the legacy of john of shanghai and san francisco: what words may we use at the altar

saturday was the feast day of st. john the wonderworker of shanghai and san francisco. much beloved for many reasons, and villified by some for many of the same reasons, father john has long been one of my most important companions among the saints. it has only been recently that i have read of his and his predecessor st. tikhon's work to reclaim and restore the orthodoxy of the early church in the west.

part of that work is to encourage ancient liturgies which were used before the schism. this is of course not always easy. in that context i found this blog posting fascinating. it contains some cogent considerations, i think, but it also assumes a continuity of the "eastern" church, even at its most "orthodox," which unfortunately is not supported by the events of history. alas, there was a time when many of the eastern bishops were arian heretics. there was a time when many if not most of the russian bishops were lutherans. the old believers find the current russian liturgy unacceptable.

it is in this context that the love and patience of blessed john seems most important. the words of the liturgy, just as the words of scripture, are human words: inspired, but not beyond our comprehension. alas, again and again schisms surround our trying to say the same things with different words.

this morning i read psalm 18 (ev 19) from the new jerusalem bible of some friends for whom i am house-sitting. the line i am accustomed to hearing as "preserve thy servant from presumptious sins" it translates "from pride preserve your servant, never let it be my master." this is certainly a sentiment father john would be quick to second.

"i will go unto the altar of god

even unto the god of my hope and of my salvation."

i have been reading catherine pickstock's after writing over the past few weeks. i intend to reread it again this fall when i'm back home and i can sit with it in the bathtub and soak it up by candlelight. it's an important, even if obviously horrenedously-written book. it might be much clearer, and one hopes in better style, if she wrote in latin. and my old latin vocabulary would probably be more up to the task.

the main thrust, if such a rounded book may be accused of having a thrust, is that the liturgical revisions of vatican ii, and therewith all the little vatican ii tag-alongs such as the american book of common prayer 1979, were scarcely better informed than the reformers of the time around the council of trent, whom they were so quick to criticize. moreover, she suggests that the western church has cast off what was left of a liturgy that would be accessible in a "post-modern" age to replace it with something that is so 1976.

as one who came to the "big church" only around 1980, and who has only gradually come to explore the much richer fare of the pre-vatican ii west and of the non-vatical east, i am delighted that she supports my inclinations with such carefully nuanced research. unfortunately, it seems that for the most part the post-vat church is fairly reluctant to say, "oops, we goofed." (benedict may be an exception, but unfortunately his plate has so many rotten potatoes on it it makes it difficult to hear him when he speaks of strong meat.)

meanwhile, i am happy to continue with using the book of common prayer 2009. perhaps black is the new black.

st. basil's feast

basil was, of course, one of the paleocappadocians, as it were. as one of the doctors of the eastern church, he spoke and wrote much. but perhaps nothing he is credited with is so basic as this:

"the shoes in your closet are stolen from the barefooted man;
the clothes hanging there are stolen from the one who is naked."

more thoughts on same-sex marriage

let me say up front that i have presided at the celebration of same-sex "unions," and i do not regret that. at the same time i should say that i have always used the united methodist rite for such events, and the methodists don't really look upon marriage as a sacrament.

but i need also to say that i scandalized some of my younger friends about a year ago by mentioning at a pre-nuptial dinner that i did not really think that same-sex unions were "sacramental christian marriage." they are young and hip and accepted such a thing as an "of course." i'm old and a fogey and think too much, so my hangup was on the vocabulary and the nature of sacraments.

the argument is often made that the church blesses battleships and the queen's carriages, so why not two people living together in a committed relationship. of course the church can bless such people, but just as the blessing of the queen's carriage is not a sacrament, i have wondered whether such a relationship is a marriage as a sacrament. in one of the most important books on the subject of same-sex marriage in the church, the late yale scholar john boswell took some length to discuss how marriage and the church's attitude towards it had changed over the years.

in most discussions of sacraments, at least in the west, we've more or less agreed with augustine that a sacrament is an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." in the west the "celebrants" of the "sacrament of marriage" have been the couple themselves, and the "outward and visible sign" has been what we have euphemistically called "consumation." the east has taken a somewhat different view of marriage. indeed in the eastern church has not felt the necessity to list and number the sacraments as has the western, and "sacraments" and "sacramentals" have been viewed in a somewhat wider context of possibilities. and marriage in the eastern church has not been so often about sex. marriage as a spiritual path to union with god has been given much more attention. in the west the tendency has been more to focus on the union within a marriage as a sign of the union of god with the church: it is a pointer towards something rather than a road towards something.

