The Rev. Canon Charles H. Nalls
“How long, Oh Lord?”
-Psalm94
The great flurry over an immenent return of Anglo-Catholics to Rome appears to be in full swing. Some three years after a group of traditional Anglican bishops signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there now has been a “generous” response from folks on the other side of the Tiber. Cries of, “Next year in Jerusalem!” (or St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, as the case may be) have given way to a near frenzy to see who can get in “the club” fastest with no idea of what may be in the details of the offer. It is a bit like the way in which the current U.S. Congress deals with legislation: “No reading, please! Just sign it.” Add in the rumblings that many Anglo-Catholic lay people (remember them?) are decidedly uneasy with respect to the trans-Tiber trip, and it appears to be a good time for some reflection.
Truth is, waiting gives one pause to ponder, and these last few years of rumor and waiting and rumor have been more than ample time to think about this whole question of Catholicity amongst an ever-fragmenting body of Anglicans. It is always good to engage in a little ressourcement, but particularly when things seem to be murky or unsettled. Putting aside questions of liturgy and music for the moment, it might be useful to remember a bit about precisely why Anglican-Catholics are not already Roman Catholics.
I began my own reflection with “Christian and Catholic” from The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton.* I have freely adapted the bishop’s text (translate: he who steals from this steals twice) for this essay which I have planned as part of a series.
Bp. Grafton, truly a “venerable” if not a “blessed”, had a way of getting down to brass tacks that seems to escape us in more modern times. Granted, the Anglican communion of which he was a part has rung down the curtain on itself, but the great revival of Catholicity in the Anglican communion of the 19th century stimulated theological investigation in every quarter.
As Grafton pointed out, the Oxford Movement/Catholic Revival opened the long-closed storehouse of patristic learning” in a way that would profit all branches of the Church. It dusted off and polished up the great Anglican divines and “gave a new zest to biblical research and exegesis.” At its heart, “the Movement” arrived at a deeper realization of the mystery of the incarnation and its extension in the sacraments. Again, from Grafton, “The whole range of Catholic theology came out in more vivid colors and was grasped with a new and more intense appreciation.” Higher ideals of sanctity and a personal self-sacrificing devotion both in clergy and laity were the result and “lives, talents, means were lavishly poured out at the feet of Christ.”
Out of all of this, great hope arose for a reunion of Christendom. But, history reveals that such an effort to live the prayer that all may be one was sure to arouse the ancient adversary. And so it was that the Movement was harassed and attacked from all sides. There were tribunals, mobs in the east of London, charges by bishops against Anglo-Catholics, and denunciations in the media of the day.
Now I think we do well to look back over nearly one hundred-fifty years—indeed, perhaps the last five-hundred--and see how the cause has fared. Neither the sometime folly of adherents nor the blindness of adversaries could stop it. It has formed and purified many to a high degree of sanctity, who are now resting with God. Even in these last broken years there have been Baptisms, Confirmations, and Marriages, so many added to the Mystical Body of Christ in the sacramental cycle. In the time of prosperity men may attain salvation, but in times of suffering and adversity they are made saints. And now it seems we Anglo-Catholics find ourselves in a period of trial and temptation.
Looking at Anglicanism throughout the world, we see that the former Communion is broken into a growing number of pieces, shattered by the hammering of revisionists and modernists. Indeed, the once-respected and proud American branch is led by outright heretics and those who deny Christ’s power to save mankind. It is a diminishing force, a patchwork of graying and increasingly empty parishes. The claimed “traditionalists” are besieged with legal actions by a denomination bent on seeing their parish properties used as saloons rather than give ground in its fight against Christian orthodoxy.
More than thirty years past, participants in the Congress of St. Louis in the United States in 1977 rejected changes that had been made in the Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women, and affirmed Catholic principles and teachings. The Affirmation expressed a determination "to continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same." Yet, almost immediately after this bold attempt to replant and renew came the fissures and splits that have plagued the Movement into the new millennium. And we have played at church, the fraud and the mountebank decking themselves in rich attire to scrap over a few souls, and, perhaps sell a few “seminary” degrees to those who want to have “authority” and the social position of clergy.
