Richard Hooker, Priest and Theologian, 1600

The Episcopal church commemorates Richard Hooker, one of the great theologians of our tradition, today. Hooker's writings, in particular Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, stressed tolerance and inclusiveness and the middle way of Anglicanism between what he saw as the extremes of Catholicism and the Puritan movement.

And in recent years, I remember this day in 2007 when the presiding bishop preached about him at the Diocese of Vermont's convention Eucharist.

Hooker is a remarkable example of what wisdom in the flesh looks like—which is probably why he made it onto our list of saints. He wrote his most famous work in response to controversy with another wing of the church. And you don't have to look much beyond the first page to see the connections with current controversies in this church.

Richard Hooker was appointed Master, or Rector, of the Temple Church in London in the late 1500s. He had an assistant there, from the Puritan wing of the church, named Walter Travers. Hooker's duty was to preach in the morning. Travers followed him in the afternoon, and he took the opportunity one day to refute what the rector had said in the morning, when he preached about salvation and the possibility that all of us will be saved. The Puritan position, along with Calvin, believed that some may be damned even before they can do anything. Hooker insisted that that understanding took away the possibility of God's grace.

Hooker's focus on reason and tolerance and inclusion is foundational to that broad stream of Anglican thought. This isn't just academic theologizing. It has to do with the basic identity of our tradition—that we can be comprehensive and inclusive as we search for a larger truth. And that rather than being a cop-out, that focus on comprehension is a sign of the spirit at work.

That focus on comprehension lies underneath the challenging and uncomfortable place we are trying to stand in as a church today—affirming that gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians are deserving of the best ministry of this church, AND that there is a place for those who take a different theological position. We say that we are willing to live in that uncomfortable and unsettling place because we believe that only God has truth in its fullness.

Wisdom, and the search for it, is one of the gifts and vocations that the body of Christ always needs. None of us ever has it all, and it is only in the wisdom of the body gathered that we can even begin to think that we might have the mind of Christ.

Hooker's statue stands outside Exeter Cathedral.

A Gentle Witness

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates one of my heros - Florence Li Tim-Oi, who on this day in 1944 was ordained as the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion.

Collect of the Day:

Gracious God, we thank you for calling Florence Li Tim-Oi, much-beloved daughter, to be the first woman to exercise the office of a priest in our Communion: By the grace of your Spirit inspire us to follow her example, serving your people with patience and happiness all our days, and witnessing in every circumstance to our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Icon of Florence Li Tim-Oi in the General Theological Seminary, New York City, 2005; painted by Sr. Ellen Francis, OSH.

COMMEMORATION: AELRED, ABBOT OF RIEVAULX

Today the Episcopal church commemorates Aelred of Rievaulx, born 1109 and died January 12, 1167. He entered the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx when he was 24 and became abbot in 1147. While abbot, he wrote a classic book of spirituality, Spiritual Friendship, which is still in print.

He wrote,

"There are four qualities which characterize a friend: Loyalty, right intention, discretion, and patience. Right intention seeks for nothing other than God and natural good. Discretion brings understanding of what is done on a friend’s behalf, and ability to know when to correct faults. Patience enables one to be justly rebuked, or to bear adversity on another’s behalf. Loyalty guards and protects friendship, in good or bitter times."

Thanks to Integrity for the Aelred icon image.

Feast of Julian of Norwich, Contemplative

Lord God, who in your compassion granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today is the Feast Day of Julian of Norwich, one of my most favourite spiritual writers and saints. She celebrated God and Nature. If you don't know much about her, why don't you read a bit.

Her book is a tender meditation on God's eternal and all-embracing love, as expressed to us in the Passion of Christ.

She describes seeing God holding a tiny thing in his hand, like a small brown nut, which seemed so fragile and insignificant that she wondered why it did not crumble before her eyes. She understood that the thing was the entire created universe, which is as nothing compared to its Creator, and she was told, "God made it, God loves it, God keeps it."

She was concerned that sometimes when we are faced wiith a difficult moral decision, it seems that no matter which way we decide, we will have acted from motives that are less then completely pure, so that neither decision is defensible. She finally wrote: "It is enough to be sure of the deed. Our courteous Lord will deign to redeem the motive."

