laudable Practice

O Almighty God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist: Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Yesterday many of us who are Anglicans will have observed Saint Matthew the Apostle , one of twenty observances of saints in the Book of Common Prayer 1662. This was, of course, a matter of some controversy in the Elizabethan Church and beyond. According to the 1572 Admonition to the Parliament , the inclusion in the Prayer Book of "holydayes ascribed to saincts" was evidence of its reliance upon "that popishe dunghil, the ... Masse boke ful of all abhominations". Such observances were contrary to "the best reformed churches". There is a sense in which the Anglo-catholic tradition might affirm this, seeing in the observances of saint...

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The collect for Saint Simon and Saint Jude, Apostles, wonderfully orients us towards the celebration of the Communion of Saints on All Saints' Day. In his Whitsun sermon ' Of the Spirit of Grace ', Jeremy Taylor powerfully expounds the passage from Ephesians on which the collect is based, unfolding the mystery of the Communion of Saints as our participation in Christ: that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconciled to us, and yet that Himself must die that He might pardon us; that God's most holy Son should give us His body to eat, and His blood to crown our chalices, and His spirit to sanctify our souls, to turn our bodies into temperance, our souls into...

In his Sermons for the Saints' Days and Other Festivals (1879), there are three sermons by John Keble for All Saints' Day. It is difficult to identify anything in the sermons which would not have been heard from an Old High pulpit on the festival. The sermons exemplify a quietly joyful High Church piety for the festival. In the first sermon, Keble points to how All Saints' Day is not separate in the Anglican mind and Prayer Book provision from All Souls' Day, for we rejoice that our "own friends and kindred", "a great company of dear ones", are "all saints now": The promise is for you, for me, for us all. Why should there be one among you not found partaker of its benefit? "In My Father's house," says our Lord, "are many mansions:" there is room enough and glory enough, for all who are bidden, if only they will come in. Why should any one here be absent? In the Lamb's treasure-house, there is a crown and a robe ...

In the sixth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier continues with his characteristic Old High critique of excessive, radical asceticism. As mentioned last week, I think we can say that he here captures an enduring - and wise - aspect of ordinary Anglican piety: a mistrust and rejection of a radical asceticism which too easily and too readily denies the goodness of the created order and of the ordinary circumstances in which the vast majority of Christians are called to live out the faith: As to voluntary mortifications, or any self-denial more than is necessary to keep down our lusts and inordinate appetites, and for the due exercise of charity; and except in such extraordinary cases as occurred in the first ages, and in some subsequent periods of persecution, and as it is not impossible though improbable may yet recur, in all which God makes a special call upon us; beyond this I will venture to say that there is no warrant in Scripture for such ...

In the fifth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism , Le Mesurier demonstrates the Protestant nature of the Old High tradition regarding the cult of the saints: You may remember that when Moses died, his body was not to be found: and this, as it is well understood, was done in mercy, lest the Israelites should, from the great benefits of which he had been the instrument to them, have been led to worship his remains, or in any other way to pay him adoration. It is striking to see how God appears to have pursued a similar course with respect to the first publishers of the New Testament. Of the Virgin Mary we know absolutely nothing after the ascension of our Saviour, except that she was at one time with the disciples at Jerusalem ... Going on to others, we may observe that of Joseph, her husband, not a word is said. We are left to collect that he died before our Lady only from what passed at the foot of the cross. The same remark applies to the apostles. Of them ...

It is the day after All Saints' Day.  But, no, this is not All Souls' Day.  The classical Prayer Book calendar has no place for such a commemoration, for sound, coherent theological reasons .  The faithful departed are not a category apart from those whom we celebrated yesterday, "thy blessed Saints" who have entered into "those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee". This conviction finds its defining expression in the commemoration of the faithful departed in the Prayer for the Church Militant: And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom. The quiet, abiding hope of these words, entirely without urgent petition or fearful concern, encapsulates the Church's prayer at the graveside , quoting Revelation 14:13: "for they rest from their l...

