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“What is chaff? It is a light, worthless thing, easily blown about by every wind: it has no life, no power, no substance in it. Would that we had not, very many of us, too great cause to fear that our religion, during great part of our lives, has been no more real than this.“
- From a sermon by John Keble
“Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer’s love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.”
- Austin Farrer, “The Crown of the Year”
A joyous Feast of All Saints!
“The saint is the apology for the Christian religion. He is holy, however, because he allows Christ to live in him and it is in Christ that he "glories".”
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics,” Vol. 5.
I am willing to go put on a limb and prognosticate that church historians are going to look back upon this event as one of the single most important events in 21st century Christianity.
To our dear Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ. Grace and peace to you in the name of our risen Lord Jesus Christ, on the Commemoration of the martyrdom of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. The first Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) gathered in 2008 in Jerusalem to prayerfully respond to the abandonment of the […]
“Peter washed away his fault with his tears; he poured water from his eyes and baptized his conscience.”
- St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 229p.4.
“[The Eucharist] embodies the actual presence of the grace it represents; and this grace is the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ himself."
- John Nevin, The Mystical Presence (1867)
THAT is good (or better yet, faithful) Reformational sacramental theology (as opposed to the shallow memorialist theology that has infected too many Protestant churches)! That is theology that has meat to it and invites us to come, truly experience the Lord, and be utterly transformed as we encounter him. It is theology for the whole person and the whole of life, not just the life of the mind.
Celebratory desert for the Feast of St. Michael and all the Holy Angels!
(Blackberries with honey and cardamom, homemade whipped cream, over top angel food cake.)
From this morning’s readings:
“O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.” (2 Chronicles 14:11, ESV)
This is a prayer the Church needs to relearn in every age. God’s people need to continually rediscover that the Church has no other sure source of defense because “there is none like [the Lord] to help.” That is a hard lesson for us to embrace when so many of us are seeking government-backed dominance.