A matter that greatly troubled her was the fate of those who through no fault of their own had never heard the Gospel. She never received a direct answer to her questions about them, except to be told that whatever God does is done in Love, and therefore "that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

And you can read more about her here!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Andrew Plus

"We remember Oscar Romero, a Roman Catholic bishop who was killed by an assassins bullet while he celebrated a mass. That was 30 years ago today. We also remember the martyrs of El Salvador, the priests, nuns, and lay people who were murdered, raped, jailed, and who simply disappeared because they gave voice to the poor and ministered to them. They spoke out against the injustices that robbed ordinary people of food, shelter, land and the ability to make a decent living and basic human dignity. They spoke out against a government that favored the rich to the exclusion of the poor.
[...]"On our own every day level, what we do in this parish and diocese may appear very mundane by comparison to standing up to a military junta. But being a friend and apprentice of Jesus among his people is still costly, a little scary, and very important. It may involve welcoming a mentally ill young man into your church who has walked through the rain from his group home into your congregation with open arms. It may mean choosing to welcome the homeless into your church when it gets too cold outside. It may mean driving around bringing meals to the homebound who would otherwise go hungry. It may mean standing up to the media no-nothings and pot-stirrers who tell us mean-spirited lies that Jesus had nothing to do with the poor--or at least gently but firmly correcting those who are taken by their harangue.

"I am certain that Romero's own journey was not easy. He was not raised to be a radical. He was raised in privilege and was appointed to care for the church in his archdiocese in a rather conventional way. Appoint priests, oversee schools, manage the books...don't rock the boat. But he had a heart for faith, and was willing to go where Jesus led him. At first tentatively, and later boldly, he began to connect the dots. He believed that the job of the church was to care for the weakest of God's people. For Romero, this was a death sentence.

"The thing about walking with the poor is that may feel like death. Maybe we won't get beat up by goons, or shot by an assassin. It might mean that we are not invited to few parties or considered a little crazy by our relatives. But we are going to the places where Jesus went, we are seeing the faces that Jesus sees, and we learning love from the people for whom Jesus died and rose again."

Almighty God, you called your servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, we may without fear or favor witness to your Word who abides, your Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.

Transformed: A soldier who became a man of peace

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, guide the nations of the world Into the way of justice and truth, and establish among them that peace which is the fruit of righteousness, that they may become the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Today is the Feast of St Martin, Bishop of Tours, 397.

"The Feast of Martin, a soldier who fought bravely and faithfully in the service of an earthly sovereign, and then enlisted in the service of Christ, is also the day of the Armistice which marked the end of the First World War. On it we remember those who have risked or lost their lives in what they perceived as the pursuit of justice and peace."

Icon by the hand of Br. Leon Liddament, St. Seraphim's Studio, Walsingham, England. View more icons of St Martin here.

"In olden days in England, St. Martin was an extremely popular Saint, and his feast ushered in the great fast before Nativity. When St. Augustine of Canterbury arrived in Kent, he found in Canterbury a Christian church, ancient even then, dedicated to St. Martin. The location can still be seen in modern-day Canterbury."

See St Martin's Church, Canterbury, the oldest church in England still in use - here.

Collect for today:

Lord God of hosts, who clothed your servant Martin the soldier With the spirit of sacrifice, and set him as a bishop in your Church to be a defender of the catholic faith: Give us grace to follow in his holy steps, that at the last we may be found clothed with righteousness in the dwellings of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Venerable Bede, Priest, and Monk of Jarrow, 735

A reading for May 25.

TimesOnline

Roderick Strange - Credo: More than a brief flight through warmth and light

Bede once compared human life without faith to a sparrow flying through a banqueting hall in winter

An old monk lay dying but still he had work to complete. He dictated to a scribe the last lines of a book he had been writing on St John’s Gospel and distributed what few small treasures he possessed to his fellow monks. He gave glory to God, singing, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”, and then he died. It was the morning of Ascension Day.

These events are not recent. Far from it. They took place in 735. The monk was Bede, known as the Venerable. He is the only English Doctor of the Church and his feast is celebrated in the coming week.

We may respect him, but we may also wonder what to make of him. He lived so long ago.

