Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

We packed the cars with eighteen helium balloons and sandwich trays and gift bags and headed for Saint Peter’s this morning.  Fortunately others were bringing the tubs of ice cream, the toppings, the drinks.

It was the Opening of Church School and Ice Cream Social and I was looking forward to seeing the children as well as a little hot fudge.  (I also love balloons.)

I set out the bags and tied the multi colored balloons along the hallways to mark a path from the narthex to the classrooms where our teachers awaited the children.  Soon mothers with babies were chatting with the attendants in the nursery, and the Primary/Juniors were working on cool bookmarks and learning about the creation of the world.

As I watched them, I thought how good God was to give us children to teach, to care for, to love with God’s own love.  How good to share the good news of God’s glory, his heaven and his earth.  And soon, those approaching ten to twelve years of age will prepare for Confirmation, prepare to receive Christ himself in the Eucharist, the miraculous union of heaven and earth within us.

Baby Natalie, 9 months, especially loved to poke her finger at the balloons and cry, ba….

As the weeks progress, we shall add to and layer our children’s program with songs and rhymes, contests and pageants.  We shall live out the Church Year, celebrating the coming of God’s Son at Christmas, his life on earth in the months following, his death and resurrection at Easter.  Then we will tell how the Son of God walked the earth for forty days, appearing to many, and his ascension to Heaven.  On the Sunday called Pentecost-Whitsunday we will celebrate the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples in Jerusalem, an event marking the Birthday of the Church.

And it is this Holy Spirit that wove through us this morning, as old and young gathered together to tell these stories.  Unsentimental stories they are, for they are about life and death, who we are, who we are meant to be, the stories of mankind.  And we will live in these stories in the months to come.  We will dramatize them, tell them again and again, how God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life…

And as we teach and dance through the seasons of the Church Year with our children, Christ will take root in our hearts in a new and wonderful way, for he sanctifies us as we glorify him.  Just as those balloons would soar we will rise to meet Christ in the Eucharist, but with our feet planted firmly on the earth.  This is the miracle and joy of being a sacramental Christian, that we weave our senses into God’s glory, for this is what God does with us – he weaves his glory into our senses.  Meeting God is not merely “spiritual.”  When we meet God we see our world anew for he is its Creator.  Light is lighter, shadows deeper, colors more intense, aromas and tastes richer, a friend’s touch more tender.  Or as Gerald Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit poet, wrote in 1918,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness…
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Ah!  Bright wings.  Gratia Deo for our children who bring us closer to those bright wings.

Sundays are often a time of reflection upon the week past, and on this Labor Day weekend, the roles of work and worship wove together in my thoughts.  Someone said to me this last week that going to Mass was experiencing the meeting of Heaven and Earth, and nothing less.  If young people understood this, my friend said, if they fully understood the implications of the stupendous action occurring on the altars of the world, they might be more interested in participating in the liturgy, Greek for the work of the people.

In many ways the experience of the Eucharist is that simple and that profound, that exciting and that adventurous.  It is encountering the burning bush of Moses, the cleansing coals of Isaiah, the super-reality of C.S. Lewis in the sharp-bladed grass of The Great Divorce, a reality that T.S. Eliot described in Four Quartets with the words, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”  One should approach God’s glory with some fear and trembling, as the Psalmists repeatedly warn, yet in the certainty of God’s boundless love.

American culture has largely sentimentalized worship and in doing so has also removed the exhilaration, satisfaction, and fulfillment that comes from being part of a great celestial and redemptive work.

We are a permissive post-war culture, and we have become addicted to pleasure, as standards of living rise, cushioning our lives and increasing our expectations.  Still we never have enough, always demanding more, sooner, complaining it isn’t enough.  The play ethic has replaced the work ethic, and if we work it is to play more and better.

Gone, or at least unpopular, is commitment.  Commitment to work, spouse, children, parents, grandparents, God, the Church, the Body of Christ. We want to be free to flee, to flit, to hover, to escape, to feel good.  We want immediate gratification, immediate purchase, we want the now, and we will mortgage our children’s future to obtain it.

