laudable Practice

At the Parish Eucharist on the Sunday before Lent, 11.2.24 Mark 9:2-9 “And he was transfigured before them.” It is at the centre-point in Mark’s Gospel.  The accounts of miracles and parables - revealing the Kingdom of God - have been the focus of Mark’s Gospel up to this point. Saint Peter, on behalf of the Twelve, has just confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. Mark is about to turn towards Jerusalem and the week of the Cross and the Resurrection. And it is at this pivotal point in his Gospel, that Mark brings us, following Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, up the mountain, to behold this mysterious event: “And he was transfigured before them”. The word Mark uses - now translated ‘transfigured’ - means transformed, mystically changed. The clothes of Jesus, we are told, “became dazzling white”, a description which speaks of a brilliant, light-filled glory. He adds, “such as no one on earth could bleach them”. He is reaching for words and phrases which will communicate ...

On this day before Lent, we continue consideration of the Absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer from A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), by clergyman John Shepherd. In his commentary on Prayer Book Mattins and Evensong, Shepherd expounds how the Absolution at the morning and evening offices is an exercise in the presbyteral ministry of reconciliation.  On Shrove Tuesday, Shepherd's words are a reminder there is no need for private absolution (albeit this ministry is available to those who desire it for "quieting of ... conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness"). Those of us who have heard the absolution pronounced at Morning or Evening Prayer on Quinquagesima or the days following, being penitent, have been absolved in preparation for the penitential season.  The Church of England places the Absolution, or Remission of Sins, immediately after the General Confession. The whole congrega...

As Lent approaches, most of the posts this week will consider the normative way Anglicans over centuries received absolution: that is, by means of "The Absolution or Remission of sins ... pronounced by the Priest" at Mattins and Evensong. To guide our reflections on this Absolution, we turn to  A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), by clergyman John Shepherd. Mindful that the Absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer, "pronounced by the Priest alone", had been a source of Puritan and then Dissenting criticism since the Elizabethan era, Shepherd invokes Calvin in defence of the Absolution as a "signal promise" of forgiveness after confession: The propriety of introducing the Absolution in. this part of our daily service, is acknowledged without reserve by Calvin, whose immense learning, and extraordinary abilities, no one will dispute. This distinguished instrument of the reformation, who was...

‘From one degree of glory to another’: Baptism, Lent, and the gift of life in Christ At the Parish Eucharist & Holy Baptism on the Sunday before Lent, 2022 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 How might we describe what we do here on Sundays in our parish church?  How might we describe how we seek to live out the Christian faith, Monday to Saturday?  I think most of us would instinctively choose quite modest words to describe both.   We might talk of our Sunday worship as a means of growing in faith, hope, and love; we might talk of seeking in daily life to love God and neighbour. In our first reading this morning, however, from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle employs more dramatic language to describe Christian worship and the Christian life: “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Sp...

‘Clothed and in his right mind’: preparing for the season of healing At the early Eucharist on the Second Sunday before Lent, 2022 Luke 8:22-35 Luke’s account of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac may sound very far removed from our respectable, rational twenty-first century lives.   He lived naked among the tombs; he would break the shackles placed on him by the local community, so disturbed were they by him; he would go out into the wilderness, there tormented by his demons. And we are left in no doubt that the profound disordering of this individual’s life was because of the influence of dark spiritual forces.  “Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him.” When those demons are expelled by Jesus, they enter into the nearby herd of swine, who rush into the lake and are drowned. For respectable, rational people it all sounds a bit too much. Except that behind our respectable, rational appearances, we can be much closer...

‘Of first importance’: turning towards the Paschal Mystery At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday before Lent, 2022 I Corinthians 15:1-11 The season of Lent is approaching.  This Fourth Sunday before Lent begins a series of weeks in which we ready ourselves to enter into Lent. The liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, tells us that we are called to mark Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word”. It is right, then, that we ready ourselves, that we give time during these weeks to think about how we will observe Lent. But why? Why these Sundays before Lent, heralding the approach of the season? Why have forty days in the Spring of each year marked by prayer and abstinence, self-examination and the reading of Scripture?  The answer is found in today’s Epistle reading, Saint Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had receive...