Bede was born in Sunderland in 673 and brought up in a monastery at Wearmouth from the age of 7, before becoming a monk himself at Jarrow and living there for the rest of his life. It seems probable he never left northeast England. How could so isolated a life be significant for us? Yet that very isolation may itself be the clue.

Most of us too have times when we feel fairly isolated and we wonder what difference our lives make or what value they have. However long we may live, in fact our time is short. Bede once compared human life without faith to a sparrow flying through a banqueting hall in winter, where, as he wrote, “the fire is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall and all inside is warm, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging”. Then “a sparrow flies swiftly though the hall. It enters in at one door and quickly flies out through the other . . . So this life of man appears but for a moment; what follows or indeed what went before, we know not at all.”

The image may chill us. It may seem all too likely. However, Bede was using the image to suggest that there is more to life than that brief flight through warmth and light from darkness to darkness. And his own life was devoted to exploring that deeper possibility.

In his monastery he gave himself up to scholarship. He has declared that he loved to learn, to teach, and to write. And he was fortunate that at that very time great monastic libraries were being assembled, placing at his disposal the resources he needed. So among his many writings there were commentaries on Scripture, lives of the saints, and in particular that Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which many regard as his greatest work because of the new standards it set: its sense of time, its instinct for a good story, its mastery of readable Latin, and the start it even made in using sources critically. And those three strands of writing can be seen as linked. What is brought out by contemplating and studying Scripture is made real in the lives of holy men and women, the people who come to be recognised as saints. And the saints themselves are not to be viewed simply as individuals; their lives are a part of the Church’s life, its complex, sometimes blemished, history.

Contemplation can shape who we are, and who we are has its influence on others. Prayer and study, identity and action are not separate. They need to be integrated and made coherent.

Although he lived a hidden, scholarly life long ago, Bede is not forgotten. He is, for example, patron of this college where I am rector, where men are prepared for ordained ministry in the English-speaking world, and where the integration of prayer and study, identity and action, is fundamental. It gives meaning to a sparrow’s flight beyond the banqueting hall.

Next month men from here who later will be ordained as priests, will become deacons, for Malaysia, Zimbabwe and America, for Australia and for England. All five continents will be represented. Bede’s imagination, if he could ever have imagined it, would have reeled at the prospect of his influence spreading in such a way. And how can we calculate the impact of our own lives and actions?

Monsignor Roderick Strange is Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome

THE LOVING HEART

How appropriate - on the day after the Vermont House voted in favour of marriage equality - to see in Speaking to the Soul, the reading and prayer - a mantra I used in my spiritual meditation - for the feast day of Richard, Bishop of Chichester, which is commemorated today.

Day by day, dear Lord, of you three things I pray: to see you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly, day by day.

With love as the centerpiece, the eyes of faith may move back and forth from knowing the Lord more clearly and to following more nearly by and through loving more dearly. Love is the heart of the relationship. Without love, as Paul put it, all other skills and talents make one but “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1), for “the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Love, reaching out beyond self, is enabled to see and follow more nearly. And here, at the heart of knowing and following, the soul of our human awareness finds at least a measure of contentment in recognizing its deepest desire. It rests in the love and loving of the beloved. It knows that there is no other way of knowing and wishes to follow in the way that there is no other way of going.

HUMBLE MARY

Speaking to the Soul - Daily Reading for March 25 • The Annunciation

Humble Mary

A humble person is one who, like the humble Mary, says, “The Powerful One has done great things in me.” Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be our author if we were something worthless. You and I and all of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God, and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every person. And so the church values human beings and contends for their rights, for their freedom, for their dignity. That is an authentic church endeavor. While human rights are violated, while there are arbitrary arrests, while there are tortures, the church considers itself persecuted, it feels troubled, because the church values human beings and cannot tolerate that an image of God be trampled by persons that become brutalized by trampling on others. The church wants to make that image beautiful. . . .

Faith consists in accepting God
without asking him to account for things
according to our standard.
Faith consists in reacting before God as Mary did:
I don’t understand it, Lord,
but let it be done in me according to your word.