now, if find myself somewhat hoist by my own petard. when i officiate at weddings, i usually talk about the "matter" of the "sacrament" as being the taking of each other's hands. this is a "sign" that has a multiplicity of significations. but i have usually thought about "operation" of marriage as the union of opposites: a man and a woman. therefore the union the union of people who are not opposites has not seemed quite marriage. but i'm seeing that this poses problems for one who thinks too much. men and women are not opposites, but complements. nor are god and mankind opposites. very different, but not opposites. if i see marriage as a spiritual path in which two people join hands to walk together, then they do not need to be opposites; they need only to be helps meet for each other.

now, i know that this could bring up all of the "not adam and steve" or "traditional family" objections. but the description of the creation of adam and eve is about its revealing the image of the holy one, not about suburban denver families. and if we look to the "judeo-christian tradition" for our family values, then the closet is full of all sorts of oddities. should we all arrange to kill the husband of the next desirable sex-object we see in order to marry her and make the offspring of that union our heir? are we to think that would be all right if of course we said psalm 51 afterwards?

it seems to me that the description of same-sex marriage from "the right" has been almost entirely hateful, and therefore not useful to a real discussion. i watched, with a group of gay friends, the free video jerry falwell sent us about the gay agenda. we were horrified to realize that we had never known about such an agenda at all, and were of course thankful to mr. falwell for his gay 101 course.

but it seems to me that much of the discussion of same-sex marriage from "the left" has been almost entirely informed by the level of thinking explored by people magazine, and therefore not very useful to a theological discussion.

this little essay is already becoming something of a rant. i suspect it might be one on which i will have some response, which i welcome. and it is one i will follow up on as i prepare to facilitate a discussion of "homosexuality and the church" in a parish.

pentecost ember days

we have just come through the great fifty days, the church's annual reliving of what michael carroccino calls "mind-boggling" events. now we come to the pentecost ember days, three days to consider, once again, who are we, where are we, what are we doing here? we consider these questions once again in a context that exists both in time and in eternity, both on earth, and in the kingdom of heaven.

once again the great circle of time as the church observes it has come around to a place from which we can, perhaps, know

"when the tongues of flame are in-folded
in the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one."

we are invited, by the one who became flesh, died in flesh, rose in flesh, ascended in flesh that the holy spirit might come to dwell in our flesh, to eternal life. at its simplest, most literal meaning, eternal life simply means life outside of time. but to participate in that life outisde of time we must allow our life in time to be sanctified as well. that is how the circle in time becomes the ascending spiral into eternity. we must comprehend time before we can live in eternity. i always find t. s. eliot's four quartets helpful at the ember days. eliot ceaselessly sought to understand time, and knew, as he wrote in what must be the most oft-quoted english words of the past century,

"we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."

nor will we be ready for the kingdom of heaven until we welcome god's will on earth. eliot said "history is now and england." until we understand life here on earth, we will continue to be the children in the apple tree, eating the pre-mature fruit.

how slow we human-kind, who cannot bear very much reality, are to admit that

"time present and time past
are both perhaps present in time future."

we eat now the forbidden fruit, and the thrush and all creation groan. we bore now holes in the floor of the sea and the fishes and all creation groan.

"we die with the dying:
see, they depart, and we go with them.
we are born with the dead:
see, they return and bring us with them.

. . . a people without history
is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
of timeless moments. . . .
history is now and england."


history is now and the gulf of mexico. time present will remain far into time future, as we continue to be born with the dead.

the matins readings this week have been from john's gospel. on monday, "jesus said to nicodemus, 'god so loved the world . . . god sent not his son to condemn the world.'" on wednesday, "jesus said to the multitudes . . . : 'no man can come to me, unless the fther which hath sent me draw him.'"

what shall we seek? for what shall we explore?

"with the drawing of this love and the voice of this calling

we shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and to know the place for the first time."

