…The people pressed upon him to hear the word of God… (St. Luke v. 1) It must always be the case that good Christians should be pressing upon [Jesus] to hear the Word of God. (Idem) But hearing the Word of God is one thing, and doing it is quite another. St. James tells us to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22) This is where most well-intentioned Christians find trouble. After all, we can read God’s Word and hear it, but how can we do it? The problem seems to be … [Read more...]
Man comes to be as he comes to know. Coming to know is part and parcel of becoming a true human being. Coming into knowledge, therefore, is in need of the same cause as coming into being. This salient feature of created human nature is ignored by most pseudo-scientists and pseudo-philosophers. They are pseudo because they will not admit of the need for God the First Cause in their acquisition of knowledge. Evidently, they believe that there exists no Being who Knows. But if there is no being who … [Read more...]
Trinity III
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. (1 St. Peter v. 6,7) Trinitytide is all about participating in the life of God the Holy Trinity. In the season of Trinity, we are exhorted to return to God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, and by the effectual sanctification of the Holy Ghost. What we are invited to participate in is nothing short of the eternal dynamism of the Triune … [Read more...]
I AM
In stillness and silence Moses, the Lord’s Prophet, seeks and searches for God in Himself. What or who he searches for is what is not anything that he has experienced or encountered in the universe around him. In the universe are changing, moving, growing, and becoming beings. In himself he finds a changing, moving, becoming, being. He knows himself to be never the same, always changing, always becoming something that he was not before. Not only can he not step in the same river twice but he is … [Read more...]
Ascension I
Ascension-tide is the briefest liturgical season in the Church Year. It lasts only ten days. We believe that on the fortieth day after Easter Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later the Holy Spirit was sent into the womb of the nascent Church on the feast of the Pentecost or Whitsunday. So, we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us. The Ascension is Jesus Christ’s return to the eternal state that He shares, as Son, with the Father and the … [Read more...]
Ascension
It seems rather odd that no sooner have the Apostles been warned against gazing into the starry heaven in pursuit of Jesus’ Ascended nature than their Elizabethan successors have taken to exhorting us to do precisely that. The Angels of the Lord –two men standing by the Apostles in white apparel rebuke the Apostles. Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts … [Read more...]
Holy Tuesday
The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. (Isaiah l. 5) The Lord Jesus Christ has been pinned to the gibbet or the Cross of Calvary. His ears are open always to His Father’s voice. He will not rebel nor revolt in the time of His agony. He will find neither bitterness nor resentment in his heart of hearts. He has come to do the will and work of His Eternal Father, and the Father’s will and Word is always begotten in Him. He will open His ears to what … [Read more...]
Palm Sunday 2017
I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see you to it. (St. Matthew 27. 24) We in the Christian church are called to stillness, silence, and contemplation during Holy Week. The silence is our response to the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. Holy Week has been set aside from the time of early Church ponder our Lord’s suffering in silence. If we approach this time with a diligent and determined concentration, we will, no doubt, find that it will provoke our … [Read more...]
Passion Sunday
Before Abraham was, I am.(St. John viii 58) John Henry Newman reminds us that in the Church’s calendar the first weeks in Lent are spent in repentance…and that… the last weeks [of Lent], are more especially consecrated to the thoughts of those sufferings, whereby Grace and power were purchased for us (Sermon v. JHN) by Jesus Christ. From here on, then, our readings and meditations will have more immediate reference to Him, whose death and resurrection we are soon to commemorate. (Ibid) In the … [Read more...]
More on the Fall
Any man who thinks that the Genesis account of Creation and the Fall is a fable crafted for the simple-minded should be silenced by what follows on the heals of Adam’s first transgression. Interestingly enough, what ensues is not a violent Divine punishment for man’s disobedience, but an inquisition. It is, as it were, a working out of the problem of man’s sinning in relation to the Divine Truth. And the interrogation is couched in the context of an eerie calm that alone can facilitate rational … [Read more...]
Lent IV
So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free. (Gal. iv. 21) The theme for the Fourth Sunday in Lent is liberation and freedom. And our lections for that past three Sundays have been leading us up to this point. On the First Sunday in Lent, we learned that Jesus Christ was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Hebr. iv. 15) What we found, I hope, was that the first step on the road to freedom was Christ’s willingness to be tried and tested as we are. We … [Read more...]
Lent III
Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. (St. Luke xi. 28) The point of our journey up to Jerusalem in this holy season of Lent is not only to see and behold with spiritual eyes the love of the Word [that] was made flesh and dwelt among us (St. John i. 14), but also to hear the same Word. So we go to Jerusalem to hear what the Word of God in the flesh has to say to spiritual sickness and disorder and then also to spiritual hardness of heart, obduracy, and ill … [Read more...]
Thomas Aquinas on Lent II
My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (St. Matt. xv. 22) MORALLY by this demoniac is understood a sinful soul and here are noted two evils which a man acquires through deadly sin. The first is, that he is possessed by a devil; the second is, that he is grievously vexed. Every literal historical fact of Scripture can be understood on a higher plane, as allegorical or spiritual in meaning. The Gospel for the Second Sunday in Lent is no exception. A Syrophoenician woman … [Read more...]
Lent II
He is no unkind physician who opens the swelling, who cuts, who cauterizes the corrupted part. He gives pain, it is true, but he only gives pain, that he might bring the patient on to health. He gives pain, but if he did not, he would do no good. (St. Augustine: Sermon xxvii) Last week we contemplated the temptations that Jesus withstood on our behalf in order to draw us deeper into His love for God our Heavenly Father. And I pray that we came away with a real sense of His desire … [Read more...]
