Worship is boring...

...the only thing worse than actually worshiping is being in a church full of Christians…

…at least, that what you’d think looking at all the other things people choose to do on Sunday morning. It’s easy to understand why some think that: the music in church is sometimes insipid, the sermons can be dull, and the language incomprehensible. Given this, the funny papers do seem like a more entertaining way to spend Sunday morning.

Except for this: worship isn’t supposed to be entertaining. Worship isn’t about us, but God. That doesn’t mean it has to be insipid or dull or incomprehensible: it shouldn’t be, because God isn’t insipid or dull (He IS, admittedly, incomprehensible!).

Worship is boring because our beliefs about God can be boring. We want God to be boring, cause that way He’s safe and controllable and predictable. We don’t really want God; we want Santa Claus. It’s not terrifying to fall into the hands of Santa. When we encounter God, when we really encounter Him, our hair stands straight up. He’s not what we expect, or want Him to be.

If we worship God with music from a rock concert and talk to Him with the same language we use to order at McDonald’s, should we be surprised if it bores us—or God?

This Christmas, go to church. Go to worship God, not to be entertained by the music or “get something” out of the sermon (nothing wrong with any of that, but neither one is worship). Go to worship the One Who made the far-flung galaxies but Who became a helpless Child for love’s sake. That isn’t boring—it’s unbelievable. But that’s for another time.

A holy Christmas--Fr Gregory Wilcox

This is the as St Joseph's ran in the New Braunfels newspaper this Christmas

The Fullness of Time…

We all wait in our own ways: some fidget, glancing impatiently at their watches, drumming their fingers; they have other things to do. Some wait passively, with slumped shoulders and resigned stares; in our current sociological lingo, these are the “unempowered.” Some don’t mind waiting and keep themselves entertained, or at least occupied, while doing so. Some grumble, some smile, some chat, some are sullen. We wait the way we live.

Of course, how we wait depends on what we’re waiting for. A little boy waits for Christmas with expectation and excitement; a grown man waits for his appointment with the IRS auditor with an altogether different set of feelings. The bride before her wedding (and the groom before his!), the old lady in the checkout line of the grocery-store, the parents waiting to hear the outcome of their son’s operation, the prisoner who has already eaten his Last Meal: all wait—each one waits, knowing something is going to happen.

The Advent season has a variety of nuanced meanings and insights for us to discover, but at its heart it has a simple but important lesson to teach: wait.

We wait for things we can’t make happen ourselves: the paint to dry, a child’s first word, a check to clear, the verification of our numbers from the State Lottery Commission. We wait for these things because we can’t do anything else.
Advent teaches us we have to wait for God. He won’t be rushed.

God is beyond, or outside, or above time. For God there is no past, present or future—with God, all is now.

But He made His creatures and worlds subject to time. Suns sputter out, granite turns to sand, dinosaurs disappear, we grow up, then grow old. But you and I are different than dinosaurs or daisies. God has breathed His life into us. He made us to be creatures living in time, but destined for something else. He breathed immortality, but we don’t quite believe it. We live in the world of time He created, but we live as prisoners. We trap ourselves in time, define ourselves by clocks.

Advent says, wait. Wait. Be patient, God is doing something, and you’re part of it. Trust Him with yourself, with your time. Advent calls us to wait for God. What He does is often so subtle it escapes our notice, but He is here. If we learn to wait with Him and watch, we might catch a glimpse of Him as He passes.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

“He Shall Come Again, with Glory, to—gulp—Judge…”

I like to be praised. On those occasions when I am, I think finally somebody has realized my true worth. They’ve seen me as I am and given me the recognition I deserve.

—or at least, they’ve seen me as I think I am.

When I’m criticized, I’m almost always certain my critics are quite wrong: they don’t know me and they don’t know what they’re talking about.

But there are those rare occasions when I actually ponder my critics’ words—even pause to consider the possibility they may be right. And when I do, when I discover the truth of other’s judgments, I blush, even if I’m by myself in the dark.

One day, a day I’m sort of looking forward to while at the same time hoping to delay, I believe I’ll be judged by a Judge Who knows me like I’ve never known myself. When I stand (if I’m able to stand—I reckon the verb describing my posture will be closer to “grovel”) before Him, not only will He see me as I am—I’ll see me, for the first time, as I really am. On that day everything I’ve ever done or said will be recounted. The Lord Jesus has given me fair warning: “I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.” In the Lord’s presence every idle word I’ve spoken, every sneer and snub I’ve given someone (“as you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me”), every malicious thought, every greedy impulse, or self-serving deed of mine will be remembered and exposed.

We’ve all had that Unhappy and Unforgettable Moment in our lives when we’d wished the floor would open and swallow us. Beloved, on that Day there will be no escape, no gaping earth to receive us, no place to hide. We’ll know ourselves as we are known. No wonder the old medieval hymn calls it the “Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning”!

But for all that dreadful day threatens to be, our day of judgment is also our day of freedom. The One Who sees through our charades and shame is the One Who came to raise us up from all that. As I hear the soul-twisting words and deeds of my life recounted, what really matters at that hour is not what I’ve done but who I’ll blame.

Around the Table, on the night in which our Lord Jesus was betrayed, each of the Apostles asked Him “Is it I, Lord, who will betray you?” One of them knew the answer before he asked the question; only Judas left the Table justifying himself.
As we recite the words of the Creed, “…He shall come again, in glory, to judge both the quick and the dead,” remember now and then, that you’ll be there. When the gaze of the Just Judge fixes itself on you, what will you say? Again, the hymn shudders its words: “What shall I, frail man, be pleading? Who for me be interceding, when the just are mercy needing?”

The Prayer Book collect for Christmas Day petitions: “grant that as we joyfully receive Him [today] as our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold Him [on that Day] when He shall come to be our Judge…”

The One Who will judge our sins is the One Who longs for our redemption. His Advent warning is our Christmas Hope.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Death, Judgment, Heaven and—especially—Hell

It’s early Advent, that cheery time of year when our thoughts turn to Things Immortal. This is the customary time for us to ponder the above-mentioned “Four last Things.”

The first Sunday of Advent was medievally called “Doom Sunday,” just to make sure things got off on the right foot. In those days, “doom” didn’t have the same connotation as it does today. It wasn’t something like “we’re doomed, boys, none of us is gonna make it outta here alive.” Doom was the Anglo-Saxon word for “judgment”—as in the famous “Domesday Book” compiled for William the Conqueror. In the medieval churches of England, there was everywhere a standard painting above the Altar rail where people knelt to receive Holy Communion. It was a picture of the “Doom”—the Last Judgment, depicting the Lord Christ, enthroned in Heaven and dividing the people left and right—those to His right going into eternal felicity, escorted by angels, those to His left being dragged by demons straight to hell. I regret we don’t have them anymore.

Most of us nowadays are too smart to believe God would ship anybody off to hell—excepting only politicians, perhaps. Certainly He wouldn’t send me. He loves me, right?

Yes, He does.

He always will. My problem is I don’t want somebody to love me—not real, honest-to-God love. I want people to indulge me. I have only a threadbare idea about what love really is.

I usually don’t want to go where the Lord leads me, and most often I don’t want to do what He has in mind. Fortunately for me, He loves me enough not to leave me to my own devices, imagining I know not only what I want but certain I know what I need. Like a loving father, sometimes the Lord has to use a switch on me.

He does that (St Paul says, “those He loves, He chastens”) because He knows the reality of hell (whether I’m too smart to believe in it or not), He loves me and He doesn’t want me roasting on a spit eternally. That’s why bad things happen—to us as individuals, as families, as parishes, as nations and as human beings. Bad things are God’s way of saying “Uh—you’re not really getting this, are you?”

Bad things don’t come from God—hell included. The bad things that come my way don’t come because God is plotting against me, but because I’m proud, envious, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful and slothful. Left to myself, these are the character choices I’d make. So God doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He butts into our lives over and again, trying to turn us from the broad and easy paths we so often choose.

Heaven, of which the Church is the earthly and imperfect image (eikon), is, like the One Church, a communion. Heaven is the perfect communion of the redeemed with God the Three-in-One and with each other.

Hell is the opposite. There is no communion, either with God or anyone else. Hell is Me, Me, Me. Its Biblical symbol is a sulfurous, bubbling lake of brimstone and fire. The image is unappealing—it’s downright unpleasant!—but the reality is much worse. My guess is that hell isn’t a terrifying playground of devils, with pitchfork-wielding imps in red leotards, as much as it is dull. Eternal boredom with Me at the center, unable to love, unable to give (in hell there won’t be anybody to give to) or share of ourselves. Hell is a pathetic “communion” of one—Me with myself.

Hell is peopled with those who made the choice of Me, Me, Me over and again throughout their lives; they don’t know how to make any other.

Next time you kneel at the Altar rail, picture a medieval “doom”—the Lord Jesus separating His sheep from His goats. And be a little grateful for the troubles of the past week. He’s working on you—to make sure Someday, when He’s divvying up His stock, you go off happily, bleating with the sheep.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Tithes, Offerings and Alms

Money, money, money—everybody’s interested in the topic. It’s the grease that oils the wheels that keep the machinery of our society turning.

Buried treasure, pirate loot, mattresses stuffed with cash, casino jackpots, multi-state lottery prizes—these are the stuff dreams are made of. We dream about riches innumerable and wealth untold because we believe riches and wealth will not only solve our problems but make us happy.

Many Christians, and other people of good sense, will say that’s not so; they’ll insist money can’t buy happiness. But when we watch what they do, rather than listen to what they say, we discover a disconnect. Our actions betray our words. No surprise. The love of money, against which St Paul warned us, the desire for money, the trust in money, these are ingrained in us by the society in which we live. These entice us from the Gospel.