(quotes from four quartets ("burnt norton" i, "little giddding, "v", copyright 1937, t. s. eliot.)

cur deus homo: ascension and pentecost

ascension day has been down-graded in the western church since vatican ii. caught up in the great-history-of-religion-only understanding of christianity that seems to prevail in so many seminaries and popular "theologians," the gargamel of the "early church's" celebration of the great fifty days has taken all. i first noticed this when i first began to enter the great church, but i didn't know it. the rector at my parish was old-school, and blew out the paschal candle on ascension day. i, having read all the lastest stuff, was of course horrified. (and of course octaves have been "suppressed," so not much mention was made of ascension in the days following, a situation that has become more true with the new common lectionary.)

but there is, i have found, wisdom in the older understanding of the importantce of the ascension, which was brought home to me yesterday in a wonderfully non-western-arrogant way. a friend, who is vicar of a near-by episcopal church, was having tea with me, and said that in that church she held an ascension day service, to which only two other people came. one was an elderly chinese woman, whose father had been a priest in china. indeed he seems to have been a priest in the old nestorian succession, which still exists in china and which has continued to maintain its lineage even though the government denies its existence. he had taught her that the feast of the ascension is the most important feast of the year, even more important than christmas.

if god became man so that man might become god, as anselm of canterbury and many other theologians have suggested, then then ascension of christ is the moment, if there is only one moment, when our humanity is taken into the kingdom of heaven. god the son takes on our humanity, and takes it to the right hand of the father.

this is not the only moment this happens, of course. it happens each time we celebrate the liturgy. we who represent the cherubim, leave beside all earthly cares. only after our nature has been purified by the "life creating trinity" can we receive the gift of the holy spririt.

the wedding feast that is the pascha

one of the many haunting texts of the great three days through which we have just passed (over which we have just passed?) is the question that mary the mother of jesus asks her son as he stumbles with his cross towards golgatha. unfortunately, i did not bring my prayer book with me to the library, so i'll have to paraphrase:

where dost thou hasten, o my son? is there another wedding in cana where once more thou wilt turn water to wine? should i accompany thee, o my son? though thou art crucified, still thou art my son.

oddly one of the other texts which seems to embrace some of the richness of the wedding feast is, i think, a song from 1993 by kate bush called appropriately "the song of solomon." it makes very clear in a way that christians sometimes find uncomfortable the demands of the risen lord, of whom the church is the bride. if indeed, he can demand our sexuality, what else might he demand?

holy week: give me this stranger

as we enter holy week, i find the hymn attributed to joseph of arimathea, which the eastern church sings at vespers on good friday, haunts me:

"give me this stranger, who has no place to lay his head.
give me this stranger, whom his evil disciple delivered to death.
give me this stranger, whom his mother saw hanging on the cross,
and with a mother's sorrow she cried weeping:
'woe is me, my child! woe is me,
light of mine eyes and beloved fruit of my womb!
for what simeon foretold in the temple is come to pass today:
a sword pierce my heart,
but do thou change my grief to gladness by thy ressurrection.' "

may the light of christ shine in even the darkest places of our sinful souls and our sinful world

please listen to the beautiful chant, and pray for all the sons of all the mothers who go each day to calvary, whether as the crucified or the crucifiers. we still seem to know not what we do.

24 march: gabriel archangel

tomorrow is the feast of the annunciation, one of the most important events in the church year, and one which is sadly ignored by many. it is the commemoration of the incarnation. it is the day on which the archangel gabriel first said to the virgin, "hail mary, full of grace: the lord is with thee." in the west gabriel is commemorated the day before the feast; in the east the day after. since angels are immortal, there is of course no day of their repose; they are instead commemorated in connection with their messages.

i have not read angels and demons, so i do not know if there is a lot of nonsense going around about angels which dan brown has popularized as he did with the nonsense about mary magdalene in the da vinci code. i will not therefore try to enter into any big discussion of angels, but rather focus on the message.

the message, of course, is that mary was to bear a child who would be the son of the most high, who would save the people from all their sin. this child, whom the angel gabriel said would be called jesus, was a wonder to mary: "how can this be, since i have known not a man?" he continues to be a wonder, even to us today.

in that child god took on flesh, as the church believes is described in one of the psalms for lauds of gabriel's feast: "the lord is king, and hath put on glorious apparel; the lord hath put on his apparel, and girded himself with strength." the apparel which the high king of heaven put on was flesh, and in that apparel he showed the true glory of man.

