Creator, continually responded and further declared the devotion with which she would undertake these works, saying: “While the King was on His dining couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.” Now “the King’s dining couch” is what she calls the time of His Nativity, during which He deigned to be humbled for our sake and to be brought down Himself so that we might be raised up. Clearly, on this dining couch He has willed both to refresh His Church with life-giving food and to be refreshed Himself with her good deeds. For this reason He says: “I am the living bread that came from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever” (Jn 6.51); and again to the disciples, concerning the people who believe in Him, He says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (Jn 4.32). And the fragrance of nard represents the ardor of right action. “While the King was on His dining couch,” she says, “my nard gave forth its fragrance,” because when the Son of God had appeared in flesh the Church increased in its fervor for heavenly virtues – not that she had no spiritual persons devoted to God before His Nativity, but because she subjected herself without any hesitation to the more rigorous practice of virtues at the time when she learned that access to the heavenly kingdom is open to all who live rightly, as soon as the bonds of flesh are dissolved. Now we should note that the figure in this little verse was also fulfilled according to the letter in the deeds of Saint Mary Magdalene, who contained a type of the church when she anointed the Lord’s head and feet with an ointment of nard as He was reclining at supper, “and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment” (Jn 12.3), as the holy Gospel accounts bear witness. In one of them it is also indicated what kind of nard that was, for it is said, “A woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment of nard of very precious spikes” (Mt 14.3), evidently because its tips extend themselves into ears and therefore they will up the spikes and leaves with a double portion of nard oil. The naturalists write that it is the chief among ointments, hence it was deservedly used in anointing the body of the Lord.
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In professional sports there are all-star games. This is certainly true of professional baseball, professional basketball, professional hockey, and professional football (although football calls theirs the “pro-bowl” and basically no one pays any attention to it). To arrive at the group of players in these sports that participate in the all-star game involves balloting, they are elected. What are these all-star teams but those players who have been given gifts by God up and above their colleagues, and who have cooperated with those God-given gifts, in a way notable and singular, so as to be recognized by the peers as extraordinary? This same sort of thing is seen as well in the halls of fame in professional sports (and college sports, I might add). Those elected to the hall of fame play the same sport as young children do in their pick-up games, or their little league games. The game is basically the same no matter if you are playing in your backyard or the local park or arena, or if you are playing at the highest professional level. There is a spectrum of skill, and certain players are given gifts up and above the rest; those players are admired and imitated.
It is the same with the Saints of holy Church. Whereas in sport the discipline is centered on developing skills, in Christianity the discipline is centered on discipleship. Every baptized Christian is a disciple, but like sport we see in the Church a spectrum of discipleship. On one end are the Christians baptized yesterday – no matter the age, because every baptized person starts at square 1 in terms of relationship with God, Who (in the teaching of both S. Peter and S. Paul) shows no partiality, emphasized by the famous teaching of S. Paul to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” And on the other end are the canonical Saints of the Church, “canonical” meaning on the Kalendar with the title “Saint” before their name. Saints are those holy men and women who have been given certain gifts by God of prayer and service, and who in recognizing the gifts given them by God have cooperated with this grace so as to give all of their time, talent, and treasure to the glory of God and the upbuilding of His Church.
Thus we see how, on the Feast of All Saints, the Saints are examples to us of genuine stewardship. We can speak of the Saints as gardeners, in that they are dedicated to helping growth happen. Likewise the Saints certainly show humility before Almighty God, Who alone gives the increase. Saints are filled with the awe and fear of God, of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. And the Saints know that in Christ’s garden, which is the Church, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. The Saints themselves do not imitate the Pharisee, who does works to be rewarded by God, but rather they imitate the Tax Collector, the Publican, who is pure humility falls to his knees before God and asks simply for His mercy.
In the Apostles’ Creed, which in Anglican liturgy is also called our Baptismal Creed, we say “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints.” These all go together, not merely in a sequence of words but the very nature of God’s economy and saving plan: the Holy Spirit establishes the Church, which is Christ’s Body, and He calls men and women as Holy Saints to lead the Church, both in their life and in their heavenly intercession and supplication. The Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. The Saints have been transformed by the Gospel. Thus the Saints are concrete proof that the promises of the Gospel are true. We are in communion with the Saints through Jesus Christ: they are our friends, they are our colleagues, they are our teachers in how to follow Christ, they are our contemporaries.
I said before that the all-star professional players are admired and imitated. Again, this is the same as with the Saints. Everything about them we should admire – and there is so much to admire in the lives of the Saints, for the diversity of the Saints baffles simple analysis. And what we can imitate of the Saints, we should be ever trying to do. To imitate the Saints is to imitate how they follow the Law as summarized by Jesus: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind: and to love our neighbor as ourself. In loving God and our neighbor, the Saints demonstrate what Christian love is, how Saint Paul describes love: love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And without this love, says Saint Paul, no matter what we do, we are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal; indeed without love, we are nothing.