From  A   Course of Sermons for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England  (1821) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for All Saints' Day.  The sermon, on the text "these all died in faith (Hebrews 11:12), not only shows the seriousness with which the pre-1833 Old High tradition approached this feast. It also demonstrates how the Communion of Saints was understood to cohere with modest, sober Old High piety.  The sermon opens with the crucial affirmation that we share with the Communion of Saints "the same source of salvation".  As we are this day invited to celebrate the mercies of God which have been manifested in all times to his chosen servants, and to regard their lives who lived and died in faith, we cannot take a fitter subject of discourse than that which will at once excite us to consider both the bright examples of such faithful persons, and to regard the properties and character of faith i...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume II (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.  Preaching on Ezekiel 14:14 - "Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord" - Pott contrasted seeking out "the prudent care, the pious prayers, and charitable offices of others" with invocation of the saints.  Mindful that within a few decades the successors to the Tractarians would be recommending this practice, Pott's sermon is a reminder of the Protestant character of the Old High tradition: We cannot avoid remarking in this place, since man has been so weak as to flee to other intercessors, even saints and angels, with that kind of trust and confidence, which is due only to one righteous Advocate; that there is a clear difference between the intercessi...

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, ...

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...

The recent TEC steps to remove the commemoration of renowned theologian William Porcher DuBose from the liturgical calendar exemplify the wisdom of a much more minimalist approach to the commemoration of saints.  The Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music has taken the unprecedented step of advising the removal of DuBose from the calendar in light of his post-Civil War defences of the intrinsic evil of slavery and the resistance of the former Confederacy to racial equality: DuBose offered unapologetic defenses of that system of racial oppression while espousing white supremacy in some of his writings, even praising the early Ku Klux Klan. DuBose reminds us that acceptance of - indeed, defence of - injustices can easily and routinely become part of ecclesial life.  Anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racism have all taken root at various times and in various places in the life of the Church.  This is one of the reasons, by the way, which might make us think about the usefulnes...

In respect of, and with relation to that blessed state, according to the doctrine, and practice of our church, we do pray for the dead; for the militant church upon earth, and the triumphant church in heaven, and the whole Catholic church in heaven, and earth; we do pray that God will be pleased to hasten that kingdom, that we with all others departed in the true faith of his holy name, may have this perfect consummation, both of body and soul, in his everlasting glory, Amen. In his Sermon XII (preached in 1621), John Donne asserted that the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana prayed for the faithful departed.   He did so by quoting the prayer at the graveside from the Burial of the Dead in BCP 1559 : beseching the that it may please the of thy gracious goodnes, shortelye to accomplishe the numbre of thyne electe, and to haste thy kyngedome, that we with thys oure brother, and all other departed in the true fayth of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummacion and blisse, both i...

From Donne's Sermon XLV , preached upon All Saints' Day.  Donne here exemplifies the quiet joy with which Anglicanism celebrates the parish church participating in the Communion of Saints. So that it is truly a festival, grounded upon that Article of the Creed, The Communion of Saints, and unites in our devout contemplation, The Head of the Church, God himself, and those two noble constitutive parts thereof, The Triumphant, and the Militant. And, accordingly, hath the Church applied this part of Scripture, to be read for the Epistle of this day, to shew, that All-Saints day hath relation to all Saints, both living and dead; for those servants of God, which are here in this text, sealed in their foreheads, are such (without all question) as receive that Seal here, here in the militant Church. And therefore, as these words, so this festival, in their intendiment, that applied these words to this festival, is also of Saints upon Earth ... The servants of God being sealed in their ...

They were constantly observed in the Church of England, from the time of the Reformation till the late Rebellion, when it could not be expected that any thing that carried an air of religion or antiquity, could bear up against such an irresistible inundation of impiety and confusion. But at the Restoration our holy-days were again revived, together with our ancient Liturgy, which appoints proper Collects, Epistles, and Gospels for each of them. Thus does Wheatly refer to the feast days appointed in the BCP Calendar.  He goes on to quote the 1662 rubric: Then the Curate shall declare unto the people what Holy-days, or Fasting-days, are in the week following to be observed. This was no new provision in 1662.  1552 and 1559 had declared: the Curate shall declare unto the people, whether there be anye holy dayes or fastynge dayes the weke folowyn. The observance of feast days, then, was intended to be an integral part of the rhythms of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana .  T...