This has been shameful-this proliferation of “jurisdictions”. It is fair to say that we can see the hand of the ancient adversary in stirring the controversy among fellow Christians with the same theological heritage, creed and belief. So it has been the case since the time of the Apostles.
The result has shaken those seeking refuge. Some lost faith in the possibility of an Anglican Church ever regaining its Catholic heritage. They said in their despondency “Can these dry bones live?” And so for one ostensible reason or another they sought relief from the need to fight to claim their heritage by “swimming the Tiber.” Comparatively few seem to have gone from conviction after a candid and full investigation of Scripture and history. They were simply tired of the struggle and sought safety in the numbers and existing structure of Rome.
It could not also but be that under the exasperating and depressing schisms and carryings on of the continuing Church that some were found who could not bear the behavior no matter how sincerely they loved the English expression of the Catholic faith. They became victims of their doubts and fears. They began in their recovery of old truths to lose sight of the proportion of the faith, to question their position, or, attracted by Rome’s external appearance of unity, to contrast unfavorably some aspects of the Anglican Church with that of Rome. The latter church took on, to their imagination, the character of an ideal one.
It also is true that Rome was busy with her own proselytizing efforts. There are those who make this work of proselytizing a business—many of whom are former evangelical Protestants who have swapped team jerseys--and study the art of injecting doubt into susceptible minds as to whether we are Catholic. It is one of the stock arguments to refer to the number of persons who have joined the Roman Catholic Church. So be it. We do well to admire the zeal of those with a truth claim and who are bold in asserting it.
I believe that most are sincere in their desire to see all within the embrace that Rome claims to be wholly salvific. We should consider that these efforts are the result not of malice, but genuine desire to gain souls for the larger Church. There are some points, however, it would be well to consider before one marches down the gangplank onto the barque of Peter.
Let’s be direct for a moment to those who are now attending upon the issuance of an Apostolic Constitution and, with it, the Roman Catholic Church to descend from on high to solve all of their earthly woes. If the Roman Church is the only true church, and is alone possessed of sacramental grace, the same mark of improvement ought to be as obvious on the bulk of her converts from us. But what is the case?
According to the account of some who have “gone over”, they have frankly stated that they were no better after than before, or indeed, worse. They fret over the banality of worship and, worse, the cavalier treatment of the Sacrament itself. At worst, some have given up the faith entirely, or, thankfully, moved on to the Eastern Church where real demands upon faith such as fasting discipline and a robust ancient liturgy have proved the palliative to the mundane and modernist.
Ah, but the cry goes up in this most recent round that all will be well as we are going with our liturgical and musical heritage. That may well be true, although the devil may well be in the details here too. However there are things that Anglicans will not travel with. You will not be independent of Rome—a sort of “communion relationship” without qualification. You will have to assent to all of the dogma, doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. That is reasonable, and it is the reason Rome is who she is. Those who assert otherwise—that Anglicans will honored and not “absorbed” are willfully blind, utter fools or outright liars. Those who make the jump will be “former Anglicans”, Roman Catholics with the familiar trimmings but “former Anglicans”. Let us give the Roman Catholic Church credit for saying what she means.
As for the brass tacks, many who have become Roman Catholic have found that they and others fell into the same sins as they did when Anglicans, and that the Roman sacraments gave no other aid than that they had previously received. The devil then had them in a logical vise. They had denied the Anglican sacraments to be channels of grace, and now it was proved the Roman Catholic were no better, and so nothing was to be believed. There were others who grew spiritually, but no more so than did those whom they had left behind. This is what Anglican clergy will have to face no matter what gloss they try to place upon it. If one’s Holy Orders are invalid, then so too one’s Sacraments, and Anglican clergy have been committing spiritual fraud in administering them.
In joining Rome, one must be “received” effectively being re-confirmed. By receiving so-called first communion, one necessarily denies that he has before sacramentally received the body and blood of the Lord. If he is a priest, as we have noted, he denies his orders and the validity of his sacraments. In all these acts a person turns against the Holy Ghost and his Lord, denying their gifts and presence. Moreover, he deserts his post.
