laudable Practice

‘Then we will see face to face’: the life of the world to come At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, 2022 I Corinthians 13 “We look … for the life of the world to come.”  Week by week we declare this in the Creed we profess at the Eucharist. It is, however, probably one of those aspects of the Christian Faith that many of us shy away from. There has been a tendency, stretching back over the last century, for Christians to focus on those aspects of the Faith that are primarily concerned with the life of this world, not the life of the world to come.  We want others to know, in the words of the Christian Aid slogan, that Christians ‘believe in life before death’. But, while it is obviously important to remind ourselves of our commitment as Christians to the life of this world, we fail to say something of foundational significance if we avoid the Creed’s declaration: “We look … for the life of the world to come”. Words from Saint Paul in our epistle read...

From Bramhall's Protestants' Ordinations Defended , a description of what he calls elsewhere "the grace of holy Orders". He begins by noting how the Church of England regards Holy Orders as instituted by Christ; that the Anglican ordination rite embodied this belief; that it was a theology and practice shared with the Churches of the East; and that, while the Tridentine formula and porrectio instrumentorum were entirely unnecessary, their substance regarding the Eucharistic sacrifice was to be found in the Anglican ordination rite. They teach, that Ordination is a Sacrament; and we do not much oppose it. It is either weakness or frowardness, to wrangle about the name, when men agree upon the thing. We do believe, that Ordination is a sacred rite or action instituted by Christ, wherein, by the imposition of hands, the holy Orders of Bishops, Priests or Presbyters, and Deacons, are conferred ... Neither do we say this only, but we prove it manifestly. First, by the ins...

Three classically Anglicans reasons to rejoice on the commemoration (in the calendar of the Prayer Book as Proposed in 1928, the English Missal, the Canadian BCP 1962, and TEC's BCP 1979) of Saint John Chrysostom. 1. The fact that the name of Saint John Chrysostom is given to one of the Divine Liturgies of Orthodoxy suggests how the witness of Chrysostom places the liturgy as the heart of the Church's life.   The Homily ' Of Common Prayer and Sacraments ' places the Book of Common Prayer in the tradition of the Divine Liturgy:  Basilius Magnus, and Iohannes Chrysostomus did in their time prescribe publike orders of publike administration, which they call Liturgies, and in them they appointed the people to answer to the prayers of the Minister. The Homily also points to Chrysostom's sermon on 1 Corinthians 14 , in which he emphasises the relationship between the anaphora in the vernacular and the peoples' 'Amen': If you shall bless in a barbarian tongue, ...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay '"I quarrel not the making of images": The theology and practice of images in the Jacobean and Caroline Church' . The essay points to the Elizabethan Settlement creating space for a modest but real iconography, which flourished in the Jacobean and Caroline Church.  This was the case not just with avant garde and Laudian opinion but also in mainstream Conformity. --- This is reinforced by the fact that the defence of imagery was not the preserve of avant garde and Laudian opinion. Most obviously, this was seen in the words of another Supreme Governor, James VI/I : I am no Iconomachus, I quarrel not the making of Images, either for public decoration, or for men’s private uses: But that they should be worshipped, be prayed to, or any holiness attributed unto them, was never known of the Ancients: and the Scriptures are so directly, vehemently and punctually against it. Mindful that James’ care for cons...

Each year I look forward to the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Let me seek to explain why. Firstly, today's feast provides a focus of thanksgiving for time in my life lived in a community named after Saint Paul.  When I weekly pray the General Thanksgiving - "but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory" - I am, of course, giving thanks for the grace bestowed upon me through the Sacraments and those other holy ordinances "after the example of thy holy Apostles".  On this day, however, I recall with thanksgiving that my initiation into and formative years as a member of "the mystical body of thy Son" occurred in a particular place and in a particular time, a community named after Saint Paul, in the first 25 years of my life.  (The stained glass window of the Apostle's conversion is from the parish.) When I return to my home parish, I look a...

'Fulfilled in your hearing': beholding the Christ with the prophet Isaiah At the Parish Eucharist on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, 2022 Luke 4:14-21 A sabbath in Nazareth “...and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.”  When Jesus read the words of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue on that Sabbath day in Nazareth, he was reading words that were already ancient, dating back over half a millennium. And yet those listening as Jesus read from the scroll are clearly aware that the ancient words have a new and an immediate relevance. Luke captures the atmosphere of anticipation and expectation: “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him”. How come ancient words from centuries before, read on a sabbath day in a synagogue in unremarkable, insignificant Nazareth, were understood in a new and dramatic way? What was happening? And what relevance does it have for us? What did the prophet...

Writing on ' The Blessings and Graces of the Holy Sacrament' in The Worthy Communicant , Jeremy Taylor quotes both Hilary of Poitiers and Clement of Alexandria. This use of a Latin Father and a Greek Father is suggestive of a desire to both ensure that the Church's theology is 'breathing with both lungs' and to demonstrate a Eucharistic understanding richly rooted in the unity of patristic East and patristic West: The sum of all I represent in these few words of St. Hilary. "These holy mysteries, being taken, cause that Christ shall be in us, and we in Christ." And if this be more than words, we need no farther inquiry into the particulars of blessing consequent to a worthy communion; for "if God hath given his son unto us, how shall not he, with him, give us all things else?" "Nay, all things that we need, are effected by this," said St. Clement of Alexandria, one of the most ancient fathers of the church of Christ ... "They, who ...

