St Stephen's House, Oxford

2011-06-03T09:12:00.003+01:00

Imaginative Apologetics
Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition

By Andrew Davision (Ed; former tutor in Doctrine at St. Stephen's House, Oxford.)

The book collects papers from three years of successful apologetics summer schools at St. Stephen's House, Oxford.

Imaginative Apologetics draws on much that is most vibrant in contemporary theology to develop Christian apologetics for the present day. The contributors are leaders in their fields. They
represent a confident approach to theology, grounded in a deep respect for the theological tradition of the Church. They display a perceptive interest in philosophy, and unlike many works of
apologetics, their interest is in the philosophy of the present day, not only that of previous centuries. Drawing on the theology of the imagination they show the centrality of the imagination to
apologetics; from the significance of virtue in Christian ethics they show that Christian ethics is part of the Good News; from developments in the theology of knowledge they show that apologetics must be communal and must learn to tell stories. Dealing with history, the arts and the nature of atheism, with the natural sciences and social theory, Imaginative Apologetics presents a theological account of apologetics for the twenty-first century.

Andrew Davison is Tutor in Doctrine at Westcott House, Cambridge.

***

‘This is a stunning book. In simple and vibrant prose, the authors explain our failing attempts to
communicate God through colourless, proof style arguments that are all but emptied of mystery and the
language of desire. They call, instead, for a healthy tension between clarity and estrangement, logic and
wonder. They invite us towards socially and culturally sensitive presentations of the Gospel, rooted in
Church tradition and embodied in our own lives. Imaginative Apologetics delivers a prophetic and uplifting
message for all Christians.’
Alan Ramsey, St Aldates, Oxford

‘Rowan Williams memorably said, as he took up office, that the Church needed to “recapture the
imagination of the nation”. Many theologians have responded to the challenge: we continue to see in the
Church of England a confident and intelligent engagement with contemporary culture and a firm critique of
the ways in which secular humanism and New Atheism diminish what it means to be a human person. This
book is a tremendous collection of essays that explore how the Christian faith is both reasonable and
imaginative: it should be read by all who wonder what culture loses when Christianity is eclipsed.’
Frances Ward, Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral

‘This attractive volume of essays encourages us to invite others into Christ’s way of seeing the world and to
step into the life of a community where his new way of living and loving can be found. It is an original and
inspiring contribution to the apologetic task of the Church.’
Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry

***

Easter 5 - Fr. Damian Feeney

2011-05-26T13:53:00.003+01:00

image from google

Homily given by Fr Damian Feeney, vice principal of St Stephen's House, on Easter V, 22nd May 2011. (Readings: Acts vii.55-60, 1 Peter ii.2-10, John xiv.1-14)

**

Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2.5)

Strictly Come Dancing isn’t what it was. For those who are of less than a certain age, it is based on a late night BBC programme which ran in the 1970’s called ‘Come Dancing’ which was a regional ballroom dancing competition. It ran from 1949 to 1998. In the realm of Latin Dancing, there was simply no-one to rival Home Counties South, who were invariably represented by the Penge Latin Formation Team, coached by the legendary Frank and Peggy Spencer; quite simply, they carried all before them, to the presumable chagrin of the other regions. So well drilled were they, so rehearsed to the inch, that they achieved astonishing success.

One of the most important things about the experience of residential training is that we are formed, as it were, in formation. In our case this doesn’t mean that we all act, or move, or speak, or even dress the same way – we aren’t being trained to be clones. It does mean that our formation has several dimensions, from the forming of personal and individual habits and virtues which prefigure the grace of ordination to the important understanding that our journeys to ordination and beyond do not take place in isolation. We cannot be solitary living stones, and our journeying is connected by a complex network of relationships which extend beyond our year group, beyond this House, and even beyond the boundaries of living and dying. Living in formation is part of what it means to belong to the church catholic, as our experiences of God in Christ are mediated to us through the church local and universal. Such a way of life implies that what affects one affects all: whilst your eyes are necessarily fixed on the day when you will join another community – that of the parishes to which you are called, and where another type of living in formation is on the cards – there is no denying that the social habits of our life here will stay with us, and form the way in which we undertake our patterns of living in other places.

One of you said to me the other day that he believed the House to be the kind of place which you grew to dislike while you were here, but demonstrated a huge depth of loyalty and love to thereafter. All of us know by now that as ordinands, no theological college is a place in which to tarry. Many of our anecdotes after ordination will doubtless consist in the things that happened while we were here, and – please be gentle with us – the staff who taught us. But to live, to pray and to learn in community is vital, for by so doing we are seeking the very heart and example of the Holy Trinity, a community of love and mutual concern that models a different way of being to a church which sees training in such a way as too expensive, and to the world around us which struggles to define and live out what it means to be community at all.

The challenge, then, is to live as those who, as the church, mediate Christ to one another. By living in formation here we undertake a responsibility not only for our own training and shaping, but for that of each other. Our actions, words and examples, for good or ill, shape the thinking and attitudes of individual members of this whole community. And how important that is, in a college where not everyone we meet has a ‘church’ background, or understands our ways of speaking and doing things.

If I may stretch the analogy, living stones depend on one another to stay in position. In a dry stone wall, the dislodging of one stone brings about a collapse of the stones around it, because each relies on the mass, inertia and shape of the others to keep the wall stable. Each of us is called to occupy a different place within the edifice of the church, and for different reasons, and we do so by responding as faithfully as we can to God’s call which, we pray, locates us where we are needed. And, if we are Living Stones, then we must let ourselves be shaped by God into the kind of structure he wants, rather than building large personal edifices of our own called ‘careers’.

There will inevitably be times when we are called to question this – whether we are in the right place, doing the right thing – and there will be times when we do not understand why it is we have been placed where we have until much later on (if at all). If we become angry or frustrated in our situations, and on reflection recognize that those feelings are but a reflection of the community in which we serve, then that should act as an incentive to us; not to justify a superficial desire to ‘bale out’ when the going gets tough, but rather to seek the grace of perseverance and endurance, in our prayer life, our abandonment to the will of God, and to tasks which being in that situation implies. Seek the help, seek the support, of your parishes, your families, your networks, the groups to which you belong. But remind yourself of the consequences of pulling the stone out of the wall, as far greater damage may ensue.

More than this, we need to learn to trust processes, and that God’s grace makes up whatever is lacking in the church through human frailty. All of you who have accepted title parishes and incumbents up and down the country will be aware of a certain sense of risk. It is necessarily a process in which you, the parish and the diocese are called into decision with a relative lack of knowledge. If nothing else, we have to believe that the process that has led us to this place, the point in our lives, has been a grace-filled one, and that through the processes of the church we are being located to a place where we are called to be. There is also a sense in which the very act of trusting, of risking, places us in a situation where we have to rely on God’s resources rather than our own. And his grace is sufficient. ‘Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’.

Monday Reflection - Simon Maddison

2011-05-20T13:48:00.003+01:00

image from google

This homily was given by Simon Maddison, a first year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 16th May 2011;

I have based my homily on the readings we have just had (Exodus 32:1-14 & Luke 2:41-end), so I’m going to start with a brief recap...

From Genesis we heard, how when Moses had left the Israelites to go up Mount Sinai, they lost their way somewhat! Having being left to their own devices they forced Aaron in to making a golden calf that they could then worship, and subsequently, but for the intervention of Moses on their behalf, would have been destroyed by God.

In Luke’s Gospel we heard how Mary and Joseph “lost” Jesus while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Presumably they would have been preoccupied with packing things away for their return trip, making sure they had got everything before they set off, and had just assumed that Jesus was with friends travelling with them.

I am sure we can all sympathise; I usually remember what it is I have forgotten just as I drive on to the main road, forcing me to go all the way to the next roundabout just to go back and get it...

Similarly they are a day into the journey when they realise that Jesus is not with them, and are forced to go back to look for him, eventually finding him teaching in the temple.

Now these two stories are quite different in their content, but I think there is a common theme about the nature of faith, and our relationship with God.

In both cases the people involved lose their focus, whether it’s because they feel abandoned, or because they just have too many other things going on. However their responses are quite different.

When Moses is away longer than expected, the Israelites just give up on him and more importantly the God that he represents, seeking to replace him with something of their own making, and very nearly bringing about their own destruction in the process.

So unlike Mary and Joseph, who on discovering Jesus missing, instantly begin searching for him, going back to Jerusalem and not giving up until they find him three days later.

The situations may be different but I am sure we have all had similar experiences to these, when God can seem quite distant, or the concerns of our day to day life drown out everything else; after all we have, books to read and essays to write...

But I think what these stories show us is that it is not God that moves or changes, it’s us and our circumstances, and no matter how busy or disconnected we may feel from time to time, we can’t replace God with something else, we need to go back looking for him, remembering he is only ever a prayer away.

And so let us pray...

Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing affright you;
All things are passing,
God never changes.
Patient endurance
Attains unto all things;
Who God possesses
In nothing is wanting:
Alone God suffices.

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).

Oxford Artsweek at St. Stephen's House

2011-05-17T17:12:00.006+01:00

Oxford Artsweek at St. Stephen's House

Paul Vanstone Sculptures
Nick Maitland Paintings

Private view by invitation
Sunday 22 May 2011
5.00pm to 7.00pm
(R.S.V.P. to assistantbursar@ssho.ox.ac.uk / 01865 613 504)

Public view
Monday 23 May 2011 - Monday 30 May 2011
**
Monday & Tuesday 2-5pm
Wednesdays 12-4pm
and
Thursday-Friday 2-5pm
**

St. Stephen's House
16 Marston Street
Oxford OX4 1JX

Monday Reflection - Joanna Moffett-Levy

2011-05-11T14:42:00.002+01:00

image from google.

This homily was given by Joanna Moffett-Levy , a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 9th May 2011;

There is a theme in today's readings and that theme is awe, awe at God's overwhelming greatness. First, in Psalm 29 'the voice of God is over the waters, the God of Glory thunders.' God's voice shatters the greatest of the trees and makes the wilderness shake.

In the reading from Exodus, God prepared Moses and the people of Israel for the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. The people needed to be pure to receive God's words and the mountain was so holy that no creature might touch it. Thunder and lightning, thick cloud and smoke were all around when the people met at the foot of the mountain. God's presence was like the loud blast of a trumpet, like an earthquake, like a violent storm. In the next chapter we will hear that they asked Moses to speak to God for them – they were afraid that if God spoke directly to them they would die.

And lastly, we heard Luke's account of the message given by the angel to Zechariah, husband of Elizabeth and father of John the Baptist, a message that came to him as he served God in the sanctuary. Imagine the shock when he looked up to see the angel standing by the altar of incense. Gabriel was there bringing the message from the place where he stands in the presence of God. Zechariah questioned the message, mildly, and as a result was rendered silent; his silence lasted until the circumcision of John in the Temple.

We are shown in these readings that God's power is overwhelming, like a terrifying natural phenomenon; we human beings cannot look at God, cannot survive in God's presence – we need a go-between like Moses or the angel Gabriel. Our response, our right response, is awe and fear.

The contrast for us this week is between this God who thunders and the God in Christ of the road to Emmaus. The Lord is present with the two disciples and walks along the road with them and is with them at the table as they eat. They may not recognise him at first, but they see him face to face.

Can we keep these things in balance? I think that we do need both but it is not easy. We may find the intimacy easier than the awe. We don't get a lot of practice at awe, I think, here in a city, away from whirlwinds and floods and earthquakes. But our fellow Christians in New Zealand certainly have. The theologian in residence at Christ Church Cathedral, New Zealand, Revd. Lynda Patterson, struggling with where to look for God in the destruction, wrote this recently.

"the earthquake was not an act of God. It was just the earth doing what it does. Under our feet there are two unimaginably vast slabs of rock floating in the tides of a ball of liquid iron. They grind on slowly, as they have done for millions of years, and where they rub together the earth is pushed up at the seams into mountains, or swallowed up in vast trenches. Sometimes the slabs move, stick and then move again as they did for us. Into all this impermanence, we are born and set up camp for the briefest of periods. But that's not the end of the story. Behind this globe of molten rock, there is a God who designed it all and put it in place. There is a God who knows just how breakable we are and how much it hurts, because that God has been here and walked about, laughed and wept and died and rose to life again here among us."

So this week I am going to keep trying to get a glimpse of the God who we know in the breaking of bread and who fills the dark spaces between the stars.

House Lecture - Dr Colin Podmore

2011-05-09T09:58:00.002+01:00

image from google

***

All are warmly invited to

The House Lecture

presented by

Dr Colin Podmore
Clerk to the Synod Central Secretariat

Communion and Consultation:
The Anglican Communion and its "Instruments of Unity"

Thursday 12th May 4.30pm
The Curatin Room
St. Stephen's House, Oxford
16 Marston Street, Oxford, OX4 1JX
01865 613500
enquiries@ssho.ox.ac.uk
[map]

***

St. George's Day - Fr. Damian Feeney

2011-05-04T16:24:00.004+01:00

St. George, image from google.

Homily given by Fr Damian Feeney, vice principal of St Stephen's House, on St. George's Day, 2 May 2011. (Readings: Rev xii.7-12 2 Tim ii: 3-13: John xv.18-21.)

As a small and rather pious boy, I recall a conversation with my mother which she has doubtless forgotten, (and will therefore deny!) but which set a train of thought going that continues to this day. In a quest for rather premature careers advice, I asked her, after the manner of Doris Day, what I should become. Rather splendidly, she advised me that I should become a saint. She painted an attractive picture of sainthood, and heaven, which has never quite left me; nor has her parting shot, which betrayed the all-too human struggle beneath her lofty sentiments. ‘Be a saint, but don’t be a martyr’ she said. Martyrs had a hard time of it, because they had to die to win the crown, and that was perhaps not calculated to be an appealing job description for a six-year old child. I think with the passing of the years, both of us would see the flaws in that statement. But it was good enough for a precocious boy. Of course, the call of the Christian life for us all is a call to holiness, to virtue, to self-renunciation, and to the rule of love. Saints don’t theorise about sanctity, but rather live it, expound upon it, proclaim it. Often the sacrifices saints are called to make are as a result of doing these things well – of shaping virtuous lives and souls in a less than perfect world. Those who have undergone martyrdom have in some sense experienced the same consequence of God-centred living that Jesus did – words, thoughts and actions considered too dangerous, too subversive, for the places and times in which they occurred.

There are three words which haunt the preacher who turns to hagiography for inspiration. They are the words ‘little is known’. This opening to a sentence, or paragraph, about a saint may make us groan; it is certainly the case for St. George, venerated as a martyr and swathed in popular legend. Importantly, George’s tradition and cult has been remarkable, both in the history of the church and in his position as Patron of this land. Indeed, it may well be that his lack of local association led to an easing of his passage towards being our Patron Saint. Not merely in this country, but throughout Western Europe and indeed in the writings of Islam, George is revered as an heroic figure who was faithful, courageous, and who endured to death.

A Martyr, of course, is a supreme witness to the truth of the faith, even to death. He or she endures death through fortitude, offering their very being into God’s hands to dispose as He will. It is the ultimate recognition that our life is ‘not I, but Christ in me’ and that all we are and have is given to us through the Grace and generosity of God. It is an act of profound love and trust, intimately related to our crucified saviour, as the need to witness to the truth of the faith supercedes and transcends our earthly being.

We live in an age when martyrdom is misunderstood. A 12 year old walks in to a regimental barracks in Mardan, Pakistan, and detonates the bomb which brings to an end not only his own life, but that of 31 others; all on the promise of glorious martyrdom. That isn’t martyrdom – it’s murderous suicide. However we may feel about it, there will be those who will see Osama Bin Laden’s death earlier today as a martyrdom. This casts a pall over the very notion of martyrdom in the world, for there can be nothing that is holy about willing and bringing about the murder of thousands of people. None of this can be of a piece with seeking and witnessing to the truth; it is rather a gross perversion of it.

Alongside all this – and given that patron saints give us cause to examine our country – we are forced to examine the ‘witness to truth’ as it is represented in our own day. In many ways, this is not an easy time to be ordained: and being ordained places us, ontologically and visibly, as those who will be the focus for questioning, scrutiny and even attack within a wider society which is being taught to mistrust the church. Bearing witness to the truth of Christ in such a context is a challenge requiring of us great patience, charity and virtue. There may even be times when such witness, combined with our own human frailty, may break us – but God’s grace is sufficient, and we heal, and grow, and orient ourselves once again to the pursuit of grace-filled, truthful living which is God’s desire for us, and such moments of crisis can act as a catalyst for a more grounded and loving response in pastoral ministry. I delighted in Pope Benedict’s description yesterday of the final days of his predecessor, Blessed John Paul the Second. He said,

Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a "rock", as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church .**

Whether called to Martyrdom or not, the call to witness to the truth of Jesus Christ is the flame which burns at the very centre of His call in our lives. To love our country – to be patriotic - does not merely mean being an unconditional supporter of every aspect of our national life. Rather, it means being prepared to express that love in labour for that peace, justice, and right ordering of society’s affairs which are expressions of the Kingdom of God. May the prayers of St. George assist all our labours of love with his fervent prayers, and may we in our turn seek to witness to the truth of Jesus Christ, wherever that truth may lead us.

** http://www.romereports.com/palio/Pope-Benedicts-homily-at-John-Paul-IIs-beatification-english-4033.html

DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

Book Launch

2011-05-03T21:21:00.005+01:00

***

On Christian Priesthood (Continuum) by Robin Ward

Divine Illumination (Wiley-Blackwell) by Lydia Schumacher

Wednesday 11th May 2011
from 5pm to 7pm at
St. Stephen's House

RSVP
enquiries@ssho.ox.ac.uk 01865 613 500

Monday Reflection - Taemin Oh

2011-03-16T13:32:00.002Z

The House Chapel, St .Stephen's House Oxford

This homily was given by Taemin Oh, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 14th March 2011;

--

‘Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.’

Last Wednesday, we all received the sign of cross - the symbol of humanity, our sins, our life, and our death. We, as God’s creatures, should be aware of the fact that the last thing we will encounter is death. Regardless of who you are or what you have, all human beings are subject to death and shall return to dust.

Yet, for us, dust does not just mean the end of our life. Rather, dust gives us hope; hope for resurrection, hope for our salvation, and most of all, hope for the world to come, through Jesus Christ. Therefore, Ash Wednesday was not just the day of reminding us of our sins, but the day of desiring the grace of God and reunion with Him.

As our life is always full of ‘comings and goings’ or ‘ups and downs’, my life also has many days to be remembered. As a final year student, part of such rich memories are about to fade away into history. In the next term, all leavers, including me, will be sent out to the world, to serve not to be served, to witness God’s love and to proclaim the Gospel. And soon, God willing, we will be swamped by the huge amount of parish work, and eventually, we will be forgotten from each other’s memories.

However, it may be that we will see each other again soon, and some of us may meet often. We may come back to the House for a Staggers’ reunion, or any other special occasion. However, I am not sure whether we, as a whole, can be in the one place again as we are in this chapel today.

Gerald Charles Perkins.
Edward Stuart Churchill Lennard.
Cyril George Woolley.
William George Herbert Gater.
…

Do you recall anything on hearing these names? Is any one of these names familiar to you?

These names are actually to be found on the walls of this chapel - just right in front of you – all 144 names are carved in the wall. Once, all these people spent some time together here, and once, all became dust.

Yet, I do believe all are now in the full communion with God, and also believe that it will be our true reunion when our names are carved in the wall, in this chapel, side-by-side.

‘Life is short; death is certain; and the world to come is everlasting’ says John Henry Newman.

We are still young (-ish) and still we have many things to do before we become dust. However, as Newman says in one of his Advent sermons, ‘Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was. O that, as he comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer heaven!’

Day passes after day, silently and we are approaching the end of Hilary term. Therefore, this Lenten period should be the time for us to pray for each other, and ask God’s pardon and mercy be upon ourselves and others, so that we all partake in the glory of heavenly reunion.