On this point Charles Grafton was quite blunt,
God has placed priests in the Anglican Church there to be a witness, just as he placed Elijah in Israel amidst its worship. It was very trying to the prophet and so, heartsick, he fled away to the wilderness. But there the Word of the Lord searched him out and said, ‘What doest thou here, Elijah.’ It is just as much desertion for a soldier to go over to some other regiment or place on the battlefield as to run away. If we believe that we have the faith and sacraments, we must stay where we are placed.
We are reaching to the very core of our claims as Anglo-Catholics. For in deciding on the claims of the papal supremacy against the Eastern and Anglican Churches in favor of Rome, one assumes to himself the powers of an Ecumenical council. It is an act full of spiritual danger. For if Rome were right in her claims, God could not condemn one who said that as a Catholic he had not ventured to assume an authority not given him; and as God had not so ordered it that a council of the whole Church had declared the papal supremacy, he could not, by his not submitting to it, be found guilty of disobeying Him.
And so with it all of the rest. Faber developed a new Italian Mariolatry in England, and the situation has not been mitigated in the last century as Rome had pondered the question of the Blessed Virgin as Co-Redemptorix. So too, one has to consider the question of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the decree of “Papal Infallibility.” These are not optional. To be received into the Catholic Church without assent to these matters or with one’s fingers crossed is to be a liar in one’s own right.
“Perhaps,” as Grafton noted, “it is time to learn how to wait on God and to tarry His leisure. It is His Church and He is working out plans, not our plans but His own. We can only read His providences as they accomplish themselves, and by learning to conform ourselves to them.”
Would that all “churchmen”, Continuing and others, learn to trust one another more. Again from Bp. Grafton, “Union within the Church cannot be cut of whole cloth, it must first be won and established within ourselves as in the foundation of any union before we worry about sister churches.” Let Continuing churchmen trust God, get together, bear with one another, and the Church will reap her joyful harvest.
Holding, as Anglican Catholics do, the most important position in the great conflict, they are exposed to special temptations, and none more subtle than to leave their posts. They become depressed with the outlook. They have an ideal of what the king’s daughter ought to be; and they freely criticize and find fault with their own communion as they would not that God should criticize them.
They forget that as God bears with them, so He bears with His Church. Despondency when not occasioned by physical causes is a work of Satan. Nothing so helps it as for two sympathizing friends to talk over together the evils existing in the Church. It may be true that the general ignorance and prejudice is dismal and virulent, that the Agnostic and Erastian spirit is dominant, that Christianity is losing its hold, that the bishops are timid, that the progress of the Catholic cause is slow. There is some truth in all this, but the more of truth the more reasons for courage and hope. When Israel is in the brick kiln then cometh Moses. In the fourth watch of the night to the tired rowers cometh Jesus on the waters.
"Our checks," said Dr. Pusey, "have always turned out to be our greatest blessings. Let us tarry the Lord’s leisure." Let us remember the martyrs and confessors. Let us offer the holy sacrifice and put our trust in the Lord. Not a few who have joined Rome have felt it their duty to leave her. It requires a high degree of Christian fortitude to resist the solicitations of friends. But it is the way of duty and honor, and the only way to make reparation to our Blessed Lord.
* Based upon The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton (Volume 1), edited by B. Talbot Rogers, New York: Longmans, Green, 1914, pp. 343-354. This is the first in a series of reflections based on Blessed Charles Grafton’s works.
“Redeem the time, for the days are evil”.+
What is it to redeem the time? What does this suggestive phrase mean?
The first part of the sentence is partly explained by the second part. “The days are evil.” In other words, in the same way as biblical talk of Jesus redeeming people means Him saving them from sin, our redemption of time includes rescuing each moment from the domination of evil. If we see ourselves as involved in a spiritual battle, with the Kingdom of God advancing against the dark places, against the domain of Satan, we might consider human souls (and even human society and culture to a lesser extent) as the battlefield, the “territory” to be won by the armour and weaponry of faith and love, of prayer and God's word. But the battle can also be seen as fought across the field of time, across our lives' journeys, day by day, hour by hour. The more consistently and persistently we consecrate ourselves to God and his holy will, the more we change not only our own progress through time towards eternity but also that of the world around us.
