Tagged

Thanks to rocketleafsalad, it seems I have been "tagged" (some strange phenomenon that seems to be taking over the blogging world).

Four Jobs You've Had In Your Life
1. Pastoral Assistant
2. Chaplaincy Assistant at a University College
3. Accounts and Admin Assistant
4. Waiter
(I've done a lot of assistanting!)

Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over
1. Any of the Harry Potter films
2. The English Patient
3. Seven
4. Sister Act

Four Places You've Lived
1. Camden
2. Southwark
3. Exeter
4. Kidderminster

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
1. Neighbours
2. Will&Grace
3. Little Britain
4. Desperate Housewives

Four Places You've Been On Holiday/Vacation
1. Dublin
2. Bray (also in Ireland)
3. Torquay (my mother's favourite)
4. Madrid

Four Blogs You Visit Daily
Well, can't say I visit them daily, but I regularly check:
1. my own (for comments)
2. rocketleafsalad
3. thurible
4. sarisburium

Four Of Your Favorite Foods
1. salmon
2. salad (it's tasty and good for you!)
3. a cooked breakfast after a long and lazy lie-in (sadly becoming less frequent)
4. anything I don't have to cook for myself

Four Places You'd Rather Be
I'm quite happy where I am. However, I wouldn't object if someone wanted to take me to:
1. Exeter (but lots of other people who aren't there anymore would have to come with me)
2. Kidderminster (well, not really the place, but the people)
3. Ireland (I like it there and they have good Guinness)
4. A European city, on holiday, looking round a gallery with a friend.

Four Albums You Can't Live Without
1. Black Eyed Peas
2. Monteverdi Vespers
3. at least one of the Sugababes' albums
4. Basement Jaxx

Four Vehicles You've Owned
I don't drive. But I got an Oyster card, that takes me anywhere I want to go.

Four People To Be Tagged (do it! do it now!)
Bearing in mind that most people have done this already...
1. cathedral-life
2. sarisburium
3. stone fox
4. err, can't think of a fourth

Now, don't you all feel you know me better?
I'll endeavour to post something slightly more "meaningful" over the next few days...

The week ahead...

The week ahead is likely to be a busy one, not least because of the feast of the Conversion of St Paul on Wednesday which is the Patronal for one of the churches I work at. We will be having a Concelebrated Festival Mass in the evening at which I shall be multi-tasking: having already done the liturgy and organised the music, I shall be both singing and serving on the night itself. However, I'm rather looking forward to it! As part of our patronal celebrations we will also be having a barn dance on Saturday. Not quite so sure how I feel about that...

Nuns

Today I visited the Benedictine Community of St Mary at the Cross in Edgware. It was a wonderful experience and I came back feel rested and peaceful.

It was not so much a Quiet Day as a "educational" visit. We were looked after by Sister (Dame, properly) Barbara who this year celebrates her fiftieth anniversary of profession, which must make her at least 70. However, she was wonderfully bright and humorous and had a really outgoing spirit. She told us of the history of the community, of its current work and the life of a nun. We joined the sisters for Midday prayer and then celebrated the Eucharist. The convent has such an atmosphere of prayer that one couldn't help but feel the peace of the place. I felt like I had been on retreat for several days when I got back.

Sadly, only three of the nuns are now active enough to play a full part in the Community and to attend the Offices but the work of the sisters is ongoing and the convent is otherwise in good health. I was sincerely impressed and inspired by the place and hope and pray that more women will be inspired by the Holy Spirit to consider a vocation to the Religious life.

Lord our God,
in your great love you draw all people to your Son:
and in wisdom you call us to your service.
At this time kindle in the hearts of men and women
the desire to follow you in the Religious Life.
Give to those whom you call,
grace to accept their vocation readily and thankfully,
to make the whole-hearted surrender which you ask of them,
and for love of you, to persevere to the end,
grant this through Christ our Lord.
Amen .

Wulfstan, bishop

I led Morning Prayer today (being the only day this week that I've arrived at church before it started -oops!). I was pleasantly surprised on picking up my copy of CCP and the Ordo to discover that today is the commemoration of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester.