Let us pray…

May the God of all love,
who is the source of our affection
for each other formed here,
take our friendships into his keeping,
that they may continue and increase
throughout life and beyond it,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

O God, Who art everywhere present,
look down with thy mercy upon those who are absent from among us.
Give thy holy angels charge over them,
and grant that they may be kept safe in body, soul and spirit,
and presented faultless before the presence of thy glory with exceeding joy;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Monday Reflection - Mark Lyon

2011-03-12T22:57:00.003Z

image from the movie 'Jesus of Nazareth'

This homily was given by Mark Lyon, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 7th March 2011;

A church service is basically aerobics in slow motion. You have to get up, get down, come forward and turn around, all to background music with a kind of Mr Motivator figure out in front. You even get your own mini-aerobics mat hanging on the chair in front.

While these words are quite comical they nevertheless have an element of truth about them. Within the Catholic Church, the liturgy is designed so that there is air of constant movement and direction; different postures, whether we are on our knees, standing or sitting prepares us for the different parts of our worship. One of my favourite icons – Rublevs Trinity – shows us the importance of movement, while the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are seated somewhat stationary there nevertheless is a movement of activity – the activity of Creation and Redemption. What we do physically thus prepares us for what we must do spiritually. Mind, Body and Soul, while different are nevertheless one.

On Wednesday of this week we enter the very important penitential season of Lent. All of us I’m sure have either decided or thinking about what we are to give up, however, it is important to remember Lent is not a time to deny ourselves as a form of punishment. It is a time when we realign our lives back into the loving relationship with God that he has ordained us to have. The things we give up, therefore, should always have this focus. If we give up something the time or money we save should be put to good purpose. Whether that is time for extra devotion or money to a charity the essential part to this penitential season is to deepen the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father.

Lent is a time when the movement in the Liturgy, must affect and shape the movement of our life. Guy Browning talks of the physical movement in Church services being aerobics in slow motion – Lent is the time for our spiritual aerobics. A time when we exercise our relationship with God to strengthen ourselves so that whatever life throws at us – we have a sure foundation of the Hope, Love and Charity that has been given to us on the Cross.

On Wednesday we begin our journey to Golgotta – we carry our Crosses, in order that they can be transformed by Christ’s forgiving and redemptive love. It is the same love that not only redeems but brings us to the point of redemption. Jesus does not leave us to carry our own Crosses but he carry’s them alongside us. It is his work in, with and through us that enables us to say on our Good Friday his final words – In to your hands I commend my spirit.

The giving up or taking on something for Lent is a painful task but it is a task that we must undertake if we are to experience the joy of the resurrection. By ensuring that we engergise our spiritual lives in this way will enable us to witness to the world, of God’s redeeming and transforming love. In so doing we can just perhaps with true humility utter the finals words of S. Paul from our second reading tonight “And they glorified God because of me.”

Heavenly Father, Alone with none but thee,

I journey on our way;

What need I fear, when thou art near

O King of night and day.

My life I yield to thy decree

And bow to thy control.

Thou art our trust, O King of kings

We make this prayer through Our Lord Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen

Edward King - The Rt Revd Geoffrey Rowell

2011-03-12T20:13:00.003Z

Edward King (image from google)

This homily was given by The Right Reverend Geoffrey Rowell, the Bishop in Europe on the Feast of Edward King on 8^th March 2011.

Tomorrow morning, as is the way of the Bishop in Europe, I leave for Ljbljana in Slovenia to celebrate Ash Wednesday with our congregation there. I shall then be visiting the Roman Catholic Archbishop and the Lutheran Bishop and will be taking as gifts Professor Grace Davie’s book on religion in Europe amazingly translated into Slovenian! Then it is on to Trieste for another Lenten service and Venice and a meeting with Cardinal Scola, and the First Sunday in Lent with the congregation of St George’s in the morning, and with the Nigerian Congregation of St Anthony Abbott in Padua in the afternoon, before Milan overnight, and then another Lenten service and parish visit in Corfu before getting back here a week later. Knowing that Venice celebrates Cardinal with masks and processions and a whole retinue of pre-Lent customs I had hoped I could have been there today rather than on the first weekend in Lent – but then I should not have been here to celebrate this annual commemoration of Edward King.

It is rare indeed that Edward King’s day coincides, as it does this year, with Shrove Tuesday. Only when Easter is as late as it is – the very latest it can be – is there a chance of these two days coming together; but this year they do.

In the says and places when Lent was more fully observed than it is today, Shrove Tuesday was the time for feasting, for using up the foods which not be permitted during Lenten abstinence. Eggs and fat and dairy produce were made up into rich dishes such as pancakes. The French call today Mardi Gras – ‘fat Tuesday’ – for this very reason. One should note that in the Orthodox world it is possible to have a very good banquet of fasting food, as I once did in the Monastery of Miloseva in Serbia where the table groaned under no less than 22 different dishes of fasting food! But our name for today is Shrove Tuesday, which comes from an old English word schriven or shrive, which in turn may come from the Latin scribere ‘to write’, but which means to make confession. As an old Anglo-Saxon church order puts it: ‘in the week immediately before Lent, everyone should go to his confession and confess his deeds, and his confessor shall so shrive him.’

One of the treasures of Catholic spiritual life and discipline recovered by the Oxford Movement was personal confession of one’s sins to a priest and personal absolution. It was there in the Book of Common Prayer in the order for the Visitation of the Sick, and is mentioned in one of the exhortations before Communion. It never entirely died out in the Church of England, but its use was rare and in extremis, and practice could certainly vary, as an account of a deathbed confession in a celebrated series of Death-bad Scenes from the early nineteenth century, portrays the dying man noiselessly confessing his sins to God, and the absolution being given when it seemed he had ceased.

The revival of auricular confession was a neuralgic point for Protestant controversialists, for whom it smacked of the worst features of priestcraft and Popery, and in particular there was objection to the violation of family life by the priest hearing the confessions of wives. Protestant polemicists caricatured those who resorted to the confessional, as in the verses published in a Paper-lantern for Puseyites in the 1840s:

For a first endeavour

By a pre-concerted plan,

Some half-a-dozen ladies,

And an invalid young man,

And that fussy, vulgar ‘server’,

In his hideous monkish dress,

Assembled in the vestry,

‘Tis stated, to “confess!”

Salacious anti-catholic tales portrayed the horrors of the confessional, often given an extra twist by being linked with capers in the convent. Dr Pusey translated and published the Mannual for Confessors by the Abbe Gaume, and there were even parliamentary denunciations by Lord Shaftesbury after Convocation had been petitioned in 1873 to provide training for confessors – ‘this pollution of the red one of Babylon’, of by Lord Redesdale following that early SSC publication, The Priest in Absolution. Part of the cultural backdrop to contemporary reactions to the scandals of sexual abuse in the church – absolutely and rightly condemned – is nonetheless this long anti-Catholic history, with the sense that confession is somehow un-English and un-Manly – something that that very English parish priest, John Keble, sought after as a confessor by Dr Pusey, and no less by his Hursley villagers, was always concerned to rebut. I was interested to find recently in an anonymous book of 1847 – From Oxford to Rome and how it fared with some who lately made the journey – that one of the points that is made is that ‘Confession as now made in the English Church is the more perfect, the more aiding to the penitent.’ The author’s experience was that in the Roman Church confession was ‘as like a matter of worldly barter as can well be conceived: a certain amount of affliction for a certain amount of sin, arranged as immuntably as the value of the exchange in currencies’. What was needed was more of St John and less of the obtrusive questions and legalism the author had found.

Part of Edward King’s ministry – and close to the heart of it – was his pastoral gift as a confessor. It has not originally been part of his own spiritual life, but when as Vice-Principal and then Principal of Cuddesdon he found himself increasingly used as a spiritual counsellor and director, he came to the point where he knew that he had to make his own confession, which he did in April 1862 to Dr Pusey. He later told a friend how after he had made his confession and been given Psalm 103 as his penance, Pusey had knelt beside him, pouring out his heart in prayer for him. Thereafter he made his confession three or four times a year.

King was always alert to the misuse of the confessional – the dangers of formalism, and rote. I suspect he would have been a little cautious about the lists of sins published in such books as Fr Stanton’s Catholic Prayers for Church of England People – a book given to me when I was confirmed at 13. (I can remember puzzling over what were ‘dangerous dances’ and what was the sin of ‘making innuendoes’ – were they some kind of idol?) King brought to the confessional a unique sensitivity and sympathy, aware of the uniqueness of each one to whom he ministered, but it was an intelligent sympathy which in Charles Wesley’s words ‘breaks the power of cancelled sin’ and ‘sets the prisoner free’. It was close to the Orthodox understanding of confession which links it with healing, the medicine of the soul, rather than with rules broken and regulations transgressed. He believed it to be important, telling his clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln in 1898 that they had a duty to explain to their people ‘what the teaching of the Church of England with regard to Private Confession really is, making clear to them both the reality of the blessing and what she is commissioned to give, and the perfect liberty of her children.’

During the time I was working here in Oxford I can remember a Catholic psychiatrist at the Warneford Hospital saying to me that if only the Church would do what only the Church can do, absolve the sinful in the name of God my consulting room would be far less crowded, and my diary less pressured. Jesus gave to his Church the power, grace and life of the Holy Spirit, to set men and women free from the destructive and damaging captivity to what Paul call ‘the law of sin and death.’ In the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer the form of Ordination of a priest is a prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit by the laying hands with the authority of the Lord himself who breathed that same Spirit on his disciples on the evening of the first Easter Day giving them authority to bind and loose, to forgive sins in his name. The ministry of priesthood is therefore an Easter ministry, a continual setting free from destructive captivities and addictions, a realising into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Every Lent is a springtime, a recalling of us to that discipleship of love which is the way of the Cross and no less the living out of Easter life. In confessing our sins we come before God as we are – not for the ‘set mask of rectitude’ or the facebook we present to the world – yet we come before God always for what by his grace we may become, and God looking upon us loves us, and draws us into the feast of his love. Edward King knew that deeply, and taught it by his life and ministry, and I can do no better than to leave you with his own words.

“But there is yet a third gift which I would desire that you should seek to perfect and make great, and that is the kindness of heart, the gift of love. This is the mark which the Saviour Himself chose by which His disciples should be known. ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.; Friendliness, sincerity in friendship, true-heartedness, a tenderness of felling for one another in your joys and sorrows; to weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Let this be your aim. Be ready to forgive if anyone should do you wrong, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Put away all unkind words and uncharitable judgement one of another….try to ‘bear one another’s burdens.’” (The Love and Wisdom of God, pp.282-3)

“By God’s great goodness we Christians can look up higher than our own nature, for we have seen His nature descend, not to destroy, but to take up humanity into the Godhead….To our love now new spheres are open, and all men are found to be not too much for our capacity when incorporated in the Body of Christ. Φιλια will have κοινωνια, and we find the true end of love in communion with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and with mankind in Him in whom God and man are one.” (The Love and Wisdom of God, p.138)

Sunday before Lent - The Rt Revd Martyn Jarrett

2011-03-09T10:41:00.002Z

This homily was given by the Rt Revd Martyn Jarrett, the Bishop of Beverly, on 6 March 2011 (Sunday before Lent).

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I am sure it is my duty, as long as I am in this tent, to keep stirring you up with reminders. 2 Peter 1 v13

John Rouse Bloxham is hardly a name that immediately comes to mind when most Anglicans recall the great days of the Catholic revival in the nineteenth century. That is, perhaps, a pity for Bloxham was one of Blessed John Henry Newman’s closest friends. Bloxham who had gradually been drawn into Newman’s ever increasing circle of admirers and friends, was to serve for a while as one of Newman’s curates, with special responsibility for Littlemore. Bloxham, though, was never to follow his great friend into the Church of Rome. Newman may once have preached a famous sermon in which he referred to the parting of friends. That sermon, however, was not about the breaking of friendships. Both Newman and Bloxham were to live to a great age and, through all that time, to maintain in their close friendship. We are fortunate that their frequent and warm letters to each other are still available to be read. Bloxham was a frequent visitor to the Birmingham Oratory. In later years, when Bloxham was the incumbent of Beeding Priory in Sussex, a portrait of Newman hung in what was eventually to become known as ‘The Cardinal’s Room’. In 1879, after travelling to Rome to receive his cardinal’s hat, Newman returned to England, landing at Folkestone. Even then, when the great and the good, not least among the Roman Catholic community must have been eager to entertain Newman, within two days he found time to make the journey to the rectory at Beeding and to enjoy lunch with his old friend. As far as we can tell from their correspondence, neither ever rebuked the other for the stance he had taken or tried to argue him out of it. Theirs was a profound Christian friendship that went far deeper than all the controversies of the time. Newman and Bloxham never lost their vision of being reconciled in Christ even as they lived through the painful controversies of the nineteenth century.

Not everyone is as successful as were Newman and Bloxham in remaining loyal to that vision of true reconciliation in Christ. One commonly experienced feature of the Christian life is that of folk falling by the wayside as soon as the practice of the Christian life becomes tough and demanding. God who brought much reassuring consolation in the early days of faith now seems to be the God who uncaringly stands aside, even in the experience of heart-rending bereavement or of ghastly, painful illness. All too many would be disciples seek a faith built on warm and reassuring religious sentiment. Not so for Saint Matthew’s Gospel, read to us this morning. The certainty of the passion has already been spelt out in no uncertain terms to Jesus’ would-be followers. The Lord famously tells Simon Peter, when he suggests that the passion and cross could never be allowed to happen to Jesus, Get behind me Satan. S Matthew’s Gospel is as much concerned with keeping the would-be disciples’ eyes on the glory that is to come as it is with trying to prepare them for the puzzlement, stress and utter pain that are to be inevitable ingredients of the future. In similar vein, when the author of the Second Letter of Peter reminds his readers of what he claims to have seen on the Mount of Transfiguration, he says that his purpose is to encourage them not to fall away, rather
to keep stirring you up with reminders.

The story of the Transfiguration is set out for us today as you and I stand on the verge of entering into our Lenten discipline. There are all kinds of issues deep within us, both to be addressed and to be remedied. There is something about the dentist’s waiting room in these days just prior to Lent. We are beginning to reflect on what we are once again about to let ourselves in for. And, there, in contrast to our feelings, stands the figure of the Transfigured Jesus. Jesus may be about to journey up to Holy Week and the passion in Jerusalem but, already, He is encouraging us with a vision of the grand finale. The Transfiguration is a vision of Jesus as the conquering and unifying Lord. He is the fulfilment of Moses’ law and Elijah’s prophesy. But, it is something more than that. Those writers of Our New Testament knew that they, too, were in Christ, made part of His body through baptism. Everything that is Christ’s could and should be theirs. You and I are joined with Christ across time, some two thousand years later. And, the promise is the same; you and I are open to transformation; indeed, the whole Church of God is open to transformation.

At the heart of the meaning of the Mass we celebrate this morning, as at every Mass, is our re-presenting of the mystery of Calvary. As Saint Paul puts it, we are showing the Lord’s death until He comes again. The Father sees His Son hanging on the cross, still totally obedient to His Father’s will. No matter what is done to Jesus, He never gives up on loving. We human beings throw at Him all that we can and still Jesus loves us. Not even death is able defeat the power of divine love. So it is that every Sunday, the Day of Resurrection, you and I gather to show the Lord’s death until he comes again, knowing that, even in that awesome death, there is the promise of resurrection. Divine love will always have the last word. Every celebration of the Mass is potentially our encounter with the Mount of Transfiguration. The Mass demonstrates the transfiguring work of Christ and invites us, in our term, to be transfigured both by Him and with Him.

There will only ever be one test as to how far you and I are transfigured. You and I will be judged by that degree to which we reflect the love shown on Calvary. Any Lenten piety that fails in producing that fruit is worthless. Left to ourselves, of course, showing such love of others, especially when we have perceived them to have hurt us beyond measure, is impossible. You and I know, though, that we are capable of being transformed by Christ, that is, if we want to be open to His power to change our lives around. Our whole understanding of what it means to be members of His Catholic Church rests on an understanding that we are all bound into Christ’s Body by Baptism. And, because we are bound into Jesus, His life can ceaselessly enter ours and ours His, not least as we share regularly and faithfully in those life changing experiences of confession making and of receiving Holy Communion.

It can hardly be the best kept secret that you and I are, once again, faced with a church in which many are, once again, being faced with hard decisions to make as to where they believe God is calling them to serve Him in the future. Such hard decisions cannot to be ducked just because they are hard decisions. For Newman, as we know, it meant the parting of friends, from some for a while, from others for what was left of their time, this side of eternity. For Blessed John Henry and his friend, John Bloxham, it was even to mean that they would never again together receive Holy Communion. That is never a decision to be lightly made or from motives of frustration, or of anger, or of spite. Newman and Bloxham understood this and so their parting of friends was never allowed to become the ending of an increasingly closer development of their friendship.

God, in His time, calls each of us to make many choices. Yes, some among us may, near continually as it were, have to decide just where we align ourselves in the great issues confronting our Church. For many of us that will probably be a costly decision, one ultimately relating to where we think there is to be had the most authentic experience of Christian truth. For others of us, it might well be the call to decide where God’s justice might better be discerned, be it to the right of politics, to the left, or to somewhere in the middle. God, though, calls us today, as He will continue to do every day, to make another kind of choice, one on quite a different scale of values. Will we, or will we not, whatever might be the cost, embrace the opportunity to be transfigured, as Jesus offers us in this morning’s Gospel? Can we, or can we not, so raise ourselves by God’s grace to demonstrate the forbearing love, that for all their differences, Newman and Bloxham managed to achieve? Can our Lenten exercises so conform us more to Christ that we might arrive at Eastertide as people who more radiate his love, even within the unresolved conflicts of life with which you and I have to deal daily? I have more than a suspicion that, come the day of judgement, our God will be more interested in how we have answered that challenge then how you and I, for all their importance, answered any of the others.

On Christian Priesthood - Canon Robin Ward

2011-03-02T09:08:00.001Z

On Christian Priesthood Robin Ward, published by Continuum on 10th March 2011.

What is Christian priesthood? Contemporary pastoral theology is absorbed by the theory and practice of Christian ministry, but rarely sees it in terms of the exercise of ministerial priesthood. Contemporary liturgical practice emphasises participation and growth in discipleship, but not the offering of sacrifice or the anticipation of heaven. Contemporary spirituality encourages the pursuit of human flourishing, but not the need for sacramental reconciliation. This book seeks to restore the centrality of priesthood to the understanding of Christian ministry by setting it within the context of fundamental moral theology. Beginning with the importance of religion as a Christian virtue, it sets out the way in which the moral life is given a cultic setting by our participation in the sacraments. Priesthood and sacrifice are taken out of the setting of Reformation controversies and re-pristinated as key theological tools for understanding what ordination is for and how priesthood is a foundational characteristic of the Church. This has important and far-ranging consequences for ministerial formation, liturgical reform and ecumenical dialogue.

Canon Robin Ward is Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford, where priests have been trained for the Anglican Communion since 1876.

Monday Reflection - James Leigh

2011-03-01T08:32:00.001Z

This homily was given by James Leigh, a first year ordinand, at OPTET Evening Prayer on Monday 28th February 2011;

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Tonight’s second reading from the second letter of Paul to Timothy is a fitting one as we gather here tonight, from across the denominations and traditions, to worship and pray together. As Christians it is often perceived that we are divided by our diversity – Catholic and Protestant, high and low, influenced by differing spiritualities and theologies. But as this gathering represents, and as S. Paul reminds us in this reading, we are united by a ‘sound doctrine’ – that is a fundamental belief in the God who has revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. The God who became incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was made man and who, for our sake, was crucified, died, was raised and will return in glory to be our judge so that we might be raised to new life in him. Our aesthetic differences may appear divisive, our theologies may cause conflict, but our proclamation is, and must be, of this same fundamental truth.

As Christians it is our vocation, whether seeking ordination or not, to follow S. Paul’s dictum to Timothy: “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). We are all called to be bold witnesses to the truth of Christ crucified, we, the body of Christ – the Church, are the proclaimers of a timeless message, a message of truth which Our Lord has commanded us to share with the whole world. We, like the first disciples, are sent out and commissioned for the task of proclamation. It is the Church who is the guardian of that sound doctrine which Paul talks about in verse 3 of our reading, and, it is we, the Disciples of Christ who are called to proclaim that sound doctrine which the Church embodies in her teachings and witness. At times we will fail, false teachings will prevail but the endurance of the Church is a testimony to the reality of the incarnate truth of Jesus Christ.

