Myanmar: 71 dead as Muslims mount jihad attacks on police and border outposts

Myanmar: 71 dead as Muslims mount jihad attacks on police and border outposts

Linsley On What Is A Priest?

I have received permission from Alice Linsley to republish a few of her post on Just Genesis which have to do with the question of priesthood. The reason that I am doing this is the assertion of the Free Church of England which claims to be Anglican that those ordained after the Anglican rites are priests only in the sense St. Peter's "a royal priesthood" and not in the sense of the ancient bishops and Catholic fathers. In short, according to their claim, members of the ancient Christian ministry are really no more than mere laymen, a view I believe completely in conflict with the Anglican Ordinals from the time of the English reformation and before. Cranmer and the Church of England could have used the words in the Latin pontificals, presbyter and presbyterate, but they did not and deliberately choice to use the words 'priest' and 'priesthood.'



What is a Priest?
Alice C. Linsley


The priesthood is verifiably the oldest known religious institution and appears to have originated in the Nile region. It is quite distinct from the other ancient religious office, that of the shaman. Underlying shamanism is the belief that spirits cause imbalance and disharmony in the world. The shaman’s role is to determine which spirits are at work in a given situation and to find ways to appease the spirits. This may or may not involve animal sacrifice. Underlying the priesthood is belief in a single supreme Spirit to whom humans must give an accounting, especially for the shedding of blood. In this view, one Great Spirit (God) holds the world in balance and it is human actions that cause disharmony. The vast assortment of ancient laws governing priestly ceremonies, sacrifices, and cleansing rituals clarifies the role of the priest as one who offers animal sacrifice according to sacred law. The priest was forbidden to consult the spirits of the ancestors as shamans do in trance states.

Priests are intermediaries between the Creator and the community, not between the spirits and the community. Both offices are intermediary, but their worldviews are quite different. When sickness, sudden death, or a great calamity such as flooding or plague affects the community, the shaman investigates the cause and seeks to balance benevolent and malevolent energies. When the community served by the priest experiences hardship, deprivation and loss, the priest calls the people to repentance and seeks to restore the community to the peace of God. In ancient times, this sometimes meant seeking out the offenders by using the binary system of divination represented by the Urim and Thummim. These represent numerous binary sets. The urim would have a number of associations which would be assigned the opposite meaning with the thummim. Using these tools involved more than yes-no questions. It involved deriving meaning from the directional poles, gender, numbers and reversals. The morehs or ancient prophets apparently used the same approach when rendering counsel such as that given to Abraham by the moreh at the Oak of Mamre (Gen. 12:6).

Despite what feminists and politically-correct academics might say, the priestly role was from the beginning the work of a select group of men (a caste, actually) whose devotion to the worship of the Creator involved, by today's standards, extreme asceticism. Contrary to the position of the Roman Church, these men were married and enjoyed sexual relations with their wives. However they abstained from sex, shaved their bodies, fasted and entered periods of intense prayer in preparation for their time of service at the temple or shrine. They were known for their purity of life.

A survey of the world's religions helps us to understand the uniqueness of the priesthood. Shinto "priests" are really shamans, not priests. Priestesses of ancient Greek were really mediums or seers, not priests. Anthropologically, the priesthood is defined by the caste of ruler-priests known as Horites. These were Abraham's people and their idea of the priest was closely aligned to their understanding of blood as both potentially contaminating and potentially purifying.

The unique nature of the priesthood is inextricably linked to the nature of God. God is the first priest (Gen. 3:21) and the priesthood, like God, is eternal. This is what stands behind the biblical references to Melchizedek, of whose ruler-priest line came the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our great High Priest who promises in the Book of Revelation to be with us always.


The Horite Ruler-priests are Jesus Christ's Ancestors

Analysis of the kinship pattern of Abraham's people, using the genealogical information in the Bible, indicates that the ruler-priests married two wives. These lived in separate settlements on a north-south axis. So Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah to the south in Beersheba.

In his youth, the ruler-designate married his half-sister, as did Abraham with Sarah. Before ascending to the throne, he married his second wife, a patrilineal cousin or niece, as did Abraham with Keturah. The cousin wife named her first-born son after her father, a pattern which begins in Genesis 4 and can be traced to the priestly lines of Joachim (Mary's father) and Mattai, the patriarch of Joseph's line. The pattern of ruler-priests having two wives disappeared among Jews with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.

The origins of the faith of Christ, the Son of God, came to Abraham, not as special revelation, but as a tradition received from his forefathers. The distinctive traits of this tradition align remarkable well with the key features of catholic faith and practice:

Male ruler-priests who were mediators between God and the community
A binary (versus dualistic) worldview
Blood sacrifice at altars (sometimes falcon-shaped) for propitiation and atonement
Expectation of the appearing of the Son of God in the flesh
God's will on earth as in heaven - interpreted by morehs (prophets)
Belief in an eternal and undivided Kingdom delivered by the Father to the Son.

Because of God's promise in Eden, Abraham and his ancestors lived in expectation of the Son of God and taught their children to do so. Their priestly lines intermarried exclusively in expectation that the Seed of the Woman would come of their priestly lines. The Edenic Promise was a central belief of the Horite family-tribal tradition. They believed that the son would be born of the chosen Woman (not called Eve in Gen. 3:15). They believed that he would be killed by his own brother and that he would live again.