So the Church applies her remedies. Some of us take vows of poverty, become poor for the Gospel’s sake. Most of us don’t. We have other obligations, some sacred—as to our families—and some secular. But all Christians are called from the love and desire and hankering after money, and each of us—Bishop, Priest, Deacon, little old lady in the pew, big businessman on the Vestry, Sunday School teacher, choirboy and Sunday School student—has to come to terms with that hankering and what that means in our life. We all face the temptation to love and desire and trust money.

Like every other temptation, we have to resist it to grow in the Spirit we’ve been given, to become spiritual adults.

How? What do we do?

Please buckle your seat belt.

Some of us choose complete poverty. Like St Francis of Assisi, they “embrace” poverty as a mistress. That’s not for us all. But embracing some poverty is for us all. I know this is probably as close as it’s possible to come to being a social heretic, but nonetheless, it’s the call of the Gospel of Jesus.

We’re not to put our faith and trust in our money, or power, or connections, or beauty, or knowledge (not even in our books!), but in Jesus, the Son of Mary the Virgin of Galilee.

So what do we do? We give some of our money away. We don’t give it away so we’ll get more—sort of “investing with God”—but so we won’t have so much. What we give needs to be planned, as with so much else in our spiritual lives—receiving the Sacraments regularly, coming to Church on Sunday, saying our daily prayers—if we hope to actually grow in grace.

So the Church has a plan for not having so much. She calls on us to give a selected portion of our incomes away. The old Anglo-Saxon word is “tithe”—a tenth. Yeah, that’s a lot. Especially if you love and trust in what that tenth could buy you. That’s just why we should give it away.

There are other words, too, for what we give away. “Offerings” aren’t tithes but gifts made from our abundance. We offer something in thanksgiving for what we’ve received, a way of sanctifying the blessings God has given us. When we have a windfall, we should make an offering to God. “Alms” are something else, something we give for pity’s sake, to the poor and suffering. Our offerings and alms are not our tithes, but gifts above and beyond them.

Money isn’t evil, anymore than is a flashy car or a new house or that beautiful fifteenth-century hand-copied version of Cicero’s De Amicitia on permanent display at the Huntington Library. But putting any of these things in the center of our heart and mind, trusting in them, is, for the Christian, idolatry. And we are a people, in this world, who are at war with idolatry. In our arsenal, along with charity and mercy, prayer and the Sacraments, are tithes, offerings and alms.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

God and—gulp!—My Money

Money and Religion, in the minds of many, don’t mix. They shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. God doesn’t need my money: it’s only the Church that wants it—especially the clergy, who shouldn’t be trusted with it in the first place.

Just think of any TV “evangelist,” who spends a lot of air time talking about “love gifts” or, more Bible-sounding, “tithes and offerings.” Nobody is surprised when sooner or later and one after another, these fellas end up on TV surrounded by IRS agents or a bevy of bimbos. That’s all the proof we need that religion and money don’t mix.

And there’s that Bible verse, isn’t there? “Money is the root of all evil?”

First, I’m sure you know this frequently quoted verse doesn’t really exist. What St Paul actually said was “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

He knew what he was talking about.

The Gospel is not about money or power or prestige. It centers around giving, not taking, which is another way of saying charity, which is another word for love. St Paul growls “It’s the love of money” that’s the problem. When any of us, Bishops, vestrymen, Priests, ladies in the pew, Popes or Sunday School children love money, we’re loving something Jesus told us not to.

Money isn’t evil—it’s stuff. Necessary stuff, with real uses, like manure. Useful, but not lovable. St Paul isn’t worried about my loving money in and of itself; he’s warning me that money is always a sign (we might even say a “sacrament”) of something else. The danger is that I’ll enthrone one of those something elses where God should be. Whatever my heart circles around—power or pleasure, importance or security—if I love money it’s because I believe money can give me what I want.

It can’t, though. Money can buy me a lot of stuff—even friends (of a sort)—but sooner or later (sometimes not till we’re on our deathbeds) that loving money “costs” something. We pay its price with our souls. What we love shapes us: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

So for a minute, forget about the money-grubbing rector and the smarmy TV preacher and think about the spiritual reality of money.

What we do with our money is a sign of what we think is important.

We all have to keep up our mortgage payments to the bank and buy our groceries at the HEB, we’ve gotta have clothes to wear and books to read (not necessarily in that order), and in our society that means we have to “make” and use money. But money means more than that. For us, money means status and influence and power. We tell each other who we are by what we do with our money.

We tell God, too.

The TV “evangelist” promises his marks that if they’ll send him their money, God will reward them with more money. This slimy message, worthy of the ole Serpent, is “Give so you can receive more.”

Dearly beloved, we give so we’ll have less. That’s Gospel giving. We give to God as He has given to us. Without expecting a reward, giving so we can be one with the One Who gave Himself to us. At the Offertory at Mass, while the Priest prays for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, the alms bason rests on the Altar, alongside the Altar Book and the bread (soon not to be bread) and wine (which will likewise be shortly undergoing a Change). In that collection plate, we are putting ourselves on the Altar of God.

That’s true Gospel giving.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

The Holy Church

“Holiness” is one of the four marks of the Church. The Nicene Creed says “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” When we say these are the “marks” of the Church, we mean that they are her four necessary characteristics. These marks say who she is and what she is. Problem is, they don’t seem to be accurate.

One Church? Look in the phone book under “church” and you’ll find “churches” innumerable: Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Anglican. Churches by the bunches.

Holy? You’d have to be Rip Van Winkle to be ignorant of the myriad of accusations of un-holiness made about the Church—particularly those specially entrusted with her guidance and welfare—over the past decades. A little knowledge of the Church’s story from the earliest days (remember St Paul’s sharp letters to the Corinthians?) reminds us she has always been unfaithful to her calling to holiness.

And so with her Catholicity and Apostolic character. From the first the Church has been marked with failure. She has never appeared to be the spotless Bride of the Lamb about which the Book of Revelation sings. Over and again she’s been tempted and repeatedly seduced by the Seven Deadly Sins.

In spite of her failings, though, she is, always has been and always will be, the Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. It’s essential to her nature, which comes, not from her imperfect members, but from her Head, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

In this Octave of All the Saints, it’s a fair time for us to pause and consider the least questioned but probably also least understood of the Church’s marks: her holiness.

It’s important that we not hide her flaws, the Church’s failings and imperfections. As long as there is a Church here on earth, the Church Militant, the Church still struggling and at war (and she is at war, impolite as it may be to point it out), she’ll be marred with scandals. Squabbles will erupt; the Seven Sins will attack. Sometimes they seem to beat her down.

The Church is Holy, because God is holy, and she is His. Try as we might, from the corrupt Borgia popes to the avaricious Tudor kings, we can’t overturn her holiness. It flows like a crystal stream from God, feeds us in the Sacraments, lifts us to heavenly places—with angels and archangels—in our worship, consoles us in our prayers and opens our eyes to the beauty and grace God has infused in creation.

Holiness is not the pinched piety of the Puritan but the exuberant song of the redeemed. It seeks to find the desire for goodness each human soul, no matter how cramped and selfish and miserable, has buried inside.

The saints are those among us who hunger for grace, who seek the Pearl of Great Price and will give all they have for it. The saints are those among us to whom the Kingdom of God has come now.

The rest of us fumble along, hankering after the wrong things, mistaking God’s gifts for God, imagining that God must want what we want because, after all, He loves us and wants us to be happy, doesn’t He? And so the Church seems to fail, because so many of her members fail. She must be corrupt because some of us are corrupt.

St Athansius, the Archbishop of Alexandria 1600 years ago put things in perspective: “God became like us,” he said, “so we could become like Him.” Or, as the Creed called by St Athanasius’ name says so succinctly, our salvation comes “not by the lowering of Godhood to flesh, but by the raising of Manhood to God.” The holiness of the Church is the holiness of God. Slowly, in the daily sorrows and challenges and joys of our lives, He is “raising us” to Himself.

The Church looks so imperfect because we see and understand so imperfectly: “through a glass, darkly.” We see with a flawed vision. God alone sees things as they are. The holiness of the Church is not the holiness we bring but the holiness God gives. He is creating His spotless Bride—you and I are the stuff He has chosen to work with. There’s the real mystery! A blessed Hallowtide.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

The Household of Faith

The following is a bit unusual for St Joseph’s Table, but some things demand—deserve—our attention.

The Church of England is “established.” That means it’s the official religion of England, tied to the State and, to some degree, controlled by it. Americans find the concept of a “state religion” difficult to imagine; the so-called “separation of church and state” here has entered our national psyche so much that many are cautious about wishing people “Merry Christmas.” Among us, this notion of the separation of church and state is a bit of a cult in itself.

If we find the establishment of the English Church odd, consider that in many Middle Eastern countries, Islam is the “established” religion. Places like Egypt, until very recently a so-called “secular state,” looked to modern democracies for its ideals—if not day-to-day practices. Islam may not have been officially established but as the religion of the great majority of the population, it certainly enjoyed a favored status.

In an article I wrote for One magazine a few years ago (One focuses on the lives of Christians in the Middle East), I interviewed a Coptic priest who was visiting the United States. He agreed to the interview only on the condition that I not use his name, the name of his parish, or even its region. “Retribution against us is real and happens daily,” he explained matter-of-factly.