As S. Paul teaches us in his letter to the Galatians, by virtue of our baptism we are all one in Christ and it is as one body, the body of Christ – the Church, that we proclaim his message to the world. Gathered here tonight we are one in Christ and one in his truth. It is our duty to ensure that we place God’s kingdom before our own needs and desires and that we work together, setting aside our surface differences, so that God may be glorified and all may come to know the salvation offered by Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross. As Christ prayed for the unity of his Church so may our prayer be joined with his and all the Saints, that Christians everywhere may be united in love for him who is the way, the truth and the life.

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed that your church should be one in you as you and he are one and upon the disciple Peter he built the Church, a beacon of light and hope in a world which cries out for truth. May our vocation always be to your truth, the proclamation of your love and a bold witness to your Gospel, and may all Christian people be united by unwavering belief and a deep love for you. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Monday Reflection - Avril Ravenscroft

2011-02-25T14:18:00.002Z

image from google

This homily was given by Avril Ravenscroft, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 21st February 2011;

An ancient man, whose life has been a journey of obedience to God, sends his servant on the last crucial journey, to secure the proper line of his son, Isaac, the heirs that God has promised. He puts no burden of fulfilment upon the servant, “if she will not come, you are released”. But it’s deadly serious, the oath is sealed by the touching of his genitals, where in circumcision Abraham confirmed his acceptance of God’s covenant. And he is symbolically handing over to his son his own sexual potency, via the promise of the servant.

So I wonder just how eager the servant is to shoulder this huge responsibility. Abraham’s trust in God is firm, but the servant seems uneasy, constructing tests for Rebekah that suggest at the least his anxiety to get things right. Yet his is also a journey that will involve trust, for he very clearly holds this mission before God at all times in prayer.

As the story unfolds we see that all indeed will be well, and another difficult journey begins as Rebekah takes her decisive step into an unknown destiny. We’re now nearing the end of Hilary. All the parishes that will receive us as deacons are decided, and it’s feeling close. I’d like to think of it as though the bottles of champagne are about to break over our bows, but I fear it feels more akin to the moment the ship hits the water, wavering and heaving into its new element.

I’m very aware that I’m returning to the church I left, and that though it will be different, and undoubtedly challenging, I do go back to Keith in a parish that I know. Yet for everyone the journey holds some kind of unexpectedness, probably both joyful and apprehensive. We’ll go into places that think the only good news they need is an upturn in the economy, to places where worship and faith is unexamined and sealed into Sundays, to places where community is limited to the people who are probably not going to beat you up, or to places where church is considered simply irrelevant.

We’ll go with a vision that may not be welcomed, to people who may not be anxious to hear.

In its way, the task ahead may feel as daunting as the one Abraham’s servant faced. I have a friend, vicar of a hugely complex parish who says that every morning she wakes up and thinks “I can’t do this”, and every day whatever ‘this’ entails gets done – entirely, she says, through the grace of God.

Whether we are approaching our last weeks here, or nearer the start of our formation, each of us will have gained richly from our time at this House, but of most crucial importance is that when we leave we’ll take with us the experience that we don’t attempt this ministry alone. All the exploration and study, learning and growth, has been rooted in daily, sometimes demanding, worship, each day framed in conversation with God. We are woven through with prayer.

So it is through God’s strength that we dare to start out on these journeys, and on his guidance that we shall rely; on the one who revealed in his incarnation in Christ what is possible, and what is the only life worth striving for.

Let us pray:

Father, we thank you for the challenge
of calling us to your service.
Grant us sensitivity to discern your will for us,
and wisdom to fulfill it;
compassion to walk alongside those in our care,
and patience to stick by them;
courage to meet the challenges that lie ahead,
humility and endurance in the face of opposition;
Grant that we may we grow in faith, hope and love.
May we always trust in your strength,
and never in our own adequacy.
We ask these things in the name of your Son,
our Saviour, Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.

House Lecture - 2011 Jellicoe Seminar

2011-02-22T10:58:00.003Z

MGR John Armitage[image from google]

All are warmly invited to the

2011 JELLICOE SEMINAR

presented by

MGR JOHN ARMITAGE
Vicar-General, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brentwood
Parish Priest, St. Anne's Church, Custom House London
Citizens Leader

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
AND THE LIVING WAGE CAMPAIGN

Wed. 23rd Feb. (6th Week) 15.30~17.00
St. Stephen's House, Oxford
16 Marston Street, Oxford, OX4 1JX
[map]

Monday Reflection - Roger Butcher

2011-02-08T08:38:00.004Z

image from google

This homily was given by Roger Butcher, a first year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 7th February 2011.

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Over the next few weeks, the first year Ordinands will be looking at the Diaconate. Today’s text gives us a view of what it is to be a deacon, interpolate that with our earlier lectionary reading and it seems there is a simple analogy to be made; that all we need to be is ‘nice chaps’. But is it really that simple?

The Philippians struggled with the problem we also face every day; how to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in a hostile environment in which a large majority of our neighbours do not share out convictions. Paul’s advice was to follow his example as he followed Christ, in living in this world with very different values to guide them. “In the world, but not of it.”

In tonight’s epistle, Paul divinely inspired gives honour to Timothy the co-author expressing his own humility. Paul does not pronounce himself as an Apostle, finding authority within his title, but he refers to himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. The Greek word ‘doulos’ we heard tonight as servants of Christ, a more accurate rendering is slaves of Christ. Not only do they love our Lord whole-heartedly but also they become a slave, a much deeper metaphor than just being ‘nice chaps’. The form of a servant is just a pleasantry for a religious way of talking about it. So, what is to be said about the ‘shape of the slave’?

God initiates a human life on earth, which more and more is entirely given over into the hands of others. This is what slaves experience; their lives are given into the hands of others. It is a shocking fact and difficult language when you think of what slaves really are. The form of a servant will make us think of serving supper on Thursday, assisting in Church duties, or helping an old lady across the road, that sort of thing. The image of a slave evokes something much deeper, dare I say even threatening. The slave is a person who belongs to somebody else; they are in their hands. Paul saw Jesus for who he was, everything became about Christ and Christ became everything to Paul. There was no higher purpose for his life than being a slave of Jesus. God’s love is such that he puts himself in somebody else’s hands, there is this motif of setting apart. When Jesus captured Paul’s heart, Paul was changed he was set apart. Is it any wonder when we find ourselves in difficult situations, out of our comfort zone, that we find such abandonment from the environment we find ourselves in? This environment of setting apart is the place where we need to remind ourselves that we are slaves in the service of our Lord in body, mind and spirit. We share this with the Apostles and the Saints.

The very word ‘slave’ is a frightening one, but we must take comfort in the fact the form of God becomes a slave in his final embodiment. Becoming this slave to our Lord is to be close to God so that we may be pure of heart. That our humility is not forced, that we are not just simply ‘nice people’; or worse still, those who look over their shoulder to see if their good deed has been noticed. However, we seek this joy of pureness of heart, filled with the fruit of holiness that comes only through being a slave to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray;

Almighty Father, who gave your only begotten Son to take upon himself the form of a servant and to be obedient even to death on a cross. Give us the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, that sharing his humility, we may come to be with him in his glory; who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

Epiphany 5 - Fr. Peter Anthony

2011-02-07T09:49:00.004Z

image from google

Homily given by Fr Peter Anthony, the Junior Dean of the House on Epiphany 5, 6th February 2011. (Readings: Isa 58.1-9; 1 Cor 2.1-12; Mt 5.13-20)

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I thought the wikileaks scandal was over, but no this week there has been a further release of American diplomatic telegrams, which I have to confess I have found compulsive reading. There was, for example, one from the American ambassador in Bangkok about the habits of the Crown Prince of Thailand. Principal amongst them is an extraordinary fondness for his pet poodle called Foo Foo. So great is the Prince’s affection for Foo Foo that he has decreed the dog be officially accorded the rank of Air Chief Marshal. And indeed the ambassador reported seeing Foo Foo, dressed in a full poodle sized uniform of an Air Chief Marshal. This all took place at a party which the Prince threw for the dog’s birthday. Foo Foo was allowed to jump on to the dining table and to lap from the water glass of several of the guests, who were unable to do anything about it, as there was nobody present with sufficient military rank to be able to order the dog off the table.

What a crazy parallel universe some people live in. Completely disconnected from reality...entirely out of touch with ordinary people. And yet: isn’t that precisely the same accusation that many make against the Church? The Church is plugged into a way of seeing the world that nobody believes in any longer. The Church is out of touch with most people’s aspirations. And sometimes, when one sees its disputes and schisms reported on the TV, it does seem the Church is not all that far being like Foo Foo the poodle. In the Church, we give each other grandiose titles, do we not, that go with splendid outfits, just like Foo Foo. We, too, have curious ritualized meals together. We too are a hierarchy where bishops, just like Foo Foo the poodle, sometimes can’t be contradicted.

But if that ever were the case, the words Jesus addresses to us in today’s gospel go right to the heart of what we need to do about that. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.” What does Jesus mean by describing us as salt? Whatever analogy he is drawing – he is surely saying that the presence of his disciples in the world, like salt, is crucial. The world cannot survive without salt. Salt is what gives taste and savour. It’s what gives food its bite, its reality. We need salt in our bodies for a whole range of chemical processes. Life without salt is impossible.

And so should Jesus’ disciples be to the world. They will be a sign of a crucial essence without which the world would not be the world – the love of God. The Church will be the sacrament of salvation making Christ present, and drawing others to him.

But Jesus makes it plain that it will be possible for us to prevent his presence being seen in the Church. Through our failings, our neglect, or lack of zeal, we can make the Church seem as useless or as ridiculous as Foo Foo the poodle. And the heart of what Jesus tells us in today’s gospel is that when that happens, we can so compromise the Church’s mission in the sight of the world that we become as worthless as salt which has lost its saltiness: “No longer good for anything...thrown out...trampled under foot.”

What can we do about that? I think the Lord is calling us to remember one very simple thing this morning. It is this: for the Christian community genuinely to be the Church we must somehow make a difference. The Christian vocation is not a heroic Palagian struggle to be perfect or respectable; it’s about others seeing Christ alive in us. Wherever we are, whatever the Christian community is that we’re a part of, those around us must see that Christ present in us makes a difference to the world. Be that through running a soup kitchen and thrift shop for the homeless...or hearing the confessions of grand ladies in pearls and fur. It doesn’t matter what it is. To be authentically the Church, we have somehow to make God’s love present in the context where he has placed us. Christian communities that go wrong, shrink, or become dysfunctional, have nine times out of ten, lost sight of that calling: they become self-serving, introspective and ultimately die – but usually not before they have given Christian faith a bad name.

Why should the Church make a difference in the world? Simply because God wants to make a difference in the world. That’s why he sent his Son to die and rise for us. And until he comes again, we are the ones who are privileged enough, through his Spirit, to be his Body in the world; to be nothing less than the face of Jesus to those around us.

Monday Reflection - Peter Garvie

2011-02-01T21:18:00.002Z

St. John Bosco (image from google)

This homily was given by Peter Garvie, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 31st January 2011.

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The Church and sanity have often been confused in the past, and there are few instances where this is more true than in the figure of Saintt John Bosco…

It was said by many, and probably thought by more, that John Bosco must have been insane, and an attempt was made at one stage to even put him into an asylum.

But what on earth could provoke such a reaction, to a man who’s legacy is still educating thousands of disadvantaged children and who is responsible for founding the third largest religious order in the Catholic Church?

It was when visiting prisons as a seminarian that John Bosco found it difficult to take lightly his calling to live out his vocation in dedication to abandoned young people. He was moved to find a way of providing spiritual and educational nourishment for these people through the threefold method of education: reason, religion, and loving kindness. This method combined with his charismatic charm and deep devotion inevitably produced remarkably positive results. He gained the attention of many and soon had the political movers at the time sitting uneasily as he was seen to be not just a nuisance but also politically dangerous. Time and time again obstacles were deliberately put in his way to stop his work and under overwhelming adversity he persevered with all the odds stacked against him.

But look a little deeper and we can begin to see that he brought to bare the gospel in a way which is just as relevant today as it always has been.

We ought to be perplexed when the world is not challenged by the gospel. Look around us and it is quite easy to see that if the church were to take its vocation as seriously as John Bosco did his, many would suspect that we too are insane and what an astonishing compliment that might be.

Like John did, we too are discerning how to live out our vocation. We find ourselves at this time in the reassuring confines of a seminary, located in a former monastery no less, with the privilege of praying together with other Christians every single day. But lets not be under any allusions of the subtle suspicions that are awaiting us.

By agreeing to serve the church in such a public way we set ourselves up to have stones thrown at us, and that is foolish. John Bosco could quite easily be described as the clown for Christ (he was even known to juggle and dance around to engage the young people with his teachings).

Today we ask for the intercession of John Bosco, and all the saints, that we too may find what living out our vocation might look like, as we discern what God might be telling us in each of our various placements wherever they might be. What is it that might characterise the way in which we are to work with our fellow members of Christ's body, in searching out the poor and weak, the sick and lonely and those who are oppressed and powerless, to bring them to the foot of the cross and to reveal the process of the resurrection life, the love of God made visible.

And above all, we ask for the sort of perseverance that characterised John Bosco, and in doing so we can turn to our Lord for our guidance, whom this evening we have had recounted the events that led to his being delivered to be crucified. This, the greatest of all obstacles, death itself, which he overcame. May we share in that vocation, may we share in him.

Let us pray;

We praise you, Lord
for calling Saint John Bosco
to be a loving father and prudent guide of the young.
Give us his fervent zeal for souls
and enable us to live for you alone.
We make our prayer through our Lord.
Amen.

Epiphany 4 - Ian Boxall

2011-01-31T12:16:00.003Z

The Senior Tutor, Ian Boxall, preached at the Mass on 30th January 2011, Epiphany 4.

--

It is an awful lot of wine. Two or three measures per water jar, is what St John tells us about the wine produced by the Lord at the wedding at Cana. Which doesn’t sound a great deal, until one calculates that one measure was approximately 40 litres, or 9 gallons; meaning that each water jar could contain 18 to 27 gallons, or 80 to 120 litres; leaving us with a supply of wine of between 108 and 162 gallons, or between 480 and 720 litres, or up to one thousand and twenty-eight bottles of wine. That would go some way towards clearing the shelves in Tesco’s. So the sign of Cana seems to be pointing beyond the unbelievable amount of wine to the sheer liberality of God’s gift, a sign of what was promised at the end of John’s Prologue: ‘From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace’ (Jn 1:16). This sheer abundance of grace is accentuated by the fact that the servants of the feast, at Jesus’ behest, fill the water jars right up to the brim, in danger of flowing over and being wasted. When one considers how precious water is in such a dry climate, this becomes a foolishly extravagant action.

But it is not only the lavish amount which John emphasizes. It is also the quality of the wine. Now this is not perhaps something that modern pilgrims to the Holy Land appreciate. If you visit the traditional site of Cana of Galilee, then after visiting one of the two ‘wedding churches’, your tour guide will invariably take you to one of Cana’s souvenir shops, in order for you to stock up on bottles of ‘genuine Cana wine’. Yes, it’s still freely available. But the thick, sickly sweet liquid on sale has more of the consistency of Sanatogen, or Buckfast tonic wine, than the Château Lafite, or Petit Chablis, of the Cana miracle. The wine of Cana is truly excellent wine, the very best which has been kept until last. So perhaps the heart of the sign is the quality, the sheer goodness of the gift Christ offers. The disciples not only see the water flowing over the brim of these vast water jars. They taste the excellence of the resulting wine, see Christ’s glory revealed, and believe in him.

Except that John never tells us either that the disciples saw the servants filling the water jars, or that they knew what had happened to the water. The servants who had drawn the water knew. Perhaps (although not even this is stated) his mother knew. The steward tasted the final product, but not even he knew where it had come from. The bridegroom was blissfully unaware of anything that had happened. The transformation of the water into wine happens off stage, in the background, without Jesus leaving the table. Indeed, it is only because the evangelist tells us that the steward tasted the ‘having-become-wine-water’, that we the readers are let into the secret of what had happened.

So when John tells us that Jesus revealed his glory, and that his disciples believed in him, we still might ask: how exactly did he reveal his glory? What did the disciples see or know? Did they slip backstage after overhearing Mary’s words, and catch a glimpse of the water being poured? Did they taste the excellent wine and then rely on the waiters’ gossip to fill in the gaps? Whatever they saw or knew, it seems to be their abiding with Jesus, the days they had now spent in his company, which enabled them to glimpse what not even the wine waiters seem able to have glimpsed: that in these ambiguous, partly off-stage events, the glory of God was being revealed.

The miracle at Cana, John tells us, is a sign. But it is not an unambiguous sign. It is not something that one can straightforwardly point to as unambiguous evidence. As St Paul tells the Corinthians in our second reading, ‘Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (1 Cor. 1:22-24). For John, as for Paul, if we are looking for unambiguous signs, if we are looking for spectacular signs and wonders, then we will always be disappointed. Even in this great Epiphany at Cana in Galilee, Christ’s glory is not visible to all who see him, even those closest to the action. It can only be seen by the eye of faith.

It we are honest, we would probably prefer it to be otherwise. We would prefer the dazzling clarity of unambiguous glory, lighting our way as we follow him, and especially those among us who have committed not only their lives but their livelihoods to following him in the ordained ministry. Yet Christ’s glory is revealed at Cana only for those with eyes to see, for those who have spent time with him, abiding with him, praying with him. It is this which will enable us, with John, to see Christ’s glory revealed in a dying man lifted up on the Cross, a stumbling-block to those who seek signs and foolishness to those who desire wisdom. To spend time with him, so as see the glory, and to follow where he calls, requires a certain kind of God-given foolishness, like the foolishness of servants filling water jars to overflowing with precious water, at the risk of losing that which is precious; like the foolishness of the Cross, which is wiser than human wisdom.

Monday Reflection – Dominic Keech

2011-01-26T18:35:00.003Z

This homily was given by Dominic Keech, a first year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 24th January 2011.

--

When God called Abram to leave Ur, he wrapped the call in a lofty promise: Abram’s line would carry the power to bless generations to come. Abram did not reply with eloquent thanks, but simplicity of obedience. He went, as the Lord had told him. When God appeared to him again, promising the land of Canaan to his descendants, he built an altar and called God by name. He then carried on toward the desert. God had given the sign, but perhaps at first it seemed of limited significance, hardly worth commenting on; best first to act and later understand.

On the other side of the desert, Mary of Magdala anointed the head of Jesus with sweet perfume: a commonplace act done out of anxious attention. But the doubtful rebuke of the disciples brought her an assurance of worth: she had embalmed for his grave the one who still sat at table. Christ drew out the purpose from her ignorance, and made her confusion into devotion. Wherever he would be remembered, she would too, something Mary could only fully understand in front of the empty tomb.

We, each one of us, have been called, and our daily work is one of attempted response. We will build our altars at the stopping-places, praise the name of the Lord, and find that we still have to journey on. The true lengths of our travelling are, however, known only to God. We will have to wait for the falling of our own grave clothes to see that we, too, poured out fine perfume on the head of Christ. That, when it comes, will surprise and delight us.

St Francis de Sales worked to bring Christians in the Chablais to a Catholic faith, by the end of the sixteenth century the stronghold of Genevan Calvinism. His work, in its time, was for the unity of the Church. When he died, Protestantism remained in eastern France, but we remember his obedience today. With catholic apologetics he combined a supreme gift of counsel. To a young woman he wrote, ‘I would have you remember that sometimes we amuse ourselves in playing at being good angels, till we forget to be good men and women. Our imperfection must cleave to us till we rest in our grave: we cannot walk without touching the ground… It will be a precious imperfection if it makes us acknowledge our weakness, strengthens our humility, self-depreciation, patience and diligence. Through it all God looks upon “the preparation of the heart”’

This is why our work and prayer for the union of all Christians must continue, no matter how small, frustrating or seemingly fruitless it is. Ours is a life of hope, trusting that we shall see our labour, and ourselves, for what they truly are, when Christ shall be all in all.

Let us pray.