The Virgin Birth is one of many signs that the One born to Mary is the Son of God. This is not about the birth of the Sun at the winter solstice. This is not a reworking of the Egyptian tale of Horus. The Horus archetype provides the pattern whereby Abraham's descendants would recognize Messiah. It points us to the Virgin who gave birth to the Son of God under humble circumstances. In the Horus myth, Hat-Hor gives birth in a cave. In Orthodoxy, icons of the Nativity show the Theotokos with the newly born Christ in a cave.

Christianity is an organic religion that emerges out of a belief that God made a promise in Eden and that He has been busy fulfilling that promise in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The core of Christianity can be traced to the beliefs of Abraham and his ancestors. It predates all the great world religions. Christianity isn't original, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in great antiquity, and herein rests its authority.


The Christian Priest

The Christian priest stands at altar as the person of Christ at the Last Supper. He also represents the Father, by whose faith his spiritual children are offered up through the Spirit. The Christian priesthood is thoroughly Trinitarian.

I'd like to challenge the prevalent idea that the Last Supper must be understood as a Passover meal. We, with Isaac, should ask "But where is the lamb?" (Gen. 22:7)

It may be that the best context for understanding the Last Supper is neither the passover meal nor the chaburah meal, but the events that unfolded on Mount Moriah. There was no lamb, only the Father and the Son. After the offering up of the Son, a ram appears. The ram is the lamb come to full strength and maturity. Among Abraham's ancestors the lamb-ram sequence was associated with the rising and setting of the Sun, the symbol of the Creator. The temporal sacred center was noon, a time of no shadows. (James says He is the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow.) The spatial sacred center was the mountain top, between heaven and earth. Perhaps the Last Supper is the sacred center where we meet God about to cross over to redoubled strength, destroying death by His death.

In relation to the sun, Horus was said to rise in the morning as a lamb or calf and to set in the evening as a ram or bull. When Abraham bound his Issac, believing perhaps that he was the Lamb of God, a ram was provided in Issac's place. To Abraham the Horite this would have meant that his offering was accepted. It would also have meant that Isaac was not the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham's ancestors in Genesis 3:15. Isaac was not the "Seed" of the Woman who would make the curse of death void, crush the serpent's head, and restore Paradise. That promise was to be fulfilled in the future, just as the ram was associated with the western horizon, the direction of the future.
On the third day Father Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off (Gen. 22:4) and again he lifted up his eyes and he saw a ram (Gen. 22:13).

St. Paul says, "For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that He would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith." (Rom. 4:13)

JUNE - An American Anglican Calendar

1. ROGATION WEDNESDAY - St. Nicomede, P.M. - White
2. ASCENSION DAY - White
5. ASCENSION SUNDAY - White
6. St. Boniface, B.M. d. 755 (Transfered) - White
9. St. Columba, Abbot of Iona, d. 597 - White
10. St. Margaret of Scotland, Queen, d. 1093 - White
11. SAINT BARNABAS, AP, M. - White
12. PENTECOST - Whitsunday - White
13. WHITMONDAY - White
14. WHITTUESDAY - White
15. EMBER WEDNESDAY IN PENTECOST - White
17. EMBER FRIDAY IN PENTECOST - White\
18. EMBER SATURDAY IN PENTECOST - White
19. TRINITY SUNDAY - White
20. Translation of Edward, King of the West Saxons, #nglish 1662, Red
St. Fillan, Abbot & Confessor, d. c. 750 Scots' 1929
22. St. Alban, M., d 202 - Red
24. NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST - White
25. St. Moluag, B of Lismore, C.d.c. 592 Scots - Blue
26. 1st SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY - Red
28. St Irenaeus, B of Lyons, Doctor, d. c. 202 - Green
29. SAINT PETER, APOSTLE & MARTYR - Red

The feasts and other days listed in all capital letters have propers in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. The other feasts are taken from the English and Scots' prayer books. The colors listed are those from the magisterial English Liturgical Colours by Sir William St. John Hope and E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley and the Alcuin Club's Directory of Ceremonial, Vol. I. The use of any others - and those most likely to be used by those of us in the Continuum - will be those ordered in the 1570 missal of Pius V, the same bishop of Rome who excommunicated Elizabeth I. Those who do so believe themselves to be more Catholic than the rest of us almost precisely because they believe the Roman See to be the font of all things truly Catholic.

Unfortunately those who do so fail to realize that they are directly responsible for the current crisis in the Continuum in which the Australian primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion is attempting to lead Anglicans into the clutches of the Roman Church. They truly believe that their actions are simply a matter of taste, but the truth remains that the human animal is always learning something, be it good or bad, and in this case it is that things Roman are to be preferred over all things Anglican. They deny it, of course, but their actions over the years speak much larger and louder than their words.

If we in the Continuum truly value Anglicanism and the whole of the prayer book tradition over the faith and practice of the Roman Church, we are going to have to match our actions to our words. We are going to have to tell both our own people and others that we are not some sort of Romanism lite, but an authentic expression of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with our faith firmly planted in Holy Scripture as interpreted by the earliest bishops and Catholic fathers, the three creeds and teachings of the earliest of the general and universally accepted Councils.

The Oldest Eucharistic Canon

This is a post which I have long intended to make, but simply disthered because of the Latin, but after comparing my own translation to two which I found upon the web, I have decided that I can no longer delay with it. The reason I am doing this is so that ordinary Anglicans will gain a view of what we can know of the earliest Church.