Bramhall refers to the episcopate of the ecclesia Anglicana as "us, who maintain a personal and uninterrupted succession from the Apostles".  Those who receive the order of the episcopate in this communion have been "solemnly and lawfully, according to the institution of Christ and the pattern of the primitive ordinations, consecrated by those who derived a personal succession from the Apostles".  This, Bramhall shows, is a divine order: though the authoritative power of mission and vocation be in Christ, yet we ought not (with the Anabaptists or other enthusiasts) to trust to fanatical and succession fantastical revelations, or to think that every private motion is a sufficient mission or calling. Therefore Christ hath committed a ministerial power to His Church, to ordain by imposition of hands fit persons for that holy function, whereby the grace of holy Orders is derived from Him to us by a line of perpetual succession. From  Protestants' Ordinations Defend...

John Bramhall (then Bishop of Derry, Archbishop of Armagh 1661-63), responding to a Roman Catholic apologist who claimed that the Anglican episcopate ("the Protestant Bishops") had abandoned the communion of the Catholic Church: I deny, that the Protestant Bishops did "revolt from the Catholic Church". Nay, they are more Catholic Bishops in that, than the Roman Catholics themselves; maintaining a communion, for the foundations and principles of Christian religion, both with the Western and Eastern Churches, whom the Church of Rome excommunicates from the society of the mystical Body of Christ, limiting the Church to Rome and such places as depend upon it, as the Donatists did of old to Africa. It is true, the Protestants separated themselves from the communion of the Roman Church; yet not absolutely, nor in such fundamentals and other truths as she retains, but respectively, in her errors, superstructions, and innovations. And they left it with the same mind, that o...

We do not presume to come to this thy Table ... When the Priest, standing before the Table ... Take, eat; this is my Body which is given for you ... Drink ye all of this; for this is my Blood of the New Testament ... And, when he delivereth the Bread to any one, he shall say, The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee ... The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee ... If the consecrated Bread or Wine be all spent before all have communicated ... what remaineth of the consecrated Elements ... with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ - BCP 1662, Order for the Administration of the Holy Communion. When comparing the Book of Common Prayer 1662 with revised liturgies, catholic-minded Anglicans tend to routinely point to the changes in the structure of the Eucharistic rite, particularly the welcome provision of Eucharistic Prayers which followed the pattern of 1549 rather than 1662.  Cosin , indeed,...

As the holy Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice,  Brevint  also addresses the nature of the ministerial priesthood at the Eucharist.   In ministering the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood, the priest has "as much power ... as any prophet or angel": The body and blood of Jesus Christ is, in full value, and heaven with all its fulness is, in sure title, instated on true Christians by those small portions which they receive at the blessed Communion: the minister of Christ having, as to this effect, as much power from his Master for what he acts, as any prophet or any angel ever had for what they did. In also setting forth the Lord's Sacrifice in the Eucharist, there "sacramentally offered again to God", the ministerial priesthood similarly handles that which has made "the powers of heaven shake": So shall the new Israel tread in the pious steps of the old, who ever, from time to time, reiterated, either in Mispah or in Gilgal, &c. that ...

Yesterday's post addressed Brevint's rich understanding of the gift of the Lord in the holy Eucharist.  Now we turn to his presentation of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, "a sacramental passion" set before God and us upon the altar.  As the title of Brevint's work explicitly states, the Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice. Of particular note is Brevint's willingness to describe the "sacramental mystery" as a presentation of the Lamb's offering "as effectually and truly" as it was upon the Cross: The other time most favourable and proper, next to that of his real passion, is that of the holy Communion, which ... is a sacramental passion, where, though the body be broken, and the blood shed, but by way of representative mystery, yet both are as effectually and as truly offered for our own use, if we go to it worthily, as when that holy and divine Lamb did offer Himself the first time ... Therefore, whensoever Christians a...

Three classically Anglican reasons to rejoice on the commemoration of Saint Hilary of Poitiers. 1. In the midst of January, with the Sundays after the Epiphany sustaining the Church's joy in Our Lord Jesus Christ, "who in substance of our mortal flesh manifested forth his glory: That he might bring all men out of darkness into his own marvellous light" (Epiphany preface, Prayer Book as Proposed in 1928), commemorating Saint Hilary of Poitiers is a means of renewing our vision of the grace and truth of the Incarnation. In his discussion of the union of divine and human natures in the Incarnate Word, Richard Hooker turns to Saint Hilary's De Trinitate :   "He which in himself was appointed", saith Hilary, "a Mediator to save his Church, and for performance of that mystery of mediation between God and man, is become God and man, doth now being but one consist of both those natures united, neither hath he through the union of both incurred the damage or los...

