Saturday, July 28, 2012

Why Common Prayer?

We have all had the conversation. Usually it’s with half-a-dozen people who’ve lingered in the parish hall an hour after coffee hour is over, or a few vestry members hanging around in the priest’s office long after the Vestry meeting adjourned. “Why doesn’t our parish attract the numbers that swell the ranks of the huge non-denominational conventicle on the freeway?” “I love the Anglican Church. Why don’t other people see what I see?”

There are a lot of answers, some of them actually—at least partially—correct: we think it’s in bad taste to talk to people about our religion, or our worship isn’t easy to follow if you weren’t brought up in it, or our church building is too small/old/hard to find. Our priest isn’t a good preacher, the hymns are too dull, or we don’t really want people we don’t know/who don’t look like us/who are of a different political party coming to our church.

A lot of these are silly, even if some of them are true. But even if we have a beautiful church building with a great choir and St John Chrysostom as the regular preacher at Sunday Mass, we won’t be giving the Abundant Life Center, with its 9,000 members, a run for its money anytime soon.

Why?

Because that’s not what Jesus had in mind when He founded His Church. At its heart, the Church is a group of baptized people, gathered with its clergy around the parish Altar. The Church is Christian people, living a common life, practicing common prayer.

St Ignatius, a first-century bishop of Antioch, was arrested and carried to Rome to be eaten up by lions in the Coliseum. As he traveled from Syria to Italy, he wrote letters to Christians he met along the way. In one of them, written to the people of Smyrna (a church mentioned by St John in his Book of Revelation), Ignatius said “Where the bishop appears [to celebrate the Eucharist], there let the people gather; just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

This is the first time we have a written record of the Church being called the “Catholic” Church. This ancient and venerable word is familiar to most Christians. Those familiar with the Creeds know it because they say it every time they say the Creeds; those who aren’t equate it with the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants who use the Creeds (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc) are careful to explain that “catholic” (with a small “c”) means universal, as in “all Christians everywhere.” Our Roman friends quite happily refer to themselves as Catholics (with a capital “C”) and insist they are the Catholic Church.

When St Ignatius wrote his letter to Smyrna, however, he meant something different, something tantalizingly subtle with a bit of a bite. Catholic comes from the joining of two Greek words—kata and holon. Kata means “according to” and holon means “the whole.” This kataholon Church is the One Church, the one the Lord Jesus founded. Ignatius understood it, and so did the people he wrote to, as having a leadership coming from Jesus Himself through His Apostles down to the Bishops to whom the Apostles entrusted the Church. This One Church passed along the One Faith.

St Ignatius saw the One Church as revealing itself in a variety of ways. It was the One Church, spread over the whole world (the Greek word for this was oekumene, from which our word “ecumenical” comes). It was the One Church for all Christians who followed the Faith preserved by those who followed the Bishops appointed by the Apostles. The One Church is not only those who are alive at any particular time; it cannot be broken by death, since it is joined forever to its Lord, Who destroyed the power of death. It is all Christian people of all times, in Heaven, on earth, and those who are at rest.

But Ignatius understood that this Catholic Church spread throughout the world, held in common by all Christians living and dead, had a real existence. If the Church exists at all times and in all places, it must of necessity exist at this time and in this place. The Church shows itself most perfectly at worship. Scripture tells us this is the Church’s calling in Heaven; it is her highest calling here on earth.

So for Ignatius—and for Christians keeping the same Catholic tradition and Faith Ignatius had received from the Apostles—the Church shows herself most as the Church when she gathers to offer the Eucharist. That’s the meaning of Ignatius words above: “where the bishop is, there let the people be; where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

Great. What does all this have to do with Common Prayer and Anglicanism?

Quite a lot. But to see how, you’ll have to tune in next week, beloved, for Part Two of “Why Common Prayer?” Till then, I hope you have good air conditioning!—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Change for the Better

Regardless of where you stood during the tumult of the 1960s and the cultural erosion of the 1970s, time has passed; perhaps enough to give us a better, hopefully more mature, understanding of the events of those days. For the Church, it was a time of tumult and upheaval, too. For people like me, brought up with a love of tradition which the years have only deepened, the assault on the Church was embodied in the controversy over the ordination of women to the priesthood. We saw it as an assault on ancient Catholic Order, a denial of apostolic tradition.

Since those troubulous times, my thoughts on that topic have changed little.