When it comes to the the service of Holy Communion we know first what we find in the Bible, especially the New Testament. We have the gospel narratives and what St Paul has written about it. The next thing we have is what in the writings of St. Justin Martyr but even that narrative is very bare. Following that we have the liturgies which we now regard as historic, the liturgy of St James, St Basil and St. John Chysostom, Then there is the Roman canon which came to dominate the Latin liturgies of the West but whose theology is less that clear. The experts believe its origin to have been Syrian rather than Roman with the various paragraphs having been rearranged in an order modeled after that of Alexandria.

But what follows is the Verona fragment which is the oldest known liturgical canon. Some experts date it as early third century. But as the Right Reverend Walter Howard Frere, CR, pointed out in his study of it, phrases taken from it appeared in a number of later liturgies. It may seem strange to us in that it lacks a proper preface and the Sanctus. Those items entered the liturgy later. Consequently it is short, direct and sober.

Illi vere offerant diacones oblationem, quique imponens manus in eam cum omni presbyterio decat gratias agens

Dominus vobiscum.
.
Et omnes decant Et cum Spiritu tuo.

Sursum corda ;

Habemus ad dominam.

Gratias agamus domino ;

Dignum et justum est.

Et sic iam prosequatur,

Gratias tibi referimus, deus, per dilectum puerum tuum Jesum Christum Quem in ultimis temporibus Misisti nobis salvatorem et redemptorum et angelum voluntatis tuae : Qui est verbum tuum inseparabilem, per quem omnia fecisti, et bene placitum tibi fuit ; misisti de caelo in matricem virginis Quique in utero habitus incarnatus est, ex spiritu sancto et virgine natus ;

Qui volumtatem tuam complens, et populum sanctum tibi adquirens, extendit manus, cum pateretur, ut a passione liberaret eos qui in te crediderunt : Qui cumque traderetur uoluntariae passioni, ut mortem saluat , et vincula diaboli dirumpat, et infernum calcet, et justos illuminet, et terminum figat, et resurrectionem manifestet, accipiens,penem, gratias tibi agens, dixit; Accipite, manducate, Hoc est corpus
meum quod pro vobis confringetur : Similiter et calicem, dicens ; Hic est sanguis meus qui pro vobis effunditur quando hoc facitis, meam commemorationem facitis.

Memores igitur mortis et resurrectionis Eius, Offerimus tibi panem et calicem, gratias tibi agentes, quia nos dignos habuisti adstare coram te et tibi ministare, Et petimus ut mittas spiritum tuum sanctum in oblationem sanctae ecclesiae ; in unum congregans des omnibus qui percipiunt sanctis in repletionem spiritus sancti, ad confirmationem fidei in veritate, ut te laudemus et glorificemus ; per puerum tuum Iesum Christum, per quem tibe gloria et honor, patri et filio cum sancto spiritu, in sancta ecclesia tua, et nunc et in saecula saeculorum. Amen."

We return thanks to you, O God, through your beloved son, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent in these last days to be for us a savior and redeemer and a messenger of your will, who is your inseparable word, through whom you made all things and who was well pleasing to you. You sent him down from heaven into the womb of the virgin, and who, held in the womb, was incarnate and was shown to be a son to you, born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin. Who accomplishing your will and acquiring for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands when he was extended so that by his passion he liberated those who have believed in you. Who, when he was handed over to a voluntary passion so that he would dissolve death and shatter the chains of the devil, and (so that) he would trample hell and illuminate the righteous, and fix a boundary and manifest his ressurrection, taking bread and giving thanks he said - "take, eat, this is my body which is broken on your behalf." Likewise the cup, saying "This is my blood which is poured out on your behalf. As often as you do this, you do it in my commenoration."

Therefore mindful of his death and resurrection, we offer to you (this) bread and cup, giving thanks to you because you have held us worthy to stand before you and serve you.

And we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit into the offering of the holy church gathering as one; may you give to all who partake in these these sacred (mysteries) over into a filling up of the Holy Spirit for strengthing in the true faith so that we may praise you and glorify you through your son, Jesus Christ, through whom to you be glory and honor - to the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit, in your holy church now and forever and ever. Amen."

What struck me when reading after many years was that it was as direct as the canon of the 1552 prayer book, a tradition which continued in the English books through that of 1662. It gives thanks, it offers and it invokes the Holy Spirit and that in almost the sparest language possible. Its theology of consecration is that of the Eastern canons which to become that first of the non-jurors and then the Scottish Episcopal Church before being incorporated into the American prayer book. The point which it should bring home to all of us who call ourselves Anglicans is that the purpose of the English Reformation, the restoration of the faith and practice of the Church of the apostles and the earliest bishops and fathers, has succeded in a manner greater than most of us have realized. That means that when we fully use the prayer book liturgy we are able to do what the Church in the book of Acts said it was doing, continuing "stedfastly in the Apostles doctrine and communion, the breaking of bread and prayers."

O CLAVIS DAVID

After celebrating this morning and preaching I am more tired than I thought possible, but the Eucharist is like that sometimes in that it requires a huge amount of energy from us. That being the case, this is going to be very simple: the antiphon and its scriptural background. Maybe next year.



O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.



O Key of David, * and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openest, and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth : Come and bring the prisoner out of the prison-house, and him that sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of death.
Isaiah had prophesied:

* "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open." Isaiah 22:22
* "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore." Isaiah 9:7
* "...To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."Isaiah 42:7.