From The Violence of Love by Oscar Romero, Copyright 2007 by Plough Publishing House. An e-book found at http://www.plough.com/ebooks/pdfs/ViolenceOfLove.pdf

Photo courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Annunciation, c. 1480 by Tilman Riemenschneider

BE OF ONE MIND

Daily Reading for March 20 • Feast of St Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 687

Always keep God’s peace and love among you, and when you have to seek guidance about your affairs, take great care to be of one mind. Live in mutual good-will also with Christ’s other servants, and do not despise Christians who come to you for hospitality, but see that you welcome them, give them accommodation, and send them on their way with friendship and kindness.

Cuthbert’s last words, quoted in A Holy Island Prayer Book: Morning, Midday, and Evening Prayer by Ray Simpson. Copyright © 2002 Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

(From Speaking to the Soul.)

I would change St Cuthbert's words slightly to read, "and do not despise any persons who come to you for hospitality..."

Photo: St Cuthbert on Holy Island, by Powell of Whitefriars, St Cuthbert's Church, Great Salkeld, Cumbria.

COURAGE IN WORD AND DEED

Daily Reading for January 19 • The Confession of St. Peter the Apostle and a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gracious, loving, and compassionate God of our fathers and mothers, we give you thanks for your faithful servants in every age who have struggled against injustice and oppression and who have fought to root out the evil and sin of racism and discrimination. Through witnesses such as Harriet Tubman, Absalom Jones, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we have learned the merits of self-sacrifice, courageous action, and redemptive suffering. Grant that we in this day, following their example, may continue to resist oppression in all its forms and guises. May we resolve to remain committed to do the work to which you have called each of us and which you require of us all—to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly” with you, our God. Trusting in your grace and mercy, and in the power of your holy enabling and sustaining Spirit, we ask this in the name of our Liberator, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

A prayer by Bishop Barbara C. Harris, quoted in Race and Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams, edited by Malcolm Boyd and Chester Talton. Copyright © 2003.

Thanks to Episcopal Café's Speaking to the Soul.

ST STEPHEN, DEACON AND MARTYR

In this Octave of Christmas, today we celebrate the Feast of Stephen, Deacon and Martyr.

York Minster Choir
Good King Wenceslas

ADVENT CALENDAR

ON THE SIDEBAR IS AN ADVENT CALENDAR>>>>>>>

From Episcopal Café:

The Diocese of Washington's fifth annual online Advent Calendar supports the Bokamoso Youth Program of Winterveld, South Africa. Each day from December 1 through Christmas, visitors can open one of the calendar’s windows to find links to a daily meditation, the daily office and a videotaped interview with one of the scores of young people who have benefited from Bokamoso’s work.

A READING FOR ST FRANCIS DAY

Daily Reading for October 4 • Francis of Assisi, Friar, 1226

Francis’ famous embrace of the leper he met on the road was not merely a response to human suffering but, in medieval terms, an encounter with the excluded “other.” Lepers were not simply infected with a fearful disease. They symbolized the dark side of existence onto which medieval people projected a variety of fears, suspicions, and guilty sinfulness that must be excluded from the community of the spiritually pure. Lepers were outcasts banished from society. As his Earlier Rule enjoins, the brothers that Francis gathered around him “must rejoice when they live among people of little worth and who are looked down upon, among the poor and the powerless, the sick and the lepers, and the beggars by the wayside.”

Even the famous Canticle of Creation expresses more than a rather romantic love of the natural world. The underlying meaning is more complex. The key notion is that all our fellow creatures as brothers and sisters reflect to us the face of Christ. . . . Verses 10-11 celebrate the peace that comes from mutual pardon or reconciliation.

“Be praised, my Lord,
Through those who forgive for your love,
Through those who are weak,
In pain, in struggle,
Who endure with peace,
For you will make them Kings and Queens,
O Lord Most High.”

The created world is to be a “reconciled space” because of the fraternity of all things in Christ. There is no room for violence, contention, or rejection of the “other.”

From A Brief History of Spirituality by Philip Sheldrake (Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

(Via Episcopal Cafe)

APARTHEID CONTINUES IN OUR SCHOOLS

Today marks the 58th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed. But since 1990 when the Rehnquist court started ripping apart the legacy of Brown, the court has taken the teeth out of Brown. During these years our schools have rapidly segregated and the gap in skills between minorities and whites has increased again. I just visited 60 public schools in 11 different states; if you took a photo of the classes I’m visiting, they would look exactly like a photograph of a school in Mississippi 50 years ago. -- Jonathan Kozol, Educator and Writer

The struggle continues!

