laudable Practice

As we consider extracts from Keble's Advent sermons in his Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve , we turn to a sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent, beginning Advent Ember Week.  In referring to the Prayer Book collect of the week, Keble sets forth a vision of ordained ministry that would have been very familiar from Old High pulpits. The "mysteries" referred to in the collect are, he says, the two Sacraments: and note, two  Sacraments. The meaning of these Sacraments is expounded by means of the Catechism. Alongside the two Sacraments is preaching, the proclamation of "the mysteries of His Word". Yet again, in other words, we see Keble's Advent preaching suggesting little in the way of a distinctive Tractarian spirituality; instead he is standing firmly in continuity with Old High preaching and piety. And this so much the more, as we, who minister in the Church of God, whether worthily or unworthily, have a trust in some respects greater...

It is the Friday of September Embertide. Today I am thinking of a dear friend who will be priested in coming days. My mind turns towards words from Jeremy Taylor, from his work  Clerus Domini , on "the divine institution, necessity, sacredness, and separation of the office ministerial". Taylor's words are an exposition of the formula repeated at the laying on of hands in the Ordering of Priests in the 1559 Ordinal : Receive the holy goste, whose synnes thou doest forgeve, they are forgeven: and whose sinnes thou doest retaine, thei are retained: and be thou a faithful despensor of the word of god, and of his holy Sacramentes. In the name of the father, and of the sonne, and of the holy gost. Amen. This formula became a particular focus of controversy when Apostolicae Curae declared that 'Receive the Holy Ghost' was insufficient, going on to strangely suggest that the addition in 1662 of 'for the office and work of a Priest" indicated that Anglicans under...

In a recent episode of the always thoughtful and insightful Holy CofE podcast, theologian Hans Boersma was interview. Boersma - who belonged to the Reformed tradition - recently received episcopal orders, being ordained a priest in the Anglican tradition. One particular line from the interview struck me.  Addressing the vocation of the theologian, Boersma said: There is no, it seems to me, better way to do that than to be a priest in the Church. This, of course, does not deny that there other ways which are as equally good and proper: the lay theologian in the academy or the lay theologian in the service of the Church.  It does, however, suggest that the office and work of the priest is inherently caught up with the vocation of the theologian.   The vocation of the theologian in this context is not to publish but, rather, to take seriously the stuff of theology, what Thomas Aquinas calls sacra doctrina .  And it is Thomas who provides us with the key definitio...

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 ...