The priest, who’s been serving in his rural parish for more than 25 years, wanted to leave a legacy to his parish and people, something “they will have long after I am gone,” he told me. Since Coptic children, even under the recent “secular” regime, were discriminated against in state schools, he wanted to build a school for the young people of his parish. For ten years, he tirelessly raised money for his dream. Finally, cash in hand, he applied for the government permits. One of the requirements was that he appear before the Islamic town council and obtain their permission. The council agreed, with this stipulation: he must build an Islamic school first, to be larger than the Christian school he would someday build.

He’s a better man than I. At that point, I’ve have become angry, told them off and gone home to nurse a cup of bourbon. Fr X told me his story with a slight smile and shrug of his shoulders. “What did you do?” I asked. “I prayed,” he answered simply, “then I built their school.” He began raising money all over again for a Christian school, which he completed two years before he made his trip to America (not, incidentally, a fund-raising trip. When I suggested that, he chuckled. “Then the school wouldn’t be ours.”). It was built despite constant vandalism and theft of materials by the indignant Muslim neighbors for whom Fr X had built a school. He smiles as he tells his tale. “God has been kind to us,” he concludes.

The persecuted Church is the holy Church.

Copts have been Christians for 1800 years. Since the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, any Muslim who converts to Christianity is subject to the death penalty. The Coptic Christians today (who make up 10% of the population of Egypt) are all descendants of the first generations of Copts who refused to convert to Islam so long ago.

I am proud to share the Catholic religion with such defenders of the Faith.
With the fall of the “secular” government there earlier this year, plans are afoot to implement Sharia Law, the religious law of Islam, over the Egyptian population—including the Copts. Under Sharia Law, Christians “will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church or sanctuary, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration.” Churches cannot display crosses, ring bells, or conduct religious activities in public. Already, since the fall of the “secular” government in January, three Coptic churches have been burned. Christian businesses are routinely attacked. It is a daily headline to read of the abduction of Christian teen-agers who are forced to convert to Islam, their captors knowing the penalties they'll face even for backing out of a forced conversion . Sharia Law isn’t yet in effect, but in all these instances, authorities respond by telling the Coptic community not to make more trouble lest they provoke more reprisals.

Hard to believe? Yeah. And all true.

And so what’s to be done?

I’m not suggesting we write our Congressman or email the White House. Instead, follow Fr X’s good example. Pray for the Copts, whose persecution is making holy the Church of God. And pray for those of us who rarely suffer even an inconvenience for our religion, that God will make us worthy of such companions in the Household of Faith.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

…and Sharing Your Faith

Some people love to talk religion, just like some of us love talking about sports or politics or the stock market. Some are know-it-alls: the history of Church music, the details of doctrine, the intricacies of canon law; others are tar-pits of sincerity: every good thing that happens is a miracle and they attribute their choice of breakfast cereal to divine guidance.

Most of us, though, are a bit reluctant to talk about—not religion so much, as faith—our personal faith. Though we may have a hard time expressing ourselves, I think there’s something else at work, too; something deeper than just being tongue-tied.

It’s easy to talk about the amazing grease-cutting qualities of the latest dish detergent. We’re not really putting ourselves on the line when we gush about cleaning products. Faith is different. When we talk about that, we’re talking about who we are, and what really matters to us.

“I believe in one God…” we say every Sunday at Mass (the Creed of Nicaea actually begins “We believe,” but “I” does nicely right now). The creed embodies the essentials of our faith, ancient and modern. It’s our declaration of faith, not just in God, but in His creation, us included. It’s how we Christians see and understand what God has done, is doing and will do.

When we say the Creed, we’re not saying “I find the following set of historical-religious statements likely to be factual.” “I believe in one God” isn’t so much an intellectual proposition as a declaration of trust. What we’re really saying is “this is the truth on which I base my life.”

Evangelism, the telling of the Good News, is grounded on the truths of the Creed, told in our lives. Evangelism makes us uncomfortable because of the aggressive and manipulative connotations it carries in our culture. It comes across as a high pressure technique which presses people to make a “religious decision for Christ” which will save them from hell. As much as the advocates of such an approach quote the Bible, though, this has nothing to do with evangelism as presented in Scripture.

St Peter says: “be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you.”

Evangelism is “giving the answer that is in you.” It’s sharing how God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost is present in our lives—in times of sorrow and joy, crisis and freedom. It’s our willingness to share the presence and power of God with those in our lives; not because we “have” something which they don’t, but because we are all of us creatures starving for grace.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Talking about Religion…

I’ve had six phone calls today. More than half were from friends wanting to share something with me, something they’d liked and believed I would like, too: one told me about a movie I had to see (he’d just seen it), another about a place I had to eat (they knew I’d enjoy because they’d enjoyed it). Two people recommended books.

We share the things of our lives with each other: things we like (and things we don’t), things that matter (and stuff that doesn’t), things that happen to us (and things we hope won’t happen). When we do this, we’re doing more than just talking. We’re telling others (and ourselves, too), who we are, what matters to us, how we understand and define ourselves.

We tell each other about our gall bladders, the grades our kids make in school, and where we want to go on vacation next summer. If we don’t know somebody well, we talk about the weather. If we know them too well, we don’t talk about politics.

Religion is a peculiar topic, especially in the world you and I live in. It’s not polite to talk about it very much, or very deeply. We may know what the religions of our co-workers are, and that Guillermo and Susie, who we play bridge with on Thursdays, go to the Lutheran Church every Sunday, but it’s usually not the done thing to ask much more.

That’s understandable. Our society is on edge about religion, and we don’t quite know how to handle it. It’s supposed to be a private matter, like what we keep in our nightstand drawers, but what we believe about these things cuts close to the bone of who we are. Religion is about What Matters Most—who I am, what my life is about, why I live it the way I do. We are a talkative culture. Ours has been called the Communication Age. But as individuals and as a culture we’ve been trained to evade life’s most basic questions when we talk to each other.

This notion is bolstered when we consider what passes for “religion” in our culture, and religious communication. Televised religion is mostly pathetic and stupid: sentimentalized, money-grubbing, shallow and often heretical. I was stunned a few weeks ago to hear on the news that an oft-quoted television evangelist recommended to a man whose wife was deep in the clutches of Alzheimer’s that divorce was a Christian option, to enable the man to live a more sexually-fulfilled life. With such miserable “representatives” of Christ mouthing such grotesque parodies of the Gospel, it’s no wonder many Christians are unwilling to speak about their faith—or even let it be known.

And yet—St Peter says: “be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you.” Why do you believe in God? Why do you come to church? Why are you willing to get out of that comfortable bed on Sunday morning? What do you get out of it?

Every man and woman, even some teen-agers!—at some point in their lives ask the same Basic Questions: “Why am I here?” “What am I supposed to do with my life?” “Why do bad things happen to me?” “Why did I do that to her?” “What’s wrong with me?”—or, to be succinct—“Why?”

Our Faith is given to us to help us come to terms with these questions. The Church is given to us to help us live out the answers—and as we struggle with them, to share them with each other. Not by shouting on street corners or knocking on doors to tell people about Jesus—but by first knowing yourself what your faith is, and why it matters to you. Christians are to be evangelists—those who share the Good News. The street-shouters and door-knockers are sincere imitations of the real thing. Those who are willing to “give an answer” when it matters—when a friend is hurting or a crisis is looming—this is talking about religion—sharing our faith—in the way that endures. –Fr Gregory Wilcox

“Ole-Fashioned” Evangelism

Most everybody knows the word “evangelism” comes from a couple of Greek words—“eu”, which in Greek means “good,” and “angellion,” which means “a message.” “Evangelism” in good old Anglo-Saxon, means “good news.”

But to see how many Christians (let the reader here understand: “Anglicans”) approach evangelism, it means something like “a grim thing to be avoided.” But I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve had enthusiastic conversations with my co-religionists about a great new restaurant, a fantastic movie, or a wonderful laundry detergent (well, okay, not too many of those). When we really like or enjoy something, our natural inclination is to share the good news about it with the people around us.

Religion is different from detergent. But the desire to share something good with somebody else is the same.

Bishop Mote, as I mentioned in my last post, tossed me a challenge. If I didn’t like the door-to-door, let-me-tell-you-about-Jesus evangelism that is the stock-in-trade of American evangelism, what did I have as an alternative?

I didn’t have an answer for him. But an answer did—and does-exist. There is a genuine Catholic Evangelism, and it’s built right into our Anglican tradition. It’s what the whole Prayer Book is about.

In AD 500, Europe was collapsing. The Roman Empire was reduced to a memory; barbarian hordes swept across the continent from as far as Mongolia, destroying the remnants of the civilization of Greece and Rome. The Church, which had converted the Empire, went into shock from the onslaught: churches pillaged and destroyed, Christians butchered by the thousands. The Faith, which Christ had promised the gates of hell would not destroy, seemed to be tottering.

Pope St Gregory the Great (about whom I’d been reading when Bishop Mote told me to find a better sort of “evangelism” than button-holing people) embraced the task to re-converting Europe to the Good News. He did so principally by recalling Christians to the main reason they existed: the Church exists to worship God and sanctify the world. He did all he could to re-vitalize Christian worship—re-building ruined churches, teaching Christians (priests and people) how to pray and sing (the Gregorian chant is named after him) to make worship beautiful. St Gregory saw that the key to evangelizing was worship. His goal was to re-establish worshipping communities where they’d been destroyed and build new ones where they hadn’t been before. The pagans were converted by worship.

The Prayer Book envisions something much like this. We don’t (I hope) cling to the Book of Common Prayer (1928) because it’s old. We cling to it—embrace what it has for us—because it shows us how to live the Gospel, the Good News, in our lives. More than anything else, the Prayer Book is the Church’s pattern for the Christian's daily life. Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, the continual cycle of the Mass making holy the days of the year, the Sacraments marking the moments of our lives—this is what the Prayer Book is about. We are a worshiping community: that’s what Jesus means for us to be: it’s why He made the Church and gave Himself for it.

