“il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres”. THE CURIOUS CASE OF ADMIRAL BYNG The month of March brings with it the anniversary of one of the stranger episodes in the history of the British Royal Navy – namely the execution in 1757, on his own Quarterdeck, of Admiral John Byng an event which occasioned the famous remark of Voltaire in Candide that in this country, “il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les … [Read more...]
Revisiting the “God, Science, and Humanity” Conference
It has been one year now since the God, Science, and Humanity" Conference on Feb. 10, 2018, sponsored by The Prayer Book Society at St. Francis Church in Potomac, MD. The purpose of the event was to renew our Christian imaginations from within the Great Tradition of Christianity for better constructive engagement with the many challenges posed by our secular and technological social order, especially those associated with a perceived conflict between science and Christian faith. The … [Read more...]
A Sermon in the Season of Epiphany
The Baptism of the Lord Sermon Notes A. Macdonald-Radcliff For an audio version please go to: https://www.theadventboston.org/sermon-preached-by-fr-macdonald-radcliff-january-13-2019/ (The Readings of the day are appended Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 89, Acts 10:34-38, Luke 3:15-16, 21-22) In the name of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost… It is striking that the Church calendar, after the great Feast of Christmas plunges rather rapidly after Low Sunday into two particularly … [Read more...]
Advent-Epiphany “Word” Series
I have always been fascinated by language and words. Words are special. They enable interpersonal communication. They also enable the articulation of the intelligibility of the world. They are essential to our life as human beings. The Word we receive from God is also special. We speak of the Bible as God's Word. We also speak of Jesus as God's Word, His Logos, the Word-made-flesh through Whom the words of the Bible come alive. During Advent 2002 through Epiphany 2003 I had written a … [Read more...]
The Word of Mystery
Since the start of Advent, we have been following a series of reflections on the theme of “Word”. Words convey truth, knowledge and love. They have content, express meaning, and enable communication. They provide an essential connection with the world and between human beings that is uniquely human. Yet when all is said and done, words are not fully adequate to the task. This limitation is certainly familiar to practitioners of my profession, physics. Words fail adequately to convey the strange … [Read more...]
The Word of Silence
Words provide a necessary and powerful means by which we communicate with one another and are a crucial aspect of ordinary life. God also communicates to us through His Word. Yet there are times when God seems not to speak, where His Word is silent. The prophet Amos tells the people of Israel, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord.”(Amos 8:11) This is … [Read more...]
The Word of Light
Today marks the opening of the Church’s season of Epiphany, which focuses on the coming of Jesus as God’s servant to fulfill the ancient prophecy: “I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is 49:6; echoed in Acts 13:47) The word Epiphany comes from a Greek word that literally means to shine upon, and is associated with the manifestation of God’s salvation to the gentile world. Light is an apt symbol to convey the multifaceted reality … [Read more...]
The Word of Love
One of our deepest human needs is to love and to be loved. We are not made to live our lives alone. John Donne expressed this poetically when he wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Surely part of the meaning of being made in God’s image is that our lives are to reflect in some way the inner life of God as a Trinity of Persons in a relationship of love with one another. We flourish best as part of a community where love of … [Read more...]
The Word of Truth
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) Let me extend a hearty Christmas greeting to all who are reading this “Word” series. I would like to share a few thoughts about the truth within the Christmas story. Many today still ask the skeptical question of Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). In the ordinary sense of the word, truth has to do with what is real, indicating … [Read more...]
The Word of Hope
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. “ (Is.65:17) As we come to the last Sunday of Advent, we have been through a time of preparation, of anticipation, for celebrating the Christmas season. One word that I always associate with Advent is hope. Human beings seem to have an almost inexhaustible capacity to hope. It is an enduring theme of world’s literature. The Advent Scripture readings have spoken of the hope of … [Read more...]
The Word of Joy
The Psalmist says “O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.”(Ps. 95:1) Have you ever noticed that there is one pink candle among the three purple ones in the Advent wreath? The purple ones symbolize the penitential emphasis of Advent, calling us to turn from our sinful ways. By contrast, the pink candle symbolizes joy. The 3rd Sunday of Advent has traditionally been known as gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “rejoice”. We are reminded … [Read more...]
The Word of Judgment
Let us continue our Advent reflections on the theme of “Word”. The Church has historically viewed Advent as a penitential season, reminding us of our great need of redemption from lives of futility and darkness. Although God’s Word is life giving and creative, Scripture paints an unflinchingly realistic picture of human nature, and confronts us with our deceptive hearts and lying tongues. In short, left to ourselves, we do not flourish as human beings in a life of love of God and neighbor, but … [Read more...]
The Word of Life
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … Through Him all things were made.” These familiar yet powerful words open the gospel of John. As we enter into the new liturgical year this Advent, looking forward to the coming of that Word as an infant in a manger, I would like to offer a series of reflections on the theme of “Word.” They are based on a series I did for Advent-Epiphany 2002-2003 when Senior Warden at Truro Church in Fairfax, … [Read more...]
