Category The Parish Paper

Thursday next we Americans keep a day of national thanksgiving for the blessings we enjoy, in hope that we may prove ourselves worthy of them. For Christians, however, the giving of thanks is not just an annual event, but the very substance of our lives; for we give thanks not just for “life and health and safety, power to work and leisure to rest, for all that is beautiful in creation and in the lives of men”; but “above all for our spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory”.

Last week I travelled with Fr Jameson and St. John’s lay delegates (Skip Jennings, Stacy Jennings, John Bradshaw, and Rick Wright) to the annual Convention of the Diocese of Georgia, held in Tifton, about four hours drive west of Savannah. As we passed through the small towns of the hinterland we saw the damage wrought by storm Helene – huge trees uprooted, roofs patched in blue tarpaulin, piles of debris, and devastated pecan groves. It was an appropriate setting for the main topic of the Convention, which was the reality of institutional decline in the Episcopal Church, especially in the smaller congregations of a largely rural diocese.

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.