The Confessing Reader

Edward was born in 1002, the son of the English King Æthered and his Norman wife Emma. He was first educated at Ely, then in Normandy, where he lived in exile during the Danish supremacy over England. Named King Harthacnut’s successor, he returned to England in 1042 to become king. Sustained by Edward’s diplomacy and determination, his reign was a balancing act between strong political characters at home and abroad, with English, Danish and Norman magnates struggling for power. He was concerned to maintain peace and justice in his realm, to avoid foreign wars, and to put his faith into practice. He was generous to the poor, accessible to his subjects, and hospitable to strangers.

Edward strengthened the ties between the Anglo-Saxon Church and the See of Rome, sending bishops to Leo the Ninth’s councils in 1049 and 1050, and receiving papal legates in 1061. He promoted secular clerks, sometimes from abroad, to bishoprics, thus diminishing the near-monopoly of monastic bishops. Edward also had a high regard for the Eastern Church, at one time sending envoys to the Emperor in Constantinople to inquire concerning the meaning of a dream that he had about the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

This did not imply a lack of esteem for monasticism, however. Having vowed as a young man to go on pilgrimage to Rome should his family fortunes ever be restored, he later felt it irresponsible to leave England, and he was instead permitted by the pope to fulfill his vow by founding or endowing a monastery to Saint Peter. Edward chose the abbey on Thorney Island, by the River Thames, thus laying the foundation of royal patronage of Westminster Abbey. At one time he devoted as much as a tithe of his income to the Abbey, and he generously endowed it with many grants of land in different counties. He caused a huge Romanesque church to be built, 300 feet long, with a nave of twelve bays. It was finished and consecrated just before his death, when he was too ill to attend. But he was buried there, and his relics remain undisturbed to this day.

Edward’s marriage with Edith, the daughter of Godwin, earl of Wessex, was widely believed not to have been consummated, perhaps because Edward felt himself called to the celibacy of a spiritual marriage. In any event, their union was childless, thus creating the politically uncertain situation in which rival claimants for the crown of England emerged in the last days of his life.

Edward stood on the cusp of irreversible change in England. Divergent contemporary sources claimed that he recognized William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy as his heir; or that he had nominated Harold of Wessex, by sign if not by word, was his successor on his deathbed.

Prepared from material in Celebrating the Saints and The Oxford Dictionary of Saints.

The Collect

O God, who called your servant Edward to an an earthly throne That he might advance your heavenly kingdom, and gave him zeal for your Church and love for your people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate him this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The icon of Saint Edward the Confessor was written by Aidan Hart, an English Orthodox painter and carver of sacred icons. This icon is taken from his series of icons of Western Orthodox Saints.

Philip the Deacon was one of the “seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” whose appointment for the service of the poor and distribution of alms is recorded in the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Philip later preached in Samaria and was successful in winning over the Samaritans from belief in the sorceries of Simon Magus to the Christian faith. After the conversion and baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip went on a missionary tour from Ashdod northwards and settled at Caesarea. It was here at a later date that he provided hospitality for the Apostle Paul and his companions. Philip’s four daughters are noted in Acts as being prophets. Uncertainty clouds his later years, though according to one tradition be became bishop of Tralles in Lydia.

Collect

Holy God, no one is excluded from your love, and your truth transforms the minds of all who seek you: As your servant Philip was led to embrace the fullness of your salvation and to bring the stranger to Baptism, so give us all the grace to be heralds of the Gospel, proclaiming your love in Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Philip, Deacon and Evangelist, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

[H]e died with a deep sense of failure and foreboding for the future…. (from the biography of Robert Grosseteste, infra)

A salutary reminder that ours is by no means the first generation in the Church deeply to be concerned for the faithfulness of the Church.

Is the death of such saints as Robert Grosseteste within the communion of the Catholic Church a judgment not only on our present-day schismatical tendencies in the name of reform, but on the Reformation generally?

Can Anglicans cry “Schism is worse than heresy” with any integrity at all?

Given the early history of the English Reformation, Craig Uffman’s defense of a distinction between “lawful separation” and schism on the basis of the writings of Bramhall and Hammond (cf. his essay on the Covenant website - is, I think, quite tenuous. I am willing to read Bramhall and Hammond as an ex post facto rationalization of the 16th century schism, but the acts of the Tudor monarchs and their reforming councilors don’t quite come up to the “lawful” bit of “lawful separation”.

Robert Grossteste, one of the outstanding English bishops of the thirteenth century as well as one of the most learned men of the medieval period, rose to prominence in the Church from humble beginnings in Suffolk. His early education seems to have been in Lincoln, perhaps by the charity of its leading citizen , Adam of Wigford. While it has generally been assumed that Grosseteste went to the schools at Oxford and Paris, there is no early evidence for this. He was briefly a member of the household of Hugh, the saintly bishop of Lincoln, and that of William de Vere, Bishop of Hereford, but little else is certainly known about his early life.