O God, who hast made divers nations to be one in the confession of Thy Name: Grant us the will and power to perform thy commandments; that those who have been called to eternal life, may be one in the soundness of their faith and in the piety of their actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Epiphany III - Mrs Lucy Gardner

2011-01-25T21:51:00.002Z

Homily given by Mrs Lucy Gardner on Epiphany III, 23 January 2011. (Readings:Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 4-12; I Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23)

---

For all that it is wonderfully made

and contains much that can point us to its Maker,

our world is undoubtedly a murky place.

Distorted love – our own and others’ –

obscures what should be a breathtaking view.

As we allow all manner of good things to take God’s place in our lives,

those things block our view of God;

they themselves become only distorted shadows and silhouettes

which in turn cast shadows everywhere we try to look.

And because we see shades and shadows in every direction

we cast our neighbours as our enemies

and fail to see them as our brothers and sisters.

Insofar as we fail to love and worship God

as the source and goal of our lives,

insofar as we fail to love our neighbours as ourselves,

we are people who walk in darkness.

Insofar as we sin,

and we all do,

we do indeed dwell in the shadow of death.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Or you could say that we are fish,

who live in what should be a beautiful, crystal blue sea

which has been turned foul by the oily, cloying, grit-filled pollution of sin.

And yet, into these murky waters, the light of Christ has shone;

we have seen a great light;

and this shaft of light, as it hovers and swirls before us,

appears as a powerful stream

promising to carry us up out of the murk and shadows

into a cleaner, lighter, more vivid and more joyful place.

For some the promise is too fearful and we turn away,

preferring the well-known shadows

in which what we fear we have become

might lurk and hide, alongside very present,

but in some sense comfortingly well-known,

dangers and troubles,

to the startling, frightening, unknown, untried new light of life.

Many of us need more than a little persuading.

The bright light catches our attention,

but we fail to trust ourselves to the uplift of its current.

We need to be pushed and pulled and dragged into our own salvation.

To the fish struggling in poisoned waters,

to the fish already perishing,

the hook or the net does indeed appear as folly –

you might say

not so much “out of the frying pan into the fire”,

as “out of the boiling pot onto the plate”.

But for the fish being carried to cleaner, safer waters,

to the fish being saved,

the hook or the net is truly the power of life.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christ goes fishing for souls;

and often the Church has been understood as his fishing boat,

the ark.

But if the Church is the community of those being redeemed,

it might be more helpful to see ourselves

as the fish who have been caught in the drag nets,

we are still being dragged through murky waters.

We do not always come quietly,

and we are not always grateful.

Often we are squirming and jumping,

bickering and quarrelling,

with ourselves, with each other and with God.

Which is a shame,

because as we jump around,

some of us will fall out the nets;

some of will be knocked out.

Moreover,

those of us who have been caught and drawn in

are commanded to go fishing in our turn;

we are instructed to bring others in.

But while we are quarrelling,

we cannot get on with the task

which will contribute to our salvation;

while we are jumping around,

not only will some of us fall out,

others will not be brought in.

And this is why Paul warns the Corinthians about

quarrelling and bickering over claims to be the true Church

in opposition to each other.

At a time when the Anglican Communion

seems to be straining against itself,

when parts of the Church of England

seem to be seething with argument and discontent,

when Churches and parts of Churches seem to be in competition with each other,

and when people are facing tricky and painful choices

about staying within or leaving the net of a particular church,

Paul’s warning is as pertinent as it is uncomfortable;

we are in an uncomfortable, sometimes murky place.

We should not be surprised, for

we cannot go fishing from the safety of the boat;

we are sent out,

and, like Christ himself, must plunge ourselves into the murky waters

and pursue our work there, carrying His light with us.

Since the Church is indeed divided

and does indeed descend into quarrelsomeness,

she often seems just as murky as

the polluted waters around her,

if not more so,

for where the light shines,

the shadows show up more clearly.

But we must not let the Church herself,

neither as a whole nor in her various parts,

take Christ’s place in our lives

and so blot out His light

that we fall into casting our fellow Christians as our enemies

and fail to see them as our brothers and sisters.

We need to get on with fishing,

with preaching the Gospel and serving the world,

learning to share Christ’s mind,

allowing him to draw us ever deeper into his light,

ever deeper into his love,

ever deeper into his mission and service,

just as we get on with drawing others in.

And we shall only be able to draw others in

if they can see that this light is indeed the power of life in us,

if we allow the power of Christ’s love to show in our lives,

and refuse to let it be shut out and obscured

by self-interest, rivalry and jealousy.

It is only this unity of purpose,

this sharing in Christ’s work and the love of Christ –

our love of Him but even moreso His love of us –

which will make us one in Him,

and never our efforts or intentions,

or beliefs or practices.

So, perhaps we should see the many churches

the many parts of Christ’s Church

as Christ’s many nets and fishing devices;

they might be thrown by Peter or Paul, by Apollos or Chloe,

or by any other of Christ’s followers,

but the nets are all Christ’s, thrown for Christ and in his work.

And so, when it comes to the rather tricky business

of choosing Churches,

and the more painful business

of choosing to stay in or depart from a Church,

or the equally painful business of watching others do so,

we should perhaps think not so much of heroes crossing rivers,

nor of traitors jumping ship,

but of so many fish jumping about in and between so many nets,

and of so many fishermen switching between so many different tools of the trade;

if all are following Christ,

then all are travelling in the same direction,

working in different ways on the same task.

We should bear in mind and pray that

choosing between churches

should never be a question

of where we might feel most comfortable

or most at home;

if churches are nets,

then they are simply not meant to be comfort zones;

the question for each of us to answer

is about where we feel called and drawn to be,

about where we shall be most able and most fully

to play our part in Christ’s work

of fishing souls out of the murky waters of sin.

To pray for the unity of the Church, as indeed we must, is to pray just this:

that each of our Christian brothers and sisters

will accept the particular grace that is offered to them

and find the place in and from which they can best serve Christ and thus be saved

and that we shall thereby all come to share together in Christ’s resurrection life.

House Lecture - Canon Andrew Shanks

2011-01-20T09:45:00.005Z

Revd Canon Andrew Shanks will give a House Lecture on Hegel and religious Faith.
Couratin Room, Thursday 3rd February at 4.30pm. All Welcome.

--

Andrew Shanks is the Canon Theologian, in charge of the Cathedral’s educational programme. He has been at Manchester Cathedral since 2004. Previously he worked as a parish priest in Leeds, an inner city parish and a housing estate, and in rural North Yorkshire; and as an academic theologian at the universities of Lancaster and Leeds.

He has also lived and worked in Ethiopia and in Upper Egypt. His published books include Hegel’s Political Theology (1991), Civil Society, Civil Religion (1995), God and Modernity (2000), “What Is Truth?” Towards a Theological Poetics (2001), Faith in Honesty (2005), The Other Calling (2007), Against Innocence: Gillian Rose’s Reception and Gift of Faith (2008). He is married to Dian Leppington, who is also a priest.

The Revd Canon Andrew Shanks: canon.shanks@manchestercathedral.org
http://www.manchestercathedral.org/whos-who/cathedral-chapter

Adey Grummet talks about he book and her experiences

2011-01-20T09:36:00.005Z

* Couratin room, 7.30pm on Wednesday 26th January

Adey Grummet, author of Suddenly He Thinks He’s a Sunbeam, will be coming to talk about the book and her experiences, throughout her husband’s training at St Stephen’s House and the reality of married life to a Church of England vicar:

“It is the story of what happened when her husband, ‘a perfectly normal, angst-ridden, atheistic, socialist hippy actor’ underwent a metamorphosis into a Church of England priest. It was initially commissioned as an aid to couples who are now undergoing something of the same process but it has become a core text on many theological colleges’ reading lists, was preached upon at the opening of Synod by the Bishop of London...”

All Welcome.

And afterwards in the common room when the bar will be open.

www.adeygrummet.co.uk

CALL AND RESPONSE - Fr. Damian Feeney

2011-01-18T21:28:00.005Z

image from google

Homily given by Fr Damian Feeney, vice principal of St Stephen's House, on Epiphany II,16th January 2011. (Readings: Isaiah 45.1-7, 1 Cor 1.1-9, John 1.29-42)

At some point we who follow Jesus are called to examine the nature of that call and its origin. The stories of others who have had the courage to follow someone or something beyond themselves in the search for truth are a great encouragement, and so I offer you two people quite outside the structure of the churches who have articulated thoughts about vocation which have struck many chords. Dag Hammarskjold, the former Secretary-General to the United Nations who was killed in a place crash in 1961. He wrote:

I don't know Who -or What- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. ... As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and one man's experience. Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it. Also behind each of the words from the Cross[1].

Our sense of vocation, if we are blessed, diligent and careful with it, grows and blossoms throughout our lives. It can also be blighted by the all too human failings of frustration, impatience and envy. We can so easily forget the fundamental truth that our vocation often leads us into places and situations we had not imagined, and if we are not sufficiently grounded we can waste much time and energy in thinking that our response would be so much better if only we were somewhere else. In his book Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, the Romanian author Mircea Eliade tells the story of an obscure Jewish Rabbi, Isaac ben Jekel, who several hundred years ago, lived in great poverty in a single-roomed house in Cracow. One night he dreamt vividly of a treasure buried beneath the bridge leading to the royal palace at Prague. Three nights running he dreamt the same dream and, unable to dismiss it from his mind, he determined to make the long journey to Prague on foot in search of the treasure. But when he reached the city he was bitterly disappointed to find the bridge guarded by soldiers and the treasure, if indeed there was a treasure, totally inaccessible. As the Rabbi stood there in dejection, the captain of the guard took pity on him and asked him what his trouble was. So he related his dream. The captain of the guard laughed.

'You should not pay any attention to dreams. Why, only the other night I had a dream about treasure. It was buried in the house of a man I had never even heard of, a Rabbi named Isaac ben Jekel, who lived in Cracow. But no sensible man pays any attention to dreams’.

The Rabbi listened with inward astonishment; he bowed low and thanked the Captain. Then he set off with all haste back to Cracow and when he reached home, he at once began to dig in the corner of his room behind the stove. Eventually he unearthed treasure sufficient to end his poverty.

We grow up with our treasure; it is near to us all the time, but so often we do not recognize its value.

This has many implications. First of all, whatever our situations, and our feelings about them, one things is sure. God has called each and every one of us, by name, to minister for him to others. It is so tempting to look at the gifts of another, the achievements of another, the situation of another, and pine, if not with envy or jealousy, then maybe with a certain degree of wistfulness, for the things others can do, achieve or enjoy. We waste a good deal of time looking for our treasure in unrealistic places, places where it is not accessible to us. One result of this fruitless journeying is that we become unhappy with who we are, our regard for our own gifts diminish, and we become less and less fruitful for God.

Our treasure is within us. It is so often what we grew up with. If God has called me, then I know at least that there is something within me that God can use. George Herbert alludes to this in his poem ‘The Priesthood’

...only, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
I throw me at his feet,

There will I lie, until my Maker seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show his skill:
Then is my time.

‘Our time’ – our calling, our life – is now. Our treasure is within ourselves, the gold of the gospel and our gifts - and it has been gathering and collecting every day of our lives. Rowan Williams earths this understanding of the paradoxical nature of God’s call when he writes:

‘God chooses where he wills: there is no set of conditions for his grace. We are to rejoice in the fact that, weak and sinful and silly as we are, God has chosen us for the privilege of loving and serving him.’

But with that rejoicing comes a balancing responsibility, a pain, if you like, when our loving and serving becomes unbalanced and we are unable to hold on to the burden and privilege of this calling. Rowan Williams continues:

‘And so our crises occur at those points when we see how unreality, our selfish, self-protecting illusions, our struggles for cheap security, block the way to our answering the call to be’.

The treasure is under our feet, it is within us, and therefore it is the very thing most likely to be taken for granted. I gain tremendous encouragement from that passage in Mark 6, where Jesus returns to Nazareth, to be greeted by those who knew him when he was but a lad – and they decided that no-one who came from their town could possibly be anyone special (‘We knew him when he had nowt’) – ‘and he could work no miracle there….and he was amazed at their unbelief.’ In my native Lancashire, it is said that the reason people go to church is to to stop other people going; some people, without realising it, manage to limit God and limit others at the same time. Perhaps they – and we – have every right to be concerned. Jesus came among us, and through him we discover a very human side to God that we had never suspected, and wonder whether God can really do this thing this way. For those on the way to faith this particularity can be hard to fathom, and how we preach it and proclaim it a most sensitive issue.

But this, after all, is the treasure at our feet, carried in these earthenware vessels. What we have to offer the world is Christ crucified and raised from the dead – the action of a God who will stop at nothing to redeem his people, redeem his creation. That miraculous action continues this morning and every day in the Mass and its outworking in our daily living, as we seek to discover and rediscover the treasure at our feet.

Damian Feeney
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

[1] http://chippit.tripod.com/markings.html

Monday Reflection - Graham Lunn

2011-01-17T23:27:00.003Z

image from google.

This homily was given by Graham Lunn, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 17th January 2011. (Readings: Genesis 6:11-7:10, Matthew 24:1-14)

--

Genesis 6:22 is one of my favourite verses in the Scriptures, as it testifies to Northern Irish involvement in the composition of the flood narrative. For, if we render this verse literally, it translates as, "and Noah did according to all that God commanded him, so he did". Of course, the NRSV committee did not wish this best-kept of biblical secrets to be revealed, so they translated as follows: "Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him".

One of the most striking features, for me, of the flood account in Genesis is the emphasis placed on Noah's obedience to God. Both the background traditions which seem to have come together to form the narrative we now have are clear on this: the reason that Noah pleased God, that the Lord accounted him righteous among a corrupt generation, was that he was willing to listen to God and obey. Indeed, the presenting cause for the flood being sent to cleanse the earth had been a discernible lack of obedience to the Lord's commands, shown in the marriage of the "sons of God" to the "daughters of humans" (do see me afterwards if you which to discuss this interpretation).

So it is that Noah is the one with whom God chooses to establish his covenant, the first covenant in salvation history. I wonder how it might be if we reminded ourselves that we, too, are children of a covenant. Ours is the dispensation of the new and everlasting covenant, established and ratified by the supreme obedience of another middle-eastern man to the will of God. Yet the fact that it is the Son of God who established this covenant by the shedding of his blood does not exempt us from our duty to obey. Indeed, as those being formed to be priests of this new covenant, we must always be mindful of our obligation to live as Christ in the world, righteous among a corrupt generation. In this we do nothing more than fulfill our baptismal vocation; but there may come a day for many of us when, God willing, we shall have to administer the sacraments of the new covenant to the People of God, and we can do this only in his strength and in obedience to his command.

May God therefore grant us the courage and power to do his will, to work towards those things which would please him. May our love never grow cold, that we may be counted among those who endure to the end, and thus are saved.

Let us pray.

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

House Retreat 2010 and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

2010-12-06T12:49:00.003Z

image from google

1. Advent Retreat Programme 2010
(Retreat Conductor: The Right Reverend Martin Warner, Bishop of Whitby)

**

Monday (S. Nicholas, Bishop)

6pm Evening Prayer & Introductory Address
Silence begins
7pm Dinner

Tuesday (S Ambrose, Bishop)
8.30am Breakfast
9am Morning Prayer & Address
12.15 pm Said Mass with Address (Celebrant: Fr. Peter Anthony)
1pm Lunch
6pm Evening Prayer & Address
7pm Dinner

Wednesday (Feast of the Immaculate Conception)
8.30am Breakfast
9am Morning Prayer & Address
12.15 pm Midday Prayer and Address
1pm Lunch
6pm Sung Solemn Mass and Final Address (Celebrant and Preacher: Bishop Martin)
Silence Ends

* Throughout this time the House will be in greater silence. This holds good for all public spaces in the House, especially the Dining Room and Common Room, until the retreat has finished.
* All students from the House are welcome to participate in the retreat if they wish.

2. Solemn Mass on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Solemn Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception with Missa Vidi Speciosam by Victoria this Wednesday at 6pm in the House Chapel. (Celebrant and Preacher: The Right Reverend Martin Warner, Bishop of Whitby) All welcome.

Monday Reflection – Peter Garvie

2010-12-02T13:22:00.005Z

image from google

This homily was given by Peter Garvie, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 29th November 2010.

We are now in Monday of week 8. Its astonishing to reflect on all that we have achieved and experienced in such a short period of time over this term. But if you are anything like me you must be feeling the strain a bit now, aware of that creaking and aching as the term edges ever more inevitably to its completion. I don’t know about you but I feel like a very tired marathon runner. I feel as though I have very little energy left for battling over the hills, I for one am weary, and I’ll be honest with you, I am beginning to beg for the finish line. The thing is though, as the term edges ever more inevitably to its completion and we feel strain a bit, we begin to become aware of what this is all about.

Advent is a good time to re-align ourselves with what after all, should be the motivation behind all that we do. And we now have an opportunity to do this as we embrace a new and invigorated spiritual life as our liturgies change. If we let our work spring out of our prayer lives we will gather the momentum to come round that back straight and execute that sprint finish we need. In the army over the summer I learnt from a sergeant that when the soldiers get exhausted on their physical training exercises and look as if they are about to collapse, they will often run along side them and put their hand gently on the small of their back. There is no physical advantage to this but it is never the less known to have the most remarkable results. I am told it more often than not – gives them that little bit of encouragement they need to push on. I wonder whether we might be able to ask ourselves how much Advent can help us push on with our work. If we are tired, if we are beginning to hear those creaks and feel those aches as we complete all the things in our busy schedules, then might Advent be that gentle encouragement we need. Might it help us feel the presence of that encouraging hand upon us, the hand of the living one, our risen lord and helper? For many of us we have reached that point in term, for others we might be able to be the one who offers that encouragement. Either way Advent is a time to dwell ever more seriously, ever more joyously on the coming of the kingdom of God and what our appropriate response should be.

Our gospel tonight talks about Jesus healing, and when people tried to get in his way, he kept on healing, when they plotted his destruction, he kept on healing. Let us not forget our work, our ministry, as we come to the end of this term. Let us be encouraged, and let us pray.

St. Stephen's House - Church Times AD

2010-11-22T17:40:00.002Z

Monday Reflection – Diego Galanzino

2010-11-15T22:21:00.000Z

image from google.

This homily was given by Diego Galanzino, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 15^th November 2010.

Common tenure, working agreements, appraisal systems, management performance reviews, employment law, retirement age, mixed mode training, practical theology separated from dogmatics, more expensive training pathways, the Institute for Works of Religion, mission statements and mission-shaped-anything-you-like, bums on seats policy...

The Church has engaged in a process of secularisation of its structures and behaviours, perhaps with the aim of making things more transparent and understandable to the outside world.

This is not a mere exercise of borrowing ideas from the secular world. No, its nature and scale tend to suggest that the actual Church has absorbed the worries of the world about money, status and serving more than one master.

“Ask, and it shall be given to you; search, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened for you.”

It is easy to say this, but in reality many of us share many concerns about our future ministry, about the future of residential training or more simply, if there will still be a Church by the time we retire, let alone a pension board.

However, deep down, we should also know that a secularised organization of the Church is perhaps not necessarily the best solution to our problems.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine.”

Tonight’s second reading offers another picture. The Sermon on the Mount – which our lectionary has unfolded for the past week – is coming to an end between tonight and tomorrow. It envisages another kind of community. Its wisdom sayings are rooted in the Jewish tradition; they present a type of living that is centred on God and articulated in our dealings with one another.

This should be a model for discipleship which could certainly inspire our common life here, but also it could provide a rule of life based on the concept of waiting upon God, which Graham has illustrated for us earlier in term.

“Ask, and it shall be given to you; search, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened for you.”

For the Matthean Sermon on the Mount, to follow Christ is to have a filial relationship with God; to wait upon Him and play our part without presuming that we could put the world to right with our own devices. Our part is to be the attentive recipients of these sayings.

It is not primarily a matter of what we do about the things they prescribe, but how we do them; or as famous New Testament scholar said “living in accordance to the Sermon on the Mount is a path to perfection. One should travel this path as far as possible. On the Day of Judgements the Son of Man will show just where the minimum righteousness lies”.

In this discourse, Matthew presents God as the Father, the provider of all good things and the Son of Man as the just and only judge, “before whom all lances are of equal length”, or as Luke’s Gospel puts it

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged [...]. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

So, as seen as today it’s the only feria for this week, let me encourage you to explore the life of a great saint from Piedmont, my homeland. St Luigi Orione, the founder of the Sons of Divine Providence put into practice all these sayings, his model of Church was so dependent upon God that it would seem utter foolishness to the Ministry Division as it did for the Roman Curia in his time.