What Saint do you seek to not only admire but imitate? If you do not have one, it is time to get one. Who is your favorite Saint? If you do not have a favorite Saint, start to read about the lives of the Saints, and start to come to our weekday liturgy where we keep the feast days of the Saints of the New Testament as well as certain other important Saints, like S. Francis of Assisi and several others. If we want the Holy Spirit to come, to inspire our souls, if we want to be gardeners in Christ’s garden, if we want the culture of our parish must be one in which we are constantly asking for the Holy Spirit to come, which means His Kingdom come – let us deepen our communion with the Saints, let us build our living relationship with the Saints, one Saint at a time. To celebrate and venerate Saints is to celebrate and worship Christ in them, because Christ is in us and we in Him. In the simplest of terms, the Saints teach us how to be a better parish, better disciples, better gardeners: indeed the Saints teach us how to be an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God. All because the Saints are completely full of Christ, full of grace and heavenly benediction, completely filled by Him Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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“And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’” What could sight be for us, except the capacity to discern what is holy from what is unholy? As we heard from the Epistle to the Hebrews, having the “faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” To distinguish what is of the Holy Spirit from that which is from the flesh, the world, and the devil? So that we can recover our sight, so that we can truly see. And in seeing, all the more readily and effectively exercise our stewardship, through our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure.
This is the third of my sermons on stewardship. I am offering sermons on this topic because our stewardship reflects our entire attitude to the Church, which is realized within our parish. In my first sermon I spoke of stewardship as seeing ourselves, members of this congregation, as gardeners: that we are to do what gardeners do: help growth happen, through cooperating with God; gardeners who have in mind an image of the harvest to get through the difficult work, which for us is the image of an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God.
In my second sermon, I spoke of being gardeners who show humility before Almighty God. As Saint Paul teaches, it is not us but God Who gives the growth, only God Who gives the increase. And we are made humble by our awe of God, from Whom all growth comes – in awe of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made.
Stewardship entails being a gardener in the garden of Christ with profound respect for the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life. In Christ’s garden, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. For our parish to be Christ’s garden is for us to recognize that the Holy Spirit can act powerfully, such as to make the impossible possible. Our stewardship is thwarted by pride, yet it is genuine in humility. I spoke of always seeking to serve our awesome God, serve His awesome power, serve His incredible creativity, serve His loving energy that gives all things life, that fills all things with His sacramental blessing, that shines with the brightness of heaven in even the darkest of places, illumining all things with the torch of Christ’s light which ever burns with health, with salvation, with the peace that passes all understanding.
In support of all of this understanding of stewardship, we hear this teaching from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for His sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” In hearing these words “our work and the love which we show for His sake in serving the saints,” as about us as well, we can hear them as directly about our stewardship. Our work and the love which show for God’s sake in serving the saints, which here means fellow Christians alive as well as faithfully departed, this is our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure. Our tithe is for God’s sake, that He will give the growth if we, as gardeners, through work and love shown for God’s sake, truly serve Christians; that is through work and love help Christians grow in their faith. For that to happen, we need to give our tithe: of time in worship and prayer, that we ourselves are fed by grace and remember God’s law to love Him with our whole being, and love Him in our neighbor; for that to happen, we need to give our tithe of talent, in support of the ministries ongoing in this parish (Vestry, liturgical ministry, ECW, Daughters of the King, Atrium catechesis, the various teams we have, and the rest); and for Christians to grow in their faith, we need to give our tithe of treasure, to allow the parish to operate within the financial realities of the world today.
Yet the passage from Hebrews recognizes a common problem in parish stewardship, which is sluggishness. Sluggishness is really a word that often describes normal parish life, isn’t it? We know the Gospel, and we are sluggish in proclaiming it. We know the Gospel, but we are sluggish in living it out, day to day. We know the Gospel, but we are sluggish in offering our threefold tithe, especially our tithe of time and talent. And so understanding the remedy for sluggishness is central to stewardship.