In 1225 he received a benefice and and is known about that time to have been lecturing in theology at Oxford (notes of his lectures and sermons of the period 1225 through 1230 have survived). In 1129 he became archdeacon of Leicester, a position that he resigned in 1231, having already given up his university lectureship to become the first lector in theology to the recently-established Franciscan house at Oxford.

Grosseteste’s intellectual energy and accomplishments were considerable. Prior to 1225, his main occupation was scientific studies, with a treatise on computations which demonstrated knowledge of recent translations of Arabic works; an outline of general astronomy; short works on comets and rainbows; and a commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. After these early works, from 1225 to 1235 he produced the main series of his theogical works, including commentaries on the Psalms and on Galatians. During this period he also learned Greek, acquiring a competence scarcely paralled by any Western scholar before his time. As a bishop after 1235, he was able to devote considerable resources to a large project of translating Greek texts into Latin, including the works of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite; the Ethics of Aristotle; and parts of the works of John of Damascus, Basil, and the newly discovered Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This program required the employment of a group of scholars, several of whom were supported with benefices. In addition to these works, he published a treatise on light - a subject that had exercised his mind for many years.

Consecrated Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, Grosseteste showed conspicuous energy and dedication in his episcopal ministry. He was tireless in carrying out diocesan visitations, organizing preaching by Franciscan and Dominican friars, drawing up regulations for both clergy and laity, and opposing royal and papal intrusions against local prerogatives. In pursuit of a policy of episcopal independence, Grosseteste made an appeal to Pope Innocent the Fourth at Lyons in 1250, travelling to the papal court with a carefully prepared denunciation of the abuses of power in pursuit of personal and family gain by papal officials, by the Curia, and the Pope himself. While giving an account of these abuses, he also made proposals for reform. These were ignored, and Grosseteste was perhaps fortunate to escape excommunication. Whether he was suspended during his last years is unclear, but he died with a deep sense of failure and foreboding for the future, probably on October 8th, 1253.

Grosseteste left his books and manuscripts to the Oxford Franciscans, ensuring their survival and growing influence in the fourteenth century, culminating in the discovery by the reformer John Wycliffe that on several points (on the importance of pastoral work and of preaching, his sympathy for the Greek Church, and his criticism of the papal Curia), Wycliffe had been anticipated by Grosseteste. His became a cherished name among the Lollards (followers of Wycliffe), and he figured in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Summarized from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and other sources

Collect

O God, our heavenly Father, who raised up your faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in your Church and to feed your flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

William Tyndale was born about 1495 at Slymbridge near the Welsh border. He received his BA and MA degrees at Magdalen College, Oxford, and also spent some time in study at Cambridge. After his ordination, about 1521, he entered the service of Sir John Walsh at Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire, as domestic chaplain and tutor. In 1525 he went to London and obtained a similar position with a rich cloth merchant, Humphrey Monmouth.

Tyndale was determined to translate the Scriptures into English, but, despairing of official support, he left for Germany in 1524. From this point on, his life reads like a cloak-and-dagger story, as King Henry the Eighth, Cardinal Wolsey, and others sought to destroy his work of translation and put him to death. He was finally betrayed by one whom he had befriended, and in Brussels, on October 6, 1536, he was strangled at the stake, and his body was burned.

William Tyndale was a man of a single passion: to translate the Bible into English. As he said to a prominent Churchman, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more scripture than thou dost.” His accomplished work is his glory. Before his betrayal and death, he had finished and revised his translation of the New Testament, and had completed a translation of the Pentateuch and of Jonah and, though he did not live to see them published, of the historical books from Joshua through 2 Chronicles. His work has been called “a well of English undefiled.” Some eighty per cent of his version has survived in the language of later and more familiar versions, particularly in the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.

After the fashion of his time, Tyndale could be a bitter controversialist, and his translations sometimes had a polemical purpose. He was a lonely and desparate man, constantly hunted and hounded. In his personal life he was amiable and self-denying. His last words were prophetic: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

Collect

Almighty God, you planted in the heart of your servant William Tyndale a consuming passion to bring the Scriptures to people in their native tongue, and endowed him with the gift of powerful and graceful expression and with strength to persevere against all obstacles: Reveal to us your saving Word, as we read and study the Scriptures, and hear them calling us to repentance and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of William Tyndale, Priest, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Bible Girl’s interview with Brother Andrew, the Dutch evangelical Christian known for his smuggling Bibles into places hostile to Christianity, and co-author Al Janssen of Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ: read it all.