However, the truth of the Gospel remains; if we follow this path to perfection – both privately and as a community – all other things will be given unto us.

Remembrance Sunday - Fr. Peter Anthony

2010-11-14T21:05:00.004Z

image from google.

Homily given by Fr Peter Anthony on Remembrance Sunday, 14th November 2010.

***

What is Christian Remembrance?

It sometimes seems as though the main thing that characterises academic life, is the endless attempt to remember things. Collections to be revised for; Final exams with all that cramming. So much information to be remembered. In the midst of all that it’s hardly surprising there are quite a few self-help books around designed to help you improve your memory when it comes to exams. I was reading one the other day full of cunning strategies: spider diagrams; flash cards; even the suggestion that your choice of cologne can make a difference. If you wear the same fragrance on the day of the exam as you did to revise that subject, your mind will apparently be much more able to recall the information you need.

Over the past few weeks we have in a broader sense been in a season of remembering. We have just kept All Souls’ Day, when we remembered before the Lord all the faithful departed. A few days after that was Bonfire Night: “Remember, remember, 5^th November; gunpowder, treason and plot.” And now we keep Remembrance Sunday when we pray for those who have fallen in war.

All those sorts of remembering may seem quite different, but they actually have one thing in common. They all involve fear of forgetting. The fear of forgetting the horrors of war so that similar conflicts should never happen again. The fear of forgetting the cherished memories of our closest loved ones. The fear of getting into the exam room and not knowing the answer. It seems that we remember so that memories are kept alive. We remember to keep the spectre of forgetting at bay.

Is that all that there is to say about Remembrance? Is it just about keeping memories alive, the recalling of past events? I think one of the things we are called to re-discover each year around this time is that for the Christian, Remembrance is much more than that.

The point is this. All too often we think of remembering as something dependent on our efforts. Our ability to recall. Our determination not to forget.

One of the things that today’s commemoration shows us afresh, however, is that when Christians remember the departed, we do so knowing that they live in Christ. When Christians remember, we participate in a living reality. In our baptism, we were incorporated into Christ, made one with him. We were a given a new identity as sons and daughters of God. Not just were we given a new identity but we were given the gift of new life, eternal life with him who triumphed over death. That bond is something which the grave cannot overcome. Even though many years may distance us from those who have died, we share a kinship with them, which is indestructible. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not just recalling past events, no, through our remembrance, we share in a deep, living, communion with the departed. This is never more evident and more effectual than when we celebrate the Eucharist together just as we did on All Souls’ Day praying particularly for those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.

If that is the case, then we discover something else. We discover that we no longer need to be haunted by that terror of forgetting. Christian remembrance is not just about the desperate attempt to keep the memory of our loved ones alive, for we know that in God they will never die. They will never be forgotten.

In fact, in a funny way we discover that Christian remembrance is not about us doing the remembering. Rather it is rejoicing in the fact that it is God who remembers us. He knows us and cherishes us, and remembers us in his Son. We need not fear being forgotten. It is the solemn recognition each year that it is God who remembers us, that we are part of a bigger picture, the bigger picture of life with him that we share with those who have died. When we remember, we are participating in the eternal act of endless remembering and loving which is the life of heaven, that perfect society, where war, violence, and death are no more, and men and women enjoy that eternal peace which is God’s will for us.

THE RICHES OF HIS GLORIOUS INHERITANCE - Fr. Damian Feeney

2010-11-03T16:53:00.003Z

A Sermon preached at Keble College, Oxford on the Feast of All Saints, 2010

Readings: Daniel vii.1-3 & 15-18, Ephesians i.11-23, Luke vi.20-31

It’s a great joy to be here with you this evening. Thank you for this invitation to be with you, and to explore with you for a little while the riches of the inheritance of the saints in this wonderful setting, and on this special day.

The call of the Christian life is a call to holiness, to self-renunciation, and to the rule of love. Saints do not theorise about sanctity, but rather live it, expound upon it, proclaim it. Often the sacrifices they are called to make are as a result of doing these things well. Those who have undergone martyrdom have in some sense experienced the same consequence of gospel-centred living that Christ did – words, thoughts and actions considered too dangerous, too subversive, for the places and times in which they occurred. This was particularly so in the last century, when it was believed that more Christians were martyred than in any other.

The danger with saints is that we can lionize them to the extent that we fail to appreciate the need for saintly living in this age as well as any other. It is becoming fashionable in a lot of places to mount an attack upon what is perceived as a new and militant atheist apologetic sweeping the land. Now – I don’t doubt that such things are happening, and that humanists have much that is critical to say about people of faith. But perhaps this is a wake-up call – a call to repentance in the church, a call to all people of faith to bring the lofty ideals of faith and belief to bear in practical situations. Very often nationally broadcast criticisms of faith and the faithful frustrate because the Christian response is not all we feel it might be, and there goes up a cry for a renewed Christian apologia to counter such arguments. We know, perhaps, of local churches and faith groups doing good, wholesome and holy things for the good of the kingdom of God and for the care of his precious people – but it’s all very local, and not at all ‘newsworthy’. Still, I remain convinced that there is a lot of Good News out there, wonderful stories of human transformation brought about through the grace-filled witness of the church, and a great many people who are gently wearing the mantle of sanctity in the service of others. But if we are honest, do we sufficient attention to the virtue of humility, the joyful tasks of service, the ‘holy chores’ of grace? Can we honestly say that our lives contribute all they might to the coming of the kingdom? It’s a question we need to ask constantly, and one which our meditation upon the lives of the saints helps to bring to the surface.

It has been said that what distinguishes the saintly is not the capacity to perform the huge, Herculean task, but rather to perform the small and the mundane task with beauty and with grace – to live as in a world invested and charged with the grandeur of God, and so to reveal that grace to the less focused eye. If we would counter the arguments and criticisms of others – some of them well founded – then we must labour to ensure that change is brought about through love, prayer, word and action.

But saints do not merely perform tasks with grace. They live in ways which provide evidence of the divine in human endeavour and being. Faithfulness to the Christ of the Gospels makes clear to us that saintly living is possible in any age, including our own. To offer ourselves to God for this way of life, definite acts of will are required – acts of renunciation of the things which stand on our way, acts of ascesis and mortification, which serve to remind us that it is not we ourselves, but Christ in us, who guides, inspires and makes possible the things we undertake. To that end, St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that ‘Christian perfection has but one limit, that of having none ’.<1>

I enjoy the thought, from time to time, that Heaven will be a state of endless meetings between saints of different eras. What fun that will be! It will take an eternity to meet them all. I wonder, for example, what St. Stephen, the first martyr, will have to say to St. Paul, who assisted at his execution. I imagine that there will be quite a queue to meet St. Augustine of Hippo, for good or ill, and that one or two friendly discussions will take place between Calvinists and Catholics during the queuing. Then the apostles, of course, meeting their Episcopal successors with a mixture of joy and bewilderment – and one could go on. But one thing is for sure. There is a glorious diversity within the company of the saints – people of all shapes and sizes, some who wielded temporal power and others who shunned it, those who were passionate and argumentative, those who were serene and irenic, those of amazing and intense learning, those of pure and joyful simplicity, those of contemplation, those of action. At some point people who we think of as saints have committed every sin in the book, but their lives were transformed not by their own efforts, but through God’s wonderful and redeeming grace in their lives, so great and strong that they couldn’t help but respond in exciting and radical ways. There are those we know, and celebrate, and those we do not – those whose saintliness has been known only to God. All responded to their time, their circumstances and the events which surrounded them with the light of the gospel – well received in some times and places, rejected in others. What matters is that they sought to be vessels of God’s grace, not only for those around them but for successive generations. It is part of the deepest Christian vocation to cherish our sense of communion, not only with one another but with all who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith. May the Saints, our brothers and sisters in eternity continue to urge us on, to renewed and fervent holiness, until we are blessed to be among their number, and Christ is all in all.

DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

Given at Keble College, Oxford, on 31^st October 2010

<1> De vita Mos.: PG 44, 300 D

KEEPING THE FAITH - Fr. Damian Feeney

2010-11-03T16:46:00.002Z

A Sermon preached at Pusey House, Oxford on 10th October 2010

Ecclesiasticus xxxv.12–17 2 Timothy iv: 6-8, 16-18 Luke xviii.9-14 (NRSV)

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 2 Timothy iv.7"

It is a joy and a blessing to be with you this morning, in a place where the faith has been kept, taught, cherished and shared since its foundation. Thank you for inviting me to be with you.

A culturally relevant question for you. What do the film Blazing Saddles, the American rock band Bon Jovi, and Oldham Athletic Football Club have in common? While you’re puzzling round that one, let me add to the list Michael Jackson and a film starring Harry Lennox and Vanessa Williams?

The answer is that all of them have, at some time or other, found recourse to the words ‘Keep the Faith.’ They occur in film and song titles, advertising campaigns, motivational addresses, and a whole host of other places. As such, they can refer to ‘faith’ in a whole variety of contexts. In each case, it implies a stability – a standing where you have been placed, even when that place is not one of your own choosing. Paul, in this morning’s epistle, offers a summary of his own earthly life – his own sense of relief, almost, that he has done all he can to respond to his meeting with the Jesus he had encountered, those years ago, on the road to Damascus.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

As a consequence, Paul looks forward, to the reward which his keeping the faith will elicit.

From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Faith, of course, is a gift from God, and keeping the faith that we are given is an essential. Such an imperative impacts upon every aspect of our living, in both public and personal spheres. Whilst it is true that keeping the faith involves the fairly obvious virtues of perseverance and fidelity, there is another area which is perhaps less obvious – that of growth, because only by growing in faith can we hope to keep it. As you can see from my well-sculpted physique, honed over years of punishing exercise and trappist self-denial, I am a great one for the gym. Well, that’s nearly true – I am a great one for gym membership. I was in one long enough to read the sign on the door which said ‘Fitness can only be gained and maintained. It cannot be stored’. We are also told, whilst on our fitness kick, that we should have five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. No one would dream of having thirty-five portions on a Sunday, to see them through the week. The same is somewhat true of faith. We think of having a ‘repository of faith’ but the truth is, it has to be exercised, practiced, daily, if it is to be kept. Prayer, sacraments, fellowship, caritas, discipleship with Jesus rather than mere admiration of him. Keeping the faith means never standing still in our relationships with God and with one another. You want to keep the faith? Practice it, daily.

Generally, when we ‘keep’ something, there is a feeling that we are preserving and protecting it, because it is precious to us, and we don’t want it damaged or falling into the wrong hands. So, ‘keeping the faith’ carries with it overtones of retrenchment, consolidation, holding on grimly to what you have, as if we can form some kind of citadel around it. Part of the Christian paradox is that to keep the faith we must share it – striving to find ways of communicating the Catholic faith in this generation, living lives of radical and distinctive love in the face of often overwhelming indifference. That process begins here at the Mass, as we are filled with God’s grace through this moment of unspeakable holiness. It is this grace which gives us the power to live as Christ’s servants at all, and to live out that life of joy in the social, intellectual and spiritual maelstrom which Oxford can be. But in the living of that life, keeping the faith consists not simply in the living but in the sharing – the thought that what we receive here is too good, too valuable, too rich to keep it to ourselves. And if the challenges and difficulties for the Catholic faith in the present day seem too much for us, we need to recall that it is at times like this that keeping the faith actually matters, and matters not only for the sake of our own souls but fort he souls of generations as yet unborn. We here in Oxford look back to various martyrs – Ridley and Latimer, of course, just outside the front door, and Roman Catholics Nichols, Yaxley, Belson and Pritchard, and no doubt others who chose their historical period less wisely. They – and countless others – have endured far, far worse, in concentration camps and prisons, like Paul himself – murdered by soldiers and monarchs, executed by the people they were sent to serve and to whom they proclaimed the gospel. It was, in their own place and time, the consequence of keeping the faith. Their memory, as much as their prayers for us now, sustains us, reminding us that it is possible to live to the exacting words of Christ in ages of darkness and difficulty. To spend time wishing that things were different is tempting, but utterly futile. When I attempted, at the age of six, to reject the bowl of prunes put in front of me for my school dinner, Mrs. Porter the dinner lady came out with that classic northern line ‘You get what you’re given.’ It’s as true of the time in which you live, just as it was true of the unpromising and dangerous times in which Jesus lived. Our task is to witness and serve in the time we are given, not to wish for any golden ages, mythical or otherwise.

There is a bigger, wider challenge to those of us who are concerned for the mission of the church and the coming of the kingdom. To those who would live in a faithless, Godless world, faith is a dangerous thing. It challenges the assumption that humans can be self-sufficient and self-serving. The politically correct world which humanism would espouse would be a desolate and monochrome world indeed – a far cry from the life in abundance which Jesus Christ offers. It is a world warned against by (amongst others) Pope John Paul II in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995). Commenting on unwelcome developments in the field of medical ethics, he wrote

the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test. Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad vicious circle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life…

If we lose God, we lose our true selves. John Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI spoke eloquently last month of this concern in Westminster when reminding us

not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

It remains to be seen whether these words can inspire a confidence leading to a renewed dialogue going beyond personal gesture or statement, but impacting on the wider fabric of society. If we would keep the faith it’s important that the place of that faith is re-affirmed, and that will only happen if those of us who hold it live it, not in any pharisaic or pompous fashion but after the manner of our tax-collector – in penitence and humility, whilst firmly and courteously challenging the zeitgeist which claims that there is no place for faith in the public arena.

Keeping the faith matters – not only personally, but corporately, visibly, meaningfully. May this great gift continue to sustain, provoke and drive us onwards to the glory of the Kingdom, moving mountains and shaping hearts, minds and lives, until Christ is all in all.

DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

Monday Reflection - Chris Johnson

2010-11-01T21:24:00.001Z

This homily was given by Chris Johnson, a second year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 1st November 2010 (All Saints).

..

I don’t know about you, but at this stage in term, I begin to feel rather tired. The bell that summons us daily to prayer has been summoning us for five weeks now, and I have about got to that stage where my body clock automatically wakes me up at 6:30 in the morning, whether it is a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or – much to my annoyance – a Saturday. In fact, the problem was exaggerated just yesterday morning when the good Lord gave us one extra hour in bed... and I woke up at 5:30 GMT. Tiredness, we are told, kills. The Highways Agency advises us to ‘take a break’ – but that’s not advice the seminarian, priest or tutor can easily accept, as the daily round of obligations in chapel, refectory and classroom each make their separate demand on our time and energy.

Tiredness and exhaustion are indicative of our humanity, and our fallen humanity at that. How often do we complain about this or our other failures or frailties? When we do, it should be comforting to know that the saints were made of the same mould as us. But, being sensible of their weaknesses, they were careful to ‘retrench all incentives of their passions, to shun all occasions of sin, to ground themselves in the most profound humility, and to strengthen themselves by the devout use of the sacraments, [and] prayer... [Yet] It was by the strength they received from above, not by their own, that they triumphed’.

The lives of the saints instruct all Christian people to rely on Jesus. In doing this, we must die to our own passions and deny our own will, by uprooting ‘pride, vanity, revenge and other irregular passions, and planting in the heart the most perfect spirit of humility, meekness, patience, and charity’. Such a pattern was exemplified by St. Joseph in our Gospel reading tonight: Joseph, being a righteous man, planned to dismiss Mary quietly. ‘But just when he had resolved to do this’, an angel appeared to him and commanded him otherwise. In humble submission to the will of God, which required the displacing of his own desires, Joseph obeyed the angel’s command.

Our reading from Isaiah, on the other hand, shows us that this is not always the response of humanity to God’s call. Isaiah instead paints a picture of a people to whom the Lord had spoken, but who neither knew His voice nor understood it. Yet even there, all was not lost. As the prophet said, ‘though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword’.

The virtues in which the renunciation of our selves consists – humility, meekness etc. – are styled by Christ as Beatitudes, because they not only lead to happiness, but also bring with them a present joy. The reward of the saints in the kingdom also serves to remind us that everything which is suffered here on earth is made light there. The holy ones of God show us that path from one to the other, from present trials to future glory, and this glory strongly animates our hope and excites our fervour.

In the rite for Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer, the priest reads aloud the Comfortable Words, opening with that promise of the Matthean Christ: ‘Come unto me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you’. These Words fit snugly between the Absolution and the Sursum Corda – and their position reminds us that following our own purging, we can look forward to meeting God Himself at that time when sacraments shall cease. Thus when we are tired and heavy laden, fallen in our humanity and weak in our service, Christ comes to us and promises us rest. He transforms the utter poverty of our nature, with all its natural limitations, by the great riches of His grace. The saints show us that that vision of God is attainable – for they now enjoy it.

At the opening of his many-versed hymn, William Walsham How wrote: ‘For all the saints, who from their labour rest; Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia! Alleluia!’ The Christian soul thus finds its rest in God, and in particular in the true worship of Him. And right now, through the grace of His sacraments, we can join with saints and angels around the throne worshipping the Lamb, though our vision is still ‘through a glass darkly’. When we are tired, burdened and heavy laden, we would therefore do well to remember another verse of For All the Saints:

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

May our toil through this life not distract us from knowing that our hope is in God, to whom is due all honour and praise, now and in all eternity; and may His holy ones pray for us as they share in that vision for which we long.
Let us pray.

Almighty God,
Thou hast made us for Thyself
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee:
pour Thy love into our hearts and draw us to Thyself,
and so bring us at the last to Thy heavenly city
where we shall see Thee face to face;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Ghost,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Last After Trinity - Ian Boxall

2010-10-28T15:09:00.002+01:00

The Senior Tutor, Ian Boxall, preached at the Mass on 24th October 2010, the Last After Trinity. Readings: Ecclus 35:12-17; Ps 84:1-7; 2 Tim 4:6-8; 16-18 and Luke 18:9-14

--

There aren’t many groups more in need of a public relations adviser than the Pharisees. The Pharisees are regularly vilified for their hypocrisy, or their self-importance, or their obsessive legalism which damages the consciences of others and drives them far from God. So the Pharisees become easy targets for that human, but ultimately lazy and distorting tendency to caricature and label, rather than that much harder learning to speak about other human beings in a careful, precise, and ultimately more truthful way.

Even in the New Testament, with a few notable exceptions, the Pharisees play to type, almost always the antagonists, rarely doing the right thing. Which makes it all the more difficult to listen to today’s gospel and not fall into easy caricature. We seem to be presented with a stereotypical Pharisee, and, for added measure a stereotypical tax-collector as well. It isn’t helped by the fact that neither of these two characters in Jesus’parable is given a name, because, although we still do it, it is harder to caricature and pigeonhole when people are named, when they have a name and a face and a family and a history.

But what if today’s parable is less about caricature than about turning caricature on its head, so that we are forced to re-evaluate both how we view Pharisees and how we view tax-collectors, and ultimately how we view each other?

First, the Pharisee. We might be tempted to think that he is a typical Pharisee, self-important, carried away by his own piety, despising the ‘people of the land’. After all, he seems to fit perfectly the definition of a Pharisee in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘self-righteous person, formalist, hypocrite’! But I want you for the moment to throw away your copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (it may be helpful for your prose style, but may prove disastrous as a tool for New Testament exegesis). I want you to reach instead for your copies of the Jewish historian Josephus, or your English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If we spend a bit more time with the first century sources, we might come to the conclusion that the Pharisee in the parable is in fact a quite untypical Pharisee. The Pharisees, Josephus tells us, were the pin-up boys of first century Judaism, highly popular among the people (of course, he was a Pharisee himself, which always helps). If we are to believe other accounts, the Pharisees were the modernisers, those attempting to re-interpret archaic laws for modern times, which is why they often provoked the ire of the Sadducees. As for their supposed obsession with the minutiae of legal interpretation, let’s not forget that the community at Qumran called the Pharisees ‘the smoothies’, the ‘seekers after smooth things’, criticizing them not for being too strict, but for being far too lax in their following of the Law.