O RADIX JESSE

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

One of the great themes of medieval art is the Jesse Tree. You will find variations of it all over Europe both in parish churches and great cathedrals. The point of these trees is our Lord's descent from the father of King David, but also of something else. In one of his conflicts with the pharisees Jesus asked them if the Messiah who was to come was David's son, why did David then say "The Lord said unto my Lord, set thou on my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool?" The only possible answer frightened and confused them. What it was intended to point out was that He who was and is to come was no ordinary king. It is something which in this day and time we need greatly to remember and this is where this one of the Great O's points us.

O Root of Jesse, *which standest for an ensign of the people, to whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles seeK : Come and deliver us and tarry not.

The text again points to passages in the prophet Isaiah. "A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." Isaiah 11:1
* "On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious." Isaiah 11:10 But Isaiah was not along. Micah also wrote that the Messiah would be of the house and lineage of David and even be born in David's own city. St Paul in his epistle to the Romans reminded the early Roman Christians and, by extension, all of us of this fact.

But the most interesting part of the antiphon for me is to be found in the last words, "and tarry not." He has promised to come and we are supposed to be anxious for his quick coming. But are we? If we are not ready, then this period of the Great O's is one in which we are reminded that we should and must be. We must be excited about it; we must stir up our hearts and the very best way of doing that is the worship of the church, the daily offices and the Eucharist which we have "until his coming again."

O ADONAI

The antiphon for the Magnifict on 17th day of December in the Sarum rite was O Adonai. It is with a bit of embarrassment that I have to post the Latin version of this antiphon as sung by Roman Dominican students. I would much have preferred to be post the English equivalent as sung perhaps by the sisters of the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage. After all it was from a book obtained from St Mary's Press that I first learned of the Great O's. That book contained the antiphons for the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis throughout the Christian year according to the Anglican calendar. It was intended for use with The Sarum Psalter which was also published by St. Mary's Press. Later when Briggs and Frere published their plainchant psalter one of their announced aims was to make sure that it conformed to Palmer's work. Briggs and Frere is still available and every quire in the Continuum should have copies. They might also want to have copies of the Lancelot Andrewes Press' plainchant psalter. it has additional and very helpful material.

But the point here must remain on text of the antiphons themselves and their scriptural references which clarify and expand the the theme of the season of Advent. In O Adonai the most obvious are the events from Exodus 3:2 and 24:12. The title to the antiphon makes reference to Isaiah 33:22 which says :"For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our ruler, the Lord is our king; he will save us." And its point is taken from Isaiah 11:4-5 "[...] but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins."

O Adonay,* and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearest in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him in the law in Sinai : Come and deliver us with an outstretched arm.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr

Technically, today is the feast of his translation, the return of his relics, what was left of his body after the lions in the Roman circus finished with him, to Antioch for burial. The relics were moved twice after that and now rest in a church in Rome. But the important thing for the Church is that we, as Anglicans, should realize the importance of this great saint not merely for the Catholic Church but for all those who call themselves Christians.

Ignatius who also called himself Theophorus (God bearer)was born in Syria around anno Domini 50 and died in the Roman circus sometime between 98 and 117. He was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist along with his friend and fellow martyr, Polycarp and succeeded St. Evodius as the bishop of Antioch. According to some early authorities he was appointed by St. Peter himself. In the ninth year of his reign, the emperor of Trajan ordered Christians to worship the gods with pagans with the penalty being death for those who refused. Ignatius was at the forefront of the effort to keep the Church together and strong in the face of organized persecution paying special attention to the weakest among the faithful. When his efforts came to the attention of the authorities, he was arrested and brought before the emperor who at that time was in Syria. He was condemned and sent to Rome to be fed to wild beasts in the circus.

During the course of that trip to Rome he wrote at least six letters to various churches and one to his fellow bishop Polycarp which have managed to survive down to this present day. These letters are very important for the Catholic and Anglican understanding of the Church. Indeed, it is one of these letters that the very word "catholic" (according to the whole) is used for the first time. Ignatius also first uses the word "Eucharist" for the service of Holy Communion as well as setting out the tripartite division of the Christian ministry as bishop, priests and deacons. And this relates directly to The Preface in our Anglican Ordinal which states that these orders have existed "from the Apostles' time." It from Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, that we first learn this.

There is also an Anglican involvement in these texts. The seven authentic letters in time were joined by six entirely fraudulent ones. Even the authentic letter became larded with material by latter writers who were attempting to use the saints name and reputation to forward their views on later theological issue. In the thirteenth century the scholarly bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grossteste, carefully edited the later material out in the most careful Latin translation of these works. In the seventeenth century Archbishop Ussher, the primate of Ireland discovered Grossteste's manuscript and published it in 1644.

Ignatius' writings like all of the apostolic fathers should be known to every Anglican in the Continuum. They, after the very apostles and evangelists themselves, are the real basis of the Anglican tradition.

O SAPIENTIA

In the calendar of the English prayer book of 1662 December 16 has this cryptic entry. It is the opening two words for the antiphon for the Magnificat in the Sarum and other pre-Reformation orders of vespers. In the Roman rite this antiphon is found on 17 December but the sequence of antiphons follows the same order as that in the Sarum office with the exception that Sarum had an additional "Great O" not found in the continental rites. What most Anglicans don't know is that this antiphon and those following it go back to the fifth century. We know this because Boethius (480 - 524/5) makes a passing reference to same as if everyone reading him would understand the allusion. The question for prayer book Anglicans is why when so much of the ancient rites were suppressed that the calendar should contain this quite unexplained reference?