Ten Reasons to be Anglican/Episcopal (Part II)
What is the Anglican Way and why is it good? Part II The following series of short reflections relates closely to a series first put out in the precursor to the Anglican Way which was then known as The Mandate by The Revd. Dr. Peter Toon, in 1997 A M-R (The final five of ten reflections are included in this second post under this heading) 6 The Anglican Way looks to the Early Church perspective When asked to explain the foundation of the Anglican Way as a living … [Read more...]
The Centenary of the Armistice ending The First World War, A Sermon Preached upon Remembrance Sunday
The Grosvenor Chapel Mayfair REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY 11th November 2018 Commemoration of the Centenary of the Armistice ending the Great War Requiem (Setting by Gabriel Fauré) With Choir and Orchestra Directed by Richard Hobson The Service opened with the gathering in silence of the Congregation and the entry in procession of the Sacred Ministers and the laying of a wreath of Flanders Poppies to the recitation of the traditional words of Lawrence Binyon taken from his poem For the Fallen. … [Read more...]
The Filioque Clause and the underlying theological issues – An Article by The Revd. Dr. Daniel Newman
Recent days have seen the publication of an historic Agreed Statement between Anglican and Oriental Orthodox theologians on the Procession and Work of the Holy Spirit. The statement was originally signed a year ago the previous October after lengthy discussions by members of the Anglican Oriental-Orthodox International Commission (AOOIC) but was only published at this year’s meeting of AOOIC, which took place in Lebanon. … [Read more...]
PART II of A Response to ACNA’s Proposed 2019 Prayer Book * by Drew N. Keane
By Drew Nathaniel Keane (*This original article was first published online on Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church to whom grateful thanks is most warmly extended) This first section of the article (published here earlier) covered the proposals for Morning Prayer, Baptism.This section now looks at the proposals for Holy Communion and the Lectionaries in the forthcoming ACNA Prayer Book By way of introducing this second Section of the original Article it … [Read more...]
Elephants and Anglicans to the Sound of Church Bells – The Toon Memorial Lecture 2018
So, oft in theologic wars The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!.... So concluded this year's Toon Memorial Lecture in Pusey House Oxford given on the 17th of May 2018 under the title Elephants and Anglicans to the sound of Church Bells: Just how central is the place of the Prayer Book for Anglicans and the future of the Communion? By The Revd. Canon Alistair … [Read more...]
St George’s Chapel Windsor
There is no one place more deeply connected to the monarchy in Britain, aside from Westminster Abbey, than Windsor Castle and the Chapel of St. George. Just how much of that history weighed upon Meghan Markel as she then was during her recent wedding to HRH Prince Harry now Duke of Sussex is unclear, but it could hardly be more profound. Kings Henry VIII and Charles I are buried beneath the Quire and elsewhere lie Edwards IV (1483), VI (1484) and VII (1910); George III (1820), … [Read more...]
Persecution of Christians: Recent Overview Reports detail a deteriorating picture
“In terms of the numbers of people involved, the gravity of the crimes committed and their impact, it is clear that the persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history.” So began the presentation by Aid to the Church in Needof their most recent global overview report on Christian persecution Persecuted & Forgotten? – A Report on Christians Oppressed for their Faith. This report went on to point out that not only are Christians more persecuted … [Read more...]
Christmas 2017: Can wonder ever end?
If our eyes do not remain closed, Christmas is a season associated with wonder. Do we ever stop to pause from our busy lives to sense the sheer astonishment of simply being here, that we are beings who are even capable of wonder: the wonder of the world, the wonder of the Christ child, the wonder of any child, the wonder that we have a welcoming home in a small corner of our most amazing and abundant cosmos populated with more than a trillion trillion stars? Can science and Christmas have … [Read more...]
Advent 2017: To arrive at the beginning
The end is where we start from. … And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, Little Gidding As we come to the opening of Advent, 2017, the liturgical readings remind us of both the "last things," the Last Judgment and the new heavens and new earth, and our anticipation of "new things" in the coming of the Christ Child. The end and the beginning somehow belong together. For the … [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...]
Just what is science, after all?
"All human beings by nature desire to know." Thus goes the opening line of Aristotle's "Metaphysics" (4th century BC), the book so named because it came after the book on physics in his collected writings (meta being a Greek preposition that has "after" among its several meanings). We immediately see three obvious yet remarkable things implicit in this quite simple statement. First, "human beings" are said to be a class about which the term "all" can be predicated, implying a common nature … [Read more...]
The Recovery of Wonder
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed." Albert Einstein wrote the above in a 1931 essay entitled "The world as I see it." Einstein went on to characterize the experience of mystery as "a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the … [Read more...]