the writer of the hebrews would describe the role of the virgin by quoting psalm 39 (ev40):8: "a body thou hast prepared for me."

in the fourth century when the church struggled mightily with the wonder who was this child, she produced the nicene creed, expanding on gabriel's claim that "that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the son of god," with the words "the only begotten son of the father, god from god, light from light, very god of very god." in the fifth century at the council of ephesus the church would insist that the child born to mary was truly all that the creed claimed, from his conception. mary would henceforth be called the "theotokos," the one who bore god.

it is easy to lose the humanity of jesus in these words, especially when the creed is separated from the liturgy. in the liturgy, you see, we say that not only do we receive at the communion "the only begotten son of the father," who sounds to be very spiritual, but we receive the body and the blood: body from body, blood from blood, born of the virgin.

now sadly enough, we sometimes disdain the very flesh which god took on. (see te deum: "thou, having taken it upon thyself to deliver man, didst not disdain the virgin's womb.") we have bumper stickers claiming that "we are spiritual creatures trapped in a physical body," or "spiritual creature having a physical experience." we become jealous of angels. this has especially been true in the time we call "the enlightenment," when milton would make satan the real hero of his epic poem. it is helpful to recall what jung said about heroes: that they are boys, not real men.

but real men (including women) are made in the image of god. when that image became tarnished, god took on flesh to show us once again what our true glory could be.

next week we will observe the great three days, when more than any other time that glory was revealed. looking forward to that time, enjoy this basque carol.

shrove tuesday

shrove tuesday is fascinating because it is celebrated by many activities by many people who don't necessarily know why they do the things they do except that they have always done them. in northumberland, for instance, as in many parts of britain, the day includes a football match. as carnival it is "celebrated by many people who seem mostly to be looking for an excuse to enjoy drunken excess. in the united states even, it is still celebrated with pancakes by many who will not participate in any real lenten fasting.

the name of the day, shrove tuesday, comes from the old english word "shrive" meaning to confess one's sins and have them forgiven. that was of course when we still thought there were sins, and found the burden of them intolerable. now what makes us miserable is most often not our sins, which we quite enjoy, thank you very much, but the downturns of the new leige lord of our lives, the economy. if there is anything we recognize as sin, it tends to be part of the society, for which we are not responsible.

it is against this background that i find these words of oscar romero insightful:

"how easy it is to denounce structural injustice, institutionalized violence, social sin. and it is true, this sin is everywhere, but where are the roots of this social sin? in the heart of every human being. present-day society is a sort of anonymous world in which no one is willing to admit guilt and everyone is responsible.

"because of this, salvation begins with the human person, with human dignity, with saving every person from sin. individually there are among us here no two sinners alike. each one has committed his or her own shameful deeds, and yet we want to cast our guilt on the other and hide our own sin. i must take off my mask; i, too, am one of them, and i need to beg god's pardon because i have offended god and society. this is the call of christ.

"how beautiful the expression of that woman upon finding herself pardoned and understood: 'no one, sir. no one has condemned me.' then neither do i, i who could give tht truly condemning word, neither do i condemn; but be careful, brothers and sisters, since god has forgiven us so many times, let us take advantage of that friendship with the lord which we have recovered and let us live it with gratitude."

candlemass eve: a hinge of the year

in a room filled with the smoke of incense, i leave the candles burning on the altar for a long time. there is a lot going on this night, and i want to savour it. we have celebrated the consolation of israel, the coming of the messiah, recognized by the prophet simeon and the prophetess anna, proof that there were those in israel who recognized their glory. this feast is the hinge between the completion of the old testament and the beginning of the new.

the presentation of our lord in the temple is also the hinge feast between christmas and easter. it is a bittersweet time. amidst the joy of the meeting of mary, carrying the infant lord, and joseph with simeon and anna, after simeon sings of the light to the gentiles, the glory of israel, represented in our procession around the chapel with blessed candles, comes the chilling line in the gospel, spoken by simeon to mary, "yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also."

"also."

the mass of candles: the light of the world will truly be extinguished. john will mention tht darkness in his gospel, saying simply, "it was night." (13:30) we will represent that darkness again with candles, during holy week at tenebrae. what we remember in this candlemass in what we remember in all our eucharists: "as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the lord's death till he come."

