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Showing posts from December, 2022

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given

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As we prepare to receive the holy Sacrament at Christmas, words from a John Henry Hobart sermon  (from a collection published in 1824) for Christmas Day. This short extract may seem quite unremarkable but it is this which has drawn me to it.  The Church calls us, on this day, sacred to the commemoration of his nativity, to display our penitence, our gratitude, and our love, in that holy supper which he hath instituted, to set forth all that he hath done for us, and to assure us of the blessings which he hath purchased for us, and in which we offer to him, who hath visited and redeemed us, ourselves, our souls, and bodies, a holy sacrifice. Its very modesty and reserve aptly captures something important to Anglican piety. Here there is no Enthusiasm, no dramatic asceticism, no urgent revivalism. But, rather, the quiet, prayerful reception of the holy Sacrament on the feast of the Lord's Nativity. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given. The extract is a succession...

2022 in books

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As the year draws to a close, I am looking back on the best books I read in 2022, including a 'book of the year' recommendation. In  Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019), Brett Salkeld offers an interpretation of Aquinas' articulation of transubstantiation which offers important points of contact with the Reformed tradition. Particularly striking, however, was its positioning of Aquinas as considerably closer to Calvin - and, indeed, Zwingli - than Luther, who was much more a 'late medieval'. There is a superb chapter on Calvin and his "remarkable agreement" with Thomas "on signs and signified in the Eucharist". Similarly, on the relationship between the Ascension and the Eucharistic presence, "Calvin (and Zwingli too!) follows Aquinas rather precisely": How ironic, then, Calvin's reputation as a Zwinglian is based largely on his theology of signs and his affirmation of the ascension, two points on whic...

Against the Advent Purists

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Like last year, our Episcopal Church is Christmas caroling on December 31st. I don't care if it is liturgically better than before Christmas. It's dumb and embarrassing. None of the random houses we go to will understand why we are showing up a week after Christmas. This statement on Twitter caught my attention last weekend, as the parish in which I serve was preparing for a joyful Nine Lessons and Carols on Sunday morning (the Fourth Sunday in Advent) with no sense at all that this supposedly disturbed Advent or was an apparently unfortunate compromise with secular culture. Now, to be clear, we should, of course, be still singing carols on 31st December.  That is not the problem.  The problem is banishing carols from Advent, exalting a purist approach to a liturgical season over the proper and wholesome desire to anticipate the joy of Christmas. Historical evidence in terms of Anglican preaching and piety does suggest a significant and enduring awareness that Advent cannot be...

Cranmerian Holy Communion during Advent: Sacrament, Gloria, and Eschaton

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Alpha and Omega, To whom shall bow All nations at the doom, Is with us now. The ancient eucharistic anthem from the 7th century Antiphonary of Bangor captures the eschatological aspect of the holy Sacrament.  Rowan Williams quotes it when he describes how through the sacrament Christians "stand at or beyond the end of the ages ... [and] become, unevenly and fleetingly but truly signs of the end, bearers of hope and judgement". We might detect here an echo of the great Alexander Schmeman n and his account of the Eucharist: "we have entered the Eschaton, and are not standing beyond time and space". As Schmemann also says elsewhere : The Kingdom is still to come, and yet the Kingdom that is to come is already in the midst of us.  The Kingdom is not only something promised, it is something of which we can taste here and now. And what does this rich teaching have to do with Cranmerian Holy Communion? One of the most distinctive features of the family of Cranmerian Eucha...

"The Advent of Jesus Christ, now about to be celebrated": An early PECUSA sermon for late Advent

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During Advent  laudable Practice  has been sharing extracts from the  sermons of Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie , Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27. We conclude these extracts today with a sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, preached on the text Luke 19:10, " For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost".  It is noticeable that the sermon makes frequent reference to the approaching festival of Christmas. We might regard this as something of a response to the Advent purists in our midst, who sternly declare that no mention can be made of Christmas until late on the evening of 24th December.  Duffie's sermon disagrees, pointing to a wise pastoral approach in which the penitence of Advent prepares for, points towards, and coheres with the celebration of the Lord's Nativity. The sermon might then also be regarded as an echo of the epistle appointed for the day: "Rejoice ... The Lord is at hand".  The nature of the Christmas fe...

Cranmerian Holy Communion during Advent: heeding with Israel the prophetic call to justice and righteousness

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Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow (Isaiah 1:17) . In Advent the Church stands alongside Israel, hearing the prophet Isaiah's call to justice and righteousness. The just ordering of social relationships is fundamental to the prophet's call: Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless (Isaiah 10:2). In this short series reflecting on how aspects of Cranmerian Holy Communion have a particular meaning and resonance during Advent, we turn to the exhortation addressed to those who come to receive the Sacrament, "Ye that do truly". It is another unchanging feature of what I have loosely termed the Cranmerian rites.  There are, of course, not insignificant differences between, on the one hand, 16...