It is almost as if there were a secret wish for it to be revived and with the Oxford Movement and its aftermath this has occurred in the English Church. It began with the monastic revival and books like The Day Hours of the Church of England. These books were essentially translations of the Sarum office book which had received these antiphons as part of the common heritage of the Western Church. Further when the Rev'd G. H. Palmer translated the Sarum Diurnal for the use of the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage, he also set the antiphons to their ancient music so even though the words were now in English the tune would be the same. Consequently for the days that the Great O's were sung, the Magnificat would be sung to the solemn version of tone II with the second ending. This is one of the most beautiful of the solemn tones which anciently were always used for both the Magnificat and the Benedictus. They are, as one might imagine, slightly more elaborate than the simple versions of the same tone.

There is another interesting thing about the Great O's. If one uses only the Roman version of them. reading backwards from the last to the first, a Latin phrase is formed, "ero cras" - tomorrow I will come. This is the essential promise of the Advent season and the thread that is woven from all of the biblical texts referenced in the words of the antiphons themselves. In the case of O Sapientia the following verses are evoked in the text: Isa. 11. 2,3; Isa. 28.29; Sirach 24.3; and Wisdom 8.1.

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, * which camest out of the mouth of the most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things : Come and teach us the way of prudence.

St. Lucy of Syracuse, Virgin and Martyr

The American Church with its attempt to reconcile the traditions and prejudices of both high and low Anglicans failed to produce its own black letter calendar of feasts or to incorporate that of either of its mother churches. On the other hand it provided a proper for the feast of a saint other than those of the Red Letter days in its calendar and also lessons and proper psalms for evening and morning prayer for various types of saints for whom parishes or missions might be named. It thus, strangely, attempts to have things both ways to the satisfaction of neither party. Indeed, by so doing, it has created and sided with a party of its own and encouraged the very thing which St Paul has written that we should banish, i.e., the spirit of party itself. It has tried to pretend that it has no need for the celebration of the saints and thus of the doctrine of the communion of saints while celebrating the feasts of those disciples of our Lord listed in the New Testament as being his apostles. Unfortunately this has resulted in the very pattern of prayer book worship itself being violated and one of the most important of our Lord's commandments to his apostles and disciples being, for all practical purposes, rejected.

The prayer book intends that the historical pattern of Christian worship that existed from sub apostolic days until the Reformation should be continued. That meant that in any place where there was a church or chapel the priest or other minister in charge was to say daily the morning and evening offices of the Church with the Eucharist being celebrated on all Sundays and other holy days for which the prayer book provided propers, that is to say a collect, epistle and gospel or indicated by rubric that such celebration was appropriate. This provision is found by our low churchmen to be very offensive in that if they acted in obedience to the prayer book as they promised at their ordination, they would appear to be doing what ministers of the Roman Church do. It does not matter that this is what our Lord and his apostles and evangelists ordered and that the entirety of the Church did from Pentecost till the continental reformation (if it can be called that) for no other reason Romans, whatever their other failings, continue to do it. On that ground, you would also expect them to give up their belief that Jesus is "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God" and our savior simply because the Roman Church continues to believe that also.

So be it!

But there is a reason for some of these missing black letter days in they point us to those movable feasts and fast which still retain a place in the prayer book calendar such as the Ember Days. St Lucy's feast is one of those as it occurs on the 13th of December and the Advent Ember Days are ordered to be kept on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after. The next question is will they have remember to announce these fast days and the reason for them on the Sunday previous and will they actually provide so much as a single communion service on any of the three days when we, the Church, are supposed to pray that God will send us a proper supply of men to be deacons, priests and bishops in the next generation. And if they, the deacons, priests and bishops in this day and time don't, will there be faithful lay men and women who will take up their prayer books and bibles and say the offices privately so that the Church's work may be done?

I would like to hear from those where it was done and also from those where the clergy neglected it.

The Glastonbury Thorn

It is very sad to report that last night vandals cut down the Glastonbury Thorn. This tree, Middle Eastern in origin, has been a symbol of the earliest Christianity in Britain for centuries. As of yet there are no clues to the motive or to the identity of the vandals who destroyed it.

Saint Martin's Day - Again!

It should be clear to anyone reading this blog that I have a devotion to Saint Martin of Tours. But then I am an American and his feast days fall upon two major American holidays, his translation on Independence Day and the celebration of his celestial birthday on Veteran's Day. Somehow, in my own mind that makes him an almost essential American saint although he was born in what is now Hungary and died in what is now France.

Not only do I think of him as being uniquely American, but also as being quite a representative of classical Anglicanism. After all, his fame and possibly some of his relics were carried to the British Isles well before it interested the Roman Church. St Ninian of Scotland was a disciple of his and dedicated his major missionary church to him and it was in a church dedicated to St Martin in Canterbury, that the first Roman mission set up practice. In short, his cult was carried to the British well before they fell victims to the papacy.

Since the 1928 American prayer book has no calendar of black letter holy days although it does have liturgical provision for "A Saint's Day," those of us in the Continuum who reject the pseudo-papalism of the missals must look to the calendars of the English and Scots' prayer books with perhaps a nod to that of the Welsh Church with its richness of Celtic and early British saints. We can also look to their revisions of the 28/29 period for propers appropriate to these days as being well within the prayer book and Anglican tradition. We could, of course, look backwards to the Sarum and other English missals, but as long as we have recourse to the British books, I think we need not look elsewhere. The important thing is to look to our own history and its heroes to inspire us to do what they did which was to seek God completely and embrace and live the Christian faith fully which means we are called to follow the example of the saints.

The Third Sunday Before Advent

Last Sunday was not only the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity and the Sunday in the Octave of the Feast of All Saints, but it was also the Third Sunday Before Advent. As the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, the prayer book rubrics requires that the collect, epistle and gospel shall be used at the celebration of Holy Communion. Because it was also the Sunday in the Octave of All Saints, the collect for that feast will be read at the communion service which will also be marked by the proper preface for that feast at the Sanctus. But what is required by it also being the Third Sunday before Advent?

Here reference must be made to pages xl and xli of the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. There you will find a series of proper psalms, and lessons for both Morning and Evening Prayer These are ordered for every day, morning and evening, from the Mattins of the Third Sunday before Advent through Evensong before Advent Sunday itself. These psalms and lessons reflect the theme of the approaching Advent season so that we will be better prepared for the season to come.

Now I know that most of the parishes in the Continuum do not have daily celebrations of the offices. Indeed Evensong is almost extinct among us. This is extremely unfortunate because anything less complete use of the prayer book where missions or parishes have their own buildings is something which harms all of us who call ourselves Anglicans. Now the public reading of the offices does not have to be done by the priest. He should be doing so but there are times when he cannot. That means that the lay people in the parish have a very important role here and should be taught how to properly and in accordance with the rubrics properly read the offices. This is a legitimate part of the priesthood of all believers.

But even in those places which don't have buildings or other permanent meeting places, the congregation can be taught and encouraged to read the offices either by themselves or in their families. This will make us all more familiar with Holy Scripture. In fact the two things which we all need to know better is the Bible and our Book of Common Prayer.

A Riposte on Puritans and Puritanism

"The Puritan party from the days of Elizabeth to the present time have never honestly accepted the Prayer Book : its members have been too much of Churchmen to leave the Church, but too little of Churchmen to value its principles: They have remained in a false position, attempting to subvert the system to which they nominally conformed. It has been pointed out how openly the attempt was made in Elizabethan times; and, though it has in God's good Providence failed all along to win any substantial recognition, it has been able at times to establish an evasive and false tradition of Prayer Book interpretation which has practically popularized and sought even to justify a system of disloyalty to the Prayer Book. The party has had its conflicts with more loyal and wholehearted churchmanship, and the issues have hitherto not been finally decisive. The failure of the Elizabethan attempt to puritanize the Church inaugurated the period of loyalty of the early Stuart times: the success of this recovery was too rapid and too injudicious, and so the revenge came speedily; for a while sectarianism and even puritanism had their way, until a short experience of their results under the Commonwealth produced a fresh reaction. The failure of the Puritans at the Savoy inaugurated another period of loyalty under the later Stuarts, but, when Church life was systematically crushed in the 18th century by Whig politicians and Latitudinarian bishops, the reign of the false tradition and the evasive, disloyal or merely torpid attitude to the rules of the Church's worship again set in; and those who tried to be loyal to the Church system, whether early followers of Wesley, Clapham Evangelicals or Oxford Tractarians, were all alike in turn charged with innovation, disloyalty and even with Popery. The contest still survives; the Puritan party still works for a system, which is not the system of the Catholic Church or of the English Prayer Book, and defends its disregard of plain rubrics (e.g., as to fasting or daily services), and its want of sympathy with the system (e.g., as to the frequency and discipline of Communion by appealing to the evasive tradition, which in the dark days of the history it has been able to form, and would like to fasten permanently upon the Church. Thus there is no feature more marked in the history of the Prayer Book than this contest between the Church system of worship expressed in the Prayer Book and the false interpretation which has grown up through a continuous tradition of evasion and rebellion."

This quotation, taken from Proctor and Frere's New History of the Book of Common Prayer, is still as true as the day it was written and published. The Continuum has been repeatedly split by this fight which has been made the worse by those who should have been the best of Churchmen adopting and practicing a tradition equally at varience with the Prayer Book and the Church, i.e., an imitation of the very worse of what even Roman authorities have labeled as "Roman bad taste." The result is that those who know and actually practice the Anglican tradition seem to have become fewer every year. But it is that tradition, the way of the classical Prayer Book Catholic, which this blog has embraced and will continue to do our best to set before all those who call themselves Anglicans and the world at large.

The above was originally posted in my first year and I am putting it back up now because of recent opinions on other Anglican sites, I think this long quotation from Proctor and Frere needs to be revisited. In both the English and American churches men who had no loyalty to the doctrine, discipline and worship to be found and still found in all of the classical prayer books stood for orders and accepted ordination to an office which they didn't accept or believe in precisely for the reason of destroying first the Church of England and now all of Anglicanism. The purpose of this blog is to support Anglicanism according to the one official document of the Church which is the Book of Common Prayer.

Independence Day

Tomorrow is Independence Day and its propers will replace those for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity. on pages xlii and xliii of the American Book of Common Prayer you will find the psalms and lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer. Strangely, it does not rate a first evensong. That may be because it is not entirely a feast of the Church although the Church does give it great importance as well it should.

Why? Because the American struggle for independence, for liberty was a struggle born from the very teaching of the prayer book tradition itself just as the revolt against King John which led to the Magna Carta was likewise a struggle born in the Gospel's vision for all men. Most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and who wrote the Constitution of the United States were Churchmen. Consequently it is no wonder that the ideals upon which this nation was founded and built sprang straight from the Old Testament and the New.

As we celebrate our independence tomorrow appropriately in attendance at Morning Prayer and Holy Communion let us remember all those who have given their lives both to make and keep us free. And let us also renew our faith in the Faith which inspired them, the faith which every day reminded them that there is a God in "whose service is perfect freedom."

The Feast of the Visitation

This is the first evensong of the feast of the Visitation. It was instituted by Urban VI in 1389 and celebrates the occasion of the Magnificat. It is found in the black letter calendars of the English book of 1662 and the deposited book as well as those of Scotland and Canada. It was also to be found in the calendar of Sarum and the rest of English Uses.

G. H. Palmer's Antiphons upon Magnificat and Nunc Dittis provides antiphons for both the first and second evensong. According to this the tone of the first is solemn version of the sixth and the second the solemn of the fourth with the second ending. The text of the first antiphon is as follows:

To an instrument * of ten strings singeth the Royal maiden, magnifying the Lord her Savior who hath wrought in her so wondrously : Who putteth down the mighty from their seat, in righteousness, and exalteth the humble in his loving kindness.

The Collect in The English Liturgy is as follows:

Almighty God, who for their mutual comfort, didst cause the Blessed Virgin, mother of thine only Son, to visit Saint Elizabeth; Mercifully grant that we, being sheltered by thy defense from all adversaries may ever be comforted by his continual visitation, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

At the Altar of Incense

Sorry, this one is personal. But surrounded as I am both by little groups and mega churches which claim to be 'Biblical' I always find myself asking those who adhere to them how often they use incense. The answer is always "never!" And for me that ends the argument because it is my firm belief that in order to understand something of the mind of God, you have to be open to the continual use of incense in the services of the Church. This is both the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer and of Holy Scripture, however much we, both as individuals and as Churchmen, tend to ignore it. But on the feast of the Nativity of Saint John Baptist we should find it especially hard to do.

Why? Because it was when John's father, the priest Zacharias, was at the altar of incense in the temple that the angel Gabriel announced to him John's birth and told him what the child was to be called. That place and time have, as the sainted Dr. William Howard Frere, C.R., wrote in his revision of Procter's A New History of the Book of Common Prayer always bothered 'Protestants' because it seemed to close to the ceremonial law of Israel which they have rejected. I suspect they are also bothered by the fact that one of the magi's gifts was frankincense as well. It speaks to strongly of the fact that Christianity is a "yon side religion" with just too many things beyond the bare rationalism of Reformation fundamentalism.

The Book of Common Prayer never specifically orders the use of incense in the services of the Church, but from Elizabeth I's prayer book of 1559 the Act of Uniformity has ordered; "Such Ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof, shall be retained, and be in use, as was in this Church of England by the Authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the sixth . . ." Certainly thuribles and incense boats were among them and we know by the complaints of Elizabeth's bishops to their friends in Zurich that incense was used. Bosher in his book The Restoration of the Church of England pointed out by quotes from the period that prayer book services in the chapels in France during the Commonwealth astonished the French by their copes, profound bows, and clouds of incense. And incense continued to be used in the cathedrals of England until a canon of Ely brought to an end in 1770 by complaining that it caused him headache. Rationalism and the beginning of secular humanism had set in.

But the prayer book reminds us of its scriptural intent and importance with the Sentences as the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer. "From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my Name shall be great among the Gentiles: and in every place incense shall be offered unto my Name, and a pure offering: for my Name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. Mal. i, 11." "Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice. Psalm cxli. 2."

And then there is the Book of Revelations with its description of the worship in heaven. Hard core Evangelicals and 'Protestants' of all varieties just might as well consign themselves to hell because you know they are not going be be comfortable with all those bowls of incense burning before the throne of God. And that is why every oratory, mission, parish or cathedral in the Continuum ought to be preparing its people for heaven by the regular use of incense because if Holy Scripture teaches us nothing else, there is no way that we can escape the fact that God likes it, likes it a lot and "the Bible tells us so!" It even gives us his own recipe as to how it is supposed to be mixed.

So if we as Anglicans are going to be good Biblical and New Testament Christians, we need to make sure that we imitate the worship of heaven as it is revealed in Holy Scripture. And that means that we are going to have to use incense both at the offices, in processions and at the celebration of Holy Communion. After all, we have he words of Jesus in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them." We read them as well, but it is only too plain that we frequently don't hear what they say, what they order. We are so stuck in our own defense against the very word of God that we can not hear it and certainly don't want to obey it. In things great and very small, it is time for that to change.

An Interesting Bit of Verse

'For this, Seditious Spirits in disguise
Swarm in the Church, tho' they that Church despise:
Loudly they boast her Ancient rights and Fame,
Whilst underhand they play a Popish Game.
The Seed of Loyola with Artful Pains
First fixt this High-Church Poyson in our Veins,
Infecting too, too many of our Youth,
Who, blindly led, fell from the Cause of Truth.

Does that read like an attack upon the Tractarians, the early ritualists or even the late nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics? If you thought so you would be wrong. It was written and published in 1708, more than a century before the beginning of the Tractarian Movement. Those lines came from a poem titled: The Seditious Insects: or, the Levelers assembled in Convocation. I present it as evidence that as Frere wrote in the early twentieth century, the Church has always had its enemies who were in his words "too little of Churchmen to obey her, but too much of Churchmen to leave her."

And so the battle persists. Those of us who think of ourselves as Prayer Book Anglicans or Prayer Book Catholics and who believe that real high churchmen value the Church and express that by a full and complete obedience to our own version of the Book of Common Prayer, must remain aware that the Church still contains those whose real loyalties remain outside "the doctrines, discipline and worship . . . .of the church" as expressed in her classical formularies.

The Geneva Bible of 1559

One of the advertisements which I receive regularly on the internet is for the Geneva Bible of 1559. It is touted as the version of the Bible brought to America by the Puritans and consequently as the Bible not only of the Reformation but also of the American Revolution. It is a clever sales idea, but as an Anglican one that I must reject. Why? Because one of the things which an American child is quite unlikely to learn in the government schools is that the major leaders of the American revolution and the writing of the Constitution were not members of the denominations, but Anglicans. And that would make the real Bible of the American Revolution and the American founding precisely The Authorized Version of 1611, commonly called the King James version.

Since most American know very little of English history even as most Britons know very little of American history, it is probably time that we run through the facts. One of the great myths of American history is that the Pilgrims who came to what is now Massachusetts in 1620 were coming to this country for purposes of religious freedom. Absolutely nothing could be farther from the truth. For some period of time these folk had been living in Amsterdam and not in England, and in the Dutch states they had every bit of religious liberty which they could have desired. They didn't like it. Why? Because the freedom of Amsterdam threatened the absolutist ideas of this little group. They were afraid that in the middle of all that freedom their children would wander away from their version of the "True Faith." Hence their choice to come to America where they could set up their own little version of a religiously totalitarian state which allowed of no freedom of religion to anyone whose views or faith differed from their own. We face a similar situation today in that the very political and ideological heirs of the Puritans have done their best to control the levers of public opinion and admit no orthodoxy except their own.

A few years later with the Cromwellian revolution and the overthrow of both the monarchy and the Church of England, the same experiment was tried in England. It did not take very long for the majority of the English to decide that they didn't like it and the king returned from exile in 1660 and both the monarchy and the Church were restored. That meant a return to the services of the English Book of Common Prayer and the use of the King James version of the English Bible. And it was this version of both prayer book and Bible that a clear majority of the leaders of the American Revolution were raised on. The result was that when the Declaration of Independence was adopted two thirds of those who signed it were Anglicans. And the convention in Philadelphia which wrote the American Constitution was comprised of fifty per cent Anglicans plus one. There was another nominal Anglican but he was one of the two delegates to that convention who were deists.

One of the great American myths generally told by persons of a certain political persuasion is that the framers of the American system of government were deists and not Christians. These are the people who in fact hate the Church and hate Christianity, because the faith of English Christians has always led them to demand greater freedom for ordinary people. Take that first great document of liberty, the Magna Carta. The leader of the Baron's revolt against King John was none other than the archbishop of Canterbury and the place where it is easiest to see an original copy of that great document is at Salisbury Cathedral. By modern standards it was not much, but it contained that magical phrase, "the Church of England shall be free." John Lackland had attempted to sell it to the papacy.

One of the features of the Geneva Bible is the included commentaries. Rather than giving the reader the freedom to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" the text of Holy Scripture, these commentaries told the reader what the Scriptures meant and what he was to believe. And of course it was an interpretation heavily slanted from a continental Calvinist view. Among the reasons that King James authorized a new translation of the Bible based upon the best available Hebrew and Greek manuscripts was precisely the political and religious slant of these commentaries. He and the Church of England wanted a text that was the most faithful to the meaning of the original without the inclusion of later opinions.

In modern America we have a like situation in that we have people telling us what the Constitution means which is frequently almost the precise opposite of what the text actually says.

The point of this, if there is one, is that the English Church and her daughters who have been and remain true to the faith of the Bible and the prayer book as we have received it, that is to the 'doctrine, discipline and worship' of the Catholic and Christian church as Jesus handed it over to the apostles and they in turn to the sub apostolic Church is the greatest guarantor of human freedom and dignity which the world has ever know. Those who strike out at the faith and practice of the prayer book are also striking out at the very dignity and freedom of every man. One of the doctrines of the framers of the American Constitution and government was that we receive our rights, not from government but from God. And that is a doctrine which they learned both from the Bible, the Authorized Version, and from the Book of Common Prayer.

The Feast of St George, Martyr

Today is the feast of St. George, the patron not only of England but of a very large number of countries, cities and provinces besides. It was made a feast day of the English church in the Synod of Oxford in 1222. But its importance in England increased when Edward III made him the patron of the Order of the Garter in 1348. The British war cry of "England and St George" began with the Hundred Years War as Edward III began his attempt to achieve the French crown, a claim based upon his descent from his mother, the French princess Isabella.

The prayer book collect: Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy holy Martyr George triumphed over suffering, and despised death : Grant, we beseech thee, that enduring hardness, and waxing valiant in fight, we may with the noble army of martyrs receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.