"even so, come, lord jesus."

benedict biscop

benedict biscop sought to romanize the church in britain, and therefore one might expect me to find him to be "the enemy." however, it is important to realize that the roman church in the seventh century was certainly not the roman church of novels such as the da vinci code, nor even the roman church of the nineteenth century. in the seventh century it was more orthodox than constantinople, which was nearly taken over by the current new thing, monotheletism.

what benedict seemed most taken with about roman christianity was the rule of st. benedict, which he encountered at lerins, where he was tonsured. his understanding of the rule included perhaps most importantly the chants used at rome, and books. so wonderful did the british church find the gregorian chants that when benedict's prior at wearmouth, ceofrith, was the only person at the monastery not sick with the plague except for one young boy--whom we know as bede of jarrow--he could not bring himself to leave off the chants. and of course it would be the british church's love of books and learning which would start the educational centers that would end "the dark ages" in europe.

he also, for better or for worse, brought stone building techniques to britain. the remains of st. peter's at wearmouth are still standing today, a much different sort of structure than the mud and waddle buildings that had preceeded it.

and, benedict brought icons. we hardly think of british christianity as being iconographic today, because of the thoroughness of the roundheads' destructiveness. but at one time, following the lead of benedict biscop, monasteries and parish churches and cathedrals were all as frescoed and full of icons as the churches of the east. whenever benedict started a new building project, he undertook another trip to rome to bring back books and icons and vestments, bringing the british church into the cultural world of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. when the light of christianity culture was nearly extinguished by the invasions that would follow, that culture would be taken back to europe by misssionaries from britain. but that is the story of later saints.

christmas in the old testament

i suspect many of us think of christmas as a "new testament" event, and of course it is insofar as it inaugurates the new testament. but much if not most of our understanding of the event comes from the old testament. the ox and the ass are from isaiah; the answer to the question of the wise men to herod's advisors comes from micah. but i think my favourite prophecy that has shaped our understanding of the nativity is the passage from wisdom that is the introit for the second sunday of christmas (wisdom 18:14-15):

"while all things were in quiet silence
and that night was in the midst of her swift course,
thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne."

it is the image that informs my favourite german, perhaps favourite of all, christmas carol, "lo, how a rose e'er blooming."

advent ember days: our king and saviour draweth nigh

christianity is not a democratic religion. recent liberal protestantism seems determined that it should be, and if one's understanding of christianity comes from the history of religion school that dominates many seminaries, the popular press, and the popular media, one would think that the divinity of christ and his messiahship were the results of a vote held at nicea in 325.

the traditional propers for the advent ember days present a different view.* in the older western lectionary it is on the third sunday in advent that our attention is turned from the last things, the coming of christ at the end of the world, to the coming of christ as jesus of nazareth with a gospel from matthew, and "our ministry" is put into that context with an epistle from 1 corinthians. in contrast, there are no seasonal ember days propers in the newer lectionaries, and the emphasis has, not surprisingly, moved almost solely to the inclusive nature of the people of god and away from the exclusive sovereignty of god. (see, for example, the collects "for the ministry" and "for the mission of the church," pp. 205-206, 256-257, book of common prayer 1979.)

but still we have the advent antiphon on venite, "our king and saviour draweth nigh: o come let us adore him." and this is the true context in which we live our lives and die our deaths.

i have included this rather lengthy historico-polemical introduction because it is easy to forget that the one whose coming we celebrate this season is not an elected official, but the absolute sovereign of the universe. true, we may elect to serve him or to oppose him. but either way, "he cometh, he cometh to judge the earth; and with righteousness to judge the world, and the peoples with his truth."

jesus insistently reminded us that no on can serve two masters. it is remarkable but not coincidental that at no other time of the year than advent does mammon make such inticing claims on us. so, these advent ember days are a sober opportunity for each of us to consider whom one recognizes as king.