Gone, or at least marginalized, is belief in the judgment of God, or indeed, our fellow man.  Gone are standards of objective right and wrong.  We are our own gods and we evaluate our own righteousness.  We flee from other arbiters, from imposed morality, from the Church and its moral imperatives.  Another friend commented this last week that he didn’t need to attend church on Sundays since he led a Christian life, meaning, I believe, he was a good person, righteous.  What happened to worship?  to thanksgiving?  to meeting God?  to the intersection of Earth with Heaven?  God wants more than goodness.  He wants us.  He burns with fire for us.  He comes to us and calls us by name.

Gone is the search for truth, for truth might curtail freedom to flee judgment.

Some of us look for the right church “fit,” feeling a lack, a nagging sense of loss, looking for something greater, something numinous.  We church-shop, wanting to feel good now and have our own goodness validated.  We don’t want demands.  We don’t want ten commandments and we don’t want seven deadly sins.  We don’t want to be told not to kill our unborn children or wed our sisters.

We don’t want to meet God in the burning bush where he reveals himself.  We don’t want to be cleansed with fiery coal.  We don’t want to admit our sins and be washed in the blood of the lamb.

And yet, when we do this, when we are washed clean by confession and absolution, when we truly meet God in the Eucharist, we soar into Heaven from Earth.  We sing, as we did this Sunday morning,

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates;
Behold the King of glory waits!
The King of kings is drawing near;
The Saviour of the world is here.

Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heav’n’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.

Redeemer, come! I open wide
My heart to thee: here, Lord, abide!
Let me thy inner presence feel;
Thy grace and love in me reveal.

So come, my Sov’reign; enter in!
Let new and nobler life begin;
Thy Holy Spirit guide us on,
Until the glorious crown be won.   (Hymn #484, George Weissel, 1642, based on Psalm 24)

The walls of my office are covered with icons and shelves crammed with books.  Jewel-toned images against gold leaf, the icons are figures surrounded by glory, the earthy animated by the heavenly.  We are like them, creatures of two worlds united by body and soul.

Soon, soon, another work of the people, another liturgy, another Mass, will call me to this gilded glory, this work of heaven and earth..

It was a simple melody in a major key and it reminded me of rolling green hills, the smell of earth, grass, growing things, the moment taken to smell a rose.  The words as well were simple and direct, but carried a more serious plea, for they asked God’s help in giving us a conscience quick to feel.

I was also reminded of the Quaker song, written by Elder Joseph Brackett Jr. in 1848:

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning we come round right.

It is this simplicity I find in Hymn 499, sung to “St. Petersburg” with simple dignity as the note reads at the top of the page.  And the words, like those above, call for a turning: Let the fierce fires which burn and try, Our inmost spirits purify: Consume the ill; purge out the shame; O god, be with us in the flame; A newborn people may we rise, More pure, more true, more nobly wise.

It’s simple stuff, but unpopular today, this talk of sin.  Such talk lowers self-esteem, doesn’t it?  Such talk might make me love myself less?  How can I be assertive, empowered, a true modern woman?  Yet I find it is the admission of wrong turns that places me back on the right path.  It is confession of sin and absolution that produces assertiveness, empowerment. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.  To grow and change in the right way means to bow and to bend, to come down where we ought to be.

I find in the Mass that I have left the furious and frenetic world behind and entered a simpler and truer reality.  I pass through the narthex into the nave, walking toward the sanctuary, the tabernacle, the throne of God.  The journey is more than my feet padding on the red-carpeted aisle and more than taking a seat in the shiny oak pew, more than kneeling on the padded kneelers.  It is a journey of preparation, both in time and in eternity, with songs sung, prayers petitioned, consciences cleared of the detritus of the week.  I travel through the liturgy, both a simple participant and simple recipient in glory itself, receiving the lessons and sermon into my mind and heart.  With my fellow worshipers I sing Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty and we offer ourselves to God.  Soon, the priest, in the name of Christ, pronounces absolution of our sins.  Now we are ready.  We are ready to enter the Canon of the Mass, the holiest part of the Sacred Liturgy, and we pray Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus… , Lord God of Hosts…..  The bread and wine are consecrated and we join one another to unite today with the past and future, with the saints and angels, with the living and the dead, to become one with God in the Eucharist.