The word “redeem” means to buy back, or to pay money so as to release someone or something from the former possessor. That is why it is applied to the practice of buying and then freeing slaves from their former owners. (Which still goes on, by the way, in Africa, where a number of Christians are still rescuing Christians and animists from enslavement to Muslims.) And that is why it is also applied to Christ's sacrifice for us, where he pays the debt of our sin Himself (as well as meriting eternity for us by his perfect obedience) in order to release us from its guilt and power over us.
How does this apply to us and time? After all, time that is gone is gone forever and the past cannot be changed. However, the present and the future are in our hands. Unless we cooperate with God in the now, we leave the present and future to the imprisonment of merely continuing the past, of being determined by the influences of the world, the flesh and the Devil. In other words, unless we redeem the time, we leave it to the muddied flow of fallen, corrupted nature. The days are evil because of the working out of the primordial and perpetual rebellions of created beings with free will. Those under God's grace represent His insertion of a different, more powerful dynamism, one which in its “working out” leads inexorably to final victory.
How do we redeem the time?
I have already said it is by cooperating with God. What are the specifics of this cooperation? The first one is a matter of basic attitude to time. We must see it in the context of eternity. St Paul said “this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which lie ahead, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
As the words “press towards” indicate, we must also work hard for God and not waste time that should be in his service through laziness. This does not mean every moment that is not spent in prayer or religious or charitable works is therefore wasted. God intends us to set aside time for rest and recreation, hence his institution of a day of rest, the Sabbath, in the Bible. And it is the same Bible that encourages us to sleep properly: “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.” And the same Bible that says even normal, everyday activities can be done for God: “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”. So, yes, we must set aside time especially for prayer, meditation on Scripture, doing good works and going to Church. But all that we do can be given a distinctively Christian character simply by building up the habit of remembering his presence and grace, of consciously living “under the shadow of [his] wings” (Psalm 36.7). Persistent, brief prayer throughout the day is the road to this habitual awareness of God. This does not mean we sin if we are not thinking religious thoughts all the time. The point is to know that He is thinking of us even when we are not explicitly thinking of Him. Some people may find this concept frightening or an imposition. But we neither can have or need a “holiday from God”. On the contrary, he is our resting place, as that quote from the Psalm indicated and as many of the Psalms do.
St Paul says in today's Epistle that we should have the wisdom to know the will of God. And that is so we can do it, obviously, as we have just learnt. Where and how do we find this wisdom? St James (1:5) tells us it is ours for the asking, if we ask in faith. That brings us back to prayer. God speaks to us through the Scriptures always, and much of the wisdom there is sufficient for decision-making if we apply it generally to our situation. (Not every decision requires a special divine inspiration, after all. God gave us a brain as well as a Bible.) He will also speak to us through other Christians, common sense and directly to our hearts.
“[B]e filled with the Spirit” the Epistle tells us. If we live full of God, we will clearly affect our times by touching and bringing healing to them with His eternal goodness. Allow me to quote something I have said before: “Paul makes clear in his letters that we can choose to be filled with the Holy Spirit in an ongoing way. Indeed, he exhorts his readers in Ephesians, “be filled with the Holy Spirit”, and the Greek means “be being filled”, it is the present continuous tense. He connects this exhortation with loving Christ and knowing His love for us, instruction to praise and give thanks to God, including in song, and to constant praying generally (Eph. 3.16f, 5.18-20, 6.18). Even in Acts, people who were “baptised with the Spirit” at Pentecost could be filled again later in response to fervent prayer (4.31). Being filled with the Holy Spirit does not have to mean a once-for-all, once-only experience.” So, prayer (including praising and worshipping God) and focussing our attention on Christ are again seen to be the key.
“[S]ubmitting to one another in the fear of God” is the last thing mentioned in today's passage. This reminds us that we cannot redeem the time from evil days unless we forego pride, the original sin that caused the days to be evil in the first place, and behave with humility and patience towards one another.
We can redeem the time, through God's grace, as we trust and obey, as we give ourselves to Christ and his Church, as we love God and neighbour and cover everything with persistent and devoted prayer. +
Eph. 5:15-21
Matt. 22:1-14
O aweful love that found no room
In life where sin denied thee,
And doomed to death, must bring to doom
The power which crucified thee,
Till not a stone was left on stone,
And all a nation’s pride o’erthrown,
Went down to dust beside thee.