*these include isaiah 2:2-5, psalm 24, isaiah 7:10-15, luke 1:26-38, psalm 119:151-152, isaiah 9:1-5, psalm 85, luke 1:39-47, psalm 53, isiah 19:20-22, psalm 19, isaiah 35:1-7, isaiah 40:9-11, isaiah 45:1-8, the song of the three holy children 26-30, benedictus es, 2 thessalonians 2:1-8, and luke 5:1-6. one might notice that there is no lack of mention of the inclusion of all peoples in the kingdom of the holy one.

advent: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the world

one of the problems of starting blogging is that one feels one should continue blogging, especially during the big times of the year. so, i have been thinking i should say something about advent, but have been hesitant to jump to it. advent is a multi-layered season, because the coming of christ is a multi-layered event, and our celebration of it brings together many parts of that coming at one time.

the earliest observation of advent by the church seems to have been in the fast preceeding not christmas but the ephiphany, which from very early times in the eastern and celtic church has been a time of baptism. that is where the penitential layer, which is much less popular in the west particularly today, comes from. we are not in our "culture" very comfortable with penitence; we tend to focus more on the coming of the new-born king. more and more we use blue advent candles. and the birth of christ, at christmas, is of course also part of the season. but the earlier emphasis in the west was on the second coming, on the last things as we used to say. this is made very clear in the propers in the pre-vatican ii lectinary and missal.

i have been thinking about whether i might write a little something about each of these emphasises, but i think what is suggested by folklorists as an even earlier understanding of this time of the year is something most of us need most, and which would allow us time to explore some of the other gifts of this season, the gift of a new king who would give us a new heart, so that all would be well.

that earliest understanding is reflected, some think, in the advent wreath. the story is that at this time of the year, the dark time with long and cold nights, people would actually take the wheels off their wagons to turn them into chandeliers to light their times together as they waited and encouraged the return of light, telling stories in the glow of the candles.

few of us would not benefit from something similar. rather than make advent a time of making a list and checking it twice, we could sit down and tell each other stories, read to one another, or curl up with candle light and a novel. (i just finished hermann hesse's wonderfully provocative and ironic the glass bead game, a wonderful meditation on, among other things, both penitance and the last things, although i did not expect that when i picked it up.)

there is a beautiful collect in the family prayers section of the book of common prayer we might find helpful:

"o god of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; by the might of thy spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art god; through jesus christ our lord. amen."

i confess i was even more pagan after reading hesse: i had a little campfire last night to celebrate the beautiful advent vesper light, and the encourage the return of light and warmth.

st. john of damascus

john of damascus would probably have a much harder time these days than he did in the seventh and eighth centuries. in the seventh and eighth centuries the struggle between christians and muslims was hardly off the ground. he is famous for his hymns, but even more famous for his defense of icons.

what i find so fascinating about his defense of icons is that he was able to write his treatises, usually called on the holy images, because he had the protection of his muslim friends. he had been born in damascus, his father had worked for the caliph, and he had as well before he retired to the desert of palestine. he, as did many of his contemporaries, thought of the muslims as another christian heresy.

ironically, it is usually thought that the orthodox aversion to icons at this time was because the muslims looked upon the holy images as a violation of the second commandment.

had he remained closer to the centers of power and orthodoxy during the iconoclastic controversy, john would probably been severely punished; almost certainly his treatises would not have been published. but working at the fringes of imperial power, he was protected by the caliph and produced the work that led to his often being called "the last of the fathers."

a great week of saints

st. cedd, st. alfred the great, st. frumentius, st. neot and sts. simon and thaddeus all have come up this week. oddly enough, there are quite a lot of connexions between them.

cedd of course is the brother of my patron, chad, but he was also one of the most southern-traveling of the northumbrians, and worked in the territory of which alfred was king. (if alfred had not won at edington, you might be reading this in a language which, even if after 1066 and all that sounded much the same, would be called danish.) alfred was the patron of neot of glastonbury, a scholar and monk who was very influential on alfred. at a time when most kings were pretty bloody even if they were christian (think of my patronymic ancester, cadwaladr, who was a "christian" but who allied himself again and again with the pagan penda in wars against the christian kings of northumbria), alfred truly was a kinder and gentler sort of ruler.

neot shares his feast day with ss. simon and jude, who amongst other things were missionaries to persia. jude is also known as thaddeus, and in persia is called addai, the composer of the liturgy of sts. addai and mari, also used by the church in abbysinia, whose founder was st. frumentius.

the old testament reading for today's feast of simon and jude from isaiah (28:9-16) seems appropriate to all of these saints: "precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; . . . i lay in zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste."