And what is most fascinating to me as a sacramental Christian, is that God cleanses and feeds me, then turns me around once again to go back outside to the furious and frenetic world that he has, after all, created but has indeed made some wrong turns.  But I have been changed.  I am a new creature, reborn, and re-sent, re-turned.  I am far more simple.  I have been touched by God.

There have been numerous books published recently on happiness and how to find it.  We are told we have the right to its pursuit.  How does one pursue it?  And when found, how is it retained?

I believe happiness is being close to God.  Not just any God but  the one true God, the God of Abraham, the God of Peter and Paul and the Apostles, the God of you and me.

And to retain happiness, I must give it away, share it, for God is love.  I must knock down the wall between God and me, the wall created when I sin, when I disobey His law, His will for me.

And what is His will?  I search, seeing clues all around me… Scriptures, the Sacraments of the Church, Prayer, other Christians through whom He speaks.  How do I spend the time given to me?  Do I love enough?  Do I obey His law?

“Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself,” Christ said to the rich young man.  He says to follow the Ten Commandments: worship the one Lord God, do not worship images, do not swear, keep Sunday holy, honor your parents, do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not covet.

And if I don’t keep these commandments, I will not be happy, I will have separated myself from God.  I was meditating on this separation as I knelt in church this morning.  I knew that as I journeyed into and through the sacred liturgy, I would be washed clean of my sins, and I would once again draw near and be united with God.  I knew I would know happiness.

Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians this morning spoke of the the “sufficiency” of God, that He is enough for each of us.  God teaches us His will, how to love, what is wrong and what is right.  But we must desire to be taught, and we must learn from Him in Scripture, prayer, and liturgy.  If we do this, He will meet us, it will be enough, sufficient, and we will be happy.

Anglican Christians, like Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, are sacramental Christians.  That is, we acknowledge that we are made of matter and spirit, and that God, being our creator, meets us through both matter and spirit.  So we adorn our churches with sensory beauty: flaming candles, stained glass, sculptures, incense.  We incorporate the dance of liturgy and the sounds of harmony and song, hymns solemnly reverent or joyfully triumphant, the organ tender or thundering.  We sing with the choirs of angels and kneel with the communion of saints.  Past, present, and future weave into this tapestry of happy holiness, or perhaps holy happiness, and we taste Heaven.  We see, hear, smell, touch, taste.

We are pulled out of ourselves and into God and His delirious love, as we receive the Eucharist.  And I know, as I look to my week ahead, that I shall have other chances to meet Him, and the choice will be mine, to go to Him or not, to be happy or not.  Much will pull me away, many things will distract me, but He will be there, waiting.

Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland; Sunday Mass, 8 and 10, Wednesday Mass, 11; www.saintpetersoakland.com

The doctine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven is what Anglicans call a matter of “pious opinion” or “pious belief.”  It is the belief that Mary’s body was raised to Heaven, that she did not die.  Christians believe that we are resurrected, but that we will be given new bodies at the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.

I believe that the Assumption, that is the “assuming into Heaven” or the “falling asleep,” was entirely possible and find it interesting to note that no shrine or church or location in the world claims to possess her relics.

Either way, whether she died a natural death or was bodily raised to Heaven, she has been a miraculous blessing to mankind, having said yes to God in Nazareth all those years ago, having assented to the Father’s will.  In this submission, in this assent, she bore within her body God himself.  It is something I am slowly learning as I age, this assent, this submission, and the resulting glory.

Raised a Presbyterian, I was taught to fear devotion to Mary, that it was superstition.  But, as our good Anglo-Catholic preacher said today, we venerate her, do her honor, as the most important of all saints, as theTheotokos, the God-Bearer. We venerate other saints as well, those who submitted and assented to God’s will in their lives.  But perhaps because of my childhood training, my prayers to Our Lady are not as spontaneous as I would wish, and I confess I have never had the patience to recite a rosary, although I have often tried.  Even so, praying a Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, the announcement Gabriel made to the young girl in Nazareth, reminds me of Mary’s love, guidance, and even power and influence.

