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...]
Passions of the Human Soul: Thomas Aquinas with Commentary
According to St. Thomas Aquinas: Love is something pertaining to the appetite; since good is the object of both. So love and appetite are words used to describe a spiritual perception that begins in the body and ends in the soul. Appetite is the first instance of love, and thus we move from physical need to spiritual desire. Wherefore love differs according to the difference of appetites. There are different kinds of appetites depending upon the object of desire. For there is an appetite which … [Read more...]
Trinity XIX Epistle: Thomas Aquinas with Commentary
Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: But rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. (Ephes. iv. 27, 28) THE Apostle lays down three propositions in this Epistle. Firstly, he exhorts the faithful lest they should give place to the devil in their heart. Neither give place to the devil. Secondly, he bids them avoid those things which prepare a place for him: Let him that stole steal … [Read more...]
Quinquagesima’s Love
St. Paul uses a word for love rarely employed among his contemporaries. It seems as if he carefully avoided any of those terms, and they were many, which make it easy to associate the supreme virtue with desires which spend themselves in their own satisfactions, and through instinctive in human nature, are often degraded by man's perversity. English people have never found a word entirely equivalent to St. Paul's term. Our word love stands for a wide range of feeling. It may represent merely … [Read more...]
Suffering the Word…
It is more than slightly disturbing to see how seemingly sensible Christians fall apart completely when visited with one sort or another of earthly unhappiness, calamity, or suffering. The only conclusion that can be drawn from such a violent shift and sudden change in temperament is that such a man was only a seemingly sensible Christian. In all truth, such a man is not truly a sensible Christian. And this because suffering is not an habit of his customary life. Suffering is, of course, a … [Read more...]
Plato on Narcissism
The most serious vice innate in most men's souls is one for which everybody forgives himself and so never tries to find a way of escaping. You can get some idea of this vice from the saying that a man is in the nature of the case 'his own best friend,' and that it is perfectly proper for him to have to play this role. It is truer to say that the cause of each and every crime we commit is precisely this excessive love of ourselves, a love which blinds us to the faults of the beloved and makes us … [Read more...]
Saints Peter and Paul
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ… (1 St. Peter i. 6,7) Many people like to undermine the credibility of the ancient Christian witness because so little is known of those early Christian disciples and martyrs who gave … [Read more...]
Becoming Little Christs
THESE DAYS, being a faithful Christian is no easy task. By reason of our society’s obsessions with strange ideas and new mores, we are often persecuted and thwarted in our efforts to embrace traditional Christianity. It seems so natural to become filled with despair. What we hate ends up defining us too much. The opposition becomes a bette-noire, and we might rightly be accused of idolatry. Far from radiating and mirroring the truth that is under assault, we manifest depression and despair -- … [Read more...]
Prayer Before Holy Communion
Blessed be my God who is pleased to call me once again to the Reconciliation Feast: and after all my breaches with Him, and all my sins against Him, yet to grant me a new indulgence; and to seal my pardon afresh in the precious blood of His Dear Son, that was shed to take away the sins of the world. At thy gracious invitation, Lord, I am bold to come, looking for that blessed benefit, which I know myself so unworthy to receive; that thou mightest justly bar up the doors or mercy against me, and … [Read more...]
The Tudor Machine
It is remarkable how popular historical fiction creates expressions such as ‘the Tudor machine', a term hitherto unfamiliar in historical circles. Dominic Selwood, writing for the Telegraph on yesterday’s 481st anniversary of Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, seems to have been dwelling in the realm of these historical romances when he remarks that Henry VIII’s divorce was “the event that started the English Reformation.” Furthermore, and here historical fiction triumphs … [Read more...]
A Sermon for Easter III
But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered. (Ps. cxxiv. 5,6) We have said before that the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ does not destroy nature but perfects it. And the season in which we find ourselves is no exception to this rule. The process of perfection is no easy business. It involves an ongoing struggle and tension between the old man’s old … [Read more...]
Advice to Those Seeking Ordination
By the Rev. Jonathan Mitchican The priesthood is a great blessing, but it is also one of the hardest things that I have ever experienced. When I was discerning my calling to the ministry in my early twenties, I visited with an older priest in the diocese who told me that if there was anything else I could possibly do, I should go and do it. I took some offense at the time, thinking that he was just trying to scare me away, but looking back now, I realize that he was trying to express to me … [Read more...]
Why Worship?
The Rev. Gavin G. Dunbar The following piece is taken from the Lenten Parish Papers of St. John's Church, Savannah, GA. After the healing of ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) from the disease that made them outcasts to Israel, one of them came back to Jesus, "and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks". He is a Samaritan - not only an outsider but also a heretic. Jesus responds with a question: "Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? … [Read more...]
On Vocation
In The Guardian, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes recently has written a series on George Herbert’s role in her conversion from atheism. When she was assigned Herbert’s poetry to read as a young student, Threlfall-Holmes realized this poetry was "the most dangerous challenge to my atheism that I had yet come across”. She writes: My teenage self was rather proud of being a "cultured despiser of religion". I had dismissed religion as being for the weak of mind, a crutch, something that intelligence and … [Read more...]
The Absence of God
The Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been recognized for his profound religious observations thrown into relief by the turbulent events of the twentieth century. Thomas’s poetry is marked by political and spiritual struggle; as David Anderson has explained at Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, his work “is not easily orthodox or pretty.” Anderson writes: Thomas is mostly interested in God’s silence or absence, the deus absconditus or hidden God, and what that means for … [Read more...]
St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr
The Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle & Martyr, August 24th We do not know much about Bartholomew except his name, and that he was an apostle. According to Church tradition (recorded by Eusebius), it is said that he preached the gospel of Christ in India (a vague geographical term that in antiquity covered much of south Asia) and died a martyr in Armenia, after being skinned alive. That is why his traditional symbol is the flenching knife; and he is sometimes portrayed in art – most … [Read more...]
Bishop Jeremy Taylor
Roberta Bayer The Anglican calendar commemorates Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), a scholar, a man of prayer, and a true pastor. He lived through a century that saw the execution of King Charles I, the Cromwellian interregnum which suppressed the Church of England and banned the Book of Common Prayer, and finally the Restoration. He was a renowned scholar, a student of the liturgy, his thinking formed by the works of the Church Fathers, who defended the Book of Common Prayer, and the historic … [Read more...]
In Memory of the late Rev’d Dr. Peter Toon
The Rev’d David Curry The death of Rev’d Dr. Peter Toon (on April 25th, 2009) has saddened us all. But there is much comfort to be taken from the witness of his life. Peter was one of the most remarkable oracles of the Anglican Way. He shall be greatly missed. Indefatigable in his commitment to Christian Orthodoxy and to the place of the Anglican witness within that orthodoxy, Peter was tireless in a much neglected but crucial feature of our corporate life. He was, first and foremost, a … [Read more...]
Tribute to Dr. Peter Toon
Graham Eglington Peter was my comrade in arms, guide, counsellor, and dear friend for upwards of 20 years. I owe him much personally. But it is his contribution to the Anglican Way of reformed Catholicism, particularly in North America and Australia which concerns us all. The Prayer Book as the principal formulary and root of the Anglican Way was at the heart of his message. Indeed it would not be saying too much to observe that there would be no Prayer Book cause in North America without his … [Read more...]