Reminds me of a question I’ve asked before: in the run-up to the war in Iraq, when many politically conservative American Christians were supporting the Bush administration’s move to war and many politically liberal American Christians were opposing this movement, who was praying for Saddam Hussein’s conversion?

I know that we weren’t in my parish church, not publicly and liturgically. Sometimes you’d think we weren’t actually Christians at all.

How fitting to have found this on the day we commemorate the life and witness of St Francis of Assisi.

Francis, the son of a prosperous merchant of Assisi, was born in 1181 or 1182. His early youth was spent in revelry and fruitless attempts to win military glory.

Various encounters with beggars and lepers pricked the young man’s conscience, and he decided to embrace a life devoted to apostolic poverty. Despite his father’s intense opposition, Francis totally renounced all material values and devoted himself to service to the poor. In 1210 Pope Innocent the Third confirmed the simple Rule for the Order of Friars Minor, a name Francis chose to emphasize his desire to be numbered among the least of God’s servants.

Two of the things that distinguished the Friars Minor from other bands of Italian poor preachers of the time was their respect for and obedience to the Church authorities and their doctrinal orthodoxy. The Rule for the Order, the Regula Prima, begins with a promise of obedience and reverence to Pope Innocent and his successors. Most of the rule is a gloss on the passages of the Gospels which refer to renunciation and to the conditions of life of the followers of Christ, but the rule continues: “all the brothers shall be catholic and live and speak as catholics. If any shall err from the catholic faith and life either by word or deed and shall not mend his way, let him be expelled from the brotherhood.”

Francis longed for a wider field for his preaching and looked towards the conversion of the Muslim Saracens. Eventually reaching Acre and Damietta in 1219 with twelve friars, Francis denounced the loose-living adventurousness of the Crusaders. Somehow passing through the enemy lines, Francis met the Sultan, who was deeply impressed, but who remained unconverted. Francis refused all the Sultan’s offers of rich presents and returned to the Christian armies. Spending a few months on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, he returned to Italy after being urgently recalled by news of changes which had taken place in the Order.

The Order of Friars Minor had grown rapidly all over Europe. The numbers of friars had become large, foundations had been made outside Italy, and there was no novitiate or real organization. Cardinal Ugolino, patron and protector of the Friars Minor, wished the entire Church to benefit from their ideals and example and wanted the Order (then numbering about 5000) to become a well-organized body dedicated to reform. At the General Chapter of 1220, Francis resigned as Minister-General of the Order, realizing that he was not the administrator the Order now needed, particularly since his ideal of strict and absolute poverty, both for the individual friars and for the order as a whole, was found to be too difficult to maintain. His last years were spent in much suffering of body and spirit, but his unconquerable joy never failed.

It is to these later years, when Francis held no official position within the Order that he had founded, that some of the most famous incidents of his life belong. At the inauguration of the Christmas crib (crèche) at Grecchio, Francis, a deacon to his death, read the Gospel with such devotion that men wept. Francis wrote the “Canticle of the Sun” in 1224 when he visited Clare, an early follower, at Assisi while extremely ill. Not long before his death, during a retreat on Mount La Verna, Francis received, on September 14, 1224, Holy Cross Day, the marks of the Lord’s wounds, the stigmata, in his own hands and feet and side. Pope Gregory the Ninth, the former Cardinal Ugolino, canonized Francis in 1228 and began the erection of the great basilica in Assisi where Francis is buried.

The twentieth century witnessed a widespread revival of interest in Francis, but with a tendency to see in him only such traits as appealed to individual writers (or to film-makers!). This resulted in caricatures of a sentimental nature-lover or of a hippie drop-out from society, portraits that omit the real sternness of his character and neglect his all-pervasive love of God and identification with Christ’s sufferings, which alone makes sense of his life.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts and The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

Collect

Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may for love of you delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for Francis of Assisi, Deacon and Friar, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

N.B. Concordia Theological Seminary is one of two theological seminaries of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) in the United States.

An STM student from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (CTS) and an incoming STM student are among five men to be ordained in Gothenburg, Sweden on October 20. Bishop Arne Olsson of Sweden’s Mission Province will ordain three Finnish and two Swedish candidates in a ceremony to be held at Bjurslatt School Auditorium in Gothenburg. Among the three Finnish candidates are Markus Pöyry, an STM student at CTS since 2006, currently writing his thesis, and Esko Murto, who will begin STM studies at CTS in November.

The ordinations, to be held in conjunction with a missions conference, are a further demonstration of the international scope of the growing Confessional Lutheran movement in Scandinavia. The ordinations were made possible by the assistance of Bishop Walter Obare of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, a church founded largely as the result of work by Swedish missionaries. The candidates will serve Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian Lutheran organizations. In recent decades the former state churches in these countries have refused to ordain Confessional Lutherans because of their positions on matters such as the authority of Scripture and ordination of women.