So the Pharisee in the parable may not be a typical Pharisee at all: rather, he is a caricature of a Pharisee gone-wrong, of what even a popular, liberal, pious, God’s law-loving Pharisee might become. Jesus’ parable shockingly turns on its head the usual expectation of the Pharisee, replacing one caricature with its polar opposite, just as it does precisely the same thing with the caricature of the swindling, disreputable, ungodly tax-collector. It is meant to shock. It is meant to force us to re-evaluate the caricatures with which we ordinarily operate.

But the real point of today’s parable is less about different kinds of people – caricatures or not – than about different kinds of prayer. The pious Pharisee prays a prayer which on a superficial level sounds like a eucharistic prayer: ‘God, I thank you …’ Yet as his prayer unfolds, it comes clear that it is a highly distorted eucharistic prayer. First of all, although the prayer is addressed to God, the Pharisee stands ‘praying to himself’, so self-absorbed that no real conversation, certainly no real thanksgiving, is possible. Second, his prayer doesn’t give thanks to God for what God has done, but rather gives thanks to himself for what he has done for God: ‘I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ Nor can he resist his own attempt at caricature, dividing humanity into manageable groups with their own neat labels: ‘thieves, rogues, adulterers’ … and then ‘this tax-collector’, who belongs to a group which might be even worse than those groups already mentioned!

On the other hand, there is the prayer of the tax-collector. It is not that what the tax-collector says is any more true than what the Pharisee prays. The Pharisee probably did go beyond what was required by fasting twice a week and tithing the whole of his income. And the tax-collector may well have been the disreputable rogue that the Pharisee implies him to be. But unlike the prayer of the Pharisee, his prayer is utterly focused on the mercy of God. And his is prayer which is acceptable to God. He stands far off, beating his breast in a sign of repentance, thoroughly aware of his own unworthiness. Luke make be hinting here of another scene – not in the Temple but outside the walls of Jerusalem – where others stand far off and beat their breasts. Ironically, the disreputable tax-collector is closer to those crowds who repented as they saw the crucified Jesus than the Pharisee who sees no need for repentance.

There is a second Pharisee in today’s readings, and he does have a name: Paul of Tarsus. This Pharisee has certainly been subject to more than his fair share of caricature and pigeon-holing. Yet the glimpses which the New Testament gives us of Paul’s prayer is of a Pharisee who is both utterly aware of his own unworthiness, and of the limitless mercy of God. It is not what he has done for God, so much as what Christ has done living in him, which permeates his prayer. So, on the verge of death, the Paul of 2 Timothy prayerfully reviews his life. Yes, he has fought the good fight; he has finished the race; he has kept the faith. But only by the grace of God working in him. It is the Lord who stood by him in his defence. It is the Lord who gave him strength. It is the Lord who rescued him from the lion’s mouth, and who will save him for his heavenly kingdom. That is the invitation today, for our prayer and for our Christian vocation: to glimpse what God has done, and is doing for Paul the Pharisee; what God has done for the unnamed tax-collector; what God has done, and is doing in us.

Monday Reflection - Gavin Cooper

2010-10-25T22:12:00.001+01:00

image from google

This homily was given by Gavin Cooper, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 25th October 2010. (Readings; Ecclesiasticus 39: 1-11, John 17: 1-5)

We are now on week three of Michaelmas term, which, for us means that we have been here four weeks. I, for one, am surprised at how quickly the time has gone, already.

How many of us were told before we arrived, or even as we started at seminary how quickly the time would go- I know some of you who have just joined us have heard it, because I have said it to you- and it is true-time flows here.

We work hard in the course of our studies and all of us, whether we are on the BA, BTh, MTh, CTG all share a common occupation- what Fr. Robin would call ‘scribble, scribble, scribble’.

In the NRSV, the reading we heard from Ecclesiasticus is given the simple title- The Activity of the Scribe; and I actually think that it fits rather well our situation here as we daily ‘scribble, scribble, scribble’.

I am not for one minute suggesting that any of us are to be compared with the scribe- but this passage does sum up some of what we are about here.

The Scribe seeks out the wisdom of all the ancients and prophesies; he penetrates the subtleties of parables; he sets his heart to rise early; he gives thanks to the Lord in prayer. These are all things that we are part of in our studies here. Particularly if, like me, you think that setting your heart to rise early is to roll out of bed at 7am and wish you had got up ten minutes earlier to avoid the bell ringing whilst you are madly brushing your teeth.

We are lucky, in that we are given the time here to commit ourselves to study and prayer, and, joking aside- we do get the space to pray

He sets his heart to rise early to seek the Lord who made him, and
to petition the Most High; he opens his mouth in prayer and asks
pardon for his sins.

This evening’s second reading follows on quite nicely from this idea of prayer- for at this point in John’s gospel, we are shown Jesus at his most intimate with his Father- we are a fly on the wall in his own prayer.

His first petition Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify you. Fr. Damian, around this time last year told us that we should not wish our life away, and this evening’s readings do nothing but restate this message, for if we are to follow this example of prayer from Jesus, then we should express to God every now and again that it is His time frame we are working to and that it is His will that is being done (we hope).

Following this morning’s seminar, the inhabitants of the back row of these stalls should be able to speak at length on the danger of stress in our work without repetition, hesitation or deviation. We do, from time to time, get snowed under and our concern can be so much directed towards ‘scribble, scribble, scribble’ that we do have to learn to lean on the prayers of those around us and know that when they are troubled they can lean on our prayers- however, we should always know that in our doings here, it is God’s plan that is being carried out, and that, if we are lucky, we will share the gifts of the scribes

If the great Lord is willing, we will be filled with the spirit of
understanding; we will pour forth words of wisdom of our own and
give thanks to the Lord in prayer.

The Lord will direct our counsel and knowledge, as we meditate on
his mysteries. We will show the wisdom of what we have learned
and will glory in the law of the Lord’s covenant.

Monday Reflection - Imogen Black

2010-10-11T13:58:00.001+01:00

image from google

This homily was given by Imogen Black, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 11th October 2010;

Today is the feast of Ethelburga, a 7^th century saint who was abbess of Barking; not to be confused with Ethelburga, a 7^th century saint who was abbess of Faremoutier-en-Brie; or indeed with Ethelburga, a 7^th century saint who was abbess of Lyming.

Very little is known about her, making it an interesting question as to quite why she (unlike her two namesakes) has been singled out for the contemporary Anglican calendar. Perhaps it’s not unrelated to the fact that a church under her patronage in Bishopsgate made the news a few decades ago; almost destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1983, it was rebuilt as the St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, something that may have brought the saint a little more into the public eye.

What we do know about her comes mostly from Bede, writing some 50 years after her death. Her brother Eorcenwald founded the monastery at Barking and set her over it as its first abbess. In this task, we’re told, she proved worthy of her brother in all respects, “both by her holy life and by her sound and devoted care for those under her rule”, to whom she was both “mother” and “nurse”.

That is really all Bede has to say about her character. But he is convinced as to her holiness, to which visions and miracles bore witness. Most notably, an elderly nun had a vision in which a body brighter than the sun was drawn up from the monastery into heaven; a few days later, Ethelburga died, and such was her record, Bede says, that none who knew her could doubt that the gates of heaven were opened for her. Then another nun, badly crippled, asked to be carried into church to pray at Ethelburga’s body. There she asked her to intercede on her behalf in heaven, that she might be released from her suffering; twelve days later she was indeed released, in death.

So what, then, can we learn from such a figure, given how little we know of her? Perhaps that holiness does not necessarily involve doing things that are, in the end, particularly exciting or memorable, but can be a matter of simply faithfully seeking God’s will in the place where we are set, getting on with the job that we’ve been given to do. And that how we treat those around us, those people with whom we live and work, is a significant testimony to our holiness or lack of it. Those who believed Ethelburga to be truly holy, who sought and received her intercession, were from her own monastery, the people who saw her in day-to-day life, who had to live with her, under her authority. She can hardly have been faultless, but whatever her faults, her genuine care for her community was seen as rather more significant.

Let us pray.

To those who love you, Lord,

you promise to come with your Son

and make your home within them.

Come then with your purifying grace

and, at the intercession of St Ethelburga your virgin

make our hearts a place where you can dwell.

We make our prayer through Christ our Lord.

Trinity XIX - Fr Damian Feeney

2010-10-10T14:11:00.000+01:00

Homily given by Fr Damian Feeney, vice principal of St Stephen's House, on Trinity XIX, 10th October 2010.

Readings; 2 Kings v.1-3, 7-15b; Psalm 111; 2 Timothy ii: 8-15 Luke 17.11-19 (NRSV)

--

Lepers have become the symbol, par excellence, of those who must to be avoided. Over the summer I reached something of a milestone, watching as I did, late into the night, Ben Hur for the one thousandth time. If you don’t know it (where have you been?) part of the story concerns Judah Ben Hur’s mother and sister, who contract leprosy and are banished to the Valley of the Lepers, where they are kept apart from the rest of the community; even their food is lowered down on pallets. This doesn’t necessarily betoken or imply a lack of compassion so much as fear – fear of contagion, for to touch one who is so afflicted is a risky, even dangerous business. More than that, to touch a leper meant that you were ritually unclean. The conclusion of the tale is one of transformation – the most cursory of encounters with the crucified Christ, and his blood outpoured, cures the women of the dread and highly contagious ailment, but not before Judah himself had led them out of the imposed captivity of the Valley to which they had been condemned.

So it has been for lepers through the ages. Famously Francis of Assisi embraced a leper – a signal moment in his own understanding of what Christ-like love meant. Blessed Damien the Leper, in serving the colony at Molokai in Hawaii, where he arrived in 1873 (carrying little more than his Breviary) contracted leprosy himself some twelve years later. He wasn’t alone in this sacrifice – he was the third missionary of the Sacred Heart to contract the disease – but fear of infection led to him being ostracized by members of his own religious community, including his superior and his bishop.

It’s interesting to speculate the response of the priest to the presence of ten healed lepers, requesting a re-admittance to mainstream society as required in Leviticus 14. Only the priest could declare the leper clean, and therefore fit to belong within the mainstream of society. He would have to examine the lepers, find two living birds, some cedarwood and some crimson yarn. He would slaughter one of the birds…..actually, I’ll leave it to you to look up, but I have an image of the priest frantically looking over his shoulder at the Levitical Code to make sure he got it right, and that’s before we approach the vexed question of what he should be wearing. (It’s all a long way from First Year Formation and Ministry, where slaughter is kept to the minimum prescribed by Ministry Division.)

The priest wouldn’t be sure, because he wouldn’t have dealt with the situation that often. There was no cure for leprosy. A healed leper meant a miracle, and a miracle is something for those in authority to mistrust. Rather than focusing on the miracle, the priest might possibly have reflected on what happens when the rules in which you have come to trust have been broken by the very God who gave them. The law prescribes a course of action, a ritual, if you will – but in fact what matters is God’s action in healing through Jesus – something of itself which was profoundly threatening to the priest, and indeed to any who would think of themselves as the stewards of the tradition. When God works outside the tradition, we are challenged to think again.

Any society of humans creates lepers. That is, we create underclasses of people, people who we deem to be ‘unclean’ beyond the pail’ untouchable. There are any number of reasons, from poverty to lifestyle to crime and disorder. Migrant workers, living in a black economy in the Fens, or drowning in the waters of Morecambe Bay: Christian people whose tradition and practice is different from our own. Not for nothing did a former colleague of mine once say that the acid test of the church’s mission and ministry at this time would be its treatment and care of paedophiles. Of course we hate the sin, we hate it bitterly, but to Christ, no soul is not worth dying for.

So, who are your lepers? What are the prejudices to which we dare not admit, but which all of us carry and can affect our conduct and our treatment of people? We seem to live in a world where most, prejudices against others are roundly condemned – I say ‘most’ because it still seems acceptable to hold Stephen Fry as a national treasure, despite his prejudicial treatment of Christians, Christianity and people of faith generally. But let’s not be distracted. Who do we subconsciously condemn to a valley of lepers our own design? There are always those who we prefer, and therefore those we do not. Part of our formation as followers of Christ is about humble self-awareness, and a razor-sharp honesty before our loving, merciful and compassionate God, who knows us better than we know ourselves. to recognize such things within ourselves, and to release such people from the places of confinement which exist in our own minds. The challenge is that our preparations here are to fit us, however imperfectly, for a share and participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ – one who was asked for mercy, and whose response betokened not merely mercy, but healing, acceptance and liberation.

DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

Monday Reflection - Graham Lunn

2010-10-04T22:58:00.000+01:00

Image from google

This homily was given by Graham Lunn, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 5th October 2010. The readings was Ecclus. 16:17-end and Mark 15:1-15;

It seems to me, in self-reflection and in observation of others, that a vocation to the sacred ministry often comes with two unfortunate character traits in tow: a restless activism, and a not insignificant amount of control-freakery. Both of these traits are in our day doubtless formed in us from an early age. We live in an era still defined, in the ‘sophisticated’ West at least, by a strident individualism which tells us that we are the masters of our own destiny; and we live in a country which has yet to escape a spirit of messianic Pelagianism – that British pull-your-socks-up mentality which where I come from leads to a phenomenon proudly referred to as the ‘Protestant work ethic’. I am sure, however, that they are as deeply ingrained in the character of what it is to be a fallen human being as much as in what it is to be here in the West now.

These traits of activism and desire to be in total control I’ve labeled as unfortunate, and I believe them to be particularly so when it comes to considering our continuing vocational journeys, as seminarians, as tutors, as priests. Throughout the process of consultation leading up to the experience of a Bishops’ Advisory Panel, and in training here and the search for a curacy, it has been a trial for me to realise at various points that I am certainly not the one in charge. I have to wait. I have to be patient. I must recognise that I am not the only actor in this process, that there are many others involved – and not least the Lord.

But even the Lord Himself knew a time when He seemed not to be the actor, the one in total control. The passage from Mark’s gospel we heard a moment ago ended with the phrase, “[Pilate] handed him over to be crucified”. W.H. Vanstone, in his book The Stature of Waiting, points out that up to this point, that of the narrative of the Lord’s Passion, Mark portrays Jesus as the actor in every situation. In fact, it is Jesus’ very activity which gives this gospel its breathless haste – he came, he went, he spoke, he called, he had compassion, he began to teach. But from this point on, this point of being “handed over”, Jesus suddenly becomes the one to whom things happen. His action throughout His itinerant ministry sits in stark contrast to His Passion, the events leading up to and including his death and resurrection.

What does it mean then for us to be conformed to this aspect of Lord’s Passion in our seminary context? Too much to consider fully, I’m sure, in one, two, three or as many years of residential training we might be afforded. But I wish to make two points.

Firstly, that we must take this opportunity to hone the skill of waiting, to reject the notion that we must be in control, and that we must constantly be doing in order for our ministry, both now and in the future, to be of value. This is all very well to say when already the new members of our fellowship will have discovered how busy life at St Stephen’s House can be. We are, however, blessed with time specifically set apart for conscious waiting, waiting upon God. We must heed the advice of the writer of Ecclesiasticus when he tells us not to ignore the purposes of God simply because they might be too great for us to comprehend. We must take this precious time while we have it, and learn from our life here the discipline of taking time to be attentive to the voice of the Lord in prayer.

It is also good to recall at the beginning of this year that indeed there are many actors in our vocational journeys, our Bishops, our DDOs, our prospective training incumbents, our families - the Lord. But we also have each other, and I believe that in our openness to each other in this place, and at this time, we can not only wait on God as individuals, but as a fellowship seeking His purpose for our common life. In this way too we can discover more insight into what it might be to be conformed to the Lord’s Passion, and to know more fully what it is to be “crucified with Christ” as His Body.

St. Stephen's House Open Day

2010-08-10T16:21:00.003+01:00

OPEN DAY
Saturday 30th October 2010
10.00 am - 5.00 pm

St. Stephen's House
16 Marston Street
Oxford, OX4 1JX
Tel. 01865 613 500
enquiries@ssho.ox.ac.uk
admissions@ssho.ox.ac.uk
www.ssho.ox.ac.uk
map: click here

St. Stephen's House is an Anglican theological foundation and Permanent Private Hall in the University of Oxford, offering formation, education and training for Ordained Ministry, PGCE and a variety of qualifications.

If you are a potential student or you are thinking about your vocation or interested in learning more about ministry in the Catholic tradition of the Church of England, you are welcome to join us!

Tea and Coffee - Available from 10.00 am
Tours of the College - from 10.30 am
Sung Eucharist - 12.00 noon
Buffet Lunch - 1.oo pm
Vocations Addresses - 2.00 pm to 3.00 pm*
Studing in Oxford - 3.00 pm to 4.oo pm**
Tea - 4.00 pm
Evensong and Benediction - 4.30 pm

* An opportunity for those exploring ministry to put questions to a panel of vocation advisers.
** Find out information about the range of courses offered by the college.

Revd Canon Mark Oakley becomes Canon Treasurer at St. Paul's

2010-07-03T22:22:00.004+01:00

Photo from St Paul's Cathedral's website.

St Stephen's House congratulates the Revd Canon Mark Oakley (SSH 1990-1993) becomes Canon Treasurer at St Paul's.

Canon Oakley was born in Shrewsbury and studied Theology in London and Oxford before taking up his first appointment as Curate of St John’s Wood Church (1993-1996). He was then asked to become the Chaplain to the Bishop of London (1996-2000) and was appointed a Deputy Priest in Ordinary to HM the Queen in 1996. He served as Chaplain at Copenhagen and Archdeacon of Germany and North Europe (2005-2008) and was Area Dean of Westminster (St Margaret), from 2004 to 2005. He was Chaplain at RADA from 2003 to 2005.

For more info: Click HERE

Monday Reflection - Adrian Stark-Ordish

2010-06-25T11:05:00.001+01:00

This homily was given by Adrian Stark-Ordishk, a second year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 20th June 2010. The readings was Romans 11:25-end;

I want to spend a few moments this evening thinking about leaving.

St Aloysius left family and wealth to become a Jesuit. He, as patron saint of youth, also provided the name for Sebastian Flyte’s teddybear in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian is in love with his youth and struggles to leave it behind.

We here are coming up to the end of term and a leaving of our own, albeit a temporary one. Some of our community have already left for the next stage; a rather more permanent leaving. I wonder whether our, temporary, leaving is an opportunity for us to prepare for when we leave for good, whether that’s in one or two year’s time.

We have to choose between St Aloysius and Aloysius the teddybear. Will our time here be such that we are enabled to leave and move on, looking with gratitude on all that God has given us during our time here? Or will we find our time here hard to leave behind, wishing that life could remain always as it is now?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that living in Christian community is not the norm; it is a blessing and must not be taken for granted. We must see our time here together in this way. We are together now, but it will not always be so. Our summer vacation is a taste of this.

How can we learn to follow the saint and not the teddybear? How can we leave energised and forward-looking rather than looking backward? We are a transient community for we are called to be ordained ministers, not seminarians. How can we prepare for this? The habits that are being formed in us here will help, but the answer will be different for each of us. However, I believe that the answer will come down to learning to love God and to love our neighbour, however these are expressed in our individuality.

This summer is an opportunity to reflect on what is ahead of us and review our preparation for it. May it be fruitful.

Let us pray…

Gracious God,
we pray for those from our community who are to be ordained this Petertide. We pray also for ourselves as we seek to follow your call and deepen our love for you and for one another.
We ask this in the name of Jesus.
Amen.

Trinity III - Fr Andrew Davison

2010-06-23T13:24:00.002+01:00

Homily given by Fr Andrew Davison, on Trinity III, 20th June 2010.

‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.’

In the name of the + Father and of the + Son and of the + Holy Spirit.

You may remember that I preached towards the beginning of term. It wasn’t a cheerful sermon. It revolved around a question: why is the Church of England is so lacking in charity? Why is our zeal is so faint and our commitment so thin? Why are there are so few saints?

I will come later to today’s reading from Galatians. Paul introduces this chapter with a question of his own:

‘O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?’

It’s the same question as I was asking in my sermon, put a different way. How can we be so apathetic in face of the Incarnation? Do we really believe that God came to us and went all the way to death on a cross?

before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified

Is our church art so much decoration? Does it not speak to us to see Christ extended upon the cross? We had these words of Isaiah, taken by the Fathers as a prophecy of the crucifixion:

I held out my hands all day long
to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
following their own devices;

--

This last week many of us shared in our apologetics summer school. Stephen Bullivant’s lecture has been in my mind as I’ve been writing this sermon.