and of course with all of them the collect for today is appropriate:

"O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone; Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

commemoration of st. frideswide

with the feast of luke the evangelist and iconographer and the new martyrs of russia available for consideration, why should i choose to mention the somewhat obscure 8th century mercian abbess frideswide? i chose to write about her because the history of the modern western church seems to be described by the history of her foundation. i can probably do no better than to quote her story from fr. beverly c. hughson o.h.c.'s athletes of god, pp. 335-336:

"this saint was a mercian abbess, the daughter of a prince who lived at oxford early in the eighth century. the old story is that algar, a neighboring prince, sought her hand in marriage. fearing lest her father would compel her to accept his addresses, she fled from oxford with two nuns in a boat, rowed by an angel in the likeness of a young man clothed in white, and took refuge in a wood near abingdon. many stories similar to this are told of this holy virgin. there is no question, however that she founded a convent at oxford and for many years devoted herself to the service of the poor and outcast. her convent was in later times given to the augustinian canons, and it was acquired by cardinal wolsey for his cardinal college, which afterwards became christ church. the chapel of this college, which was built in the twelfth century, is now the cathedral church of the oxford diocese. the bones of the saint were cast out of their tomb [see photo above] in the chapel in the reign of edward vi, and those of the wife of peter martyr, the reformer, enshrined in their stead. under queen mary the bones of the intruding lady were removed, and the relics of st. frideswide restored. when elizabeth came to the throne, she ordered the former to be returned to the shrine without disturbing those of the saint. so now it is said that they both rest in the same shrine, and those who go to venerate the relics of the saint have opportunity of contemplating the remains of her strange bedfellow."

monasticism in its early days was often an attempt to escape from the growing worldly politics in which the church was becoming engaged. frideswide's refusal of a political marriage and the privileges it would provide were well understood and appreciated in the early british church. consider the legend of the seven desert fathers who brought monastic christianity to wales and cornwall, and the popularity of the visit of st. anthony to st. paul as the bottom image on standing crosses.

but monasticism, too, came to be a source of power, rather than of seeking one thing: to know god. st. frideswide's abbey became an augustinian house. then the royally established episcopacy took over, and cardinal woolsey made it into a "college." at first colleges were legitimate institutions for christian learning, one may hope. but the despotic rule of henry, which the reformers thought they could turn to their advantage, made cardinal college a royal establishment instead, although cleverly named not king's (that would happen at the even more protestant cambridge) but christ college.

now even the bones of the monastic foundress were removed, and those of a foreign-born scholar replaced them. with the elizabethan settlement, all the bones were thrown in together, a somewhat macabre pre-curser of the claims of the history channel, for example, which claims that truth is to be found simply by considering everyone's "opinions." it is sad to consider that the pharisees have prevailed in so much of the modern church.

st. thais

i admit right up front that one of the reasons i decided to post on the commemoration of st. thais is to have a link to joshua bell's playing of the interlude in massenet's opera. but the real life of the penitent saint and the story as told by the romantic massenet are slightly different. paphnutius was not so distracted by her physical beauty as to be driven mad. rather he was given a vision of a throne awaiting some saint in heaven. he assumed it would be for s. anthony, but he was told instead that it awaited s. thais, the penitent, who reposed only fifteen days after entering the desert monastery.

praying the scriptures

a letter from a friend arrived yesterday with a very useful problem. ryan knight is a campus minister at a large state school. he is thinking of introducing praying the scripture to his students, but they are already having trouble understanding praying the psalms. so i thought about this as i walked out to the county's highest ridge, with a view of the kings river.

i had recently sent him one very practical book on the subject, which i did not yet know he had not read. oh well. but i thought, another book is probably not going to be much help anyway.

and it dawned on me that praying scripture is really very simple:
think about someone you love very much.
imagine that person in serious trouble.
think of yourself praying for that person.
think how you would want the holy one to listen to your prayer.
read scripture listening that way.

we are the ones whom god loves very much.
we are in serious trouble, and not for our sins only, but for the sin of the world.
the holy one speaks to us in scripture.
our listening is praying the scripture.

the next problem ryan came up with is that many of his students are still in denial that they are in serious trouble. but that is why so much of the scripture is stories. they catch us up in ways we aren't expecting. but that's perhaps the subject of another post.