THAT THE PASSION OF CHRIST BROUGHT ABOUT ITS EFFECT BECAUSE IT WAS A SACRIFICEA sacrifice properly so called is something done to render God the honour specially due to Him, in order to appease Him. St. Augustine teaches this, saying, Every work done in order that we may, in a holy union, cleave to God is a true sacrifice, every work, that is to say, related to that final good whose possession alone can make us truly happy. Christ in the Passion offered Himself for us, and it was just this … [Read more...]
Word made Flesh
Through the self-emptying life of Jesus Christ the life, light, and love of God the Father are received and then passed on. What this means is that Jesus Christ the man was always subjecting His human nature to His Divine Nature in order to reveal the life, understanding, and will of God the Father to all mankind. And so what He surrendered was all self-loving, self-willing, and self-seeking so that He could reveal God’s Word in [His] flesh perfectly to the world. Of course, God’s Word is His … [Read more...]
First Friday in Lent: Thomas Aquinas with Commentary
Thomas Aquinas and Commentary:THE CROWN OF THORNS Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see king Solomon in the diadem, wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the joy of his heart. Cant. iii. n.This is the voice of the Church inviting the souls of the faithful to behold the marvellous beauty of her spouse. For the daughters of Sion, who are they but the daughters of Jerusalem, holy souls, the citizens of that city which is above, who with the angels … [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...]
Musings on nature
It is the great burden of every good preacher to face his congregation’s temptation to be too much of this world and not enough of the other. Men will be men, and that means that their humanity is always tugging their souls towards the false gods of time and space, and away from the One God of eternity. This kind of dualism is common to the fallen condition, and so we should not be surprised. The proverbial fruit of the primordial Garden is ever with us, and that it attracts and consumes most is … [Read more...]
Septuagesima Sunday
Septuagesima Sunday February 1, 2015 Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? 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 … [Read more...]
Sonnets of Prayer
From: The Christian Year in the Times of London, anonymously written. The Times Publishing Company LTD, Printing House Square, 1930.Sonnets of PrayerDuring the discussions on Prayer-Book revision little was said about the Collects. These ancient prayers have a place by themselves in the affection of Church people, and it seems to be agreed that to touch them must be to run the risk of spoiling them. They give permanent expression to the awe and confidence of men who know that because in … [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...]
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...]
“Lent” by George Herbert
Welcome deare feast of Lent: who loves not thee, He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie, But is compos'd of passion. The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church sayes, now: Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow To ev'ry Corporation. ≈ The humble soul compos'd of love and fear Begins at home, and layes the burden there, When doctrines disagree. He sayes, in … [Read more...]
Preparing for Ash Wednesday
People ask me: Why does The Book of Common Prayer (1662) delay the required Prayer (Collect) on Fasting during Lent to the First Sunday in Lent when it should, apparently, by rights, be prayed on the First Day of Lent, which is the previous Wednesday?Here is the answer!The Collect for the first Sunday is addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ and begins with a reference to fasting, O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our … [Read more...]
The Collect for Sexagesima
O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:19-31 The Gospel: Luke 8:4-15 Historical Note This Collect is taken from the Gregorian Sacramentary. The only notable changes were introduced in 1549 when Cranmer omitted the phrase “by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles,” which previously had followed the word … [Read more...]
“Gesima” Sundays and the BCP
As the Church moves through the Christian Year from Epiphany to Lent she passes through three Sundays which have to modern ears strange titles. Septuagesima, Sexagesima & Quinquagesima are in fact three Latin words and they indicate how far away we are from Easter – that is, 70, 60 & 50 days respectively. From the fifth century after Christ these Sundays emerged as a preparatory cycle for Lent in the West.The Latin names arose by analogy with Quadragesima, the first Sunday in Lent, … [Read more...]
King Charles I and the American Revolution
January 30, according to the Book of Common Prayer, is the Feast of Charles the Martyr. On that day in 1649, Charles Stuart, Charles I, monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was beheaded after a short trial. Afterwards, the country was subjected to the rule of Parliament and then to the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. So began the Interregnum or Commonwealth, during which various experiments at Parliamentary governing were attempted and failed, and then, after … [Read more...]
The Tuning of All Existence
The Rev’d Canon Robert D. Crouse “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” --Galatians 2:20 The Festival we keep today is not a very ancient one. The early Church observed a day in honour of the martyrdom in Rome of the chief apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, and we still keep that festival at the end of June. But this festival of St. Paul’s conversion belongs to the Western Church alone, and began to be generally observed only in the twelfth century. Thus is it one of the many medieval … [Read more...]