Stephen told us about twentieth-century responses to atheism, from people who didn’t them off as ‘a perverse and adulterous generation’. Stephen’s heroes asked why the Church was not more attractive, why the children of their time were more inspired by atheist Marxism than by the Catholic faith.

It was French theologians who had the right idea: any response to atheism must take two forms, one inward and one outward. Yes, there is work to be done in mission, but there is also work to be done renewing the church herself. Yves Congar puts it perfectly: ‘since the belief or unbelief of men depended so much on us, the effort to be made was a renovation of ecclesiology.’

Those tasks remain, and they fall to us. There is the external work of presenting the faith with passion and clarity. We have thought about that, many of us, over the past week.

Then there is the internal work. It seems to me that it falls into three parts: catechesis, charity and ecclesiology. There’s preparing a church that knows its faith; there is enflaming a church that puts its faith into action; and there is inspiring a church to know and rejoice in what it means to be the church.

--

My penultimate sermon it revolved around a question: why does the Church of England look so little like the body of He who came to cast fire upon the Earth?

That is a ‘why?’ question. Its solution will be a ‘who?’ question. Who will burn with charity? There is a simple answer: it is to be us; it is to be you. It is you who must build the Church up: teaching it, stirring it up, inspiring it to be itself.

From those great mid-century theologians we have three tasks: to teach the faith, to live the faith and to understand the Church. In each you have such a role to play, but it is a servant’s role. The clergy of the Church of England cannot save it: you cannot put in enough hours; you cannot meet enough people to preach the Gospel; frankly, you cannot provide the money to keep the lights on.

The hours, the evangelistic contact and the finances will come from the laity or they will not come at all. As future clergy, your task is to reconnect the laity with their faith, to renew their passion: to hold out before them the incarnate God, as he was held out to us upon the cross.

We need catechesis because the problems of the Church and the world need theological answers, not general answers. The Church and the world need Christians who know the truths of their faith and live by them.

That would be a revolutionary thing. Stephen’s lecture contained an oblique quotation that I’ve been able to track down. In his introduction to Dorothy Day’s autobiography The Long Loneliness (the founder of the Catholic Worker movement) the peace activist Daniel Berrigan describes her as someone who lived ‘as though the truth were true’. Dorothy Day responded to the dire needs of Depression Era American. She accomplished remarkable things, and her work carries on to this day – just round the corner from us in fact. She might simply reply that she took Christian theology seriously and lived as one who believed it to be true.

We have already moved on, since catechesis and charity go together. Conversely, to life without charity may as well be life without faith. Thomas says that charity makes faith Christian. The selfish, uncharitably Christian may not really believe in God at all. The American New Atheist Daniel Dennett stopped going to church as a young man when he decided that people do not believe in Christianity; they believe in believing in Christianity.

And finally to ecclesiology, or understanding the Church. That might seem like the odd one out: catechesis, social justice and ecclesiology? It is not. As the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England put it in more confident days, ‘the church is part of her own proclamation’: we believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Rarely has the Church been under such attack. In the face of terrible scandals, the church is in some places an object of scorn and everywhere the object of derision. But more corrosive than external scorn is internal apathy. The Church of England has spent so much time worrying about the problems of the Church that she has begun to see the Church as part of the problem. But it is not: the Church is God’s solution. The Church is the Body of Christ, the place of salvation. The Church is the beginning of the recreation of the world.

One of my favourite lines of twentieth century theology comes from one of those French men, de Lubac: the Church is the new universal community in embryo. In other words, the Church is already the beginning of the reconciliation of all things.

To see that, our passage from Galatians is the perfect passage:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

The Church is the first fruits of salvation. The Church is where reconciliation happens: Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female – and whatever other hostilities we need to add in our own day.

Keep the theology of the Church in view, and love the Church. Salvation is the communal reconciliation of all things in the Body of Christ. As you might perhaps read for yourselves in a forthcoming book, we believe in a church-shaped salvation. But that is not abstract idea. Church-shaped salvation means that we must work and pray for a salvation-shaped church. We are all in this together. This is work and prayer we share, wherever our paths will take us.

Trinity II - Fr Damian Feeney

2010-06-18T19:40:00.002+01:00

Homily given by Fr Damian Feeney, Vice Principal of St. Stephen’s House, on Trinity II, 13th June 2010.

It is a great joy and privilege to be here today as we celebrate the mighty sacraments of the new covenant in the life of Ann Lee, born just over a month ago, the youngest (and, apart from Christopher Johnson, the smallest) member of our community here at St. Stephen’s House. We celebrate with her because of all we understand her Baptism to mean; the truth of her incorporation into church and kingdom; the fact of her dying with Christ, that she may share in his resurrection; the vocation which is part of the gift of grace in her life, the outworking of which is entrusted to her parents and godparents. Above all we pray that this moment of Baptism will be the moment of her knowing Christ, and that such a knowledge will be hers every day of her life; that Christ is not only her companion, high priest, host, and guest, but friend and brother. For today Father Andrew and Sara are not alone in celebrating a new family member; all of us, and Christians all over the world, have a new sister.

Our gospel reading points to one aspect of this miraculous liturgy, namely forgiveness. Today and every day the grace of forgiveness will be Anne’s. Jesus came, and comes still, to end the estrangement between human beings and God, to banish the sins and barriers which we have built up amongst ourselves and against God. Today all of this is washed away: as we rejoice with Anne, her parents and godparents, we are reminded of the fact of our own baptism, without which none of the journeys we have undertaken would be possible. We rejoice in the endless capacity for mercy that the Lord displays towards those who turn to him in sorrow for their sins. For this astonishing God does not merely wish to look down on us. Nor is he content with merely being one of us, and sharing our lives as Christ did. This is a God who longs for the shocking intimacy of our incorporation into him, even as he sees fit to dwell within us. For we celebrate a very particular kind of new life – not the life we ourselves live, but the life lived in us by Christ, who is able to accomplish in us far more than we can ever ask or imagine (as Paul reminds the Ephesians) as we are rooted and grounded in his love. Consequently we are able to grasp the length, the breadth, the height and the depth of God’s love in our very beings.

Let us pledge today to pray for Ann, and for all those who, in future days, we will ourselves have the privilege of baptizing in our own ministries, that she may indeed know the life of Christ welling up within her, as he draws her close to himself, and that she may know and make known his presence and joy within her.

RIP David Campbell, Priest

2010-06-17T09:24:00.003+01:00

Pray for the soul of Revd David Campbell SSJE who past away on Saturday 12 June 2010. The funeral will be held in the chapel of St Mary's Convent(St Mary's Road, OX4 1RU) on Monday 21 June at 11.30am.

Please contact Sr Frances Dominica from All Saints' Convent on 07762 019 357 if you wish to attend.

Jesu mercy; Mary pray.

Monday Reflection - Imogen Black

2010-06-13T21:29:00.000+01:00

This homily was given by Imogen Black, a second year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 13rd June 2010. The readings was Romans 9:1-18;

This Wednesday is the feast day of St Richard of Chichester. He hasn’t made it into our House calendar, but I feel he deserves some attention, not least from those of us who are seminarians or priests. For his holiness was well-recognised in his lifetime, to the extent that he was canonized within ten years of his death, and it seems to me that he modelled virtues we would do well to emulate.

He was, when young, like many of us here, a student at Oxford. Those who feel their grants are a little small might find comfort in the fact that Richard knew student poverty all too well – he and the two friends with whom he lived were so poor that they only had one gown between them, and so had to take it in turns to attend lectures. Yet he persevered, and became well-known for his learning – he went on to study further at Paris and Bologna before returning to Oxford University as its Chancellor.

Richard was far more, however, than just a scholar. He was not afraid to stand up for the rights of the Church against the State, personally experiencing the cost of opposition to the King. Elected as Bishop of Chichester, Henry III refused to accept him, wishing a far less competent favourite to have the see instead. When he was opposed, he confiscated the see’s revenues and property, and Richard, though consecrated by the Pope, was obliged to live in penury for two years, until the King gave way. Yet in that time Richard still pursued a fruitful ministry, visiting on foot the parishes of his diocese.

He was regarded by many contemporaries, it seems, as a model bishop. It is said of him that he was hugely generous, in almsgiving and in hospitality, his charity being “as wide as the halls of his palace”, though he was austere in his own manner of living. He was always courteous and gentle, and was not so caught up in the affairs of the Church that he did not have time for other interests. In his spare time, it seems, he was a keen gardener, with a particular skill in grafting fruit trees.

Whilst said to have looked after the people of his diocese like a nurse caring for infants, he had high standards. The laity were obliged to attend Mass regularly, and to learn by heart certain common prayers. He expected worship to be conducted with order and reverence and was not afraid to defrock members of his clergy who acted immorally.

But perhaps the most important thing that can be said of him was his clear holiness, his personal devotion to Christ. This has become enshrined in his famous prayer, attributed to him on his deathbed – that he might know Christ more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly. These aspirations were very much at the heart of his life, at the heart of his ministry. As, in this month of June, we continue to reflect on Christ’s love for us, and the devotion which we ought, in turn, to offer him, we could do well to make Richard’s prayer our own.

Let us pray.

My thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesu Christ,
For all the benefits which thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for me,
O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
And follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

Concert at St Stephen's House

2010-06-09T21:14:00.003+01:00

The music publishers Edition HH will host a concert in St John’s Church on Friday 18 June 2010 at 6.45 p.m. Entrance to the church is from Iffley Road, opposite the university sports facilities.

The programme will include works from the Edition HH catalogue for marimba, bass flute and electronics. Admission is free.

For more information:
http://www.editionhh.co.uk/

Arguing for Christ Today 2010

2010-06-08T15:45:00.004+01:00

Arguing for Christ Today
Summer Apologetics Course 2010
St Stephen's House, Oxford
15-17 June 2010
[view map]

A Catholic, theological and philosophical exploration:

For the third consecutive year, St Stephen’s House is offering a course in Christian apologetics this June. The lectures and discussions will explore the subject from several angles, bringing a full range of theological resources to bear. The focus will be upon apologetics from an Anglican Catholic perspective. We will explore what it means to give a rational defence and advocacy of the Christian faith, working from a Christian understanding of reason that takes in desire and the imagination along side logic.

The lecturers and topics for 2010 are to be confirmed. In previous years, speakers and papers have included the following:

The Revd Prof Alister McGrath, Introduction to the Theory of Apologetics and , Apologetics, Science and the New Atheists
The Revd Dr Matthew Bullimore, Apologetics in the ParishÂ
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison, Philosophy, the Bible and Communication and Theological Topics for Apologetics
The Revd Prof Graham Ward, Apologetics and Contemporary Culture
Mrs Lucy Gardner, Beyond Defence: The Gospel as Good News
The Revd Dr Richard Conrad OP, The History of Apologetics with an Ecumenical Perspective
The Revd Dr John Hughes, Proofs, Arguments and Objections
The Revd Dr Canon Robin Ward, Apologetics, Catechesis and Liturgy: Some Historical Moments
The Revd Dr Alison Milbank, Apologetics and the Imagination
Dr Stephen Bullivant, Meeting Atheism in the Twentieth Century: Some Theological Responses

For more information:
http://www.ssho.ox.ac.uk/apologetics/Welcome.html

Monday Reflection - Taemin Oh

2010-06-08T15:37:00.002+01:00

This homily was given by Taemin Oh, a second year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 7th June 2010. The readings was Romans 7:1-6;

Trinity Term is, actually very special period for many of us. Although today’s weather is not very good, it is mainly the trinity term that we can feel the dramatic change of seasons, in such a good way. And of course, for some of seminarians, it is a time of ‘leaving’ to prepare the first step of their future; ordination. So, the last couple of days, I have asked a question to some of the leavers: ‘How do you feel now?’ As you can guess, majority of them told me that they were pretty nervous but fine.

Surely, we know that the word ‘nervous’ does not mean that they are seriously afraid of doing something or they think they are not ready to be ordained! Rather, it was some sort of expression of ‘the expectation to the uncertainty of the coming future.’ Yet, it all sounds very far for me, but it does not seem to be a bad idea to think about my own situation.

Yes, they are all gone, we can see that. They are many empty seats now in this chancel and even they look quite sad. But is that all? Can we see anything other than just empty seats? As Timothy Radcliffe quotes from the classical film Brief Encounter in his book Why go to Church, it maybe possible for us to see these stalls through the concept of ‘absence’.

A board housewife and a GP meet in a railway station and fall in love, but finally they realize that they have no future together, so they must break with each other. That evening, the husband of the housewife, Laura, says to her; ‘You have been a long way away. Thank you for coming back to me.’

It sounds like nothing more than just the story of Eastenders, but Radcliff points out that it was not a physical absence of hers, but a mental, spiritual, human absence. In our real life, I am sure that we all know this ‘exist-but-not-exist’ status very well.

On the other hand, we also know that the sense of absence can bring us more than emptiness. The prodigal son in Luke’s Gospel had to empty his mind first to ask his father to forgive him and to accept him. Once the son emptied his mind, then he could fill his heart with other things. Similarly, in today’s second lesson, Paul says, ‘we have to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.’ We know that to die, in Paul’s perspective, is not an easy task, because we also know that to empty our mind is not an easy thing to do. We should say ‘No pain, no gain’.

Our leavers, bravely, had emptied their seats, their old identity as laity. But soon they will have their new identity as a deacon or priest. The continuers who are in this chancel today, we also should empty our minds, so that we can fill our hearts with love, charity, and prayer for others. And this is what we need to learn, during our remaining training period.

Let us pray.

We pray for those ordained deacon this year;

Michael Bailey, James Bradley, Michael Childs, Michael Ellis, Adrian Furse, Martin Henig, Daniel Lloyd, Simon Sayer and Alysoun Whitton.

We also pray for those ordained priest this year;

Mary Ashton, Paul Atkinson, Peter Boyland, Dexter Bracey, Milesius Brandon, Stephen Hearn, Josephine Houghton, James Rodley and Daniel Sandham.

Grant, We beseech Thee, merciful Lord,
that the designs of a new and better life,
which by thy Grace we have now formed,
may not pass away without effect.
Incite and enable us by Thy Holy Spirit,
to improve the time which Thou shalt grant us;
to avoid all evil thoughts, words and actions;
and to do all the duties which Thou shalt set before us.
Hear our prayer, O Lord,
for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Understanding Islam 2010

2010-06-06T21:47:00.004+01:00

Understanding Islam :
Monday 7th ~ Thursday 10th June 2010
St. Stephen's House, Oxford
[view map]

This is a course for those who want to learn more about Islam and reflect on Islam as Christians.

It aims to provide an understanding of Islam as Muslims understand it, and to address questions of Christian response to Islam and Christian co-existence with Muslims. No prior knowledge of Islam will be assumed.Â Most of the teaching will be provided by David Marshall; there will also be input from other speakers, Muslim and Christian (including staff at the Oxford Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies), and visits to Muslim institutions.

Topics to be covered include:

The life of Muhammad
The Qur'an
Islamic belief and practice
Islam and society
Recent developments in Islam
Islam in Britain
Christian-Muslim relations

Course director and principal lecturer: Revd Dr. David Marshall

David Marshall studied theology at the University of Oxford and Islamic Studies at Birmingham University. His doctorate, on the Qur'an, was published as God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers. He trained for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and has worked in parishes in Leeds and Cambridgeshire, in university chaplaincy, and in theological education both in England and abroad.

From 2000-2005, David was Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a post involving substantial work in interfaith relations, particularly in a number of Christian-Muslim initiatives. Since then he has taught in a range of contexts, including St Stephen's House, the Cambridge Theological Federation, the London School of Theology and the London campus of Notre Dame University. He is now serving as the Academic Director of the Archbishop's Building Bridges seminar for Christian and Muslim scholars.

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For more information: enquiries@ssho.ox.ac.uk

Leavers' Sunday 2010

2010-06-06T15:13:00.003+01:00

Today marked the end of their time at St Stephen's House for nine of our number who left following our Sung Mass and Leavers' BBQ. We wish them all the very best for the future and send them off with assurance of our prayers. (click HERE to see some photos)

Please pray for those ordiained deacon this year:

Michael Bailey
James Bradley
Michael Childs
Michael Ellis
Adrian Furse
Martin Henig
Daniel Lloyd
Simon Sayer
and
Alysoun Whitton

Please pray for those ordained priest this year:

Mary Ashton
Paul Atkinson
Peter Boyland
Dexter Bracey
Milesius Brandon
Stephen Hearn
Josephine Houghton
James Rodley
and
Daniel Sandham

Corpus Christi - Fr Damian Feeney

2010-06-04T14:41:00.002+01:00

Vice Principal, Fr Damian Feeney preached at the Mass on Corpus Christi. The Gospel was Luke 9:11-17 ;

The more perceptive among you will know that for some time two cats have been resident in my house. I confess to something of a love-hate relationship with them, for behind the cuteness that everyone else seems to find so appealing there are two ruthless, calculating beings. One is serene until roused – and when roused, fights ensue – the other is, quite simply, mad. The first, when hungry, ingratiates himself with temporary displays of affection. The other uses intimidation – scratches, bites, threats and blackmails of all kinds. All of this is to ensure that they are fed. And once they are fed, and full, they wander off to do …well, whatever it is that cats do. Their various strategies to ensure full stomachs are presumably part of some survival mechanism – they eat to live, that they may feel full, and they are content until they feel hungry again, and that’s the end of the story. (Actually, I know one or two humans like that as well).

Tonight we consider a very different kind of feeding - a kind which does not leave us feeling full, but which makes us aware of a greater hunger. The nourishment of the Body and Blood of Jesus, tonight here celebrated, is of a different order entirely. We rightly speak tonight in the most exalted terms of the very presence of Jesus Christ, truly God, truly human, here among us in this Mass, in this most Holy Sacrament. We will endeavour to demonstrate this belief further as we process with this Divine Presence beyond the church walls. Then we will settle down to another type of feast at our guest dinner. But there is a very particular way in which this feeding leaves us – or should leave us – unsatisfied.

We who belong to the great joy and privilege of a Eucharistic community are aware that with the privilege comes the responsibility. If we are drawn to this feast, to our High Priest, host and friend, we commune with the divine, and with the divine purpose. We reflect continually upon what it means to live with the Mass at the centre of our being, but often fail to recognize the intimate connectedness between the Eucharist we share, the Godhead we adore, and the new, transformed lives which Jesus longs for us to live. The hunger which the Eucharist brings about in us is a hunger for the world, a hunger for our neighbour, whoever he or she may be. It is a hunger which cannot be satisfied until all are fed, until all live lives of dignity which are worthy of the kingdom, until the very kingdom of God is ushered in through this divine presence and the hunger He inspires. The more exalted our attitude to the Eucharistic presence of Jesus is, the greater and more pressing is our sense of responsibility.

None of us can claim to have an attitude to such things which is anything other than cursory. All of us need to recognize and feel this hunger, a hunger which cries out with the physical and spiritual hunger of others. How good we are at dressing up such outrages as poverty and hunger with our sophisticated politics, as we endeavour to absolve ourselves from simple action. Well, I don’t believe Jesus will accept that, or own it, because the bread which he gives is his very flesh, for the life of the world. And mere charity, in the sense of the benevolent giving from the surplus of our plenty, is not enough. The charity which we seek is rather the theological virtue, the unlimited loving-kindness which expresses itself when we stand alongside the disadvantaged and share their lot as Christ did. It was this distinction which Eduardo Galeano had in mind when he wrote,

I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person and learns from the other. Most of us have a lot to learn from other people.

Belonging to a Eucharistic community carries with it profound responsibility – to the beatitudes, to the Kingdom of God itself - the responsibilities of the kingdom – to act in ways which indicate our hunger, our dissatisfaction with the status quo. For many who dare to acknowledge this hunger, it is expressed in opposition to globalization, to a world run for the benefit of corporations, looking instead to a truly Eucharistic model of living – a world, as Timothy Gorringe puts it, ‘of mutual accountability, of just sharing, of common ownership, of non-hierarchical forms of power.’ In this sacrament, this wondrous presence, we are enabled to celebrate how far we have come, to recognize how far we still have to travel, to acknowledge the divine hunger which drives us, and the sublime nourishment and grace which will guide us home. In this mode of being we ourselves seek to become signposts of the Eucharistic heart of our faith and of all living. As Gerald Schlabach memorably writes, ‘

‘God sets a lavish table, hosting outcasts and enemies, feeding all with God’s own life. Incarnate in Jesus Christ and embodied still in bread and wine, God offers life to the world by a further miracle of incarnation through all these sinful, bumbling, short-falling Christian lives which yet become Eucharist in and for the world’.