By consecrating a bishop for the Mission Province in 2005, Bishop Obare re-opened the door to ordination for Confessional Lutherans, not only in Sweden, but also across Scandinavia, where the cultural tradition is that bishops ordain. This international scope was also demonstrated by the ordination September 16 in Norway of a Danish candidate to serve two Norwegian congregations by Norwegian Bishop Børre Knudsen and Mission Province Bishop Olsson. The Mission Province views itself as an “independent province of God’s Church and Congregation in Sweden … in continuity with the spiritual tradition… of the Church of Sweden … and a non-territorial diocese within it.” Church of Sweden officials refuse to recognize this diocese.

The conference’s opening service, under the theme “Go, and make disciples of all nations,” will feature a sermon by Roland Gustafsson, who served many years in Kenya working with Bishop Obare at the seminary in Matongo. Gustafsson is now missions director for the Evangelical Lutheran Mission (ELM-BV). Several other international mission leaders will also speak before the afternoon’s ordination service.

One of the men to be ordained, Bertil Andersson, has been serving as a missionary in Mongolia, sent by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission Association (NLM) and also supported by the Swedish Mission Organization Gospel for All (META). Andersson has already served one four year term in Mongolia and will assume a number of pastoral duties when he and his family return there. His ordination, and those of the other four candidates, would not have been possible apart from Kenyan Bishop Obare’s consecration of a bishop for the Mission Province in 2005.

For further information:
Dr. Christopher Barnekov, PhD [cbarnekov(at)verizon(dot)net]
Source: Information taken from the Mission Province website and correspondence.

Views and opinions expressed are the author’s interpretation.

But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

Having just read Bishop John Howe’s email message to his diocese regarding property claims, and the documents prepared for the departure of St Clement’s Church, El Paso, from the Diocese of Rio Grande, I have a few thoughts about property.

Those parishes among us who leave The Episcopal Church should leave without their property. These might include conservative parishes in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts and liberal parishes in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. (However, I utterly reject the argument that “only individuals” may leave The Episcopal Church, and not parishes, as starkly individualist, community-denying, and reductionist in its assertion of the parish as a canonical-legal institution only and not as the “congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered, according to Christ’s ordinance”.)

The diocese should then give up the property to the departing congregation.

Both the diocese and the departing parish should cooperate in making such arrangements as are needful for those who wish to remain in The Episcopal Church or who wish to depart with the diocese for another Anglican jurisdiction, whatever the case be for those dissenting from the congregation’s departure.

Surely we should be as willing to do at least as much for one another as Jesus commands us to do for the importunate evildoer.

I suggest we call it the St Martin Plan.

Remigius, also known as Remi, was born c. 458 of Romano-Gallic parentage. At the age of twenty-two he became bishop of Rheims.

Noted for his learning and holiness of life, Remigius is chiefly remembered for his conversion and baptism of Clovis, king of the Franks, on Christmas Day, 496. By becoming Catholic instead of Arian (as some other Germanic tribes, such as the Burgundians and the Visigoths, were doing), Clovis was able to unite the Catholic Romano-Gallic population and their leaders with the Germanic Franks who had earlier invaded the old Roman provinces of Gaul. His conversion also made possible the cooperation the Franks gave later to Pope Gregory the Great in his evangelistic efforts for the English. Saint Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, tells us that Clovis’ wife, queen Clotild, who was already a Christian, “continued to pray that her husband might recognize the true God and give up his idol-worship.”

When Clovis was baptized together with some 3000 of his followers and family, Remigius gave him the well-known charge, “Worship what you have burned, and burn what you have worshiped.” Among those baptized was Albofled, one of Clovis’ sisters. Another sister, Lanthechild, who had accepted the Arian heresy, converted to the Catholic faith and was chrismated.

Under the protection of Clovis, Remigius preached the Gospel among the Franks and founded bishoprics and churches. He died at Rheims on January 13, around the year 530.

Prepared from material in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, and The History of the Franks (trans. by Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Books).

The Collect

O God, by the teaching of your faithful servant and bishop Remigius you turned the nation of the Franks from vain idolatry to the worship of you, the true and living God, in the fullness of the catholic faith: Grant that we who glory in the name of Christian may show forth our faith in worthy deeds; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Read it here.

LCM is my bosom friend, our friendship going back high school days in Grant Parish, Louisiana. He is also a friend and colleague of Brad Drell (they are both attorneys in Central Louisiana).

And with a moniker like The Last Calvinist Methodist and his wide-ranging interests and perceptive intelligence, he really should create his own weblog. No doubt finding the time is the problem, though.