Thomas Aquinas on Lent I
When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered. (Matt. iv. 2.) I. AUGUSTINE says that it is the highest religion to imitate what we worship, so that, when Our Lord fasted, we ought to imitate Him in fasting. We worship God Almighty. We worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We worship the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Worship unites us to the object of worshiping. Our object is Jesus Christ because He is the Way to the Father. Through Him, we … [Read more...]
William Law: The Spirit of Love, ii.
Look at all the Variety of Creatures; they are what they are for this only End, that in their infinite Variety, Degrees, and Capacities, they may be as so many speaking Figures, living Forms of the manifold Riches and Powers of Nature, as so many Sounds and Voices, Preachers, and Trumpets, giving Glory and Praise and Thanksgiving to that Deity of Love which gives Life to all Nature and Creature. (The Spirit of Love: ii. i. 4, William Law) There is a strange suggestion that the finite … [Read more...]
Lent I
Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew 4. 11) On Ash Wednesday you and I entered the Holy Season of Lent in which we began our journey up to Jerusalem with Jesus. Behold we go up to Jerusalem. (St. Luke xviii. 31) We are invited to go up to the holy city of Jewish Kings. We are invited to go up to the City of Man in order to discover what its citizens do to the Love of God in the flesh. We are called to study and explore the unusual life … [Read more...]
Temptation
Christ Jesus desires truly to redeem our human nature. To do so, He takes it upon Himself to be tempted as we are tempted. How does He do this? He goes off into the wilderness. The wilderness or desert is a place that most men think ought to be free of all real temptation. Jesus shows us that it is precisely in the wilderness that man is tempted by Satan on all levels. First, Jesus shows us that in the desert Man is tempted to put his body before his soul. Man is tempted … [Read more...]
Quinquagesima Sunday
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem (Matthew 20. 18) The Gesima season ends with an invitation to another beginning. Behold we go up. (Matt. 20. 18) We are invited on to yet another road, a spiritual road that leads to our death and new life with God. The road which we will tread is not an easy one. It will require a new and determined readiness. It will demand serious moral introspection. It will call for drastic measures as we learn how to hand over our sin to the Lord for death. It will demand a … [Read more...]
Sexagesima Sunday
And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? (St. Luke viii. 9) The New Testament is full of examples of parables; there are actually thirty in total. We encountered one of them last week in the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. A parable is an external and visible story or illustration that carries the mind into an interior and invisible truth. Archbishop Trench tells us that a parable always involves the story of human beings; never places their moral education … [Read more...]
Septuagesima Sunday
So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (St. Matthew xx. 14-16) We have just completed our journey from Advent through to Epiphany-tide. The season we have observed has been a time of illumination and manifestation. In it we saw that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us whom we discovered to be the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. Now we turn to a period in the Church’s life extending from Septuagesima Sunday … [Read more...]
Being Moved Back to God
Look at all Nature, through all its Height and Depth, in all its Variety of working Powers; it is what it is for this only End, that the hidden Riches, the invisible Powers, Blessings, Glory, and Love of the unsearchable God, may become visible, sensible, and manifest in and by it. (Spirit of Love: ii.1, William Law) When God the Holy Trinity makes, He makes as Being, Knowing, and Love. What we mean to say is that He who Is, Knows what He does, and Loves to do it. The three names of Being, … [Read more...]
A Word to the Wise
In my work as a physicist I know the necessity of being sound in the basics. We speak of fundamental physics, fundamental particles, fundamental symmetries and so forth. If you get it wrong at the beginning, at the most fundamental level, that spells trouble ahead for greater progress. So let's cut to the chase to seek what is most basic. That is essential if we are to be fruitful in exploring the quite different domains of science and faith. The power of words I have always been … [Read more...]
Trinity XXII 2016
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Rev. iii. 20) I think that it is probably the case that, more often than not, we do not think of God moving or coming towards us. Rather we think of our relationship with God as our moving or coming to Him. The most earnest of Christians come to the Lord with laundry lists of supplications and intercessions. Expecting to be heard and heeded, in … [Read more...]
The Society Mourns the Passing of Bishop Geoffrey Rowell
BISHOP GEOFFREY ROWELL Requiem aeternam dona eis.... It is with the deepest sadness that the Society has learned of the passing of Bishop Geoffrey who was, only months ago, to have given a paper at the Society's recent conference Anglicanism Catholic and Reformed. This would have been on the theme of the distinctive Anglican understandings of holiness and it was only with great reluctance that he withdraw, on account of the then early, but already acute, stages of the illness … [Read more...]
Audio of two further Sessions including Dr Arnold Klukas opening the Session on Liturgy Now at the PBS 2017 Conference
Recordings of two further sessions of the PBS Conference can be accessed below. In the first, Dr. Arnold Klukas, the recently retired Professor of Liturgy at Nashotah House, gives the lead presentation. He opened a discussion of the challenges facing the Anglican liturgical heritage if it is to preserve authentic continuity. He was joined in reflecting upon the different contexts of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom by Fr Gavin Dunbar, Dr Jesse Billet and Fr. … [Read more...]
Audio of the Session on Science and Faith at the PBS Conference 2017
A recording of the Conference Session on Apologetics, Science and Faith addressed by Dr. Paul Julienne, the distinguished Physicist and the Society's lead blogger in this field, can be accessed below. He addressed the question: How should science and faith relate to one another? Dr. Paul S. Julienne … [Read more...]
Audio of Drs. Joan O’Donovan, George Westhaver and Jesse Billet, from the PBS Conference 2017
Audio recordings of the Papers given by three more of our principal speakers at the 2017 Conference can be accessed below: The Papers given were: The Public Authority of the Church in the Cranmerian Tradition, by Dr. Joan O’Donovan, University of Edinburgh Incarnational Reading: A Tractarian View of the Authority of Scripture by The Revd. Dr. George Westhaver, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford “The Holy Scriptures, or … [Read more...]
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