To be Eucharist in and for the world – that is our vocation, the vocation of all the baptized, a vocation which finds distinctive focus and character in the vocation to be deacons, to be priests. I conclude with a well-known quote – well known because it is brilliant – and I offer it especially to those of you who have come out of retreat today, and who will be ordained to the diaconate within days now. It comes in the words of Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar, speaking to the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress.

. . . I say to you, and I say it with all the earnestness that I have, if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in His Blessed Sacrament, then, when you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you, through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the peoples of your cities and villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum. . . . It is folly, it is madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacrament and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating Him in the bodies and souls of His children. . . . You have your Mass, you have your altars, you have begun to get your tabernacles. Now go out into the highways and hedges, and look for Jesus in the ragged and the naked, in the oppressed and the sweated, in those who have lost hope, and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them, and, when you have found Him, gird yourself with His towel of fellowship and wash His feet in the person of his brethren’.

The Most Holy Trinity - Ian Boxall

2010-05-31T22:14:00.004+01:00

The Senior Tutor, Ian Boxall, preached at the Mass on the Most Holy Trinity. The gospel was John 16:12-15:

One of the many advantages of spending my childhood holidays in Croydon, is that I have very vivid and happy memories of long summer daytrips to London. Normally my aunt came with us, and one of my earliest memories is of her stern warning about watching our step as we walked the London streets. ‘Make sure you tread carefully in the middle of the paving stones,’ she would say. ‘Under no circumstances step on the lines, otherwise the bears might get you.’ She, of course, was of that generation which had absorbed the verse of A.A. Milne, best known as the creator of Winnie the Pooh, and Milne provided the mantra as we made our way very gingerly along the pavements:

Whenever I walk in a London street,

I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;

And I keep in the squares,

And the masses of bears,

Who wait at the corners all ready to eat

The sillies who tread on the lines of the street

Go back to their lairs,

And I say to them, "Bears,

Just look how I'm walking in all the squares!" (A.A. Milne, Lines and Squares).

Now it is possible to treat the doctrine of the Trinity in a similar way, as a perilous journey down the assault course of a London street. Stray a little too far to the left, and you might find yourself crossing the line into Modalism; go too far to the right, and you could step over the border into Monarchianism. Go a bit too fast, and your foot might slip into Adoptionism; trip up on a loose paving-stone, and your whole body might topple over into Macedonianism. If we keep on the street too long, there is a strong danger that we might be exposed as Unitarians or Tritheists. All around us, meanwhile, there are threatening bears waiting to gobble us up: with names like Arianism, Sabellianism, and Apollinarianism. Apparently, the only way to get through is to keep your head down, watch out for the lines, and keep repeating the mantra: ‘Not three eternals but one eternal’; ‘not three uncreated but one uncreated’; ‘not three incomprehensibles but one incomprehensible’.

Yet Christian faith in God as Trinity is perhaps not best imagined as a set of military manoeuvres designed to provoke anxiety. On the contrary, the precise definitions and rules about what can and can’t be said about God are there to make the journey easier for us; to free us from the trap of worshipping a God who is just too small, or too remote, too unfit for purpose and ultimately unable to save us.

This is underscored when we turn to today’s scripture readings, and learn that the doctrine of the Trinity is cause not for anxiety but rather for delight. Our first reading from the book of Proverbs offers us a highly poetic alternative to the account of Creation at the beginning of Genesis. Wisdom calls out, describing how she was present with the LORD in the beginning, as a master-builder, intimately involved in the construction as the wisely-planned creation began to unfold. Or alternatively (to read the Hebrew a somewhat different way), Wisdom is depicted as the creator’s child, playing with the creation like a new toy of which she thoroughly approves. Whatever the translation, we hear this passage on Trinity Sunday in recognition that, as early as the New Testament itself, Christians have seen in this figure of Wisdom a vision of Christ: present with the Father before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills were formed, when the heavens were established and he drew the lines between the land and the sea (Prov. 8:22-29). Far from the vision of an unmoved mover, we see a God who delights in what he has made, who draws circles as well as lines between squares as he brings order out of the chaos of the deep. More importantly, however, the Father delights in Wisdom, and Wisdom in turn delights in the world that is coming to be, and especially delights in the human race which has emerged as the pinnacle of that creation. It is a vision of mutual delight which issues forth into delightful creativity.

Then, in St John’s Gospel, we hear that the Spirit of Truth is also intimately involved in this divine delightfulness. ‘He will glorify me,’ says Jesus, ‘because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’ The Spirit doesn’t take away honour from the Son, anymore than he offers some new revelation which upstages that provided by Jesus. The Spirit glorifies the Son just as the Son has glorified the Father, and as the Father is about to glorify the Son in the hour of his death and resurrection. All that the Spirit does and says is to enhance the Son’s reputation. Picking up on the language of Proverbs, which John has already exploited in the Prologue to his Gospel, we might even say that the Spirit is that delight which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father.

What about us? What implications might this divine delightfulness have for our own lives together in this place, centred on the worship of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Timothy Radcliffe puts it this way:

‘The persons of the Trinity are not three ‘imaginary friends’, in the words of Dawkins, three people with whom I can have fantasy conversations. Rather friendship with the Triune God reshapes my perception of the world. Believing in the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, I see everything with gratitude. Believing in the Son, I delight in its intelligibility and seek understanding. Believing in the Holy Spirit, I am thrown beyond myself in love’ (Timothy Radcliffe OP, Why Go To Church? London and New York: Continuum, 2008, p. 72).

There is perhaps a certain irony for those of us in this community, that we celebrate Trinity Sunday at this time of the year, when our leavers are about to depart and a new community formed. For in St John’s Gospel, from which we heard today, it is precisely in the context of a departure that we are given the most explicit glimpse into the life of Trinity. In the Upper Room, as Jesus takes leave of his disciples and prepare them for what lies ahead, he opens up as it were the heart of God. In the dynamic relationship between Father, Son and Spirit that Jesus reveals, we see an overabundance of delight, with no hint of self-absorption or selfishness, nor rivalry or jealousy or one-upmanship. At the very point of departure, albeit in a scene tinged with sadness and apprehension, John invites us to listen into a dialogue at the heart of God: the God who is love, who so loves the world that he gives his only Son, whose parting gift to us is the love between them which is the Spirit. And bound up with this glimpse into the God who is love, is the new commandment, that ‘just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’ (Jn 13:34).

RIP Peter G Cobb, Priest

2010-05-26T23:15:00.010+01:00

Pray for the soul of Peter George Cobb, priest (SSH 1964-5), sometime Senior Tutor of St Stephen's House (1971-6) and its historian; sometime Master of the College of Guardians of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Jesu mercy; Mary pray.

2010-05-21T09:09:00.003+01:00

Dr. John Jarick

We congratulate John Jarick on his appointment as Departmental Lecturer in Old Testament for three years from 1st October 2010. His duties will comprise lecturing and teaching in place of Professor John Barton, who is absent on a Leverhulme fellowship for the period. The association of this post is with Regent’s Park College, so John will leave St Stephen’s House after nine years in post at the end of September. We wish him well on his appointment and express our thanks for everything he has contributed to the life of the college during his time here.

-The Revd Canon Dr Robin Ward.

Monday Reflection - Adrian Furse

2010-05-19T11:20:00.000+01:00

This homily was given by Adrian Furse, a final year ordinand, at Evening Prayer on Monday 10th May 2010. The readings was 1 Peter 4:1-11.

‘The end of all things is at hand’ 1Peter 4:7

For those of us who live between the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His Second Coming, this is what we are to have in mind: that we inhabit a liminal space, looking to the completion of all things in the mercy of God.

As a community we have to live with this uncertainty in a number of ways – staff and students are preparing to leave – for work elsewhere and ordination, some are preparing to sit examinations, and all for the glory of God in a world whose economic and political spheres are uncertain, for a church where old certainties give way to new crises. But lest we think that we are alone or unusual in this, it is salutary to be reminded that this is exactly the situation faced by the addressees of the First Letter of Peter.

The advice in this evening’s second reading (1Peter 4:1-11) is quite clear: we are to be in the world, but not of the world. The Christian faith which we proclaim in both word and deed is to be radical, profoundly counter-cultural – a sign of hope, of new life, and victory, in Christ’s breaking the bonds of Hell and being raised to new life in the Spirit. Not for us the revelry which meets its end in dissipation, but in the sober and prayerful cultivation of the virtues.

Our growth in holiness together as a community is founded in the love which we have one for another. This love is a reflection of the life of God as Trinity in Unity and the source and perfection of all human virtues. It is this love which makes Jesus lay down His life freely and in obedience to the will of His Father. It is this love which raises Him to new life and through the Holy Spirit strengthens and encourages His Church. We respond by living lives in this world though not of it, founded on and infused by love which covers a multitude a multitude of our sins. It is shown in our common life together and our hospitality towards our guests in this place.

As a mixed, varied, and diverse community, we take the gifts and talents which God has given to us, to use them to build up our common life together. Everything which we do, from pouring a Gin & Tonic, to sweeping up dead flies in church, organising liturgy, writing an essay, taking an exam, or offering the Sacrifice of the Mass, all these things are done for the glory of God and to build us up in love.

All that we have, all that we are is directed towards these aims, this is what living the resurrection life means. The world may not understand it, yet it cannot fail to be moved by our witness to the love of God in word and deed. This then is our end, our proper function, the goal toward which we press.

Monday Reflection - Gavin Cooper

2010-05-04T11:25:00.003+01:00

This homily was given by Gavin Cooper, a second year ordinand from the Diocese of Peterborough, at Evening Prayer on Monday 26th April 2010. The readings were Deuteronomy 9:1-21 and Ephesians 4:1-16.

Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

I am sure that there is not one person in this room who has not felt anxiety in the past few weeks, or, indeed, is anxious now. The BTh exams are looming, the BA exams are in sight, the MTh essays are being read and re-read, some of our community face not only the run up to ordination (which in itself is something to be anxious about) but they are also thinking about their new situations, a new house to furnish, a new community to join. It is inevitable in a situation such as ours that we are all under a lot of pressure - and I speak of the staff as well - Fr Robin has his book being published, Fr Andrew is looking ahead to his new appointment - we are a community of anxious people.

I know, only too well, how annoying it can be to be reminded of coming exams and the things that need to be checked off the list before they arrive, and therefore, I apologise for bringing the subject up again.

This is, though, a funny term - and I think that those of us who have been through a Trinity Term at St Stephen’s house will tell you different things about the way in which the community changes throughout the ten weeks we will be here. Daniel reminded us in Chapel Practice, for example, that the dynamic in Evening Prayer will change. We are after all a community that is constantly changing shape - mainly due to the way in which we are being formed and the things we learn about each other as our time here passes. In a few weeks we will be a smaller community and that will take some getting used to - in a way, we will be starting from scratch in terms of being a new group. A cause for anxiety? During this term we will be welcoming more people on interview here and encouraging people into our community? A cause for anxiety?

There is a lot to be anxious about. And whilst we are right to be anxious, we are reminded tonight of our purpose and calling. Paul begs us to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called. We are constantly reminded of what we are called to do and in our studies are being directed towards ways in which we can fulfil that calling in the best way we can- however, as Fr Damian said yesterday, this is about walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

In our growth, we are to approach this calling with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, but most importantly, we are to use our gifts and talents to build up the body of Christ. That is, after all, God’s will for his whole church.

There is one body and one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father, by whom we were called to the one hope of our calling. We are given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift and that is where our anxiety and fears are dispelled as we grow in unity and faith to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

So as we approach exams, deadlines, new jobs, ordination and anything else that might be causing us to be anxious, remember that we are all working to the same end - that the body of Christ might be built up; and that it might be built up in love.

SS Philip & James - Christopher Johnson

2010-05-04T09:08:00.002+01:00

This homily was given by first year ordinand, Christopher Johnson, at Evening Prayer on Monday, the feast of SS Philip and James.

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8f.)

Following the example her Head, the Church’s mission is to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to help the blind to see, and to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18). Easier said than done; and rarely is the Church bold enough to employ this literally, though the kingdom, especially for St. Luke, was one that could be (at least partly) realised in this life, as well as something promised and waiting to be experienced. Tonight’s reading from Deuteronomy reminded us of the values of that kingdom: ‘Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue’ – a poignant reminder, in fact, of the Christian vocation when it comes to casting our vote this week. Still, general elections are not the only time when we might pursue justice. The Greek of the New Testament relates the concept closely to righteousness – which is not so much an abstract reality, but is an aspect of God, and, as St. Matthew informs us, can be shared and must be pursued by mankind. ‘Blessed are those’, he writes, ‘who hunger and thirst for righteousness’, ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’, ‘For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom’ (Matthew 5:6, 10, 20). Righteousness and justice are values of that kingdom, and Christ’s Church and disciples are called to live out those values here in our earthly pilgrimage.

Ss. Philip and James lived lives which embodied these values, and died deaths which exemplified them further. Their deaths cried out the words of St. Peter – ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading’ (1 Peter 1:3). Philip and James were privileged to share in such blessings as their earthly pilgrimage ended and they took their place in the Church Triumphant. Moreover, they provide an example to us of Christian witness; the end and beginning of which is the greater glory of God. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!’ (1 Peter 1:3). Unlike Philip and James, though, whose witness may have been strengthened by that close encounter with our Lord as He walked on earth, our eyes have not seen Him – at least not in the same way. Yet, our own witness should still be motivated by love: ‘Although you have not seen Him’, writes Peter, ‘you love Him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy’ (1 Peter 1:8).

As we were reminded by Fr. Peter not so long ago, like Philip and James, like the English Martyrs we celebrate tomorrow, and like St. George our country’s patron, we must face our own martyrdom. As visible witnesses of Christ and His Church, we are called not only to account for His Gospel, which is difficult enough in a world with values that are often in complete contrast, but we are also called to account for our own behaviour in light of that Gospel message. And as we have been reminded again recently, the two do not always tally. Yet our witness must continue – our Lord insists: ‘Go’, he says, ‘and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28:19f.). Go, he says, evangelise, incorporate, offer the Sacraments, teach the faith. Fight the good fight, for salvation is what is at stake; and however difficult modern society sees the Cyprianic dictum (ad Jub.), confirmed in the Council of Florence (1442), that outside the Church there is no salvation, the imperative to draw people in to Christ’s flock is still there, and more so now, for ‘salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers’ (Romans 13:11).

When, therefore, we are casting our vote this week, let us call to mind the true love of God manifested in all His Holy Martyrs. Let us offer ourselves, and our votes, to furthering Christ’s kingdom on earth, not only acknowledging that each person is created in God’s image, but that each is created in His image, ‘according to His likeness’ (Genesis 1:26). Let us, as St. Irenaeus explained (Adv. Haer., v:1), grow in that likeness by conforming ourselves to Him who is Truth, and let us do it with a passion to see His kingdom grow. Then we may hear the loud voice from heaven which proclaims: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!’ (Revelation 12:10-12).

Easter V - Fr Andrew Davison

2010-05-02T17:18:00.004+01:00

The Theological Virtues - Faith, Hope, & Charity.

You may have come across the latest book by Philip Pulman, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The title is not something that I like to read out in church, but there you go, that’s what the book is called: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

Pulman has the good grace to label his book ‘a story’. I doubt that will prevent it from dragging souls away from God. After all, The Da Vinci Code is only ‘a story’ but it’s turned untold thousands of people away from the Faith. In Pulman’s story there are two brothers: Jesus, a good man, and Christ, a scoundrel. Jesus teaches an ethic of love; Christ complicates things with his overlay of theology and big ideas. Pulman makes his point in an inventive way but his argument has been around for a hundred years and more: Jesus was a good man but his message and example were hijacked by the Gospel writers. They ruined the simple ethical teaching of this rabbi with their theology and its insinuations that Jesus was divine. The main culprit among them, of course, is John.

Except that sometimes the villain is Paul. For other detractors it was Paul who took Jesus, an itinerant teacher, and spoilt his simple ethical message with theological additions. That was AN Wilson’s line, until he recently saw better of it.

These points cross my mind this morning because I read John yesterday, and St Paul. I do not find a simple ethical imperative obscured, as the hostile critics say. If anything, John and Paul concentrate on a message even simpler, even more imperative, than Christ as we find him in the other Gospels.

Does John deflect us from the real Jesus, that simple preacher of love and forgiveness? Here is what he writes for us today: ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another… By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ It is John, of all New Testament writers, who is obsessed by love – the simple ‘ethical’ message of love – here in this Gospel and throughout his First Letter [There is an argument to be made that the ‘ethics’ of Jesus are so revolutionary that they should not be bracketed with other systems under the world ‘ethics’. I have sympathy for this idea, but I will not pursue it here.]. And Paul devotes a whole chapter to the supremacy of love. His message is strikingly similar to that of Jesus in today’s Gospel from John.

Today’s Gospel passes over all the miracles that the disciples were to perform and says instead that it is love, love supremely, that will distinguish them as Christ’s disciples. [The point is St John Chrysostom’s, as quoted by Aquinas in the Catena Aurea commentary on this passage.] ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples’ – not that you perform miracles, although you will, but – ‘if you have love for one another’.

That is so much like Paul: what matters for the Christian is not miracles, speaking in tongues, or prophecy, or supernatural insight, or faith to hand our bodies over to be burned, but love [cf. 1 Corinthians 13]. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another: the more excellent way. That means we can certainly agree that Jesus offered his first hearers a message of charity, expressed in words and examples such as they had never heard or seen. But we need not accept that this was soon obscured beneath theology, philosophy and abstraction. Love, charity has been the golden thread running through Christian writings ever since: Paul, John, Augustine, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Theresa of Avilla, and others down to the present day.

The burning flame of charity is everything. And that should cause us to stop in our tracks and search our souls. I have one more sermon left here after this one. In that sermon I can be upbeat and cheerful. That means today I can afford to be tough. What is wrong with the Church of England that we are so lacking in charity? You will think that I refer to the lack of charity in our dealings with one other when we disagree. And yes, I suppose, I do. But more than that, and most of all, I mean why are Anglicans so often content to live middling Christian lives? Why are there so few saints among us?

Christ said ‘I have come to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled’ [cf. Luke 12.49]. That fire is the fire of the Holy Spirit; it is the fire of charity. I look at the Church of England and, with the exception of some evangelicals, it does not seem much like the body of him who came to cast fire upon earth. This should be the cause of profound uneasiness.

The Church of England is making decisions that are deeply unsettling for some of us. I am not, of course, going to address those here. But to those of you who are troubled by them, I want to ask, is it not also troubling that there is so little heroic charity among us, any of us? And to those of us for whom the path the Church is taking is a cause of sorrow only at a remove, in that it distresses others, I ask this: we’re cheerful about what we see as positive developments – should we not, however, be anguished that the Church is not more aflame with charity? I for one cannot be satisfied that the average Roman Catholic I know is ardent, and the average evangelical I know is ardent, but that Anglo-Catholics have hardly been ardent for seventy-five years.

So that is a programme for each of us, and for our church, and for our movement as Anglo-catholics, if we can talk on one movement any longer. It is simply this, to be aflame with the flame of charity. In my first sermon here as tutor in doctrine I said that doctrine matters but most of all we must have charity. And in my penultimate sermon I am saying the same thing.

In today’s Gospel Jesus says that he is going away. He refers to the passion. Given to us today as an Eastertide Gospel, our minds skip ahead to later departure, the Ascension. That can give us hope. The Son ascends to send upon us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the charity of God. If what I have said this morning at all chimes with you, then make these days leading up to Pentecost days of prayer that God will pour his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us.

There may need to be scholarly refutations of Pulman and the rest. That should not be our first priority. What matters is what Jesus lays before us in our Gospel: ‘by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’

Principal interviewed by The New Yorker

2010-04-27T18:53:00.002+01:00

The Principal, Canon Robin Ward, speaks to the The New Yorker about the current situation in the Church of England. Read the whole article here.