The scriptural word “angel” (from Greek, angelos) means, literally, a messenger. Messengers from God can be visible or invisible, and may assume human or non-human forms. Angels are represented in the Scriptures as an innumberable multitude of being intermediate between God and humanity. In Isaiah’s vision (Isaiah 6) and in the Book of Job angels form the heavenly court and sing the praises of God, whose commands they obediently perform for nations as well as for individuals, according to the Book of Daniel.

In the Jewish apocryphal writings of the intertestamental period, angelology is highly developed, and angels, as the constant intermediaries between a transcendent God and humanity, were also regarded as the promulgators of the Law, a view accepted by the New Testament writers (Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2).

According to our Lord’s teaching the angels are spiritual beings who enjoy always the vision of God in heaven and who will accompany the Lord at his parousia, his coming in glory. The Evangelists represent Jesus as surrounded by angels at the most important periods of his life. An angel announces his Incarnation and an angel chorus announces his birth. Angels minister to him in the desert, strengthen him in his Gethsamane agony, and would be ready to defend him when he is captured. Angels are the first witnesses and annunciators of his Resurrection, and they accompany him at his Ascension to the right hand of God the Father. In the Book of Revelation the role of angels is particularly important, their worship in heaven being the prototype of the worship of the Church. And we join this heavenly worship whenever the Church celebrates the Holy Eucharist: “therefore, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven”.

Great interest - and much speculation - was taken in the question of the ordering of angels, raised by the two enumerations in Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1. By amalgamating both passages five different ranks or orders were arrived at (rulers, authorities, powers, dominions and thrones), and to these five were added the four orders of angels (here understood as a particular order of spiritual beings), archangels, cherubim and seraphim. Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (c. 500) arranged angels in three hierarchies consisting of three choirs each, in the order of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominations,Virtues, and Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. According to this scheme, only the last two choirs have an immediate mission to humanity. J Athelstan Riley’s well-loved hymn, “Ye watchers and ye holy ones”, recalls these heavenly choirs: “bright seraphs, cherubim, and thrones…dominions, princedoms, powers, virtues, archangels, angels choirs….”

But it is just as well to cut through such speculations with the simple affirmations of the Te Deum laudamus:

To thee all Angels cry aloud,
the Heavens and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.

Angels are often depicted in Christian art in human form, with wings to signify their swiftness and spacelessness (seraphim, on the basis of Isaiah 6, are depicted with six wings), with swords to signify their power, and with dazzling raiment to signify their ability to enlighten. Unfortunately, this type of pictorial representation has led many to dismiss the angels as “just another mythical beast, like the unicorn, the griffin, or the sphinx.”

The witness of Scripture can help dispel the notions of angels as a species of mythical beast, as “cherubic” winged infants, or as blonde-tressed winged gentles in gauzy fabrics. How many depictions of angels, be they in the plastic arts or in painting, would provoke such a reaction in us that the angel’s first words to us, heard time and again in the biblical narratives, would necessarily be, “Do not be afraid!”? What seems to me to be the most accurate depiction of these swift and powerful beings, whom the Scriptures also call “ministers of flaming fire” (Hebrews 1:7), who often inspire paralyzing fear in those who behold them, is found in a children’s Christmas picturebook. One page of this book depicts the appearance of the angels to the shepherds outside Bethlehem. The eye is immediately drawn to the center of the picture, to a bright oval of light nearly formless, save for the impression of a pair of wings stretching out from the center. But it is only as the eye is drawn to the edges of the picture that one realizes the immensity of this being, for in the foreground, on a clifftop, are two tiny figures, not more than a hundredth of the size of the angelic brightness hovering over the wide plain below. And they are running in the opposite direction for dear life!

In the liturgies of the (Episcopal) prayerbook, we pray that God would have his angels “lead us in paths of peace and goodwill” and “dwell with us to preserve us in peace”, and that the Lord would give them “charge over those who sleep”. In Archbishop Cranmer’s 1549 eucharistic rite (echoing the medieval Latin rite), the prayers and supplications of the eucharistic canon are understood to be “brought up into [God’s] holy Tabernacle” by his holy angels.

Three angels are named in the Bible, Michael and Gabriel in the canonical Scriptures, and Raphael in the deuterocanonical book of Tobit. A fourth, Uriel, is named in apocryphal books of Enoch and 2 Esdras. The archangel Michael is the powerful agent of God who wards off evil from God’s people and delivers peace to them at the end of this life’s mortal struggle. According to the epistle of Jude, Michael contended with Satan over the body of the deceased Moses.

“Michaelmas”, as this feast is called in England, has long been one of the more popular celebrations of the Christian Year in many parts of the world. Michael is the patron of numerous churches, including Mont-Saint-Michel, the monastery fortress off the coast of Normandy that figured prominently in medieval English history, and Coventry Cathedral, England’s most famous modern church building, rising from the ashes of the most devastating war of our time.

