'Ever-circling years': November, a month for churchyards

The closing days of November. We are on the cusp of Advent. Autumn's end is visible, the bare trees of the churchyard telling us that Winter is arriving. We are expecting frost. Today the sun will set a few minutes after 4pm.

The month began in Lutheran Scandinavia on All Saints' Day, and in Catholic central and eastern Europe on All Souls' Day, with candles lit at the graves of loved ones.

There is no such custom amongst Anglicans in these Islands. As the festive season approaches, however, churchyards will see Christmas wreaths being placed on many a grave. Visiting my father's grave on the days leading to Christmas each year, I am always touched by the number of wreaths placed on graves in the cemetery.

The words of the carol always come to mind:

For lo! the days are hastening on

By prophet bards foretold,

When with the ever circling years

Comes round the age of gold;

When Peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.

On a cold December day, with the festive season already in the air, the Christmas wreaths in the cemetery speak of both the Advent hope and the grace of the Incarnation transfiguring our mortality, our grief, our deaths.

November's closing days, and the approach of Advent Sunday, means that this sight will again soon appear in churchyards, and just as we will be hearing the words of the Bidding at the Nine Lessons and Carols:

let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.

Here, too, the symbolism of the Christmas wreath has meaning, the greenery proclaiming life, the circle speaking of unbroken communion: Advent hope and Christmas light.

As November ends, these weekly reflections on the meanings of churchyard are also brought to a close. We have journeyed through the churchyard in this month of the dead, with autumnal leaves gathering around us, seeing in the churchyard the hope of resurrection, of all things - the 'ever-circling years -gathered up in Christ. Now, as we prepare to enter into Advent, and with Christmas wreaths soon marking the graves of loved ones, we commend those who rest in the churchyards we know to the One who is Alpha and Omega, who is Light and Life Incarnate. We do so in words from the 1549 Holy Communion:

We commend unto thy mercy, O Lord, all other thy servants, which are departed hence from us, with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace: Grant unto them, we beseech thee, thy mercy, and everlasting peace, and that, at the day of the general resurrection, we and all they which be of the mystical body of thy Son, may altogether be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: Come unto me, O ye that be blessed of my Father, and possess the kingdom, which is prepared for you from the beginning of the world.

(The photograph is from the lychgate into the churchyard of The Middle Church, in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country, on a Winter's day.)

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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