“And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed Him on the way.” And immediately his sluggishness gave way to a full-hearted offering of himself as a disciple of Christ. And so, as part of our stewardship, which emerges from our whole attitude toward the Church, we must ask Jesus to help us see. We must ask Christ for His mercy. We must ask for the Holy Spirit to come, to inspire our souls. The culture of our parish must be one in which we are constantly asking for the Holy Spirit to come; constantly seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit; constantly aware of His power, His creativity, ever humble before Him Who is the Lord and giver of life: a culture soaked in relationship with the Holy Spirit. Let us ask, knowing that our Saviour Christ hears all prayers, and sends His Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, to those who are humble and devout; all because Christ lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Emphasizing the importance of keeping the sobriety of a turtledove, the Bridegroom adds: “Your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.” Surely it is through the neck that we both take in food to nourish the body and bring forth words with which we declare the secrets of our hearts to our neighbors. For this reason the role of the church’s teachers is rightly represented by the neck, since they both instruct the unlearned with an edifying word and in the process of that same instruction convey the food of salvation to the members of the holy Church entrusted to them. Clearly, this neck is rightly compared to jewels. . . . The necklaces are also ornaments for a virgin’s neck, namely, little chains woven with golden bands. . . . These aptly signify the weaving together of the divine scriptures through which the loveliness of holy Church increases when every single one of the faithful strives to shine with virtues by observing the words and deeds of the fathers more and more. For the gold from which He says that the necklaces are made is the splendor of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and the silver with which he states they are inlaid is understood as the luster of heavenly eloquence. Now what He promises in the plural (“We will make you”) is said with reference to those through whom sacred scripture has been ministered to us by the agency and cooperation of God’s spirit, of whom there have been very many from the time in which Solomon foretold these things until that which is to come. Therefore, He encircles the Bride’s neck with gold necklaces inlaid with silver because He has prepared divine diadems for the Church by inspiring those whom He has placed in authority with responsibility for teaching His faithful, and He encircles her neck with necklaces fashioned by the craftsman’s art when every faithful soul continually looks towards the holy Scriptures in all that she says or does, or perhaps I should say in everything that she lives and hopes, and diligently directs both her mind and her words according to their pattern, and thus this little verse is joined to the one above, for the reason that holy Church’s cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s (that is, that her modesty remains inviolate) is because frequent meditation on divine Scripture does not allow her to err.
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Our Gospel passage picks up with two of the close apostles of Christ – Ss James and John, sons of Zebedee, sons of thunder—asking our Lord to sit one at His right hand and one at His left in His glory. This is their processing of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which they, along with S. Peter, witnessed. They were in awe of Christ’s Transfiguration, and wanted to emulate the two they saw with Jesus at that moment: Moses and Elijah, and Christ’s right and left hand. They wanted to emulate Moses and Elijah out of their yearning for intimacy with Jesus, of Whom they were utterly in awe. And their awe, along with the awe of the whole of the Upper Room Church of Jerusalem grew when they read passages out of the prophet Isaiah as we hear today—that this Jesus, the eternal Son and Word of the Father, begotten before all worlds, King of kinds, Lord of lord, this Jesus has bourne our griefs and carried our sorrows; that this Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. And their humility grew when they realized they too were the sheep that had gone astray, that they too had turned every one to his own way, away from Him who poured out His soul to death, bearing the sins of us all.
Awe and humility—I believe both are tied in to stewardship, as I will seek to illustrate.
This is the second of my sermons on stewardship. I am offering sermons on this topic because stewardship summarizes our entire attitude to the Church, which includes the local expression of the One Church our parish. In my first sermon I spoke of stewardship as seeing ourselves, members of this congregation, as gardeners. Understanding the stewardship of this parish means seeing ourselves, seeing this congregation, as gardeners.
I went into last Sunday what this means. God has brought each and every one of us here, to this Parish, to be gardeners of His new creation. God wants us to help Him bring about the increase of the harvest. God has called each of us forth to do in this Parish what gardeners do in their garden: help it grow. That is what our tithe of time, talent, and treasure is for: the means for growth. If we want this parish to grow, then let us do the hard work of giving our time in attending the Liturgy and praying at home, let us give our talent in support of the ministries ongoing in this parish, and let us give generously of our treasure, to allow the parish to operate within the financial realities of the world today.
I also spoke last Sunday about having an inspiring image in our minds, as we take up the work of offering our threefold tithe. We need such an image because the work is often arduous, difficult, and in the immediate sense, it can be not very rewarding. A gardener would have in his mind the image of the harvest, and this image inspires hard work in the present. For us, I offered up the image of an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God. Adoring: in that with reverence we adore God Who transcends all conditions of time and space; merciful: in that we perform acts of mercy to help those in need; all with a strong desire to know God: in that we are a congregation with inquiring minds, discerning hearts, a courageous spirit that perseveres to know and love God, with the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works, and in God Himself, as He is known in the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This image, this portrait, is both who we are now, and who we seek to become more intensely, more thoroughly. We seek here nothing less than participation in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, not as a superficial social club as is sadly too common in today’s American Christianity, but as a holy organism, in holy fellowship, filled with the Holy Ghost.