Wulfstan was born in about 1009 and was a monk in the priory of Worcester Cathedral. He was elected to the episcopacy against his own wishes but proved a good and caring bishop. He was one of the few (the only?) saxon bishops to maintain his see after the Norman Conquest when Wiliam of Normandy began to fill episcopal thrones with his own courtiers. This was the more remarkable given that he had been confessor to Harold, the last Saxon king. He guided his diocese and, in his role as a trusted official, the country through a time of major political and social upheaval as William stamped his mark on England.

He was responsible for the rebuilding of Worcester Cathedral in 1084, and the two western most bays of the Nave, and the crypt survive from this time.

However, more than this, he was both humble and holy. Even after his elevation to the episcopacy he followed the Rule of St Benedict and was well known throughout his diocese as a caring pastor, a fair judge and an inspiring preacher. There are several accounts of him having healed those who were sick and offered refuge to those persecuted as English-Saxon officials were displaced by Norman successors.

Wulfstan died on this day in 1095, aged 86 (a remarkable age for his time) and was canonised on 21 April 1203.

My home diocese is Worcester and I have visited and worshipped in the Cathedral many times, where Wulfstan was monk, priest and bishop. And where, later, he was buried. Sadly, his shrine was despoiled by the reformers.

Saint Wulfstan,
pray for us.
All you holy bishops and confessors,
pray for us.

Towards Ordained Ministry

Tonight I was at the first in a series of talks for London Diocesan ordinands (and potential ordinands). It was rather good. Bishop Richard spoke on "Authority". He spoke to this passage from the Preface of the Declaration of Assent:

"The Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation. Led by the Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. In the declaration you are about to make, will you affirm your loyalty to this inheritance of faith as your inspiration and guidance under God in bringing the grace and truth of Christ to this generation and making Him known to those in your care?"

He expounded it rather well and illuminated it with references to the Rule of St Benedict. Some of his comments were rather pointed, and a few criticisms of our more conservative evangelical brethren were thinly veiled. However, I was impressed by how accessible his talk was to people of any churchmanship or tradition - I guess that's why he's bishop of a diocese as broad as London!

All of the above was helped along by the wine and canapes provided by Sion College at the reception before the talk of course!

A couple of quotable quotes:
"... at the Council of Trent, which, I am sure is never far from your minds at St Helen's Bishopsgate...." [famous conservative evangelical church in central London, of the most extreme kind]
"1963 was a year in which the world changed. It was the year, as Philip Larkin tells us, that sexual intercourse was invented."
"We have this phrase now in the Church of England: Fresh Expressions. "Fresh Expressions" conjures up to my mind the look on the face of an imp! THAT is what I think is a fresh expression."

Well, they amused me anyway.

Helping the homeless

I've just come back from our parish's Homeless Night Shelter. A truly blessed, God-filled time. We ate a meal prepared by parishioners with about fifteen homeless people who will sleep over (in proper beds!) in the church tonight.

I was quite nervous about it because you tend to notice homeless people when they are at their worst: drunk or high and making trouble in the street. But tonight was a good opportunity to meet them and share food together.

I was especially pleased that the parishioners so gladly took charge of the food preparation and serving. I was coordinating the food tonight, but once I'd decided who needed to do what it all just happened effortlessly (or so it seemed). When I thanked the volunteers for their help, they thanked me and said how much they had enjoyed it. I think it was very good experience for people who, like me, would normally be apprehensive of the homeless.

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me... Truly I tell you, just as you did it for one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it for me." (Matthew 25:35,40)

Mary Mother of God

The following is the text of the sermon I preached on New Year's Day. Our parish keeps the Roman Calendar and so we were observing the Solemnity of the Mother of God. Enjoy!

The role and place of Mary in theology and in the Church is something that a lot of people have very passionately held opinions on, and something about which there is a great diversity of opinion.