Prepared with inclusion of material from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Lesser Feasts and Fasts and other sources

Collect

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels are published on the Lectionary Page website.

In the Preface to his biography of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Douglas Macleane wrote that the “holy and patristic character of the man” impressed itself on succeeding generations as the character of a truly apostolic bishop of the Catholic Church. Andrewes has about him “so primitive and reverend an exterior” wrote Thomas Fuller, “that the Fathers are not more faithfully cited in his books than lively copied out in his countenance and carriage.”

Born in the parish of All Hallows, Barking, in 1555, Andrewes was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he was elected Fellow in 1576 and Catechist in 1580. A devoted scholar, hard-working and accurate, he became master of 15 languages, and served as the chairman (or director) of one of the six Companies of scholars who produced the Authorized (King James) Version, with particular responsibility for the opening books of the Old Testament, from Genesis through Second Kings.

In 1589 he became vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, and in the same year, Master of Pembroke Hall. In 1601 he was appointed Dean of Westminter. Under King James the First, who held Andrewes in high esteem, Andrewes’ star rapidly ascended. He became Bishop of Chichester in 1605, of Ely in 1609, and of Winchester in 1619.

Theologically, Andrewes was one of the principal influences in the formation of a distinctive Anglican theology, which, in reaction to to the rigidity of Puritanism, should be reasonable in outlook and Catholic in tone. Convinced that true theology must be built on sound learning, he cultivate the friendship of such divines as Richard Hooker and George Herbert, as well as of scholars from abroad, such as Isaac Casaubon (a French Reformed theologian and patristics scholar who was appointed a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral after he emigrated to England) and Pierre du Moulin (a French Reformed pastor and theologian whose moderating theology irritated Roman Catholic and Reformed alike). He held a high doctrine of the Eucharist (see his Responsio ad Apologiam Cardinalis Bellarmini, 1610), emphasizing that in the sacrament we receive the true Body and Blood of Christ and consistently using sacrificial language of the eucharistic rite. He advocated an ordered ceremonial for the English liturgy and in his own chapel used the mixed chalice, incense and altar lights.

Andrewes’ theological basis is best summarized in his own words: “One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period…determine the boundary of our faith.” In Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy, Canon Arthur Middleton writes that

“His point is that the authority of the Church of England is based on the Scriptures, and on the fact that her faith is that of the Church of the first five centuries, and she holds as de fide neither more nor less than did the Fathers. On the Roman front he argues from this base that novelties introduced by Rome are rejected by Anglicanism, and on the Puritan front he uses the same argument with opposite effect claiming that nothing should be rejected that finds support in the primitive church.”

In his own lifetime Andrewes’ fame rested chiefly on his preaching. He regularly preached at court on the greater feasts of the Church year, and his “Ninety-Six Sermons”, first published in a collected edition in 1629 by William Laud and J. Buckeridge, remain a classic of Anglican homiletical works.

In his 1991 book, Lancelot Andrewes the Preacher (1555-1626), The Origins of the Mystical Theology of the Church of England, Russian Orthodox theologian Nicholas Lossky wrote that

“For Andrewes, not only are spirituality and theology not opposed, but the one could not be conceived without the other. Spirituality (a modern term that Andrewes does not use, be it understood) is, as has been suggested, the ecclesial experience, in the Church , of the union of man with God, and not an individualistic pietism. Theology, far from being for Andrewes a speculative intellectual system to do with God, is a translation in terms that can be transmitted of this same ecclesial experience. It is consequently a vision of God and not a system of thought.”

According to Lossky, the aim of Andrewes preaching then becomes

“to convert his hearers to the experience of God in th rectitude of the lex credendi, which cannot but be in profound harmony with the lex orandi. Therefore, he cannot be content merely to quote the fathers; he has integrated their essential attitude to theology itself, which is not thinking about God but the attempt to translate into intelligible terms the experience of life in God.”

Andrewes died in Southwark in 1626, on either September 25 or 26, and was buried in the parish church that is now Southwark Cathedral.

Prepared from material in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy (the Revd Canon Arthur Middleton, 2001).

The Collect

Lord and Father, our King and God, by your grace the Church was enriched by the great learning and eloquent preaching of you servant Lancelot Andrewes, but even more by his example of biblical and liturgical prayer: Conform our lives, like his, to the image of Christ, that our hearts may love you, our minds serve you, and our lips proclaim the greatness of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, are published on the website of the Lectionary Page.

A number of Bishop Andrewes’ sermons have been transcribed to the internet for Project Canterbury, and are available here. Also, Dr Marianne Dorman has published a number of her essays on Lancelot Andrewes online.

Bishop Andrewes is commemorated on September 26 in the sanctoral calendars of The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Church in Wales; and on September 25 in the calendar of the Church of England. My apologies for the tardiness in getting this written and posted.

