Moved to unusual actions.

Forgive us, Lord Christ,
When the Church fails to be your Body on earth.
Forgive its inward-looking,
its temptation to respectability;
its silence towards the rich,
its neglect towards the poor.
Give us grace to seek first your Kingdom and its justice,
and unite all Christians in the struggle;
that, in the unity of the Faith and with one heart,
we may seek to overcome the world
and establish that Kingdom on earth;
to the glory of your Name,
who with the Source and Spirit are one God,
forever and ever. Amen. 

From "Catholic Socialist Devotions" http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/csdevotions.html

The St Paul's Cathedral debacle has moved me to such uncharacteristic activities as buying the Guardian (best coverage - honest!). This prayer (a slight modernisation of a Catholic Crusade prayer) seemed apposite at this time.

The Catholic Crusade ("Catholic Crusade of the Servants of the Precious Blood") aimed, among other things:

To create the demand for the Catholic Faith, the whole Catholic Faith, and nothing but the Catholic Faith. To encourage the rising of the people in the might of the Risen Christ and the Saints, mingling Heaven and earth that we may shatter this greedy world to bits.

Hmm! It makes that reluctant fan of capitalism the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's "loke a bit weedy" as my esteemed colleague Canon Molesworth might say!   It's founder Conrad Noel wrote a marvellous Credo.

From the Epilogue to Conrad Noel's Jesus the heretic (London, Religious Book Club, 1940)

We believe in God the Father, Who has made us and all the world: In God the Son, Who has redeemed us and all mankind: In God the Holy Ghost Who inspires us and all the chosen army of God.
We believe that the source of our life is the Triune God, the Comm-Unity, and that the substance of life is Community, namely, that men, by the grace of God, should of their own initiative come into that freely chosen Fellowship of God's Kingdom which is their home. We must, therefore, give ourselves as workers together with Him for the re-creating of a world in which there shall be an interplay of initiative and co-operation.

We believe that God is terrible in goodness and not in tyranny: Maker of all things visible and invisible: Maker of men: Of the sense of wonder and worship: Of the sense of sight which delights in form and colour, in flowers, pictures, sunrises and gay fabrics: Of the sense of hearing which exults in poetry and music: Of the sense of justice and truth which drives men to rebellion against the tyrants who rob men's lives of vigour, leisure, and nourishment: Of the sense of goodness which will re-create the world: God, Maker and Upholder of men's spirits, minds, and bodies.

We believe that God is manifest in splendid men and women, and incarnate in Jesus, the Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, wholly God and wholly Man, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of man, who rejoices that her Son is casting down the mighty from their thrones and exalting them of low degree; the Woman clothed with the Sun, with the world at her feet and the serpent under them.

We believe that Christ's Incarnation and wondrous Life, devoted to the liberation of the oppressed and the Commonwealth of God, was met by the malice of the mighty masters of the world who dragged Him down to His Passion and Death on the Cross; but that, despising its shame, in triumph he passed through the realms of the dead to a mighty Resurrection, no mere bodiless ghost but with spirit, soul, and body transformed.

We believe that His Glorious Ascension to the very heart of the Godhead fills all things with His Presence, and creates out of the old and tired human race a new race.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, coming upon the little band in the upper room, raising them from despair and death to newness of life, and filling them with courage and gladness, making them of one heart and mind to share all things in common and to scatter the good news among the crowds in the Holy City and to the furthest ends of the earth.

We believe, then, in this Catholic Church, a visible Army to be the first-fruits of His Kingdom and to battle for its achievement among men: the very Body of Christ to redeem mankind from the inward tyrannies of sin and the outward tyrannies of cruel systems and cruel men.

We believe that evil conditions are the outward and visible sign on the inward and spiritual rascality on the part of the few, and inward and spiritual apathy on the part of the many, but that once they have been created they react for evil upon the minds of rich and poor, and they must be swept away by an immense awakening in the soul of the nations . . .

We believe that those who by the Power of Christ have overcome sin will one day rise with glorious bodies to enjoy and help in the ordering of the Good Life to come, the overmastering Life of the Golden Age. 

We believe that we are pledged to establish it now and are destined to enjoy it hereafter. 

My kinda Creed!  Bet they won't sing this at St Paul's on Sunday!

Theological dissonance.

There is a thundering theological dissonance between this (the "Libera me"  - the version of which from Faure's Requiem was sung beautifully by the choir last night at the All Souls Mass at St Michael and All Saint's Edinburgh) :

Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna, in die illa tremenda: 

Quando cœli movendi sunt et terra. 

Dum veneris iudicare sæculum per ignem. 

Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo, dum discussio venerit, atque ventura ira. 

Quando cœli movendi sunt et terra. 

Dies illa, dies iræ, calamitatis et miseriæ, dies magna et amara valde. 

Dum veneris iudicare sæculum per ignem. 

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,

when the heavens and the earth shall be moved,

when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.

I am made to tremble, and I fear, till the judgment be upon us, and the coming wrath,

when the heavens and the earth shall be moved.

That day, day of wrath, calamity, and misery, day of great and exceeding bitterness,

when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them.

and this (the Post Communion collect for All Souls Day from Exciting Holiness used at the same service) :

God of love,
may the death and resurrection of Christ
which we have celebrated in this Eucharist
bring us, with all the faithful departed,
into the peace of your eternal home.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ,
our rock and our salvation,
to whom be glory for time and for eternity.