As children my younger sister and I were looked after by our Grandmother. My Nan (as we called her) is an Irish Roman Catholic and she has had a big role in the early part of my faith. She taught me the basic prayers, told me about the Church and life in Ireland with nuns teaching in schools, working in hospitals and caring for the poor. One of the things she taught me was the prayer “Hail Mary” which I used to faithfully say every night before bed. Devotion to Mary formed an important part of my faith from its very beginning, and except for a more protestant phase (mea culpa) in my late teens, I’ve always had an understanding of the role and place of Mary.

However, in preparing to write this sermon I was made to think more deeply about what it means for Mary to be the Mother of God, and what that might mean for us. I turned to my books on patristic theology which is the development of Christian faith and doctrine in the generations immediately following the apostles (so from about 100 to 450 AD).

In the year 430AD Nestorius, who was Patriarch of Constantinople, preached against the already popular use of the term “mother of God” as a title for the Blessed Virgin. He believed that Mary had borne the man Jesus who was the habitation of the divine Christ. This is an inadequate understanding of the incarnation but he was worried that to say Mary was the Mother of God implied that God the Son was a created , or that the manhood of Jesus Christ was incomplete, he being more God than man.

Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, was charged by the Pope (and, in part, his own initiative) with correcting Nestorius. An Ecumenical Council was called and met at Ephesus to discuss the matter. St Cyril said
“I am amazed that there are some who are extremely doubtful whether the Holy Virgin should be called Mother of God or no. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then surely the Holy Virgin who gave him birth must be God’s mother... You may say ‘Was the Virgin the mother of the Godhead?’ My reply is... the Word of God is begotten of... the Father, has his existence outside time, always coexisting with his Father... When he became flesh... he is said to have also been begotten through a woman according to the flesh. What a mother produces is one living being.”
So then, Cyril gives us the rationale behind the title Mother of God, but there is more here that it is worth discovering, about the connotations of “Mother of God” for the person of Christ. Cyril went on to say
“Scripture does not say that the Word united to himself the person of man, but that he became flesh... He made our body his own and came forth a man of a woman, not casting aside his being God, and his having been begotten of God the Father, but even in the assumption of his flesh remaining what he was...
[He was born in time] that he might bless the very first element of our being, and that, a woman having borne him united to the flesh, there might be made to cease theneforward the curse lying upon our whole race, and that the sentence... might be annulled by him: he will swallow up death for ever.”

The doctrine of Nestorius was condemned as a heresy at Ephesus in 431 for seeming to propose that Christ was two different sons: one being the divine Word, the other the human Jesus, when in fact the confession of the Church is one Lord, one Son, one person: Jesus Christ.

The mid fifth-century was a time of major debates about the person of Christ, and these culminated at Ephesus, and shortly after at Chalcedon (from which we get our creed). The Councils also marked the climax of Marian doctrine in the patristic period. It was not the concern of the Fathers though to do honour to Mary, but rather to make clearer definitions of the union of God and man in the incarnation. It became apparent that this could only really be done by recognising Mary as Theotokos, Greek for God-bearer or Mother of God. Thus Mariology (the study of the person of Mary) became firmly integrated with Christology (the study of the person of Christ).

And so we see that immediately as we talk of Mary, we begin to consider the person of Christ, his incarnation and his redeeming work. For me, this began to make sense of why we are celebrating her today. 1st January is always the Solemnity of the Mother of God, and so it always falls exactly a week after Christmas itself. This is not somehow to shift the focus suddenly from the infant Christ to his mother, but is for the deepening of our appreciation of the incarnation and so the reason for its proximity to Christmas becomes apparent.

At Christmas we recall the gracious “yes” of God to humanity which he makes in the incarnation. In thinking of Mary we remember her faithful “yes” to God: her “let it be to me according to your word”, by which it came about. St Paul tells us that all of God’s promises find their “yes” in Jesus Christ. And so, with Mary as our supreme example we offer our “yes” to God, our commitment to his will and purpose for our lives, that we might (as our epistle tells us) become adopted sons and daughters of God and find ourselves filled with his Spirit so that we, like Mary, worship God not just with our lips, but commit ourselves to him entirely that his Son might be made known through us as he came to us from her.

Amen.

Behold I do a new thing

Welcome to my blog. More to follow when inspiration strikes...