Another aspect of stewardship is humility. If we are gardeners in the garden of Christ, then we must be humble. As Saint Paul teaches, it is not us but God Who gives the growth, only God Who gives the increase. As it is with a garden, so is it with our parish: God gives the increase, the growth: our job is to cooperate with God, and do all within our power to cultivate the conditions by which God-given growth can occur.
And we are made humble by our awe of God. Let again be in awe of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. To be a gardener in the garden of Christ is to have profound respect for God’s omnipotence. It is to have profound respect as well for the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life. In Christ’s garden, the Holy Spirit dwells. For our parish to be Christ’s garden is for us to recognize that the Holy Spirit can act powerfully, such as to make the impossible possible. Our stewardship is thwarted by our pride, yet it is genuine in our humility.
As is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” And, the Epistle goes on to say, “Before Him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.” This is true power, indeed flowing from the heavenly realms, the aroma of which fills our church. Our God is indeed an awesome God, because of His awesome power, His incredible creativity, His boundless loving energy. He gave Himself on the Cross that we might grow into Him through the Sacraments. Let us in the stewardship of our parish always seek to serve our awesome God, serve His awesome power, serve His incredible creativity, serve His loving energy that gives all things life, that fills all things with His sacramental blessing, that shines with the brightness of heaven in even the darkest of places, illumining all things with the torch of Christ’s light which ever burns with health, with salvation, with the peace that passes all understanding because it is of the mind of Jesus, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Because the verse “I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots” teaches how the Lord protects the Church in the midst of misfortunes, it remains to be shown how much the Church herself preserves the love of the same Lord and Protector when misfortunes occur. There is added: “Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s.” It is said that it is the nature of the turtledove that if it is deprived of the companionship of its mate it will never be joined to another. This is appropriately applied to the chastity of the Church, for even though death has deprived her of the Lord Who is her Bridegroom, nevertheless she can by no means accept the company of strangers, since she holds so dear the remembrance of the One Whom she knows to have been resurrected from the dead and to reign now in heaven, and she is content with only the love of Him to Whom she longs to come one day. For this reason she is accustomed to declare in words she learned from an eminent teacher: “For neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, for depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). This is what holy Church says when she is fearful that perhaps she might turn aside from the way of truth by wandering after the examples of the foolish: “Let I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.” Therefore, since the seat of decorum is in the cheeks, Truth Himself rightly says to her in reply: “Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s,” which is to say, “I have adorned you with such virtue of wholesome modesty that neither the desire for transitory things nor the noisy dogmas of the foolish ever seduce you into drawing back from the chastity you have promised to me in good faith.”
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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This is the first of several sermons on stewardship. Yes, it coincides with the fact that pledge cards for next year are being sent out to every household. Yet it will be a sermon series not merely because of pledge cards. It is a sermon series because the topic of stewardship includes not only the household tithe for next year’s budget, but really the entire attitude we have toward the One, Holy Church and her local embodiment, this very church of Saint Paul in New Smyrna Beach where we are worshiping. To flesh that out will take a number of Sundays.
I want to begin by noting that one of the primary themes of Saint Mark’s gospel is creation. It is Mark’s argument that Jesus of Nazareth initiates a new creation, and is Himself the new creation: that the new creation is embodied in Him. Saint Paul picks this up in his teaching, that everyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The first words of Mark’s Gospel account are: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and this was an intentional move by Mark to immediately bring to mind the Book of Genesis, which starts in a similar way, “In the beginning…”. Christ is the true beginning of the new creation, which is in Him. At the end of his Gospel, Mark describes the women at the empty tomb as full of astonishment. That is a translation of a Greek word, the root of which is our word “ecstasy,” but it has to do also with creation. That is shown by the fact that this same word “ecstasy” used to describe the holy women at Christ’s resurrection is the new word that Moses used in Genesis to describe Adam when God fashioned Eve from his rib, and Abraham when God was making a covenant with him, both moments of new creation.
If Christ is the new creation, and every person who is in Him is a becoming a new creation, our human destiny, our vocation, the way God called (and calls) us into existence, is to become partners or agents of Christ’s new creation, ambassadors for Christ, that God makes His appeal to the world through us, His Church. Another image for this is that God has called us to be gardeners of His creation, the growth of the world and the people of the world into His new creation in Christ. And what do gardeners do but help things grow? It is patient work. It is work based upon hope—hope that the conditions will prevail and the flowers and fruits will bear forth. And indeed it is that thinking about the harvest that fuels the patient, arduous work.