On the one hand, a God who shall judge the world by fire, who make us tremble and fear The Wrath of God.  On the other,  a God of Love who draws us through the death and resurrection of the only begotten Son into the peace of our eternal home.  The two ideas have their own validity (though I have to say I prefer the modern theology but adore the Faure music - my own inner theological dissonance.) but they simply don't sit comfortably side by side in the same liturgy.  One of the challenges facing any practising liturgist is how to mesh the best of tradition with the best of the new.  And sometimes you just have to admit that the mesh is not actually possible.  There's many a Remembrance Sunday that simply never uses "I vow to thee my Country" because the sentiment nicely wrapped in Holst is utterly foreign to modern culture and sensibility.  It all works fine if you treat the music simply as a mood setter and ignore its theology, cloaked in luscious notes and hidden in generally incomprehensible Latin (just don't print the English translation in the order of service).  If you think that the meaning of what we sing with our lips is just as important as what we say aloud, then there is a problem.  Then you have to choose - Ancient or Modern?

For All the Saints

 

This Sunday in sunny Edinburgh, we are keeping the Feast of All Saints (one of our 2 dedication fesitivals) rather than the Umpteenth Sunday after Trinity. Traditionally, this is kept on November 1, followed by All Souls' Day on November 2

.

The festival of All Saints really began in the West on May 13, 609 or 610, when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome (a wonderful pagan temple and a quite pleasant Church) to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs; the feast of the dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated in Rome ever since. There is evidence that from the fifth until the seventh centuries in certain places there were sporadic celebrations on 13 May to remember the holy martyrs. However, some maintain that it has to do with the pagan observation on 13 May of the Feast of the Lemures, in which the malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were propitiated. Liturgiologists base the idea that this Lemuria festival was the origin of All Saints on the shared date and theme of "all the dead".

The feast of All Saints, on its current date, is traced to the foundation by Pope Gregory III of an oratory in St. Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world", with the day moved to 1 November and the 13 May feast suppressed.  This usually fell near the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which had a theme similar to  Lemuria, but with overtones of a harvest festival. The Irish, having celebrated Samhain in the past, did not celebrate All Hallows Day in November, as historical documents suggest that the celebration in Ireland took place in the spring: the Felire of Oengus and the Martyrology of Tallaght prove that the early medieval churches in Ireland celebrated the feast of All Saints on April 20.  Typical of the Irish to do their own thing!

The November festival of all the saints was already widely celebrated on November 1 by the time of Charlemagne. It was made a day of obligation throughout the Frankish empire in 835, by a decree of Louis the Pious, issued "at the instance of Pope Gregory IV and with the assent of all the bishops", which confirmed its celebration on November 1. The octave was added by Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484).

The festival was retained after the Reformation in the calendar of the Anglican Church and in many Lutheran churches. In the Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden, it acts as a general commemoration of the dead. In the Swedish calendar, the observance takes place on the Saturday between October 31 and November 6. In many Lutheran Churches, it is moved to the first Sunday of November. 

Protestants generally regard all true believers as saints and, if they observe All Saints Day at al,l they use it to remember all Christians both past and present. In the United Methodist Church, All Saints' Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in November. It is held, not only to remember Saints, but also to remember all those that have died that were members of the local congregation.  In many Lutheran churches, All Saints' Day and Reformation Day are observed together on the Sunday before or after those dates, given that Reformation Day is observed in Protestant Churches on October 31. Typically, Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is sung during the service. The observance of Reformation Day may be immediately followed by a reading out of the names of those members of the local congregation who have died in the past year in observance of All Saints' Day.  In English-speaking countries, the festival is traditionally celebrated with the hymn "For All the Saints" by William Walsham How. The most familiar tune for this hymn is Sine Nomine by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The Eastern Orthodox follow the earlier tradition of commemorating all saints collectively on the first Sunday after Pentecost.  The feast of All Saints achieved great prominence in the ninth century, in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor, Leo VI "the Wise" (886–911). His wife, Empress Theophano—commemorated on December 16—lived a devout life. After her death in 893, her husband built a church, intending to dedicate it to her. When he was forbidden to do so, he decided to dedicate it to "All Saints," so that if his wife were in fact one of the righteous, she would also be honored whenever the feast was celebrated. According to tradition, it was Leo who expanded the feast from a commemoration of All Martyrs to a general commemoration of All Saints, whether martyrs or not.

"Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship
   in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
grant us grace so to follow your blessèd saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen"

St Paul's and all that.

Now here's a thought:

Play with it.  Reflect on it in regard to the recent shenanigans around St Paul's Cathedral in London.  The establishment of the Church closing the over-priced museum (sorry, I mean Cathedral) for longer than the Luftwaffe ever managed to do.  The media loving Canon who first issued a welcome (albeit, the normal and insipid one that any parish priest uses to any weirdly dressed placard bearer who stops outside St Whatsits to demonstrate against the evils of haddock farming in the Utter Hebrides - "Of course you're welcome in this church" (even if you do look like Tarzan, smell like Cheetah and walk like Jane - hey we're Anglicans!) ) resigns because he can't reconcile himself to the collective responsibility for legal action that may lead to Inspector Knacker of the Yard clearing the protesters off the premises with riot gear on.  It is to quote George Carey (a rare occurrence for me) a "debacle".  I very much doubt that Jesus thinks much of any of the participants.  The Chapter have behaved stupidly in siding with the City authorities.  Giles Fraser has as usual indulged in "lovable maverick" grandstanding.  And all of course in the name of Christ.  With full media hoopla.

Says it all really.

Fresh Expressions of Church

I know they all go on about "Fresh Expressions of Church these days but my personal preference is for...

...stale expressions (obviously)!  Happy SS Simon & Jude btw!