I have presented some of their scholars to be ordained Deacons and Priests here by our own Bishops, (whereof Monsieur de Tarenne's Chaplain is one, and the Duke de la Force's Chaplain another,) ... and I preached here publicly at their ordination. Cosin's words here refer to the ordination on Trinity Sunday, 12th June, 1650 in Paris of the Reformed theologians Daniel Brevint and John Durel.  They were ordained deacon and priest on the same day according to the Ordinal of the Church of England by Thomas Sydserf, the exiled Bishop of Galloway.   This itself, of course, was a significant statement: receiving episcopal orders while episcopacy and the liturgy remained prohibited in England and, in 1650, with little hope of their restoration.  It was, despite the circumstances, a compelling statement of the Laudian vision. Cosin presenting and preaching; a faithful bishop conferring holy orders, maintaining apostolic order; two respected French Reformed theologi...

A final extract from The Great Exemplar , a beautiful and deeply patristic meditation from Taylor on the sanctity and perpetual virginity of Our Lady, indicative of Laudian Marian piety: As there was no sin in the conception, neither had she pains in the production, as the church from the days of Gregory Nazianzen until now, hath piously believed; though before his days there were some opinions to the contrary, but certainly neither so pious, nor so reasonable.  For to her alone did not the punishment of Eve extend, that "in sorrow should she bring forth": for where nothing of sin was an ingredient, there misery cannot cohabit.  For though amongst the daughters of men many conceptions are innocent and holy, being sanctified by the word of God and prayer, hallowed by marriage, designed by prudence, seasoned by temperance, conducted by religion towards a just, a hallowed, and a holy end, and yet their productions are in sorrow; yet this of the blessed Virgin might be otherwise,...

‘And the heaven was opened’: entering into the mystery of our salvation At the early Eucharist on The Baptism of Our Lord, 2022 Luke 3:15-17,21-22 Along the banks of the River Jordan, it was a routine, everyday occurrence during the ministry of John the Baptist.  Earlier in the chapter of Luke’s Gospel from which we have heard in our Gospel reading today, Luke tells us: “the crowds … came out to be baptized by [John]”. Jesus of Nazareth was one of the crowd.  That itself points us back to the events we have just celebrated at Christmas. The Child born in the manger is one of us.  We know that Jesus, Son of Mary, is, yes, one of the crowd like us.   But this, of course, is not all.  At Christmas we celebrated what we affirm week by week in the words of the Creed. That Jesus of Nazareth is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father” - and that he “was incarnate from the Holy Spirit of the Virgin M...

For in old times, God was known by names of power, of nature, of majesty; but His name of mercy was reserved till now, when God did purpose to pour out the whole treasure of His mercy by the mediation and ministry of His holy Son ... He hath changed the ineffable name into a name utterable by man, and desirable by all the world; the majesty is all arrayed in robes of mercy, the  tetragrammaton , or adorable mystery of the patriarchs, is made fit for pronounciation and expression, when it becometh the name of the Lord's Christ ... The great and highest name of God could not be prounounced truly, till it came to be finished with a guttural, that made up the name given by this angel to the holy child; nor God received and entertained by men, till He was made human and sensible by the adoption of a sensitive nature, like vowels pronounciable by the intertexture of a consonant.  Thus was His person made tangible, and His name utterable, and His mercy brought home to our necessities...

For God called the Gentiles by such means as their customs and learning had made prompt and easy. For these magi were great philosophers and astronomers; and therefore God sent a miraculous star to invite and lead them to a new and more glorious light, the lights of grace and glory. And God so blessed them in following the star, to which their innocent curiosity and national customs were apt to lead them, that their custom was changed to grace, and their learning heightened with inspiration, and crowned all with a spiritual and glorious event ...  When they came to Bethlehem, and the star pointed them to a stable, they entered in; and being enlightened with a divine ray proceeding from the face of the holy child, and seeing through the cloud, and passing through the scandal of His mean lodging and poor condition, they bowed themselves to the earth; first giving themselves an oblation to this great King, then they made offering of their gifts. Jeremy Taylor  The Great Exemplar ...

Mary, having first changed her joy into wonder, turned her wonder into entertainments of the mystery, and the mystery into a fruitition and cohabitation with it: for "Mary kept all these sayings, and pondered them in her heart". Jeremy Taylor  The Great Exemplar  I.IV.7. (The icon of the Theotokos and Christ Child is by Ulyana Tomkevych.)

In these remaining days of the Christmas season and into Epiphanytide, laudable Practice will be sharing words on the Lord's Nativity from Jeremy Taylor's The Great Exemplar , indicating how Taylor drank deeply from patristic Christological thought and devotion. The condition of the person who was born here is of greatest consideration.  For He that cried in the manger, that sucked the paps of a woman, that hath exposed Himself to poverty and a world of inconveniences, is "the Son of the living God", of the same substance with His Father, begotten before all ages, before the morning stars; He is God eternal ...  Vere Verbum hoc est abbreviatum , saith the prophet; the eternal Word of the Father is shortened to the dimensions of an infant. Jeremy Taylor   The Great Exemplar   I. ad III.5 (The icon of the Nativity is by Lyuba Yatskiv.)