Understanding the stewardship of this parish means seeing ourselves, seeing this congregation, as gardeners. God has brought each and every one of us here, to this Parish, to be gardeners of His new creation. God wants us to help Him bring about the increase of the harvest. God has called each of us forth to do in this Parish what gardeners do in their garden: help it grow. The Church asks of her members, and this church is asking of each one of us, to continue and even increase our tithes—to continue and even increase our offerings to the Parish of our time, our talent, and our treasure. Our tithe is not merely of money: it is of time, talent, and treasure. This is the patient work of the gardener in the time before the flowers and fruits come: tilling the soil, planting seeds, watering, pulling weeds, pruning, fertilizing, and all the rest. Without that work, there will never be beautiful flowers, ripe fruit—and so without our tithe of time, talent, and treasure, the garden here will not grow, but its holiness will wither away.
I said a moment ago that it is that image of the harvest that fuels the patient, arduous work. What such images can inspire us now to continue and even increase our tithe to the Parish? As your Rector I witness many inspiring images, and I know I am not alone in seeing them. We have a beautiful church, a truly holy house of God’s sacred presence and power. We have truly reverent worship, with real devotion to the Eucharist. We are a church that outwardly shows our inward adoration of God. We have a strong sense of outreach to those in need. We have daily activity on our church campus, in our Liturgy, our Fellowship ministries, our Preschool ministry. We have a growing and lively Atrium for our youngest members. These are images that keep us inspired.
Let me share another image that fuels me. It is that we are a parish that wants to learn about God. This is fresh on my mind because we started a new Bible study session on Saturday mornings, which came out of our Summer book study, and because I am soon to announce the subject of the Advent Sunday study. We are getting great turnout at these and our other formation opportunities. We are a parish that wants to learn about God, and we have the resources to provide a godly pedagogy that is wholesome, engaging, and comprehensive.
This is a very important thing. The importance is underscored in the concluding prayer in the Liturgy for Holy Baptism. To the newly baptized person, we ask God to give him “an inquiring mind and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love Thee, and the gift of joy and wonder in all Thy works.” As your rector, this is what I want our parish to support: a congregation with inquiring mind, discerning hearts, a courageous spirit that perseveres to know and love God, with the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works, and in God Himself, as He is known in the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The secret of parish growth is spiritual growth in the existing congregation. This is because spiritual growth is the result of the Holy Spirit’s power. And the Holy Spirit acts especially in groups of people that decide to want to learn more about God. The questions that arise in these groups are heard not only by the priest or formation leader, but more importantly these questions are heard by God. And God always responds to the faithful, always responds to those who show they love Him and want deeper relationship with Him.
Having brought to mind all these different images of what our parish is and what it can be, let us put them together: A reverent, merciful, adoring congregation in a beautiful church with strong desire to know God—what an a garden, brothers and sisters. Implant this firmly in your mind and hearts as you receive this week the 2025 pledge cards. Growing this garden demands the patient work of time, talent, and treasure. But God wants His garden to grow, to flourish abundantly through Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Because the Lord does not want holy Church to be ignorant of her true self, but that she should readily desire to learn what gifts she has received from Him and what she ought to suffer and to do for the sake of His love, He consequently indicates what her status is when He goes on to say: “I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh’s chariots.” Surely His “company of horsemen” is what He calls the host of the children of Israel whom He freed from slavery in Egypt. Leading them through the Red Sea into the desert, He eventually brought them into the land promised to the m as an inheritance. The chariots of Pharaoh, who were pursuing them because Pharaoh wanted to drag them back into servitude, He caused to sink into the same sea. Now He calls them a “company of horsemen” from then on, because just as a charioteer is accustomed to preside over a company of horsemen, the Lord Himself then ruled over that same people in such a way as to take charge of it, and guided it in such a way to lead it along the way of salvation. Clearly the one being compared to this company of horsemen is His Church, which He made His friend through the water of regeneration, for He has taught her that when persecutors threaten she should always have faith in His help, just as that former people was certainly terrified and very fearful when Pharaoh’s chariots came upon them but was saved at that time by heavenly protection. For it happened then that a fiery pillar gave light for the people of God but thickest darkness covered the Egyptian hordes so that all through the night they were unable to come near to one another, and this constantly happens also in the night of this world when Divine Providence uses meticulous discernment to separate the righteous from the reprobate, illuminating the righteous with His grace and leaving the reprobate in blindness as they deserve. But since it also happened that when they came to the Red Sea the children of Israel were delivered by the parting of the waves, but the waters returned upon the Egyptians and they were drowned along with their horses and chariots, is it not evident that the very stream of death that will come upon all mortal beings carries away the wicked to destruction while for the pious it opens up the way to salvation? And so far all the rest of the things that we read as having happened to that same company of God’s horsemen (that is, to the Israelite people) in the time of the Egyptian persecution, the more diligently they are examined the more clearly are they found to have anticipated in figure the holy Church of which this people was a portion. And since this verse teaches how the Lord protects the Church in the midst of misfortunes, it remains to be shown how much the Church herself preserves the love of the same Lord and Protector when misfortunes occur.