FEAST OF AELRED, ABBOTT OF RIEVAULX, 1167

Aelred was the first person openly acknowledged to be gay to be formally admitted into Episcopal Church's liturgical calendar.

From the Integrity website:

"Whereas the Episcopal Church USA meeting in General Convention in Anaheim, California, in 1985, with full knowledge, thanks to the vigilance of the bishop of Newark, of St. Aelred's homoerotic orientation, did approve for annual commemoration in her liturgical calendar the Feast of St. Aelred on 12 January and did provide propers for the same, Therefore be it resolved that Integrity Inc. place itself under the protection and patronage of St. Aelred of Rievaulx and, be it further resolved that Integrity, Inc. dedicate itself to regularly observe his feast, promote his veneration and seek before the heavenly throne of grace the support of his prayers on behalf of justice and acceptance for lesbians and gay men."

A Reading for January 12 • Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167

When God created man, in order to commend more highly the good of society, he said: “it is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like unto himself.” It was from no similar, nor even from the same, material that divine Might formed this help mate, but as a clearer inspiration to charity and friendship he produced the woman from the very substance of the man. How beautiful it is that the second human being was taken from the side of the first, so that nature might teach that human beings are equal and, as it were, collateral, and that there is in human affairs neither a superior nor an inferior, a characteristic of true friendship.

Hence, nature from the very beginning implanted the desire for friendship and charity in the heart of man, a desire which an inner sense of affection soon increased with a taste of sweetness. But after the fall of the first man, when with the cooling of charity concupiscence made secret inroads and caused private good to take precedence over the common weal, it corrupted the splendor of friendship and charity through avarice and envy, introducing contentions, emulations, hates and suspicions because the morals of men had been corrupted. From that time the good distinguished between charity and friendship, observing that love ought to be extended even to the hostile and perverse, while no union of will and ideas can exist between the good and wicked. And so friendship which, like charity, was first preserved among the all by all, remained according to the natural law among the few good. They saw the sacred laws of faith and society violated by many and bound themselves together by a closer bond of love and friendship. In the midst of the evils which they saw and felt, they rested in the joy of mutual charity.

From Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx (Cistercian Publications, 1977).

NICHOLAS, BISHOP OF MYRA, C. 382

SPEAKING to the SOUL: Daily Reading for 6 December • Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c. 342

ST ANDREW, APOSTLE, 30 NOVEMBER

Speaking to the Soul
Daily Reading for November 30 • St. Andrew the Apostle

LAIKA OF BLESSED MEMORY

From It's a Dog's Life - Laika was a Russian space dog which became the first recorded living creature from Earth to enter orbit. At one time a stray wandering the streets of Moscow, she was selected from an animal shelter.



OCIBW/MadPriest

I must thank you for your responses to Saint Laika Day [link], not only at OCICBW... but on your own blogs and on other threads. I was worried that you would consider me flippant and soppy, but you all seemed to instinctively get where I was coming from. You knew I was being very serious, in deed.

Laika is one of the icons through through which I peer to contemplate Jesus on the cross. It's a gut thing rather than a worked out theology and all the more real because of that. I had thought that the story of the little dog was just a nightmare from my own childhood, but on researching this matter I found that she has become part of contemporary folklore throughout the world. I doubt if another dog has ever had so many songs and pieces of music written for and about them, both classical and popular. The number of poems concerning her is countless. And we are not just talking about people of my age and older. She is part of the culture of people born well after her iconic journey.

Of course, every day, millions of animals suffer because of human greed, viciousness and callousness. But that is the point. Through the Laika Icon we see the suffering of all God's creatures and we see Jesus dying for the sins we have committed against these innocent ones.

THE SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS

Gaudeamus

Rejoice we all in the Lord, keeping holy-day in honor of all the Saints:
In whose solemnity the Angels rejoice and glorify the Son of God. - INTROIT for All Saints' Day, from the Anglican Missal

Here are the appointed readings for use on this day.