I have had the great blessing of visiting many churches, abbeys, and cathedrals in Western Europe and most have a Lady Chapel (as do many churches in the U.S. as well).  I enjoy lighting a candle and saying my Gabriel prayer and talking to her, asking for her guidance and blessing.  I have visited Lourdes in the foothills of the French Pyrenees and the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris where Mary appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous and Catherine Labouré.  I’ve seen Bernadette’s incorrupt body in Nevers and Catherine’s in Paris.   The shrines are packed with pilgrims of every race and color, age and condition, thousands quietly praying, singing, receiving the Eucharist.

I love the feminine aspect Mary gives our faith.  In the long tradition of her veneration in the Church, her influence has been a positive one on Western culture.  For, as our preacher explained this morning, this veneration of the Virgin led to the ideal of chivalry, to the recognition of women’s roles in Church and society, to the ideals of motherhood, family, and the Christian home.  Mary offers a model for women, and today a most welcome one.

It was a red-and-white church this morning, with the broad swathes of red carpet and brick, and the white tented tabernacle, the white linen on the altar.  We sang happy joyous hymns with many alleluias and saints rising in crescendo into the pitched eaves and the stained glass along the aisles.  The organ sounded and we sang and I glanced at the lovely Madonna and Child to the left of the pulpit, with her soft blue robes, thankful.

I have been writing about Mary Magdalene in my novel-in-progress.  I must not forget the other Mary, the Blessed Virgin, our own dear Mother.  Her Lourdes medal rests under my Magdalene medal, close to my heart, and I pray for her guidance, love, and wisdom.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.

We’ve had a coolish summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Even in the eastern valleys where dry August temperatures often hit 105 degrees, fog enshrouds the mornings and the afternoon sun struggles through the air’s chill.  The nights are cold.  The natural world is unpredictable and perhaps this is why we often chat about the weather.  It is always news.

As creatures of the natural world, however, we long for God, for we belong to God.  We long for something more, something we cannot see, but know is there, this God in whom, as Saint Paul said, we live and move and have our being.  We long for our Creator.

This week offered many times to meet God, for there were two weekday Masses, not just the one at mid-week.  Friday was the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, a day in which we celebrate the amazing Gospel account telling how Christ took Peter and John and James up a mountain to pray.  “And as he prayed,” writes Luke, “the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.  And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory…there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, hear him.” (Luke 9:28+).

I had the great blessing of attending the Transfiguration Mass.  The tabernacle was draped in white, the color for feasts of Our Lord and saints not martyred, and the high altar shone bright, beckoning.  I considered what happened on that mountain two thousand years ago, how the bodily features of Christ were transfigured in this moment of glory with God the Father.  How Elijah and Moses appeared with Him, telling Him of his coming death.  It was the union of earth and heaven and his face changed, his clothing was “glistering,” or glittering brightly.   He was transfigured.

This, I thought, is what will happen to each of us one day, and for some of us today, here and now, and in days to come in this earthly life.  But in order to meet God we must prepare ourselves.  We must confess and repent, and be washed clean.  We must meet Christ in the Mass.  Then God will come to us and bring us to Him, for that moment or, upon our death, for eternity.

As I partook of the Body and Blood of Christ I knew there were two parts to such union.  I must prepare and God must come to me.  When we meet, as in this Eucharistic moment in time, I am transfigured.  In that moment I am far more than an earthly creature.  In that moment I fly with the angels.

Moses understood the holy fear of God, the un-namable Yahweh, when he approached the burning bush.  Just so, the power and glory of Almighty God requires such preparation in worship.  We gather and sing His praises.  We decorate our sanctuaries to make them sacred spaces.  We raise the altar and we tent the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies.  We light candles and we bow and kneel.  In these ways we honor God. In these ways we prepare ourselves to meet Him.

But most of all, we clean out our hearts.  God takes all of our wrong-turnings since the last cleaning out and forgives them, absolves us of all guilt.  Now we are ready for the burning bush.  Now we are ready to be transfigured.

Today’s Sunday Scriptures spoke of being visited by God, and being able to see Him when He comes.  But, as our good preacher reminded us, if we do not look, we will not see.  We will not know transfiguration.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

My cat killed a bird.

The image of the lovely gray quail hanging from Laddie’s jaws, as the cat bounded to the back door to lay the offering inside, shall haunt me for a time.  My sweet and loving cat did this?

