laudable Practice

From Jeremy Taylor's sermon for Advent Sunday - ' Dooms-Day Book: or, Christ's Advent to Judgement ' - a particularly powerful extract on how Christian duties to the poor are to be understood in light of the Lord's advent and and the last judgement: Every man that lives wickedly disgraces the religion and institution of Jesus, he discourages strangers from entring into it, he weakens the hands of them that are in already, and makes that the adversaries speak reproachfully of the Name of Christ; but although it is certain our Lord and Judge will deeply resent all these things, yet there is one thing which he takes more tenderly, and that is, the uncharitablenesse of men towards his poor: It shall then be upbraided to them by the Judge, that himself was hungry and they refused to give meat to him that gave them his body and heart-bloud, to feed them and quench their thirst; that they denyed a robe to cover his nakednesse, and yet he would have cloathed their souls wit...

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...