For us Anglicans, evangelism centers around worship. We share our faith by sharing our worship.

Few people, though, are going to become Christians because they’re pushed through the doors of a church. People—you and me and everybody else—are drawn by love. If you and I love our worship, if we delight in the “beauty of holiness,” we will want to share it—to let people know about it—especially if it’s as life-changing as the latest and most splendiferous dishwashing liquid.

Catholic Evangelism

Many years ago, my old diocesan bishop, James Mote of happy memory, summoned the clergy of the part of his diocese in which I served together for a meeting about Evangelism. I went with some interest, curious to learn if he’d uncovered some secrets to a topic not normally associated with Anglicanism.

He introduced us to a very enthusiastic man, a young Roman Catholic deacon, who’d just returned from an “Evangelism Mission” to Haiti. The Mission had been conducted by members of some Pentecostal denomination. The logistics were simple: people paired off into “mission teams” and went door to door, giving a “personal witness” of their faith in Christ and inviting their hearers to attend a “Praise and Healing Service” conducted each night of the mission. The young man breathlessly told of the large numbers of people saved every day. Bishop Mote then thanked him and told us we should “Go, and do likewise.”

I listened to the account with an increasing unease. After we were dismissed for the day (of what was to be a two-day ordeal), the bishop approached me.
“Father, I watched you through the presentation today and you looked unhappy at what you heard. What’s the problem?”

“I can’t see what any of what we heard applies to us. The Church’s teaching can’t be wrapped up by saying ‘Jesus is my personal Savior.’ We don’t tote up ‘souls saved’ and post them on the church board out front like how many McDonalds’ hamburgers have been served. I didn’t hear anything Anglicans can use from what we heard.”

Those of you who knew Bishop Mote know how he responds to that sort of thing. He bristled and said, “Well, do you have any suggestions? What sort of evangelism would be acceptable to you?”

I smothered my irritated reply and quoted Cicero: “I may not be able to say what’s right, but I can say this is not it.”He wasn’t amused and shot back, “Think about it tonight and tell me your great ideas about evangelism tomorrow.”

I knew as I drove home I wouldn’t have anything to say to him tomorrow. I’d never thought much about evangelism. But the burr was under the saddle.

That night, more to forget my troubles than to solve my problems, I spent a few hours reading. At the time I was reading two books—Margaret Deansley’s A History of the Medieval Church and a biography of Pope St Gregory the Great. I took my consolation from my present unhappinesses by retreating to the seventh century.
But as I read, an idea began to percolate. Deansley was discussing St Gregory the Great and the great missionary efforts undertaken under his direction for the conversion of Europe. One of Gregory’s greatest successes was the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in England. Hmm. How did he do that? I picked up the biography of St Gregory, turned to the index and noted the chapter which discussed the Church’s missionary activities during his time as Pope.

Slowly, a picture began to form. The conversion of northern Europe hadn’t just happened. It was part of a plan—an orderly plan carried it in a disciplined way—which worked. There was, it seemed, an answer to Bishop Mote’s question, one that didn’t require Anglicans to put on Pentecostal clothing to convince people to come to High Mass. There is, in our own background, a plan for Catholic Evangelism.

I stayed up all night and wrote a proposal. It worked. Next week, I’ll tell, Paul Harvey-like, “the rest of the story.”

A Stitch in Time...

Doctors, therapists and minor surgeries have kept me away from the computer for the past ten days or so, but next week I will resume weekly postings on St Joseph’s Table. This week’s schedule and "Worship at St Joseph's" pages are up.

It’s reported the last few weeks that church attendance is up and sin is down across the State of Texas. The Lone Star State, with its drought, raging wildfires and record-setting heat wave, is keeping the devil at home in the more temperate climes of hell!

Until next week,

Pax,
Fr Gregory Wilcox

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four- Minute Chunks (Part the Seventh)

An Act of Parliament was required in 1662 to restore the Book of Common Prayer to its legal status, because it had been made illegal by an Act of Parliament in 1645. Its repeated use could bring on the offender a loss of all his property as well as perpetual imprisonment. The former Archbishop of Canterbury preceded his friend, King Charles I, to the executioner’s block for his devotion to the Church of England and “the ancient and venerable traditions” of her worship.

Most of the Anglican clergy and devout laity maintained those “venerable traditions” during the Puritan Commonwealth. Some, like Bishop Wren, who the Puritans locked in the Tower for eighteen years, spent their time preparing for the time when the Church and her worship would be restored. He wrote of his time: “Never could there have been so offenseless an opportunity for amending the Book of Common Prayer as now…” Others, not sharing his cold lodgings, did share his thoughts. John Cosin, chaplain to the exiled Queen, devoted his years abroad to the study of liturgy in general and the Prayer Book in particular. Harmon L’Estrange, a devout and erudite layman, compiled a massive study of the Prayer Book during the Puritans’ reign, The Alliance of Divine Offices. In it he laid out, in parallel columns, the texts of the 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1604 English Books of Common Prayer, as well as the 1637 Scottish Book (which, probably more than anything else, had cost Archbishop Laud his head). He wrote copious notes comparing and contrasting the texts, as well as pointing out inconsistencies in the translations of these books into Latin (Latin versions of the Book of Common Prayer were in widespread use both at Oxford and Cambridge). The Prayer Book had never been so popular as when it was made illegal!

After the defeat of the Puritans and presbyterians at the Savoy Conference (where they refused any but the most miniscule changes to the Prayer Book, and none at all they disagreed with), many of the Bishops, clergy and laity of the Church of England looked to this as a chance to alter the Book of Common Prayer to bring it more in line with the ancient liturgies they’d been studying. Bishop Cosin and Bishop Wren collaborated in a book, known to history as the Durham Book (Cosin was Bishop of Durham), which embodied many of their ideas. These centered around the Eucharist. It was a widespread wish to restore many of the ancient chants and prayers which had once accompanied the celebration of the Eucharist, and to add prayers from the Eucharistic liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. In fact, while the Prayer Book was illegal, some Anglican clergy had used portions of the Eastern Orthodox liturgies to replace their own outlawed rites.

But the new king had little interest in liturgy and his Parliament had even less. They ordered the Bishops to get on with it—and quickly. They had two months to revise the Book. Much work was done, but with little results. The Puritans failed at Savoy because they squabbled with each other in the face of their Anglican opponents. Now those same opponents took a page from the Puritans. Everybody wanted changes, but where to begin? What changes were most important? Who was to do what?

In the end, most of the changes which actually made it into the 1662 Book of Common Prayer showed the anti-Puritan tenor of the day. The Ordinal (technically not even a part of the Prayer Book) was much-revised to explicitly teach the doctrine of Apostolic Succession and the ancient three-fold Orders of Ministry—Bishop, Priest and Deacon—which the Puritans and presbyterians had so explicitly rejected. Some prayers were added—most familiar to us are the two prayers near the end of Morning and Evening Prayer: the “Prayer for All Conditions of Men” (BCP p 18), written by Bishop Gunning, and “A Prayer of Thanksgiving” (BCP p 19), written by Bishop Reynolds of Norwich. Many of the other changes, A Service of the Thanksgiving for the Accession of the King, a Service commemorating the Martyrdom of King Charles I, and other prayers connected with the Church of England as the Established Church, are unfamiliar to most of us “in the colonies.”

The Book of Common Prayer that survived the Puritans and remains the “official” English Prayer Book today, “the 1662,” is essentially the Book of 1604, the Prayer Book of King James I—of Bible fame. Our survey of the Prayer Book thus far has shown us a history of controversies—and every reader of this page knows those controversies have continued down to our own day. But people only fight—really fight tooth and nail—about things they care about. Why do we care? What is it about the Prayer Book that so generates controversies?

For the next several weeks we’ll be stepping back from this modest Prayer Book history to consider other—related—topics. Is the religion of the Prayer Book viable in today’s society? If it is (my opinion is obvious) can we share it without changing it? How do we do that?

Those questions—and their answers—are vital to the future of Anglicanism.

When we’ve solved that problem, we can return to our story.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four- Minute Chunks (Part the Sixth)

During the grueling, four-month debate of the Savoy Conference, the Anglican Bishops yielded almost nothing to their Puritan and presbyterian opponents. Most of their responses to the pages and pages of Puritan objections to the Prayer Book were concluded with the same response: “we think it fit that it continue as it is.” Those few concessions they made, were, tar-baby like, almost all changes the bishops themselves had proposed before the Conference was even called.

Having refused to change anything in the Prayer Book during the Conference, however, the bishops after the Conference began proposing changes to the Old Book right and left. The Prayer Book some of them intended to put together would have made the Puritans apoplectic. Looking back to the first Prayer Book of 1549 and the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, they meant to review the Liturgy of the English Church “ comparing the same with the most ancient liturgies, which have been used in the Church in the primitive and purest times” (to use King Charles’ directive), and revise it accordingly.

The men of Parliament, however, were not liturgical scholars. They had little interest in “the most ancient liturgies.” They wanted to quit arguing about religion. The King was restored, the Church re-established; it was time to get things back to normal. They tossed the Prayer Book to the Convocations of Canterbury and York (the governing houses of clergy for the two provinces of England), telling the reverend members to present their new Prayer Book “to us without delay for our consideration, allowance, or confirmation." The two Convocations (York in northern England, Canterbury in the south) worked together to reach agreement on the new book. On November 21, 1661, the King’s letters conveying Parliament’s statement were read to the Convocation of Canterbury. “The time for your work,” they were told, “is short.”