An old Laudian vision and Advent in the Northland of Minnesota

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Early in Advent, laudable Practice suggested that the experience of Advent in the Northlands - these Islands in December, sharing something of the Winter darkness of Scandinavia - hinted at the Laudian vision of ' the Union of the Churches of the Northern Kingdoms ' and of contemporary Anglican-Lutheran communion.  When I shared a link to the post on Twitter, a priest in The Episcopal Church commented that it "reflects much of the practice here in the northland of Minnesota, and the convergence of the Scandinavian and German heritage, Lutheranism, and their influence on our Anglican worship".  He pointed to an Advent Sunday experience: Attended an Advent procession last Sunday in an Episcopal Church, where in the growing darkness the candlelit choir sang from the Anglican, and German, and Scandinavian heritage. Very fitting for Minnesota. — Dave Langille (@cdnusboy) December 4, 2022 There is something of an echo here of Anglican-Lutheran relationships in North Amer...

"O ye frost and cold": the Prayer Book in bleak midwinter

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Back in the warm days of early May, I offered a May Day meditation on Old High piety, reflecting on how "noble but bare and quiet" Georgian-style churches (illustrated with examples of some historic Episcopal churches in the United States) cohered with Cranmer's words and the theology of the Prayer Book: with modesty and reserve, quietly and decently ordering us towards "the author of peace and lover of concord". On this Advent Ember Day, I offer a related meditation, reflecting on how the Prayer Book sustains us in prayer through dark, cold December days. To illustrate this, there are photographs taken over recent days - days of sharp frost and bitter cold - at The Middle Church , in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country: a sign of prayer continued over the centuries, including cold and dark times. We turn first to Mattins, in the cold darkness of a December morning. A hard frost has settled over houses, gardens, and roads during the hours of night.  It being Adv...

"A change as to effect and power": Jelf's Bampton lectures echoing Calvin and Jewel on the Eucharist

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In the sixth of his 1844 Bampton Lectures,  An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England , Jelf  - one of those whom Nockles lists as the 'Zs', the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses Eucharistic doctrine. Having, as seen last week , rejected Transubstantiation on high Reformed grounds, Jelf takes care to note that this does not at all equate to a denial that any change takes places in the bread and wine. This, of course, reflects the Reformed understanding, expressed by Calvin : if it be asked whether the bread is the body of Christ and the wine his blood, we answer, that the bread and the wine are visible signs, which represent to us the body and blood, but that this name and title of body and blood is given to them because they are as it were instruments by which the Lord distributes them to us. This is the sacramental change which occurs in the elements, the change...

"To celebrate the Advent of the Lord": an early PECUSA sermon for Advent

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During this Advent  laudable Practice  is sharing extracts from the  sermons of Cornelius Roosevelt Duffie , Rector of Saint Thomas, New York City, 1824-27.  The sermons demonstrate the vitality of the pre-1833 Old High observance of Advent. Note in this extract how we are exhorted to "celebrate the Advent of the Lord", how reference is made to "this season of Advent celebrated by the Church". Also noteworthy is how the first and second advents are held together, interdependent acts of the divine purpose that is the coming of the Kingdom and the restoration of all things.   Finally, we might also hear the deeply evocative quality of the Old High observance of Advent which was later echoed in the bidding prayer for the Nine Lessons and Carols: "Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious redemption brought us by this Holy Child". Something of this is also seen in the...

Cranmerian Holy Communion during Advent: attending to the Scriptures with Israel

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And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace; and specially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word ... Continuing this short series reflecting on how aspects of Cranmerian Holy Communion have a particular meaning and resonance during Advent, we turn to these words from the Prayer for the Church Militant. There is, of course, a particular echo here during the second week of Advent : Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them ... Note how the collect begins with hearing of the Scriptures and that the Prayer for the Church Militant likewise prioritises hearing: communal hearing not private reading is the focus of both petitions. This contrasts rather sharply with Simon Schama's comment in his  The History of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000BCE-1492CE that whereas Christian reading ...

"High honour is due, and rendered": Churches of the Reformation against Barth on the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Where ever Mary is venerated, and devotion to her takes place, there the Church of Christ does not exist. This quote from Barth's Church Dogmatics received some attention recently on Twitter . It is, at best, a foolish statement, profoundly uncharitable to very many in the Body of Christ. Upon first encountering the statement, my thoughts turned immediately to a local Roman Catholic Benedictine community, the brothers ending Compline each night with an anthem to the Blessed Virgin, before her icon.  To say that this prayerful, grace-filled community is not the Church of Christ - constituted by Word and Sacrament - is, frankly, blasphemous.  In historical terms, the statement is similarly deeply foolish. It excludes from the Body of Christ vast numbers of the baptised in East and West over centuries. To suppose that the grace of God in Christ, proclaimed in the Scriptures and ministered in the Sacraments, could not justify and sanctify because of exaggerated, or even erroneous...

A sharp midwinter frost: the Prayer Book and the Four Last Things

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The Prayer Book Society's Advent seminar on Saturday past on the Four Last Things - death, judgement, heaven, hell - provided an excellent overview of how the Prayer Book sets before us the Last Things. What was particularly striking was the emphasis from the contributors on the sparse, stark nature of the Prayer Book's presentation of these truths. 'Sparse' and 'stark' are words often applied, as a criticism, to the Prayer Book Order for the Burial of the Dead. Cranmer's sparse and stark burial rite was needed to undo the colourful cultus and piety of purgatory enshrined in late medieval Latin Christendom. Perhaps, however, it is no less needed today, in the face of both a sickly sentimentalism, on the one hand, and, on the other, a refusal to acknowledge the fact of our mortality. The Prayer Book's sparse, stark recognition of our mortality both strips away the sentimentalism and confronts cultural denial of death: "in the midst of life we are in...