Graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, nourish with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same. (Collect: Trinity VII) If you spend time reading the Epistles of St. Paul carefully, you cannot help but come away with a sense of the Apostle’s uncanny ability to unite spiritual contraries to make his point. Perhaps this is a natural consequence of his momentous conversion, when, in a fit of zealous and rabid hot pursuit of Damascan Christians, in a … [Read more...]

  O God who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass man’s understanding… (Collect: Trinity VI) Trinity-tide is all about growing in the knowledge and love of God; it is the green season, and in it, we focus on God’s spiritual harvesting of fertile virtue in our souls. The green vestments and Altar hangings of the season encourage us to pursue the fecundity of spiritual love and hope. We are being readied for things whose goodness, truth, and beauty exceed our wildest … [Read more...]

To be a Disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers) I have opened this morning’s sermon with these words of Oswald Chambers because I believe that the dangers of false Discipleship are everywhere present in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In it, we read that Then drew near unto [Jesus] all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man … [Read more...]

Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God. (St. Luke xiv. 15) The liturgical season of Trinity is all about virtuous and godly living. In this season we are called to translate and convert our vision of Christ the Way, the Truth, and the Life into habits of holiness and righteousness. In this season we are called to apply what we know to our hearts. From our hearts, we must will the good that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, teaches us. And the good that we are focusing on in … [Read more...]

And so, we love Him because he first loved us. (1 John 4. 19) Trinity tide is all about the moral life rooted in the vision of truth that we see in God.  Today I will speak about the friendship of God and man. Throughout the seasons of the liturgical year you and I have been illuminated progressively by the knowledge of God so that we might come to find friendship with Him. If Eastertide might be called the season of vision and knowledge, Trinity tide is one of activity, experience, and … [Read more...]

They marvelled to see such things; they were astonished, and suddenly cast down. Fear came there upon them and sorrow, as upon a woman in her travail. (Psalm xlviii. 4,5) One day in the future men will look back at our age and describe it as the time when man had forgotten his past. In general we shall be judged as those who had little or no respect for the wisdom of our fathers, and in particular as those who spent their lives running away from the truth. Because of both, we shall be known … [Read more...]

As the briefest liturgical season in the Church Year, Ascension-tide 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 Holy … [Read more...]

The Question: Is Jesus the living Son of God, the Saviour, the Deliverer, the Mediator, the Advocate, The Judge for you? Is He is the Logos of God in your heart and soul? If He is, then He is the reason, truth, goodness, and beauty that animates your life. If he is, then He is the ruling and governing principle of your whole existence. He then indwells your heart by His Grace and through the Holy Spirit. He then moves and defines you. He enables you to die to sin and come alive to … [Read more...]

And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. (St. Matthew 27. 19) There is a good deal of silence that is meant to surround us as a response to the Passion and Crucifixion of the Son of God during Holy Week. Holy Week has been set aside from the time of the early Church to ponder our Lord’s suffering in silence and stillness. If we approach this time with a determined silence and stillness, we will, no doubt, find that it assaults and confounds our human … [Read more...]

Before Abraham was, I AM. (St. John viii. 58) The threat of God’s nearness and proximity are quite enough to unnerve, unhinge, and unsettle men in all ages. There is something about human nature that is resistant, refractory, and recalcitrant to God and His Word. Most men treat the existence of God carelessly, incautiously, indifferently, or haughtily. Think about it. The majority of men in our own time say, I am spiritual but not religious. What that usually means is that he or she isn’t in … [Read more...]

                  Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou hast sucked. But Jesus said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. (St. Luke xi. 27, 28) In last week's Gospel, a heathen woman taught us how to come to know ourselves, repent of our sins, and to supplicate Christ for His merciful love and His all-powerful healing of body and soul. You will remember that the Syro-Phoenician woman taught us how to express humility and obedience … [Read more...]

[Love-2.1-15] Eusebius. Oh! Theophilus, you have forced me now to speak, and I cannot contain the Joy that I feel in this Expectation which you have raised in me. If you can make the Scriptures do all that which you have promised to Theogenes, I shall be in Paradise before I die. For to know that Love alone was the Beginning of Nature and Creature, that nothing but Love encompasses the whole Universe of Things, that the governing Hand that overrules all, the watchful Eye that sees through all, … [Read more...]

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Third Session: St. Thomas Aquinas tells us about the order in which Satan tempted Christ.  For at first he tempted Him to that which men desire, however … [Read more...]

  Let us Pray: O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Second Session: Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If … [Read more...]

We begin our Lenten Pilgrimage with the words of Lancelot Andrewes. Andrewes was a 17th-century poet, theologian, and Bishop of Winchester. He did not live to endure the horrific regicide of His Sovereign Lord, King Charles I. But on his own spiritual journey he culled gifts of Grace that have helped many a Christian in the modern age to understand the important place of enduring all manner of spiritual suffering as the soul moves from repentance and death and into virtue and new life. He had a … [Read more...]