That’s what cats do, I told myself.  Horrified, I reached his strong tabby body in time and forced a release, then cradled the bleeding creature, carrying it to some sod near our back fence, far away from my cruel cat.  The quail died quickly, and a profound grief hit me.  What a horrible world, I thought, where we eat each other.

Indeed, this was another reminder of the brutality of the natural world, a brutality often hidden by its beauty, by man’s need to create order and life out of chaos and death.  Man is a different creature in that regard, having this desire in his heart, the desire of the Creator.

I know we are a fallen world, but it still powerfully affects me when I see such an example, although, to be sure, many examples filled the media this last week and year, and many more will stun us next week and in the coming year.

The incident of the bird occurred a few hours after returning from worshiping God in His church and considering the wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son.  It is a season of parables, Trinity Season, a long green growing season in the Church Year when we hear the teachings of Christ and try and be what God wants us to become.  Each year, on the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, Anglicans around the world listen to this particular Epistle and Gospel.  The Epistle, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth (I Corinthians 10.1+) warns us against breaking God’s law, that is, of ordering our lives and our world according to our fallen way and not His perfect way of love.

Saint Paul promises that “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”  So we remain fallen, and we face our sins – pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, covetousness…  We know the list.  And, as our good preacher explained this morning, God doesn’t remove the temptation, but helps us to endure it, to bear it without succumbing.  When this happens, we are infused with His grace and the fallen has been redeemed.

After Saint Paul’s admonitions, we listened to the Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11+), the well known story of the young man who leaves home, spends his inheritance, and returns begging for any small place in his father’s household.  Not only does the father forgive, he celebrates the son’s homecoming.  He throws a party.  The story holds many levels of truths, and I have been blessed through the years to hear dozens of sermons preached on various aspects and insights.  But this morning I was particularly struck by its relation to the Epistle, and to the ensuing Mass.  We are the prodigals, I thought, here and now, confessing our sins and being forgiven in this liturgy by God Himself.  Here and now, we are being celebrated by God Himself as we celebrate Him.  Each week, each Mass, we appear at Our Father’s house.  We sit at His feet. We are home.  If we repent, we know he will forgive.  So we list our falling-aways of the week and promise to try and change.  We repent.  And each week, Our Father sends His Son into our hearts and minds and bodies to teach us to love one another better.  Just so, each week He celebrates His creation along with His creation.

I am like my cat, hungry for what passes by, instinctually tempted by every fad and easy turn.  We are part of this world, but we have been given the chance to be redeemed.  We are invited to the celebration, the greatest celebration on earth, in His house, and I am so very thankful.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

I love going to Mass, for it is a time to reflect on the last week and consider the week to come.   It is a time to repent and be forgiven.  It is a time to receive God’s life giving power.

This last week was a week of saints, ending with Saint James the Apostle today.

And as a week of saints, it was a week of lovely moments piercing the ordinary day.  I was looking forward to Thursday’s Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, for I had recently visited the Provencal region where she is said to have spent her last days.  I reflected on the four days we were given in the Var – Bouches-du-Rhone region of France, collecting experiences, sights and sounds, tastes and scents, in this lovely wine country east of Marseilles, north of Toulon, for my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery.

I recalled the crystal crisp blue-sky morning after a week of rain and the drive through the vineyards to the base of the broad limestone massif, the hike up the wide pilgrimage path to Mary’s grotto and chapel.  The trail was luminescent with sun refracting off broad leaves and I can hear even now the birds singing as we passed through their land, the slight breeze rustling the ancient forest foliage.  The 11:00 Mass began on time in the damp, dripping cave, and the young white-robed Dominican preached an enthusiastic sermon in French.  It was an experience of transcendence in the cool dark as candles flamed and a few faithful sang the responses.

This last Thursday, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, I imagined the cave with its crowd of pilgrims that had processed up the mountain to honor the saint on her day.  I hope it was joyous at the Grotto of La Sainte-Baume and later as the pilgrims gathered in the valley in St. Maximin’s Cathedral, dressed in traditional Provencal costumes.  Mary’s relics rest in the dark crypt below, sanctifying the church, part of the amazing mystery of this saint, for who she was and who she was not has become part of my present search.