This power was simply that of unbelief and rejection, a power that surrendered the king of Israel to the Gentiles to be scourged and crucified. It was the best people that did this, not pagans who worshiped idols and had no knowledge of God. Instead, these were the ones who had been invited. It is not politically correct to speak of such things, and yet the scripture tells us that not one stone would be left upon another, just as the prophets of the Old Testament had predicted the seventy years of captivity in Babylon, and more to the point, said that it was caused by the people’s sin. Saint Luke tells us:
And when [Jesus] was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
Luke 19:41-44
For many centuries the Jewish people suffered terrible injustices, and some of those injustices were caused by foolish men who dared to misuse these very texts of the New Testament. It is essential for Christians always to remember, when we are reminded of the severity that has fallen on any people, there must be with us only charity for those people and sorrow for our own sins. And, that we have a debt of gratitude to Israel for giving us our faith, for the apostles who preached the Gospel to the nations, and for the Blessed Virgin who said “yes” to God’s will that she give birth to God the Son. To hate the Jews is to hate God, for the incarnate God, the Word made flesh, our Lord and Savior, is a Jew. So, we must speak with great humility about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and of the Diaspora. But, we must speak of it, because we must learn from it. What must we learn? In the words of Saint Paul:
Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.
Romans 11:18-21
And, what those words mean is this: If you are a Gentile by descent, that is, of any people other than the Jewish people, and you have faith in Christ, don’t boast about it as if you were better than the Jews. You are like a branch grafted into a new tree, the tree of Israel. And, the root of that tree bears you, because it is greater than you and all your kin and all your ancestors put together. When your ancestors were worshiping idols, when mine were painting themselves blue and performing human sacrifice, the root that bears us now, the people of Israel, were worshiping the true God in His holy temple. The lesson is: Do not boast, but rather take heed. “For if God spared not the natural branches...” that is, if He allowed terrible things to come upon the people of Israel, “take heed lest He also spare not thee.”
This is the meaning of the judgment to come, the eschatological judgment. That is, in the time of the end of all things as we know them now, when Christ has come again and the dead have been raised to stand before His throne. Again, from the parable, the king has been generous enough to admit into his son’s wedding feast the most common of people- people who cannot claim to be physically descended from God’s own relatives, people who are not of the noble blood of the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And, in keeping with the customs of ancient Mid-Eastern people, he has furnished every guest with an appropriate garment. No one needed to bring his own wedding garment, because that was up to the host. He provided them for his guests, a sort of vestment to symbolize the occasion.
And, from the perspective of this king, we see another offense perpetrated against his generosity, that is, an ungrateful ill-mannered guest who ignores the garment given to him at the door, and who wears nothing over his street clothes while in the royal palace. While there as a guest of the king himself for his son’s wedding, he ignores basic etiquette. The picture is one of a man going out of his way to insult the king, not one of a man too poor to buy a good suit.
The scripture tells us who we are in Christ. We have been baptized into His death, buried with Him in baptism and risen to walk in the newness of life, the life of the Risen Christ. We are told, therefore, by Saint Paul:
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.
Romans 13:12-14
We are told to put on Christ, to clothe ourselves in Him. We must not live like the world around us, and not by their rules. Our minds must be renewed by the word of God.
If we understand where we are right now, and that we are here by God’s grace, by the goodness of His love in sending His own Son to take our human nature, and to die for our sins, then we must prepare for the day of that Risen Son’s return. Time will be rolled up like a scroll, and a new heaven and new earth will take the place of the world we have known. We are even now being summoned into that place where there is no more sorrow or sighing, and where God wipes away every tear from our eyes, for the former things are no more. If our hearts and affections cling only to this world of sin and death, living for pleasure instead of preparation to see God, we are most ungrateful and ill mannered. The time is now. We must put on Christ, and be found in Him now. What can we say except words of thanks for a generous invitation we neither deserved nor planned. It is His gracious invitation to one and all that His house be filled with guests, guests invited to abide with him in his house forever.
"Article XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.
Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants."
"Article XXII. Of Purgatory.
The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God."