laudable Practice

No un-Christlikeness at all: why we confess the Incarnation At the early Eucharist on the Second Sunday of Christmas, 2021 John 1:10-18 “No one has ever seen God.” The words of Saint John in our Gospel reading point to fundamental truths about what Christians mean - in common with Jews, Muslims, and indeed with the ancient Greek philosophers who shaped the intellectual world in which John wrote - when we say the word ‘God’. God is eternal, infinite.  Not restricted or contained by time or space.  God is eternally present in all places. God is the ground of all being, closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is invisible, unseen, not a physical being. And so, “No one has ever seen God”: because God cannot be limited by space, time, and the physical. I imagine, however, that after writing this, John - like a good dramatist - then expected a pregnant pause in our reading of his words. “No one has ever seen God.” Pregnant pause. “It is God the only Son … who has made him known.”...

Beholding the Christ Child in the Proto-Martyr At the early Eucharist on Saint Stephen's Day, 2021 Acts 7:51-60 Yesterday we were gazing upon the Christ Child in the Manger and hearing the song of the angels. Today, Saint Stephen’s Day, our readings set before us something that seems dramatically different - the death of the first Christian martyr.  It seems all very unseasonable, unfestive.   Why can we not continue at the Manger, gazing upon the Christ Child?  Why, on the very day after Christmas Day, are we brought to an event decades later? Not to a birth, but to a death. Not to the warmth of the Manger and a Mother’s love, but to the cruelty of a mob and a bitter death. Does the Church’s decision to commemorate Saint Stephen the Martyr on 26th December not distract us from the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity? Would Saint Stephen’s Day not best be placed at some other, more appropriate time of the year? Then we could continue at the Manger, gazing upon the Chr...

Manger, Glory, Incarnation: the Grand Miracle At the Dawn Eucharist of Christmas Day, 2021 Luke 2:8-20  In the quietness of this Christmas morning, our Gospel reading, from Saint Luke’s account of the Nativity of Our Lord, presents us with stark contrasts. On the one hand there is glory, splendour, majesty.  Angels, the glory of the Lord shining, the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven’.   We hear too of the royal titles of the Christ Child, born in the city of David, Israel’s greatest king; described as ‘anointed’ - for that is what ‘Messiah’ means - like the mighty kings of old; hailed as ‘Saviour’, a title claimed by the Roman emperors, reflecting their authority and the order they upheld. On the other hand, however, there is poverty, vulnerability, humility.  The news of the birth of the Christ Child is announced to shepherds: hard-working labourers, earthy, carrying the distinct odour of their labour, far removed from the comforts and ...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Christmas Day, words to prepare us for the joy of celebrating the Lord's Nativity: We are now met, according to the solemn purport of this day, to celebrate the benefits which are derived to us from our Redeemer's coming to open and fulfil the great treaty of salvation, for the succour and recovery of a fallen race. We are assembled now in order to take nearer views, and to encourage larger recollections, of the several circumstances which accompanied our Lord's Nativity, and which marked the first period of the happy season of redemption ... To us, then, it belongs to raise many a pious meditation on those lines of the sacred narrative, to draw many a lesson from each memorable sentence of those hallowed pages, which have the seal of the divine authority impressed upon them in such living characters, and which we...

"The more widely used form."  That is the description in   Common Worship: Time and Seasons  of the usage by which the Advent antiphons begin on the 17th December rather than the 16th, as in the Kalendar of the BCP 1662. Now, of course, the statement is factual - the 17th is "the more widely used form", normative in the Latin rite.  The 16th was the use of Sarum, an oddity in a local rite.  But there is something richer here than liturgical antiquarianism. The 16th allowed for an addition to the Advent antiphons, on the 23rd: O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery. Here the Church's Advent prayer rejoices in the fulfilment of the yearnings expressed from  O Sapientia .  The fulfilment comes not in abstractions, but in the swollen belly of the Maiden.   There , the Church's Advent pray...

From Protestants' Ordination Defended - a response to a Roman Catholic critique of Anglican orders - by Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, addressing the allegation that Anglican formularies had removed private confession and the priestly authority to absolve sins: Neither have the Protestants "pared away" all manner of mariner of shrift, or confession and absolution. I have shewed before in this answer five several ways [he had previously stated that the priestly authority to remit sins was found in administering Baptism, the Eucharist, prayer, preaching, and absolution], whereby the Protestants hold, that their Presbyters put away sins. Nay, they condemn not private confession, and absolution itself, as an ecclesiastical policy, to make men more wary how they offend; so as it might be left free, without tyrannical imposition. No better physic for a full stomach than a vomit. Bodily sores do sometimes compel a man to put off natural shamefacedness, and to offer his less co...

Having considered in previous posts how the unchanging texts of the penitential rite and the responses in the Cranmerian Office provide a rich source of Advent self-examination and prayer, what of the canticles?  Again, the contrast with contemporary versions of the Office is stark: one unchanging invitatory at Mattins, the very limited choice of either Te Deum or Benedicite with the Benedictus at Mattins, and a usual, long-standing practice of the unchanging Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis at Evensong.   This 'lack' of 'choice', however, does not restrict the Church's praise during Advent.  Again, the very fact that we have unchanging texts in the Cranmerian Office is an invitation to wade deeper, as we already know - from daily praying throughout the year - their words and structure, rather than attempting to identify meaning in new texts.   How, then, can the unchanging texts of the canticles in the Cranmerian Office shape and enrich the Church's praise d...