I was sorry to miss the pageantry and devotion of those faithful in southern France, but was cheered with an email from my friend, Sister Emanuela of the Sisters of Divine Revelation in Rome, an order that runs the small gift shop in St. John Lateran and have an active teaching ministry.  I had asked Sr Emanuela if she would take a few photos of the cloister at the basilica there, where, I had read, there had once been a shrine to Mary Magdalene.  And there, on Thursday, Mary’s day, the photos appeared on my screen:  photos of the cloister and the altar pieces remaining from the thirteenth century shrine.  Many thanks, Sister Emanuela!  So I proceeded to write my scene set in the Lateran cloisters, my little part in the honoring of Mary Magdalene.

Today in Saint Peter’s Church, Oakland, I thought of these things and then turned my attention to Saint James the Apostle.  Since James was martyred (early, 42-43 AD, the first Apostle to be martyred) the vestments and tabernacle drapes were blood red and the church flamed crimson in glorious homage to this devoted fisherman. The Gospel told of Christ’s question to James and John, “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?”  Indeed, I thought, the Apostles did drink of His cup, and just so, our preacher exhorted, we are called to do the same, for while we may not be called to give up our lives (although many do this today in our world), we are called to sacrificial self-giving in the observance of His law, way, and cross.

The first century folded into the twenty-first and we sang I sing a song of the Saints of God…, the charming children’s hymn, and as I drank from Christ’s Eucharistic cup, I prayed I too could offer myself as the saints had done and still do, as Mary Magdalene did in Southern Provence, as James, son of Zebedee, brother of John, had done, until the day that Herod Antipas killed him with the sword.

I left Saint Peter’s with joy, knowing if I listened I would hear God’s voice, that He held me close to Him.  He would guide me through the week to come, another big saints week: Anne, Martha, Ignatius of Loyola.

http://http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/ ; http://www.divinarivelazione.org/

Father Pomroy preached on sloth today, one of the seven deadly sins.

Sloth, he explained, is not the same as laziness.  Sloth is being lukewarm about God.  A slothful person is ambivalent and unenthusiastic, and he will will, one day, be rejected by God (the actual phrase from Revelation is more graphic: He will “spew” the lukewarm from His mouth).  Sloth enervates, drugs, and in the end, destroys the soul.

It is easy, I thought, to slide through life with little thought about God.  It often takes a grave illness or crisis in one’s life to wake up.  In the meantime, duty has called many to Sunday worship, to regular examination of conscience, to love of one’s family and neighbor, indeed to repentance.  But duty has largely been abandoned in today’s culture.

So we become slothful, and encouraged to be so.  We look out for ourselves and attend church when we have nothing better to do, when we feel like it.  One day, we shall be spewed out from God’s presence.

In the Anglican Church, as in many others, we have disciplines and “days of obligation” (attendance at Mass.)  These form a framework for our lives; they encourage us in our spiritual growth, even when we do not “feel” like it.  And, I have found, that when I follow these disciplines, I do grow and I do become enthusiastic and, both slowly and suddenly, I am filled with boundless joy.

I begin with my feet plodding the earth, dragging myself to Sunday Mass.  I leave, having tasted Heaven, angel wings lifting me along the path.  Such a transformation.

And so it was today, this Seventh Sunday after Trinity, an ordinary summer Sunday in July when folks were camping and hiking and swimming and enjoying the outdoors.  I entered the large dim nave, and knelt to say my prayers, praying for my family and friends, a list that seemed very long this morning.  So many were hurting, so many lost, so many despairing.  Then I turned to the Psalms for the day in the Book of Common Prayer, and “prayed” the Psalms.  These ancient prayers are filled with every emotion and I find myself grateful to have these poetic words to hold onto.  Then, as I looked up at the green tented tabernacle on the altar, I heard the organ play the opening chords for the processional hymn.

The hymn is one of my favorites:

Ye holy angels bright,
Who wait at God’s right hand,
Or through the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command,
Assist our song,
For else the theme
Too high doth seem
For mortal tongue.
(Richard Baxter, 1672, and John Haptden Gurney, 1838)

The tune is called Darwall (John Darwall, 1779) and is as bright and uplifting and delightful as the words.  Already I was soaring and the service was only beginning.  I waited expectant, knowing now that each minute would be filled with God.