Messengers carried the work of the two Convocations back and forth for a month; bishops and scholars burned their candles down to the nub, writing, reading, composing, and debating the changes to the New Book. By December 20, the Convocations reported to Parliament their work was done. The New Book was sent to the King and his Council before Christmas. Their work sat, unopened, in the Privy Council’s chamber for two months while other business was pursued. On February 24, 1662, the Bishops of London, Durham, Salisbury, Worcester and Chester were summoned “to that day present the said book to the King and Council.” By the afternoon, the notes of the Privy Council tell us, “the Book of Common Prayer, with the Amendments and Additions…was read and approved,” and ordered to be transmitted to Parliament. Not bad for a morning’s work: perhaps, like our modern-day legislators, they didn’t read the whole thing.

The Council sent the New Book to the House of Lords. They passed it “finding no need to review its contents.” The same day they passed the Act of Uniformity, declaring the New Book to be THE Book of Common Prayer. When the Book and attached Act was sent to the House of Commons, it was decided “the Book need not be read, the Lords Bishops being content to so have it.” Commons attached a series of resolutions to their approval of the Act, ordering “reverent gestures and demeanors” to be “enjoined on all at the time of Divine Service.” These required faithful Churchmen to “bow at the mention of the Lord Jesus’ Name” and to make “a humble gesture toward the Altar or Holy Table set in the Chancel” of their churches. The Puritans would not have been happy.

Parliament returned their work to the King. On May 10, 1662, he signed it, ordering that on St Bartholomew’s Day (August 24), printers across the country should make it available. The whole thing was put into the hands of John Cosin, the Bishop of Durham, to complete. He issued the following orders to all who were licensed to print the Book:

“To the Printers:

Page the whole Book.

Add nothing. Leave out nothing. Alter nothing, in what Volume soever it be printed. Particularly; never cut off the Lord's Prayer, Creed, or any Collect with an &c.; but wheresoever they are to be used, print them out at large, and add ‘Amen’ to the end of every prayer.

Never print the Lord's Prayer beyond—‘deliver us from evil. Amen.'

Print the Creeds always in three paragraphs, relating to the three Persons, &e.
Print not Capital letters with profane pictures in them.

In all the Epistles and Gospels follow the new translation [i.e., the King James Version of 1611].

As much as may be, compose so that the leaf be not turned over in any Collect, Creed, Verse of a Psalm, in the Middle of a sentence, &c.

Set not your own Names in the Title-page nor elsewhere in the Book, but only ‘Printed at London by the printers to the King's most excellent Majesty. Such a year.'

Print Glory be to the Father, &c. at the end of every Psalm, and of every part of Psalm 119.”

The Prayer Book of 1662 was done. It is still the official Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England today. Next week, we’ll look at some of the changes the Bishops made to the Book and, more interestingly, the changes they didn’t make. The Puritans may have been sent packing; but the united front the Bishops presented against them was already beginning to crack—and the Prayer Book would be a battleground once more.

ARE YOU SAVED?

The following is posted at the request of a number of people who read this recent “St Joseph Tract.” It was written to address the question of “being saved.” As such, it’s far from complete, or even thorough. The essentials of a grace-filled, sacramental life are only hinted at here—and there is no salvation without them; not by my estimate but by the words of our Lord Himself.

Next week, we’ll resume our review of Prayer Book history, but no doubt everybody needs a break after four weeks’ recounting the Puritans' grim assault on Anglicanism in general and the Common Prayer Book in particular. We'll see though, that the history of the Prayer Book is told not only by the many who've been nurtured on its comfortable words and but also by those who've squabbled over its contents--and not just in the past!


Are You Saved?

It’s a question we hear from well-meaning people in almost any setting: in the check-out line at the market, along a hiking trail in the park, sitting in the mall. Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?

The person asking is usually driven by a desire to share with you the good news that he is saved, and hopes that you are, too. If not, he has the remedy: confess your sins, believe in Jesus Christ, and ask Him to be your Savior. That’s it: follow these simple steps and you’re going to Heaven. Often these sincere people will offer to help you on the spot. You can get saved in the checkout line.

While he may encourage you to go to a Christian church or a Bible fellowship and tell you it’s important that you “walk the talk” (which means to live the life of a believer), when pressed he’ll admit that although those things are helpful, you’ve already done all that’s necessary. Your eternal salvation is already secure.

He’s well-meaning, sincere—and wrong.

As much as these earnest people talk about the Bible, the “quick-fix” salvation they hawk is a fantasy, and a tawdry one at that. The message of the Holy Scriptures is radically different. The teaching of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (which put the Bible together in the first place) for the last 2,000 years is different. Those Christians who have actually “walked the talk” for 20 centuries (we call them Saints, people like St Mary of Egypt or St Francis of Assisi) would find this idea of being saved silly, immature and—worst of all—untrue.

Sincerity, nice as it is, is no assurance of truth.

History is full of sincere people who were very wrong: Adolf Hitler was probably the most sincere person of the 20th century. His sincerity proved deadly to many millions—and in the end, to himself as well.

Just because somebody says you can be saved by “believing Jesus died for your sins” or saying a “sinner’s prayer” doesn’t make it so, regardless of the sincerity of the person telling you it is; after all, they’ve done it and they’re saved. Right?

Or are they?

They’ll tell you they base their certainty of being saved on the Bible—but the Bible, if we actually take it as a whole, not just pluck out a few verses here and there, gives a completely different view of salvation.

Before anything else, it’s fair for us to ask our self-assured questioner, “What does ‘being saved’ mean?” What is salvation? The word “salvation” comes from Latin. Its original form, salus, means “health” or “wholeness.” Many times the question “are you saved” is accompanied by an explanation (or is it a threat?) that if you aren’t saved, you’ll burn for eternity in hell after you die. Fires and devils and eye gouges forever and ever and ever and then forever after that. Pretty grim—and pretty pathetic. The “god” behind such a scenario is not the God revealed in Holy Scripture, Who loves us and became one of us to bring us to salvation—to wholeness and spiritual health. The great fourth-century Bishop of Alexandria, St Athanasius the Great, says “God became like us, so we could become like Him.” For 2,000 years, the Church has proclaimed her Good News, her Gospel; this is the calling she holds out “for us men and for our salvation.”

Salvation isn’t escaping hell. It’s becoming a son or daughter of God. This doesn’t happen by saying a prayer or having a warm glow of certainty that you’re saved. It happens by wrestling daily with your love of sin, by living a life of grace, a life where we learn the hard lessons of loving our neighbor as ourselves and loving God above everything else—things none of us want to do, but this is what the Gospel calls us to. In the middle of His great Sermon on the Mount, in the fifth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus tells His disciples “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” He is calling us to live our salvation.

For 2,000 years Christians have understood that my personal salvation doesn’t depend on “getting saved” one day, but by living with God day in and day out, even when I don’t particularly want Him around. Salvation isn’t something which happened to me one day, it’s something which continually happens. As I live with Christ, I am made more and more—even if it’s by baby steps—like Him. Salvation isn’t escaping hell, but discovering in our lives, almost imperceptibly, the daily Presence of God. “He became like us, to make us like Him.” Salus.

So the next time you’re standing in the check-out line and some sincere soul asks if you are saved, give him an understanding smile and say “Well, since you’ve got a few minutes, let’s talk…” –Fr Gregory Wilcox

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four-Minute Chunks (Part the Fifth)

The “Savoy Conference,” which pitted twelve Anglican bishops against twelve Puritan and presbyterian divines, was empaneled by King Charles for four months. They were to spend April to July, 1661, examining the Book of Common Prayer and "make such changes as to bring it into conformity with the most ancient Liturgies which have been used in the Church…” Neither side was to comply with the King’s command.

The Puritans and their presbyterian allies laid their plan out when the Conference began. Their solution was to abolish the Prayer Book (as they’d done under the Lord Protector) and replace it with an “approved and truly reformed” set of services. The most eminent of their number, Richard Baxter, was to compose a service for the celebration of the Eucharist. Baxter would show the Bishops what a “truly reformed” rite looked like. When he brought it to the Conference, however, the Puritans began arguing over it. None of Baxter’s confreres liked it; they refused to approve it, and they spent weeks telling him why. The Anglican bishops smiled, kept their opinions to themselves and let the Puritans and presbyterians picnic on each other.

Baxter’s Communion Service died stillborn. The Puritan Commissioners, realizing they had nothing to offer in place of the Book of Common Prayer, renewed their objections to the Book itself. These objections (which they called “exceptions”) fell into three categories: theological, linguistic, and ceremonial. Their “General Exceptions” were theological: the Church of England was “but the Romish Church disguised and unreformed.” The Prayer Book embodied the “undoing of the principal doctrines and godly teachings of the Protestant Reformers.” The Puritan Commissioners would show that the doctrines of Rome were “in mystick ways hidden” in the words and ceremonies of the Prayer Book.

Noting the affection many Anglicans had for the First Prayer Book of 1549, the Puritans wrote it off as the product of “a mist of popish superstition and ignorance.” The Prayer Book of 1604, to which the King had proposed they return, was no better: “A multitude of godly and sober persons cannot at all (or very hardly) comply with the use of it.” On that principle (“we don’t like it”), the Puritans and presbyterians proposed that if anyone had any objection to anything in the Prayer Book, it should be removed.

The Bishops responded that since the Puritans had “in times recent” outlawed the whole of the Prayer Book, finding it all objectionable, there would be nothing left to present to the King were they to remove everything anybody objected to.

The Puritans filled page after page with their “Particular Exceptions,” which were linguistic or ceremonial. Many of their minor criticisms, though, harkened back to their theological objections.

As an example, the Prayer Book, during the celebration of the Eucharist, requires the “Priest” to say the words of Absolution. The “Exceptions” call for the removal, here and everywhere else in the Prayer Book, of the word “Priest.” It’s to be replaced by the word “Minister.” This, the Puritans claimed, is only being consistent, since sometimes the Prayer Book uses the word “Bishop,” sometimes “Priest” and sometimes “Minister.” They coyly concluded that this difference “in sundry titles” confused people.

One of the Bishops replied using the words from the Preface of the Anglican Ordinal of 1550: “from the Apostles’ time there have been these three Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church—Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” Since the Puritans and presbyterians didn’t accept these ancient Orders or maintain the Apostolic Succession, they would of course be willing to see these distinctions erased. The words would remain unchanged.

For the duration of the King’s writ, from April till July, the Commissioners met, argued and debated the “Exceptions.” Nobody looked at “ancient liturgies.” The Bishops fought every Puritan objection tooth and nail, sometimes defending even punctuation marks.

When the four months ended, the Bishops had allowed none of the Puritan’s “General Exceptions” and most of their “Particular Objections” were refused. Those the Bishops “allowed” were minor: “when anything is read for an epistle which is not in the epistles (but drawn from the Old Testament), instead of “The Epistle is written…” the Minster shall say “For the epistle…"; “in the Marriage Service the words, ‘till death us depart,’ be altered thus, ‘till death us do part.’ ”

The Conference ended and the Bishops reported to the King. Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, was chosen to write a summary of the Conference. He concluded: "We have rejected all changes such as were either of dangerous consequence (as secretly striking at some established doctrine, or laudable practice of the Church of England, or indeed of the whole Catholick Church of Christ) or else of no consequence at all, but utterly frivolous and vain."

The King forwarded the results of the Conference to Parliament, heartily endorsing their conclusions.

The Puritans and presbyterians left Savoy empty-handed. The Puritans left the Church of England, becoming (many different sects of) “Non-conformists,” “Dissenters,” or “Independents.” The presbyterians became Presbyterians.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four-Minute Chunks (Part the Fourth)

“Twelve defiant Puritans were locked in a hotel room with twelve irritated Episcopalians …” It sounds like the start of a strange joke that requires the presence of a duck to pull off the punch line, but it actually happened.

Charles II, the king just-returned from exile, issued a proclamation on October 25, 1660, calling for a meeting of “learned divines” to decide the fate of the Book of Common Prayer. Their numbers were drawn from two opposed camps: the ranks of the moderate Puritans and presbyterians who wanted to remain within the Church of England but loathed the Prayer Book, and the Anglicans, represented by the surviving Bishops of the Church which the king’s return had just freed from fifteen years of persecution (by the Puritans they were now called to sit down with). Not only were the Bishops determined to preserve the Prayer Book; they wanted to force the Puritans to digest it whole. The King ordered the Commissioners “to advise upon and review the Book of Common Prayer, comparing the same with the most ancient liturgies, which have been used in the Church in the primitive and purest times.”

To the Puritans and presbyterians, who had no desire to bring the Prayer Book more in line “with the most ancient liturgies,” the king’s words weren’t promising. They wanted not the “ancient liturgies” but the liturgies most recently concocted and approved in Geneva, the mother-city of Calvinism. Of course, some of the Puritans wanted no liturgy at all, seeing any set form as “an enemy to the spirit of true and godly prayer.”

The King’s Letter Patent called for the appointed Commissioners (twelve Bishops and twelve Puritan and presbyterian clergymen, each side to have nine assistants called "coadjutors") to “meet together within the space of four calendar months now next ensuing, in the Master's lodgings in the Savoy in the Strand.” They weren’t locked into a room (though from the descriptions left to us of the meetings of what we now call the Savoy Conference, some of them felt as if they were) and the only ducks present were those that arrived already cooked on dinner plates, but for four months the Commissioners did battle for the future of the Book of Common Prayer.

The results were a foregone conclusion, though the Puritans seemed blithely unaware of the fact. The Book of Common Prayer authorized by the king’s martyred father had already been restored to use throughout the country. Before the Conference held its first session, Oxford printers complained to the king that “uncouth men of all sortes” were engaged in unlicensed printing of the “Old Book.” Before the “new book” was authorized in 1662, five licensed editions of the old appeared in London bookshops. Meeting with some Puritan clergy about the upcoming Conference, the king answered their concerns saying he would “never, not in the least degree, allow the good old order of the Church in which he had been bred" to be disparaged. The Commissioners were told their work would require the approval of “the Archbishops, Bishops and Doctors” of the Church of England, as well as the Parliament—the Parliament now sitting, crowded with the survivors of the unlamented late Lord Protector Cromwell and his Puritan allies. Only blind men could fail to see the outcome.

The Conference opened on April 15th, 1661 and met in the rooms of Gilbert Sheldon, the Bishop of London (where the Savoy Hotel now stands). Bishop Sheldon called on the Puritans and their presbyterian partners to present their objections and criticisms of the Prayer Book. They were prepared. They laid before the Bishops almost 200 hand-written pages of what they called “Exceptions” to the book. From these pages a London printer produced a 35 page pamphlet. The Puritans prefaced this with a l-o-n-g letter, addressed not to the the Commission but to the King, summarizing their grievances with the “Church once in this realm established.” Since the topic of the Commission was limited to The Book of Common Prayer and “ancient liturgies,” the Puritans used the Preface to complain about all the other things about the Church they found “contrary to God’s Word.” Worst of all were Bishops, Priests and Deacons and the “papistical notions and corruptions” of the church they embodied (small wonder they addressed their opening letter to the King rather than the Bishops who sat across the table from them).

All in all, it set the tenor for the proceedings of the next four months. Somebody should have brought a duck.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four-Minute Chunks (Part the Third)

Charles II, the son of the Royal Martyr, was crowned King of England, Ireland and Wales at Westminster Abbey on April 23, 1661. The royal chronicler of the day’s events waxed enthusiastic in his description of the crowds lining the way of the King’s route to Westminster: “Infinite and innumerable were the acclamations and shouts of joy from each and every part of the city and each and every person thereof.”

Not everyone joined in the day’s merriment, though. For 15 years the Puritan Parliament and stern Lord Protector Cromwell imposed their vision on the Three Kingdoms. They banished Prayer Book religion, imprisoned its bishops, outlawed its words, and suppressed its feasts. They had forbidden most public sports, recreations and festivals, closed every theater in the country, and even a Sunday walk—except to or from church—could result in a fine. They saw their Redeemed City on a Hill swept away with the accession of the "Merrie Monarch." The nine surviving Anglican Bishops, in cloth-of-gold copes, processed before the King down the long nave of the Abbey, as the Te Deum from The Book of Common Prayer resounded through the church. For the Puritans, it was a grim day.

The first of many. Within two weeks, Charles’ Parliament, the so-called “Cavalier Parliament” was in session. The old supporters of Charles’ father, the Martyr King, and loyalists to the old Church of England held the seats—and the votes. The Prayer Book was restored, the exiled and imprisoned Bishops re-instated (Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, had been locked in the Tower of London for 18 years) and the Presbyterian and Puritan ministers who’d been placed in the parish churches of England were booted out the doors of their parsonages unless they swore submission to the Act of Uniformity. Among other injunctions the Act declared that “all and singular Ministers, in any Cathedral, Collegiate, or Parish-Church or Chappel, or other Place of Publick Worship within this Realm of England, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed, shall be bound to say and use the Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Celebration and Administration of both the Sacraments, and all other the Publick, and Common Prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said Book...” Twenty-four hundred Puritans (give or take a baker’s dozen) refused the oath. In English Church History the result of their refusal is known as The Great Ejection.

The King was an Anglican. His staunchest supporters were Anglicans. He had restored the monarchy and re-established the Church. But no one who knew him was under the illusion the King was either pious or even much interested in religion except as a tool of State. Charles was a practical man: the Royal Martyr had not been. If he didn’t much care about religion himself, he understood many of his new subjects did. The Puritans, by walking away from the parishes, made plain they didn’t want anything to do with the restored Church. But many moderate Puritans did want to “conform.” Was there some way, they delicately inquired of the King, that the Prayer Book could be “modified” so as to allow them to keep their consciences intact? If the remnants of the First Prayer Book could be “stipp’d cleane,” they would be willing to consider taking the oath of Uniformity.

On the other side, the Anglican Bishops and clergy, who had suffered deprivation and imprisonment for their devotion to the Prayer Book, had made their wishes known to the King. Many of them looked back to the First Prayer Book as the ideal and wanted to restore as much of it as they could. During their banishments they hadn’t been idle. Many had studied the Prayer Book, written about it, and made plans for its revision when the day of Restoration came.

In response to these requests, the King issued a Royal Warrant, calling for a “conference of learned divines, of both persuasions” to meet and debate “sundry alterations and improvements” to The Book of Common Prayer. They were to meet at the Savoy Palace.

It was to be quite a debate.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four-Minute Chunks (Part the Second)

After the beheading of King Charles, the outlawing of the Prayer Book and the removal of bishops, priests and deacons from their posts across the country, the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, was convinced the Anglican Church had been “throughly purged” from the land. In the churches of England, Altars were burned, communion rails hacked to pieces, paintings of Christ and the Saints defaced (wander through Westminster Abbey—the results of Puritan vandalism can still be seen), vestments were cut into table napkins, chalices smashed, crosses from the Altars hammered into bits and bridles. The Book of Common Prayer disappeared from the churches; in 1645 Parliament passed a series of laws banning the use of the Prayer Book either publicly or privately. To own a copy was a criminal offense.

The Puritans congratulated themselves. The Prayer Book they so despised, “culled and picked out of the popish dunghill, the Mass booke full of all abominations,” was dead. But what to take its place? Puritanism, it turned out, was a catchword for all sorts and conditions of opinions, and united men mainly in its hatred of Anglicanism. At one in loathing “Prayer Book and Prelate Religion,” they found themselves at odds about how to replace it and what to replace it with. “Far easier,” Cicero said many centuries earlier, “to say what you are against than what you are for.”

Some wanted no books of prayers at all, claiming all written or liturgical prayer “casts out true prayer,” which must be extemporaneous to be “true.” Their heretofore Presbyterian allies, though, distrusted extemporaneous public prayer and insisted on a book. Even those who agreed about the permissibility of a book, however, disagreed about what it should say. Some wanted specific prayers with options left to the minister as to how and when they should be used, others wanted a book of general directions only with no set forms—it seemed there were more suggestions than suggestors.

In the end, Parliament did authorize a book. Use of A Directory for the Publique Worship of God throughout the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland was required in every church of the realm. To satisfy the Presbyterians, set orders and forms of services were given, with prayers. To satisfy the more rigid Puritans, no one was required to use the prayers and services of the Directory except as guides and models. The one prayer the Presbyterians held out for, the Lord’s Prayer, was rejected by the Puritans as not being a real prayer, since it had a set form. The Directory ended up “strongly favoring and commending”—but not requiring—its use.

In 1658, the Lord Protector died. His son tried to rule in his stead, but was forced to resign within a few months. Attempts of various factions of the Army or Parliament to seize power all collapsed for lack of support. The people wanted “the old King, the old Church, the old ways.” On May 25, 1660, Charles II, son of the Royal Martyr, landed at Dover from his long exile in France. His chaplain publicly carried with him the Book of Common Prayer as the royal party traveled to London. The King met with a group of Puritan ministers during his journey. When one protested the presence of the forbidden book, Charles answered, “Sir, I believe it to be one of the best of books!”

It was a foretaste of things to come.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer in Four-Minute Chunks (Part the First)

The first Book of Common Prayer was printed during the spring of 1549 and was authorized for use “throughout this realm of England” on Whitsunday of the same year. It was not popular. Riots erupted across the country; one priest in Wales was hanged outside his church for insisting on its use.

For all the excitement, it was a conservative Liturgy. It preserved the structure of the medieval Mass (which, for the most part, it still does), along with almost all its ceremonies, vestments and practices. But it was in English, and that scared people. He was All-Knowing, but would God tolerate prayers not said in Latin?

The 1549 book and the tradition of worship it continued, angered those anti-Roman reformers (who would eventually come to be called “Puritans”); they saw the Prayer Book as a “Romish rag.” The Puritans found a spokesman on the Privy Council of the young King, Edward VI. The Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour, pushed for a new book, one which would enshrine the protests of the Puritans. Somerset forced their demands through Parliament and in 1552, a hastily-revised new Prayer Book was approved. Nobody liked it: conservatives attacked it as a Calvinist production; the Puritans complained it still “reeks with the stench of popery.” At any rate, the book barely saw public use. Shortly after it was issued, the Boy King died and “Bloody Mary” Tudor, Henry VIII’s daughter by Katherine of Aragon, ascended the throne. England returned to the Roman fold and the Book of Common Prayer was consigned to the dustbin.

But five years later, when Queen Mary died childless, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, became Queen. Elizabeth called herself a “reformed Catholic” (not in the sense of a “reformed alcoholic,” but meaning a “Catholic but not Roman”). Her inclination was to restore the Book of 1549, but the hardening of attitudes in England as the result of Queen Mary’s persecution of all manner of protestants made Elizabeth’s hopes of taking a conciliatory approach impossible (Pope Pius IV offered to approve the English Liturgy of the Prayer Book if Elizabeth would recognize his universal authority over the Church). In 1559 the third Book of Common Prayer was approved, made by blending elements of the two previous Books, removing some things to which the Puritans objected in the first Book and some things conservatives disapproved in the second. This Book of Common Prayer was used through the forty years and more remaining of Elizabeth’s reign.

James VI of Scotland became James I at the death of Elizabeth. You know him from the King James Bible, which he authorized and paid for. James, reared in Calvinist Scotland, disliked Puritans and Calvinists with an intensity probably only a former Calvinist could appreciate. He became an enthusiastic Anglican—like Elizabeth, he spoke about Anglicanism as “Catholicism, purified and refined.” Under the early Stuart kings, James I and his son, Charles I, the Prayer Book was used to solidify Anglicanism as the “established Church, Catholic and Reformed,” throughout the Kingdom. Archbishop William Laud (1573-1645) roused the ire of Puritans across England when he promulgated a Book of Common Prayer for the Episcopal Church of Scotland which virtually restored the 1549 Book.

England erupted in Civil War. In part at least, the Civil War was a war of religion. Anglican “cavaliers,” supporting the king, and Puritan “roundheads,” supporting the Parliament, fought a nine-year war for control of the English Crown and the English Church. In the end, the King lost the war. After the war, the king lost his head. On January 30, 1649 in front of a London crowd at Whitehall Palace, the king was "decollated." Ever since, January 30 has been marked on the Prayer Book calendars of the Church of England as the day of “King Charles I, the Royal Martyr.”

Oliver Cromwell, the head of the Parliamentary army, became Protector of England and dictator for life. The Book of Common Prayer and the open practice of the religion of the Prayer Book was outlawed everywhere in England. Bishops and priests were imprisoned; Common Prayer Books were burned. No Christmas, no Easter, no altars, no kneeling for communion—in fact, Holy Communion itself became a rarity.

Anglicanism and its Prayer Book were about to become extinct.

Summertime Spirituality

I’ve been gone from Texas for a long time—and in thirty years one forgets some things. I forgot the heat. My cool, breezy home on the California beach, like the mythical sirens that seduced Odysseus’ men, erased from my memories of Texas a fact living here won’t let you forget—it’s hot as the hinges of hell in the summer. And like those hinges, the heat is unremitting: day and night, rain and wind notwithstanding. Siestas aren’t options for a lazy afternoon. Here, they’re a necessary tool for survival.

“To everything there is a season,” writes the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Summer in this part of the world is a time for us to slow down. The constant heat is an ever-present reality, ignored only to our peril. When I was a Boy Scout, I spent many a summer in a camp outside Wimberly, with a few hundred other excited boys. One of my memories is assembling every morning for prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance (are they still allowed to do that?). And every morning we’d have a casualty or two—one of us would literally collapse to the ground of heatstroke.

We’re sacramental creatures. God made all of us that way. That means what affects our bodies also affects our souls, our spirits; equally, what affects our spirits affects our bodies. The heat of summer has a spiritual impact (just look at how many people are “too tuckered” to come to Mass in the morning but manage to make it to a Sunday afternoon barbeque!).

Most churches here cut back their programs during the summer. I understand why. At St Joseph’s, I’ve bowed—albeit reluctantly—to common sense and we’ve cut back some weekday activities for the summer.

“To everything there is a season.” For us, as sacramental beings, that means every season has its time and purpose. Spring, with its rebirth, is particularly in evidence where I live: the brown fields burst green; the long row of trees that line both sides of the road from my gate within a few weeks provide a shaded canopy of sheer delight. Fall’s cooling breezes and soft evenings, winter’s cold chill that drives us inside to find the warmth of human companionship. “To everything there is a season.”

So what about the sizzle of summer?

Here’s my suggestion: find a good book, a comfortable chair and an afternoon fan. Take a spiritual siesta. We need to refresh and nourish both body and soul. We nourish our souls when we feed on the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. How about taking a few afternoons during the summer to refresh our minds and hearts too?

We call it “spiritual reading.” Find a good book—there are many great Christian classics written on the spiritual life, from the Confessions of St Augustine to the novels of C S Lewis. Choose a book of the Bible—say, one of the Gospels or the Book of Genesis. You might be surprised at what you find. Or, if you want a book to lull you into a summer’s nap, open the Book of Leviticus! Any of our parish clergy would be happy to make a suggestion—no doubt each of us has his favorite. Every week on this site, I post a chapter from one of mine—Tito Colliander’s work on the spiritual life.

A small little book, like The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, with its short, pithy selections or something a bit longer—St Teresa of Avila’s Way of Perfection (not as terrifying as it sounds—she originally wrote it for young women just entering a convent to explain some of the bald facts of living as a Christian with other people)—find something which suits you, something which will turn your mind, three or four times a week for ten or fifteen minutes, to those things which are eternal, which will outlast the summer’s heat! –Fr Gregory Wilcox

Trinitytide

Whitsunday, which we celebrated a few weeks ago, brings to an end the first half of the Church Year, which began with Advent last November. From now till this coming November (with the promise of a long, hot summer in between) we are in the second half of the Church’s year, called Trinitytide.

Unlike the first half of our year, which focuses on the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Trinitytide simply counts the Sundays from the Feast of the Holy Trinity till the next Advent. In some ancient Church calendars—and in some modern ones—these Sundays were just called “Sundays of the Ordinary Year.” Some modern church calendars mark these Sundays from Trinity to Advent as “Sundays after Pentecost.” Whatever we call them, it’s the longest time on the Church’s calendar.

The liturgical color of Trinitytide is green; the color of growth.

At St Joseph’s, there is growing work to be done this season. We have an Altar Guild to establish, a choir to grow, and, hopefully, new parishioners to bring in. I will be working on re-constructing parish rolls and a parish register. That will enable me to visit your homes and get to know you a bit better as I try to establish the “ecclesiastical status” of those of you attending St Joseph’s.

The Parish Register is the official record of the parish. It tells who our members are, who was baptized, confirmed, married, and died here. It’s an essential record of the life of St Joseph’s.

It’s missing and nobody seems to know where it is. So I’ve got to put together a new one, and it will take time—research, digging through parish documents, asking questions, getting help from you. It will be a task, but one I’m looking forward to, as it will enable me to get to know each of you a bit better.

I’ve asked Bruce Boyer—and am happy to say he’s agreed—to put together an official history of St Joseph’s. This will be good for us to have, and invaluable to me in working on the register. Reconstructing the register and producing a history of the parish will help us as we look to the future of St Joseph’s. More than most, Anglicans understand that our future is embedded in our past. This Trinitytide season of 2011 will be a time of re-learning something of our roots, that come the new Church Year, we’ll be ready for a fresh set of challenges—which the Lord, without doubt, will send our way.

This Trinitytide will be a green time for us—a time of quiet growth for St Joseph’s. Next week, a few notes and suggestions as to making it a time of quiet growth for each of us spiritually, too.—Fr Gregory Wilcox

The Athanasian Creed

You know the Apostles’ Creed. We say it every day at Morning and Evening Prayer. You know the Nicene Creed. We say it every Sunday and Holy Day at Mass. But do you know the Athanasian Creed? It has been in every Book of Common Prayer, except that of the Episcopal Church, since there have been Books of Common Prayer, since the first one, published in 1549.

The Athanasian Creed is part of our heritage as Anglicans. The English Book of Common Prayer requires that it be recited on thirteen different Holy Days throughout the year, most especially on Trinity Sunday, as the Creed so much emphasizes the dogma of the Holy Trinity.

It’s long. The Quincunque Vult (to use its Latin title from the Prayer Book), is more than twice as long as the Nicene Creed. Its phrases recite a detailed description of the Church’s belief about the Holy Trinity, insisting on the equal divinity of each Person of the Trinity while at the same time describing the differences between the Persons.

In discussing the equal divinity of the Persons, for example, the Creed says: “there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.”

On the other hand, regarding the distinctions between the Persons, it reads: “The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.”

It’s not meant to be simple, but thorough.

The Creed is named after the renowned Archbishop of Alexandria, St Athanasius the Great. He was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Nicaea which met in AD 325, the Council which produced our Nicene Creed. St Athanasius didn’t write the creed which bears his name—it was produced two hundred years after his death, to combat anti-Trinitarian heresies lingering in Spain—but the creed was called after him because it forcefully (and, yes, lengthily) teaches the faith for which St Athanasius fought.

So this Sunday at Mass, we’ll proclaim the Athanasian faith of the One Church using the words of the Athanasian Creed. I can’t promise you’ll understand the Trinity any better after you’ve said the Creed than you did before saying it, but I can assure you you’ll think about it more than you have in a month of Sundays saying the Creed of Nicaea.

A Member of Christ

The Prayer Book tells us when we were baptized we became “a member of Christ.” As we noted last week, unus Christianus, nullus Christianus. “One Christian is no Christian.” We cannot be Christians by ourselves.

In the beginning, God said “It is not good for man to be alone.” He followed His observation by creating Eve to be with Adam, and so laid the foundation—not only for the family, but for society as well.

The Church is God’s bringing together—from the scattered and contentious race of man—a Family “of all nations and kindred and peoples and tongues” of His own. From its beginning, the Church understood God drew its members together “for our salvation and that of the whole world.” “We are His family and the sheep of His pasture.”

Families are both wonderful and exasperating, made up of people sometimes loving and sometimes loathing each other. Many of the closest bonds we form on earth are with family members, and oft-times, the greatest tensions and trials of our lives come from members of our family. When the Church is likened to a family, it’s not meant to be a perennially pleasant comparison. The comparison tells us something about God and each other (and maybe ourselves, too).

We are part of each other. “No man is an island,” John Donne reminds us. Your cousin may be delightfully witty and your nephew deadly dull. They remain related regardless. The man who occupies the pew in front of you may have a bad singing voice or a ill-fitting toupee; the pretty woman in the choir may draw admiring glances from the men and disapproving glares from the ladies, but each—the unknowing toupee-man, the attractive soprano, the admiring men and disapproving women—all are “members of Christ,” the “family for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross,” as one of the Collects for Good Friday reads.

God puts up with us, and He expects us to put up with each other. He loves us, and He expects us to love each other.

This is why we have parishes. Places where Christ’s members, His family, come together to worship Him, receive the Sacraments, intercede for the fallen world, and learn how to love each other, even if we don’t always like each other (and sometimes, of course, our best friends may be in the neighboring pew).

It’s no accident that you belong to the parish you belong to—God brought you there, to do—and to be—something. In your parish, as in your family, God is “working out your salvation.” It’s not always easy, it’s sometimes challenging, and it’s often fun and happy and exhilarating. God has made you His own in baptism and plopped you down in a parish to figure out what that means. So jump in with both feet and figure it out. The answer has eternal implications! -Fr Gregory Wilcox

Unus Christianus, nullus Christianus

The Prayer Book Catechism is straightforward in its teaching: “…in baptism, I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.”

We did not, the Prayer Book says, become Christians when we “accepted Christ as our personal Savior.” We didn’t become Christians “the hour we first believed,” or when we became convinced we were sinners. Those notions, so prevalent in modern Christianity, are foreign ones to the religion of the Prayer Book.

“In baptism I was made a member of Christ.”

That means you weren’t made a Christian when you decided to be one, but when God decided to make you one. Even if you were baptized as an adult and went through baptismal preparation, even if you chose the time and place of your baptism, nothing you could do would make you a Christian until the priest poured the waters of baptism over your head. Being a Christian is less a matter of believing than it’s a matter of being. God made you a Christian through the sacramental waters of baptism.

We can’t baptize ourselves. Somebody has to baptize us. That doesn’t sound profound, but it tells us something important—even essential—about the Christian religion. The Christians of the first few centuries had a saying quite at one with the Prayer Book: unus Christianus, nullus Christianus. “One Christian is no Christian.” You can’t be a Christian by yourself.

“In baptism I was made a member of Christ.”

If we are members of Christ, part of His body, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, we are also members of each other. Fellow Christians don’t simply “go to the same church” we do—in the waters of baptism we are “born again” into the One Family of Faith.

If you have been baptized, you are a Christian. You may not live the life of a Christian, you may deny every article of Faith in the Creed. But you and I are Christians because it pleased God to make us Christians. Only He knows why. You may have been baptized because your parents wanted you to, or even because everybody else in your family is baptized and it’s just “what we do. We don’t really go to church all that much, but…” The reasons for your baptism don’t affect the reality of God’s sacramental act.

Baptism is the beginning of a Christian’s life. After the priest baptized you, he said to your Godparents and the others present: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this Child is regenerate,” [that is to say, “born again”] and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, let us give thanks unto Almighty God for these benefits; and with one accord make our prayers unto Him, that this Child may lead the rest of his life according to this beginning.”

Baptism isn’t magic, it doesn’t mean we are “going to Heaven,” but it does mean our footsteps are set on the path of the Lord Jesus, following Him where it pleases Him to lead us. We can always leave the path.

Baptism means God has made you His own in a special way, for a special reason. We are meant to “work out our salvation” with other Christians, as members one of another. And the parish church is essential to the “working out of our salvation.” There we receive the sacraments, offer to God the weekly sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and have to “work out our salvation” with people we may not know very well and sometimes may not particularly care for! But “in baptism I was made a member of Christ.” Unus Christianus, nullus Christianus.-Fr Gregory Wilcox

The Feast of Feet

Ascension Day is this coming Thursday. It’s a Holy Day of Obligation, and we’ll have Mass for the feast, but it’s not one of the popular feast days; most Christians will spend Ascension Day not knowing it is Ascension Day.

But I love the feast, though it may seem to be for an odd reason. I first came to love Ascension Day because of the Holy Feet.

Since the Renaissance, most classic paintings of the Ascension of Christ show him seated on the clouds, surrounded with angels; all the Apostles are standing below, looking up at Him as He sits in splendor. El Greco, Rembrandt, Titian, Michelangelo—everybody who was anybody during the Renaissance painted the Ascension. Each one followed the same pattern.

But in the Middle Ages, that wasn’t so. They had a more earthy, palpable view of the Faith than those who came later. Medieval paintings and manuscript illuminations of the Ascension show the Apostles standing and looking up. But they don’t see a Levitating Jesus—or at least, not all of Him. The Apostles are shown looking at the bottom of the Lord Jesus’ feet. It’s all you can see, because the rest of Him is already taken up into the clouds.

I first loved it because I was a boy and I thought it was a lot more fun than all the stuffy, uninteresting depictions of the Ascension as an excuse for the Great Artists to showcase their talents. But I loved it because it seemed more real. If this really and truly happened, the Apostles would, at some time, have been standing their looking up at the soles of their Lord’s Holy Feet. I loved it then, not quite understanding why. I love it just as much now—because it’s so wonderfully sacramental.

God did become one of us. “Like us in all things,” St Paul reminds us, “excepting sin.” In one of his sermons preached on Christmas Day many hundred years ago, St Cyril of Alexandria poked at the same truth: “God wore diapers for our sake.”

The Lord Jesus’ feet stick out from the clouds on Ascension Day to tell us “it’s true! He did come. Really come like you and me. He’s been through the wringer, just like each of us goes through it—and He went back “to prepare a place for us.”

I love Ascension Day. I love it’s truth and I love its depiction. ‘Cause it means someday (deo volente) my feet, and yours, too, will be sticking out from the clouds.—Fr Gregory Wilcox