Other controversies gnawed at the Church, too, but at the time they seemed less crucial. Paramount of these was the change to the Church’s liturgy. At the time it was passed off as simply an “updating” of our worship, enabling the Church to keep pace with the changes going on around us. I didn’t care much for the new rites: the language was pedestrian, the multiplicity of options (Rites One, Two or Three; Prayers A, B or C) gave off an odor of “change for change sake.” But to my way of thinking the battle was elsewhere. Banal liturgy wasn’t fatal, but you closed your eyes (and ears) and “thought of England.” (A good friend once remarked of the New Rites: “No one denies Jesus is present in the new Mass, He is. But He’s there s reluctantly as everybody else!”)

It’s thirty-five years since those days. Female bishops are now commonplace and up-to-the-minute new rites are being written everyday (with brand new liturgies now required for homosexual weddings and divorce celebrations!). The impact of the changes is not what was promised, though perhaps it is what was by some envisioned.

Today, as I ponder that time of troubles, I see things a bit differently. Yes, with the priesting of women Catholic Order was abandoned. But with the profound alteration of the liturgy an axe was driven into roots than run very deep in the psyche of Christian worship. Though the new rites retain old titles, it’s not just the language of the Book of Common Prayer, or the structure of its liturgies, which have been changed—the underlying notion of Common Prayer itself.

The Prayer Book isn’t just collection of venerable and ancient rites. It’s a purposeful gathering together of 2,000 years of Catholic worship, arranged and organized to form a group of Christians into a worshiping community. Common Prayer gives us a common faith, a common practice and a common life. We may not live up to it, but that’s why it was put together centuries ago. The tradition of Common Prayer means to form us, to change us into Jesus’ disciples, believing and doing what Christians have believed and done since the Holy Ghost came down that first Whitsunday. The new approach to things is not that we should be formed, but that we can now form and create a new faith, believing and doing what we think should be believed and done.

If somebody wants to make up a new religion, it’s their affair. But for those who want to hold the Faith which never changes, let’s not look for ways to improve it; let’s bring it to life by living Common Prayer in the parish it’s pleased God to place us. There’s a real way to change things!—Fr Gregory Wilcox

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Divine Arithmetic

We live by the numbers. Insurance companies, government agencies and sociologists parse out our lives by percentages: take an aspirin a day and add five years to your life; eat the delicious, crispy fat on your lamb chop (God intended us to take some risks) and subtract four. Our lives are hedged in by numbers.

The Psalmist says some of us will live an allotted “threescore years and ten,” others more, others less. We buy because numbers in our bank account tell us we can; we work because the same numbers tell us we must. The digital age which now dominates our world is, I’m patiently told by those who know, is built on an endless sequencing of zeros and ones in countless orderings. Numbers are built into the fabric of creation. They’re one of God’s inventions.

God, though, is above them—outside them. “God” writes St Maximus the Confessor with wonderful theological insight, “is above arithmetic.”

It’s one of the most basic notions of Christian teaching that God is not only above arithmetic but above everything. Before He said “Let it be,” nothing existed. Part of the basic notion that God is above everything is that God is above even existence. Existence, “being,” is part of God’s creation. Because God is above existence, we can’t even say, in a theological sense, that God exists. Existing is what created things do, and He is most definitely NOT created, or part of creation.

Yesterday I had a fun conversation with a very bright, very earnest and very unconventional Protestant minister. He and I are poles apart (he began our conversation by saying he “loathes tradition,” so you can imagine we had a hard time finding much common ground), but we both obviously relish lively conversation.

He declared the Church’s teaching was fundamentally flawed with its dogma of the Trinity. “It’s a logical impossibility,” he said with an assured certainty. “You can’t have three equaling one, or vice versa. Ever since 325” he said (the date of the Council of Nicaea, which promulgated our Nicene Creed), “the Church has been teaching an absurdity.” We had a fun conversation, and he said he wants to stop by St Joseph’s to cross friendly swords again. I look forward to it, but this morning I sent him an email of a single sentence. It’s the quotation from St Maximus: “God is above arithmetic.”

For us human beings, three equaling one is a logical absurdity. God the Three-in-One, though, isn’t an arithmetic problem. We know He is Three in One because Christ our God told us so. He didn’t concern Himself with proving it, any more than we can prove God’s existence—and you can see from the above that we needn’t even bother to try. It’s not because belief in God is illogical, but because it’s above logic—above numbers—above existence. That’s the “high and holy place” where God simply Is. And incredibly, unbelievably, if we consider Who He Is and who we are, that, St Maximus further says, is where He calls us.—Fr Gregory Wilcox