We heard the Scripture lessons and Father rose to preach.  As I listened to him I smiled at the different ways in which he expressed the same truth: dancing Christians versus creeping Christians, seeking and finding and being “caught” by God, bound by love to God.  I was astounded at the simple truth of it, for I had moved from sloth to adoration within one hour.  The contrast was immense and I feared for those who were still in the land of sleep.  Would they wake up?  Would they know what I had known?

The sacred liturgy continued, and as we received Christ into our souls and bodies, our individual joys became one, and the Body of Christ breathed as a single living organism.

I left Saint Peter’s today changed as always, having partaken of Heaven itself, and I prayed that I would never ever ever be lukewarm about God, that I would always dance to the lilting melodies of His angels.  The experience was too beautiful and exquisite to miss one single second, but I knew that duty and discipline would tide me over when I fell once again into sloth.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/, Sunday Eucharist, Sermon and Church School at 10:00.

Home again and thankful for my birthday this last week, thankful for another year on this good earth, and thankful for another opportunity to worship God in the beauty of holiness at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church.

Over the last month, as I traveled to the sites of Mary Magdalene in Provence and journeyed to that first century I sensed time encapsulating.  For her Lord is mine, the same then as today.  Her presence was everywhere I visited – the dripping cave in the massif of limestone, the Gothic basilica that honored her relics in the luminous crypt, even the ancient Abbey of Saint Victor in Marseilles.  I began to notice other country churches that had been founded by monks from fifth-century Saint Victor’s, so that soon I could see Cassianite churches dotting old Provence, their place-names remaining to remind.  And then, the Benedictines of the Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalene in Barroux at the foot of Mount Ventoux, brought me full circle to the present as I gazed upon these young ascetic faces, their black robes dusting the stone floors of the Romanesque nave, singing Latin praises.  God is good, I thought.  He remains active in our world, weaving an exquisitely beautiful tapestry of the faithful, each person unique, each love different, each talent adding to the drama of redemption.

From that first century, when Mary Magdalene and the many others preached to the decadent Roman world, to the present day, as faithful witnesses proclaim God’s immense love to our straying culture, the years seem but a blink of an eye, yet each second contains life and death, holds eternity within it.

A mystery.  And this morning as I gazed upon the thirteenth-century crucifix rising over the green tented tabernacle at Saint Peter’s, I watched and waited for the mysterious miracle, the coming of Christ into our midst in the bread and the wine.

It was a morning of miracles it seemed, for we were blessed with a baptism.  The crucifer and torchbearers processed with our priest down the central aisle to the font near the entrance, and we turned, bowing, as the crucifix passed.  Soon we were looking back to the choir loft over the doors and above that the massive red stained glass window portraying the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The glass is brilliant in its crimsons and oranges and pinks, a happy rain of color upon us below, and today the prisms shimmered with light as we gathered around the stone baptismal font.

I listened to the familiar words of the ancient rite, somehow new each time, and glanced at the fiery windows, thinking of the descent of the Holy Ghost:  “None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of Water and of the Holy Ghost… received into Christ’s holy Church and be made a living member of the same… an heir of everlasting salvation… to give him the kingdom of heaven, and everlasting life.”  Our priest poured the sanctified water over the young man’s head and with this action, baptized him “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”  With this pouring, sin dies in Christ’s own death, and the newly baptized rises from the waters a new creature, part of Christ.

I love the words used to present the newly baptized to us, his new family-in-God:  “We receive this person into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign him with the sign of the Cross in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.”

Mary Magdalene was not ashamed.  She carried the Sign of the Cross on her heart as she fought under Christ’s banner, against sin, the world, and the devil, a faithful servant.  Today is no different, I reflected.  Courage is needed to make one’s way in the dripping dark with the light of a candle.  Courage is needed to be not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified to an unbelieving world.  But He gives us that courage, he rains it upon us.

We received God this morning in the bread and in the wine, as body and blood entered our bodies and souls.  We were washed clean.  We received the crucified one so that we could rise with Him.

Even now, the stained glass rains upon my senses, the brilliant reds, the shimmering prisms.  The Holy Ghost showering upon us, world without end.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/.
All quotes from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer