All Saints Day is a festival, a time for rejoicing in the victory of the saints, all those who have been “the choice vessels of [God’s] grace, and the lights of the world in their several generations”, whose example of “stedfastness in [his] faith, and obedience to [his] holy commandments” we aspire to follow. But then comes All Souls Day – not a festival, but a penitential commemoration of the faithful departed, and (often) of prayer for them.
In the midst of a hotly-contested election in a sharply-divided country, we pray for the guidance of the minds of the voters, in making choice of fit persons to serve in public office, and for wellbeing of our country, whatever the outcome.
The commemorations of the Apostles and Evangelists are spread throughout the course of the Church’s year, and they conclude on 28th October (Monday) with the feast of Simon and Jude – the other Simon (not Peter), and the other Judas (not Iscariot). On this feast we give thanks for the completion of the foundations of the walls of the new Jerusalem: “for the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14).
On Friday past we kept the feast of Saint Luke, described in Cranmer’s classic collect as “the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel [Col.4:14], called to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul”, The ancient lessons of the feast (2 Timothy 4:5-15, and Luke 10:1-7, p. 253) invite us to reflect on the evangelistic or gospel mission of the church.
So far in this unusually extended series the focus has been on the classical Anglicanism of the 16th to 18th centuries, a recognized strain (however idiosyncratic) within the world of reformed protestant orthodoxy. We have not touched on the great “sea change” effected by the 19th century Anglo-catholic movement.
The Anglicanism that emerged out of the 16th century unquestionably involved a drastic overhaul of church’s government, doctrine and worship, a reform which catholic traditionalists think went too far – just as advanced protestants think it did not go far enough. Though it was not the first time the catholic tradition underwent reforms, yet it was more drastic than most. On what basis can we claim those reforms as consistent with the catholic tradition?
What happens in your mind when you are asked to fill out a pledge card? I suspect that at least part of your mind approaches it as a consumer would – a religious consumer, but still a consumer. It’s a bill to be paid, and somehow it must be fitted in with all the other bills we pay for goods and services we need or want.
Before he was an Apostle and Evangelist, Matthew was a publican, a tax collector, despised by all rightthinking patriotic Jews for squeezing the poor and collaborating with the Romans. Yet it was this most unsuitable person, “sitting at the receipt of custom”, whom Jesus saw and called with the words, “follow me”. Matthew did not choose Jesus: it is Jesus who chose him.
It is in the liturgies it provides for the sacraments that the Prayer Book’s claim to be fully reformed and fully catholic – without being puritan or papist – is most contested. Naturally, the chief focus is on the service known variously as the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, or the Eucharist – all of them terms with ancient origins, and varied patterns of use among catholics and protestants.
To claim (as I did in the first part of this essay) that when Cranmer’s reform seems most protestant, it is simultaneously most catholic, is undoubtedly paradoxical, but not merely a rhetorical flourish.
Those who esteem the old Prayer Book are used to sniping from opposite sides – from catholics, that it is “too protestant”; from evangelicals, it is “too catholic”. It’s a pattern of criticism that can be traced back to the recusants (non-conforming papal loyalists) and puritans (nonconforming advanced protestants) of the 16th century.
As with most of the apostles, there is not much detail about Bartholomew in the New Testament. Bartholomew was probably a patronymic (‘son of Tolmai’), not his proper name...