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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Our Lord teaches us today about the Sacrament of Matrimony. He says to the Pharisees: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Saint Paul, writing to the Ephesians, adds “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Why does God want man and woman joined? And what does it mean to say that this refers to Christ and the Church?
One thing we see in the Genesis creation story is that God has endowed human beings with a great deal of freedom. You may eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, God told Adam, which in the literal interpretation means: have at it, enjoy yourself. This is not an unqualified or unlimited freedom, for there is one tree forbidden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet overall, freedom abounds. What is this freedom for? What is its purpose? What is more, male and female united in matrimony somehow express or make known what it means to exist in this world of God-given freedom. How does this work?
This country has a lot to say about freedom. It is part of our identity as a nation. Ingrained in us is the phrase, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In the Declaration of Independence these are called “unalienable Rights,” meaning impossible to take away. That is because these rights come from God: they are endowed by the Creator. That which comes from God mankind has no ability to remove. We the creatures live within the parameters of creation set forth by our creator God who is omnipotent (everywhere powerful), omniscient (everywhere knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere present).
All people, whether married or unmarried, are created to worship God. We are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord. Fueled entirely by His grace, this is how we save our souls. And as an aid to that activity, an aid to our worship day in and day out, all of the other things on the face of the earth are created for mankind to help us in attaining the end of worship. “It is not good that man should be alone,” our Lord said, and it is as if He might have added, “amid all this freedom.”
And so out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air. They were formed of the same substance as Adam: the dust of the ground. So although humans and animals share an origin in earthly material and are both conceived in His mind, the primary difference between man and animal in Scripture is this: unlike the rest of animals, man has the ability to name the animals, that is, to reflect on their existence. Animals cannot do that. Men and women can. We can reflect on the creatures of the world, and name them. In the ancient world of Scripture, naming something is an action that comes only from understanding the true nature of that thing.
It seems as well that not only can we reflect on the true nature of our fellow creatures, but that it appears that we must. Again Saint Paul, to the Romans: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” Clearly perceiving things that God has made, that is His creatures, reveals God’s power and deity. We must have a constant awareness that everything around us is made by God, and this comes from deep, spiritual perception. The Devil, on the other hand, wants us to be oblivious to this fact; or, if not oblivious, then to have the attitude of “Yes, God man everything; so what, no big deal.” And yet, it is more than a big deal, and for this reason: God makes Himself known to us through creatures. How to worship the Lord—which means to know and love Him—is revealed by understanding the nature of human beings.
Freedom – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – summarizes how to live in God’s creation. As Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” The fully Christian understanding of freedom is poetically expressed in the ninety-sixth Psalm—O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him. To be free means the freedom to fully experience holiness, which comes through worshiping the Holy Trinity. Through “holiness” we recognize God’s presence intimately—an intimate presence in the world, an intimate presence in another person, an intimate presence in each of us. And so, freedom is worshiping the Lord in the beauty of His intimate presence; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him. Awe and wonder—the technical term for which is “fear”—this is the beginning of wisdom. Awe and wonder is the beginning of discipleship. Our ongoing transformation into more mature Christian spirituality happens with awe and wonder at the sheer beauty of the maker of all that is, both seen and unseen—utterly transcendent in His power, knowledge and presence—impossibly close to our hearts and minds, closer to us ever than our own breath. What profound intimacy God has with us!
Man and woman united together in the Sacrament of Matrimony are able to know that kind of profound intimacy. And in knowing with such intimacy, they can experience Christ in each other in the most mysterious of ways. The man experiences Christ in his wife; the woman experiences Christ in her husband. They experience Christ together, for they are one flesh. The Sacrament of Matrimony makes the fundamental unit of humanity–male and female, united –into the fundamental unit of worship. Through each other, they worship the Creator present in His creatures. This is how Matrimony refers to Christ and His Church. The mystery of Christ in us, as Paul again writes: “the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The mystery of man united with woman replicates the mystery of the Church because God seeks to be known intimately, and man and woman united in matrimony are able to know God intimately in each other, and constantly live deeper into that intimacy.
This is I think gets at, perhaps in the deepest sense, why God made them male and female. He created us male and female to properly be free, needing to be joined together to experience Christian freedom, which is freely choosing to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbor (in this case, our spouse): choosing a life of holiness, which is a journey of understanding Christ in each other, and sharing this understanding with everyone around them: children, relatives, and neighbors. A man and a woman need each other to properly worship God, and the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony enshrines this truth. Matrimony is a true embodiment of the Church on earth: that through the man and woman united as one flesh sacramentally in matrimony, the grace of Christ can truly be known, for Matrimony is a channel God uses to pour upon the world the sacrificial grace of His Son. To put it simply: to be a Christian is to be in love with Jesus, even He Who lives and reigns for ever with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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There are two equal and opposite ways to devalue something. One way is to ignore it, which says that it is unimportant. The second way is to give it lots of exposure but in trivial ways, which teaches that it has no significant value. Angels have in recent times been devalued in both these ways.
Angels have been dismissed as religious fairy tales by those who consider themselves too intellectually sophisticated to believe such notions. On the other hand, angels have been trivialized in visual renderings (which almost always seem to be very bad art) as well as being the subject of non-theological myths and fantasies. For example, human beings do not, in fact, become angels when they get to Heaven. Angels are a completely different order of God’s creation. It is like saying oranges become apples when they die. We all know this is wrong: oranges become orange juice.
What is an angel? An angel is a spiritual creature and part of God’s great unseen world. The word angel means “messenger”: messenger of God and His will.
Why are angels important to us? Beyond being messengers of God they are guardians to human beings against danger and temptation, and they especially watch over children. They remind us that we are part of a great spiritual world that is bound up with our material world.
Is belief in angels scriptural? Yes, without question. Mention of angels is found frequently in both the Old and the New Testaments. The Bible refers to cherubim, seraphim, archangels, guardian angels, and more. Saint Paul lists nine kinds of angels, what are often called the nine orders of angels. Angels played a significant role in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.
The doctrine about Angels of the historic, sacramental traditions of Holy Church—that is, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriential Orthodox, Anglican, and Old Catholic—teaches that:
* Christ is the center of the angelic world. They are His angels. They belong to Him because they were created through and for Him. They belong to Him still more because He has made them messengers of His saving plan. They are present with Christ in heaven.
* In the Liturgy of the Church—both Mass and the daily Offices—we join in our worship with the worship of the angelic choir. This choir is ever singing Holy, Holy, Holy. Worship on earth that is holy and sacramental participates directly in the angelic singing: we singing with the Angels, and the Angels singing with us. The Liturgy is an immediate participation in the heavenly reality, which is why ancient Liturgy proclaims: “Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and all the company of heaven [meaning the Saints], we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
* Angels have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announcing this salvation and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan. In the Gospel accounts, Angels are everywhere. From the Incarnation to the Ascension, the life of Jesus Christ is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. They protect Jesus in His infancy, serve Him in the desert, strengthen Him in his agony in the garden. It is angels that proclaim the Good News of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection.
* From its beginning, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life. Everyone has a Guardian Angel.
* Angels are a real part of God’s creation. They are not physical; they do not have material bodies; but they are quite real. Like all of God’s gifts, however, we must cooperate with God’s will in order to receive the guidance and protection God promises us through their ministry.
In light of all this, let us hear the words Our Lord Jesus Christ told His disciples: "I say unto you that their angels ever behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." By these words it is shown that an angel is appointed for every believer as a guardian, who shields him against the devil’s plotting and supports him in holy virtues. As the Psalmist says of every righteous person: “God commanded his angels about you, that they should hold you and bear you in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” It is a great honour for Christians that each person, from birth, has an angel assigned to him as a guardian. Just so it is written of the Apostle Peter that the angel led him out of prison and he came to his companions and asked for entrance, knocking, and the faithful ones said, "It is not Peter who is knocking, it is his angel."
Truly, the angels whom God has appointed as guardians for his chosen never leave his presence, because God is everywhere, and wherever the angels fly they are ever in his presence, and enjoy his glory. They take news of our words and deeds to the Almighty, although to Him nothing is hidden; as the Archangel Raphael said to the man of God, Tobias, "When you prayed, I offered your prayers before God."
The Old Testament tells us that archangels are set over every nation, above the other angels, so that they may protect the peoples, as Moses, in the fifth book of the Old Testament, reveals in these words: "When the high God separated and scattered the offspring of Adam, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the numbers of his angels". The prophet Daniel agrees with this in his prophecy: a certain angel of God spoke to Daniel concerning the archangel who guided the Persians, and said, "The archangel came to me, the leader of the Greek people, and none was my helper but Michael, leader of the Hebrews. Even now Michael, one of the foremost of the leaders, came to support me, and I remained there with the king of the Persians." With these words, when he said that Michael came to help him, it is shown what great care the archangels take in their authority over mankind.
The archangel Michael has care of Christian people, as he had for the Hebrew people of old while they believed in God. It is arranged by God’s dispensation that the glorious angel of heaven Michael is continually the helper of Christians on earth and their advocate in heaven before Almighty God, and His Son Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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I want today to unpack the doctrine taught by the Church Father S. John of Damascus, which is included on our service bulletin. S. John of Damascus says, “The day of the Nativity of the Theotokos [that’s the title of Mary, it means “bearer of God”] is the feast of joy for the whole world, because through the Theotokos the entire human race was renewed and the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy.” The Church rejoices at Mary’s nativity, in other words, for two reasons. The first is that through it the entire human race was renewed, and the second is that through it Eve’s grief was changed into joy.
