Yesterday was Saint Mark's Day

According to most contemporary Anglican calendars, it would have not been permitted to have celebrated Saint Mark's Day yesterday. When a saint's day falls on a Sunday, the contemporary liturgist has little hesitation in telling us that the Sunday should take precedence. When that Sunday is in Eastertide ... well, then there is no choice. In the words of the Church of Ireland BCP 2004:

Festivals falling on a Sunday of Eastertide are observed on the Monday following or at the discretion of the minister on another suitable weekday in the same week.

This obviously is required when Easter Day or its octave day, the First Sunday after Easter, fall on 25th April. When it comes to the Third Sunday after Easter, however, we might begin to wonder. Why should the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist not be celebrated on such a Sunday in Eastertide?

The very fact that Mark the Evangelist wrote his gospel, after all, is because of the Resurrection. It is the Resurrection which animates and gives meaning to his opening words, "the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God". It is because of the witness of the four Evangelists that the Church celebrates Easter Day and Eastertide.

Mark and the other Evangelists give meaning and substance to the Church's Easter faith and proclamation. To celebrate Easter is not to engage in metaphysical speculation or merely affirm a 'spiritual experience'. It is to declare, with Mark and the other Evangelists, "The third day he rose again from the dead". It is to confess that this event, of which the empty tomb is the sign, is the very heart of the Christian Faith.

Celebrating Saint Mark's Day on a Sunday of Eastertide draws us to see how Easter faith is rooted not in 'spiritual experience' or vague 'life after death' affirmations but in this particular salvific event (which then gives meaning and definition to spiritual experiences and the hope of immortality). Saint Mark's Day on a Sunday in Eastertide is therefore akin to celebrating Saint John the Evangelist's Day in Christmastide, including on a Sunday when it is 27th December (something which the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 allows). The feast of Saint John witnesses to the Incarnation as salvific event, not abstract principle:

This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true (from the Gospel reading for Saint John the Evangelist's Day, John 21:19-end).

Both feasts, then, point to the salvific events of the Incarnation and the Resurrection as doctrine, the body of teaching to which the Christian assents as saving truth. The collect for Saint John the Evangelist's Day refers to "the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John"; that for Saint Mark's Day, "the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark". In other words, the feast of Saint Mark falling on a Sunday during Eastertide reminds us that the Lord's Resurrection is doctrine, a teaching which defines the Christian Faith. The fact that the collect goes on to petition that we would not be "carried away with every blast of vain doctrine" also tell us that are other, rival doctrinal accounts which the Christian cannot accept.

It is this understanding of the Resurrection as salvific event and as doctrine - on the basis of the proclamation of Scripture - that contemporary Anglicanism requires after a generation of theological and catechetical confusion. Celebrating the feast of Mark the Evangelist during a Sunday of Eastertide offers an opportunity to restate that the Easter faith is "in accordance with the Scriptures", not based on spiritual experiences; to confess the salvific nature of particular events ("that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures"); and to declare that the event of the Lord's Resurrection is at the heart of the doctrine (the body of teaching) which defines what it is to be Christian.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (from the Gospel appointed for Saint Mark's Day, John 15:1-11).

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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