A heartening read for the heart-heavy.

Bishop Curry Responds to House of Bishops Statement
September 26, 2007

Brothers and Sisters,

The Statement of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church responding to the requests, questions, and concerns addressed to us by the Primates of the Anglican Communion is a significant accomplishment, a positive step, and a hopeful sign.

Our statement was crafted after two days in prayer and conversations with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Anglican Communion. It follows two days of work and worship in New Orleans and Mississippi to support the work of rebuilding by the church and community there after hurricane Katrina.

The result was that bishops holding different perspectives on the issues before us were able to find common ground. The statement was approved by a nearly unanimous vote of those present and participating. I am aware of only one bishop who was unable to vote in the affirmative. Liberals, conservatives, and those in between were able to find agreement in a context of mutual respect and fervent prayer. In finding common ground, we were able to discover the high ground.

Bishops Gregg, Marble, and I participated fully in the discussions and we support the actions of our House of Bishops. There is good reason to be hopeful that the response by the bishops will be positively received by the leadership of the Anglican Communion.

This is a significant accomplishment, a positive step, and a hopeful sign.

Keep the Faith,

+Michael

From his seat in the Philosopher’s Armchair, Dr Stephen Lake provides a helpful roundup of a few conservative comments on the House of Bishops “Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by our Anglican Communion Partners“. Thanks, Steve.

Perhaps, in the face of this “institutional and verbal smokescreen” the best response so far is from Dr Leander Harding (see the whole comment on Steve’s weblog):

In sum the document brings the communion closer to schism. If Rowan Williams does not now disassociate himself from the American church leadership and its intransigence he will become irrelevant as a force for keeping the communion together and the break between the Global South and the rest of the communion will be accelerated.

Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen.

Sergius of Radonezh was born in the village of Rostov, about 1314, the child of the boyars Cyril and Maria.

War in Muscovy forced Sergius’ family to leave Rostov and to live by farming at Radonezh near Moscow. At the age of twenty, he and his brother began a life of seclusion in a nearby forest, from which developed the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, a center of revival of Russian Christianity. Sergius remained there for the rest of his life, save for four years in a different monastery to accommodate a dissident group of eremetical monks at Holy Trinity (after that time they called him back to Holy Trinity), refusing higher advancement.

Sergius’ firm support of Prince Dimitry Ivanovich, called Donskoi (of the Don River), helped to rally the Muscovites against their Tartar overlords. Dimitry won a decisive victory against the Tartar khan Mamai at the Kulikovo Plains in 1380, laying the foundation for an independent national life for Muscovy and eventually for Russia.

Sergius was simple and gentle in nature, mystical in temperament, and eager to ensure that his monks should serve the needs of their neighbors. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity became known for their generous alms-giving and its provision of shelter and support to travelers and to the sick. Sergius was able to inspire intense devotion to the Orthodox faith. He became renowned as far abroad as Constantinople, and Patriarch Philophius sent Sergius his blessing and a written endorsement that decreed the new rules of communal monastic life established by the founder of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity. Alexei, Metropolitan of Moscow, loved Sergius as a friend, entrusting him with important tasks (like peacemaking between rancorous princes), and he was planning to make Sergius his successor. Sergius declined this offer of higher advancement.

The story is told that Metropolitan Alexei decided to award Sergius with a gold cross for his work and devotion, but Sergius said, “Since my youth I have never decorated myself with gold, the more so in my old age I wish to remain poor,” and he resolutely refused the award.

Sergius died in 1392, and pilgrims still visit his shrine at the monastery of Zagorsk, which he founded in 1340. The city contains several splendid cathedrals and is the residence of the Patriarch of Moscow.

The Russian Church commemorates Saint Sergius on September 25. His name is familiar to Anglicans from the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, a society established to promote closer relations between the Anglican and Russian Churches.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts and other sources

Collect

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: Deliver us from an inordinate love of this world, that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant Sergius of Moscow, may serve you with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Sergius, Abbot, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of St Sergius is taken from the website of Holy Dormition Orthodox Church, Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Bishop Arne Olsson to assist Bishop Börre Knudsen

A great celebration is planned in Tromsö. Bishop Börre Knudsen of Strandebarm Deanery – The ”Church of Norway in Exile” – will ordain the Danish theologian Erik Okkels to the Ministry of the Word on Sunday, September 16. Tromsö, sometimes called ”the Paris of the North”, is located in far northern Norway, north of where the three countries [of the Scandinavian Peninsula] come together. In the last few years a new worship fellowship has grown here in this university town. This fellowship has now called Erik Okkels from southern Jutland to be its pastor. They extended the call in conjunction with the free congregation in Balsfjord, where Bishop Börre Knudsen lives.