I will start with the second reason. We rejoice because through the Nativity of Mary, the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy. Eve grieved because of her disobedience to God’s will. Her disobedience is her saying “No” to what God ordained for their food. Eve’s “no,” is a refusal of God’s plan of creation. In this, her “no” summarizes and embodies our sinfulness, for we are all sinners in a fallen world. And her “no” summarizes and embodies the entirety of the disobedience toward God seen throughout Old Testament Scripture; the Old Testament is an extensive elaboration of Eve’s refusal of God. Eve’s grief is heard in Moses and Joshua bemoaning the disobedience of the sons of Israel; Eve’s grief is heard in the prophets, rebuking Israel of their stiff-necked hardness of heart. Eve’s grief is the grief of a people lost and alienated from God. Mary changed all this. She counters Eve’s no with a holy and obedient “yes.” Her yes to God comes in her whole life and especially at the annunciation – Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word – her yes, which cooperates with God’s plan of creation, redeems and transforms Eve’s no. Mary’s whole life was a yes to God, and yes which opens the doorway to Christ. Mary’s yes changes the grief of the people of God into joy.
That’s the second part of the teaching of S. John of Damascus. For the first part of S. John’s teaching, let us consider the Gospel passage from Matthew. There are two genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament. These are the genealogy in S. Matthew’s Gospel account, which we just heard, and also that in the Gospel account of S. Luke. Neither make for the most gripping narrative or story, yet there are details of Matthew’s genealogy to notice.
For one, Jesus is described both as the son of David and the son of Abraham. This identification of Jesus as the son of David echoes the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary at the annunciation. To Mary, Gabriel says, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there will be no end.” In 2nd Samuel, chapter 7, God tells David, through Nathan, that “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” Jesus being the son of David, therefore, ratifies the testimony Christ Himself gave anonymously to David, and makes the physical lineage traced from David also sacred lineage. It is holy because it is physical: body to body, mother to mother.
The identification of Jesus as the son of Abraham creates a specifically spiritual lineage to go along with the physical lineage from David. Abraham expresses faith in God. Genesis 15:6: “And he [Abraham] believed the Lord; and he [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham is known as a father of our faith, because those that believe in the Holy Trinity share in Abraham’s faith, and are children of Abraham: spiritual children, sharing and participating in the Holy Spirit. As S. Paul said to the church in Corinth: “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Cor 6.16). As the Holy Spirit lives in us and moves among us, we are participating in the Kingdom, which is life in the Holy Spirit, the same life initiated in Abraham. S. Paul is even more specific in his Epistle to the Galatians, when Paul writes, “So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. . . . Those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.” Hence within the faith community of the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ. He is part of that spiritual lineage.
Yet Jesus is more than a mere part or participant in the spiritual lineage of Abraham and the physical lineage of David. For the genealogy of S. Matthew concludes by acknowledging Blessed Mary, of whom Jesus was born, Who is called Christ. Jesus is the anointed one, which is what “Christ” means. He is the anointed King Who reigns over the kingdom. He reigns as King on the throne of David over the house of Jacob, and He is the anointed King of the historical faith community of Abraham. Thus the entirety of the revelation was made manifest in Christ; in the words of S. Paul, “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.”
We see clearly that Mary’s role in the economy of God’s plan of salvation is unmistakable. She is part of the physical lineage, and she is part of the spiritual lineage. While salvation history had been unfolding long before she was born, God’s plan of salvation began to come into clarity when the person of Mary herself was born. Without the birth of Mary, the King would not be known. Hence her birth is a feast of joy for the whole world, as S. John of Damascus teaches.
Because of Christ, through her the entire human race was renewed, he also teaches, not because she is the savior, but because He Who is the Saviour, the King, Christ Jesus, is known through her birth of Him, physically and spiritually. Physically, because He was actually born from her; and spiritually, because of Mary’s faith. Because all of the Church celebrates Mary’s acceptance, her cooperation with grace, her yes to God’s initiative to reveal through her the fullness of His plan for salvation, which is Jesus Christ, which came from her yes – because of all this the Church celebrates Mary’s nativity.
In Luke 11 we hear this: “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Blessed is Our Lady because of the physical (the womb that bore, the breasts he sucked), but even more so, Blessed is Our Lady because of the spiritual (hearing the word of God and keeping it); Mary recapitulating Abraham’s obedience and doing so on behalf of us all, changing the Eve’s grief into Gospel joy, for Christ redeems Eve’s disobedience and loss of paradise through the Gospel: the Gospel which is Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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