Professor Oddmund Johansen, the prime mover in the new worship fellowship, is rejoicing over the celebration and now also welcoming the Mission Province’s Bishop Arne Olsson and Province Secretary Bengt Birgersson to take part in the ceremony. Bishop Börre Knudsen has invited Bishop Arne to assist him in the ordination.

Many bridges are being built through this ordination. One is the bridge between Danish and Norwegian Confessional Churches and another is the bridge between the Swedish and the Norwegian church struggle. In February 2005 Bishop Börre Knudsen assisted Bishop Walter Obare Omwanza when he consecrated Arne Olsson as the Mission Province’s first bishop. Erik Okkels is also a member of Mission Province’s Support Association.

Source: “Prästvigning i Tromsö”
Translation: Dr Chris Barnekov

Erik Okkels ordained by Bishop Börre Knudsen

Assisted by Mission Province Bishop Arne Olsson, Bishop Börre Knudsen of the Strandebarm Deanery ordained Danish theologian Erik Okkels on Sunday, September 16. The ceremony took place in Tromsö in northern Norway in the presence of a great host of God’s people from the area.

Two free congregations, “valgmenigheter (congregations of choice)”, one in Tromsö and one a few miles to the South in Balsfjord, had decided to call the pastoral candidate from Southern Jutland as their pastor. In addition to Bishop Arne Olsson, Bishop Knudsen was assisted by Pastors Hans-Olav Okkels (Erik’s father), Per Nielsen, Per Körner, Ragnar Andersen, Gunnar Ödegårdstuen and Mission Province Secretary Bengt Birgersson.

At the worship service the newly ordained pastor, whose ”father tongue” is Swedish and ”mother tongue” is Danish, preached in Norwegian on the day’s Gospel text, Matthew 6:24-34.

Erik Okkels has long worked to help establish and grow the Mission Province. Together with his parents and his brother Jakob, he has been a member of the [Mission Province’s] Support Association from the beginning and has now applied to be accepted as a member of the Mission Province’s Ministerial Collegium.

Through this ordination a number of connections were made and strengthened – between people of faith in Norway and Denmark and Sweden, and between Strandebarm Deanery and the Mission Province. The conversation during the reception, the luncheon following, and a continued gathering at the home of Professor Oddmund Johansen suggested that these ties will continue to deepen.

Source: “En historisk prästvigning”
Translation: Dr Chris Barnekov

Other articles on the Mission Province in Sweden may be found here.

I’m not sure how I missed her until she linked to one of my recent posts, but you should check out Kerry’s weblog, A Ten O’Clock Scholar.

An Anglican, a Southerner, a theological reasserter/conservative (at least, I think so from her posts): she’s definitely joining my list of preferred weblogs.

Kerry, if you read this, shoot me an email message: jmm(dot)btg(at)verizon(dot)net. I’d be interested in hearing from another Anglican weblogger in the Diocese of North Carolina, especially a fellow resident of the Triangle.

And Katherine, if you read this, accept my humble thanks for the good word you put in for me at Stand Firm earlier, about being one of those witnesses left in the Diocese of North Carolina.

Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples, is probably to be identified with Levi, a tax collector (“publican”) mentioned by Mark and Luke. In the Gospel according to Matthew, it is said that Matthew was seated in the customs-house when Jesus bade him, “Follow me.” When Jesus called him, he at once left everything, followed the Master, and later gave a dinner for him. Mark and Luke also note that Levi was a tax collector. In all three accounts, Jesus is severely criticized for eating at the same table with tax collectors and other disreputable persons.

Tax collectors were viewed as collaborators with the Roman state, extortioners who took money from their own people to further the cause of Rome and to line their own pockets. They were spurned as traitors and outcasts, and were liable to assassination by some Zealots. Pious Pharisees refused to marry into a family that had a tax collector as a member. Clearly, Matthew was hardly the type of man whom a devout Jew would have had among his closest associates. Yet Jesus noted that it was the tax collector rather than the proud Pharisee who prayed the acceptable prayer, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” There is a frequent favorable reference to publicans, or tax collectors, in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel according to Matthew.

The Gospel attributed to Matthew is actually anonymous. The unknown Christian teacher who prepared it during the latter part of the first century probably used as one of his sources a collection of Jesus’ sayings that the apostle Matthew, according to second-century writers, is said to have drawn up. In time a title containing Matthew’s name, and signifying apostolic authority, came to identify the whole.

Tradition holds that Matthew, having converted many persons to the Christian faith in Judea, travelled to the East. He has been venerated as a martyr, but the time and circumstances of his death are unknown.

Amended from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with additions from The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV)

Collect

We thank you, heavenly Father, for the witness of your apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of your Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the Feast of Saint Matthew are published on the Lectionary Page website.