One more thing everybody: The anti-vaccine argument for a new spin on “freedom” is basically, “I have a right to do what I want with my own body.” Unfortunately, the law of the land mostly agrees with you, just it agrees with the pro-abortion argument. But I say, it’s not just the woman’s body; it’s the body of another person, a dependent child, entrusted by nature and nature’s God to her care. Similarly, it isn’t just your body either. The life and health of your neighbor is a moral obligation imposed by the second greatest commandment of the Law. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” That you imagine that your selfish position, to further the spread of this contagion, is even consistent with Christianity tells me that you don’t even have a clue about anything to do with Jesus Christ and what He commands. As He said, “Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites… blind guides that strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.”
Monday, August 30, 2021
Sunday, August 29, 2021
13th Sunday after Trinity 2021
On the Good Samaritan: Sermon after Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. Here is the link. https://youtu.be/2-pBf3T2l_E
Sunday, August 22, 2021
12th Sunday after Trinity 2021
For the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, with a sermon, click the following link. https://youtu.be/HcQuXi4Wzt0
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Sunday, August 08, 2021
Friday, August 06, 2021
The Transfiguration August 6
II Pet. 1:13f Luke 9:28f
In the spirit of
the Confessions of Saint Augustine, let me say that during a few years in my
youth, I embraced a form of Protestant Evangelicalism. This was probably
because the Episcopal priest who had prepared me for Confirmation, in 1971,
drained the spiritual adventure out of Christianity. The Confirmation itself
was quite a powerful experience; but the kind of rubbish that he presented for
education as to what it was, and how I should respond to the grace of God given
in the sacrament, seemed more a course in skepticism and almost agnosticism
than in the Catholic Faith once delivered to the saints, and preserved and
taught by the Church of the Fathers. The problem began when the very modern
priest, all too typical of the 1960s and early 70s, told us that, really, there
was no devil. It got worse as it went along.
When I came across people who took their faith very seriously, I was among
Evangelicals in the Charismatic movement. And, though much was good, and the
people were quite sincere, I found in those years that present in a certain kind of Protestant
mentality, is a strong resistance to what they call "religion." These
folks loaded the word "religion" with many negative connotations,
depicting especially Catholics in many prejudiced ways; equating
"religion" with superstition, or even with hypocrisy. So, if I sound
a little hard on their way of thinking, please understand that my criticism is
not without both charity and genuine pity.
Having been an Episcopalian since 1958, I grew up in a Church that was still
Anglican, and that had quite a lot in common with the people that those friends
of mine called Catholics, because, really, we are Catholic; that is, we believe in the Catholic
Faith and the Catholic Church that we speak of in the Creeds. We have just said
"I believe One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." We regard
ourselves to be among the inheritors of that Faith and Church along with our
brethren who are Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Having been brought up
in the sort of Anglican household that appreciated the continuity of the Faith
with that of the ancient Church, it was only a matter of time before I would
again hunger for that very thing that my Evangelical friends regarded with
great suspicion, namely "religion."
When we look at the Gospel for this Feast of the Transfiguration, we cannot
appreciate its depths if we fear those things which are specifically
"religious" in its presentation. Christ our Lord was on the mountain,
a place that for Jews symbolized the revelation of God, going all the way back
to Moses. It was as He was in prayer that He was transfigured. This is very
important. For, the chief reason why many of the Protestants I was close to, in
my youth, would step away from their perception of "religion" had
everything to do with a hesitation to embrace and love that most important of
all doctrines, that central revelation of God, the Incarnation. I have said
this before when speaking of the sacraments, specifically the Blessed Sacrament
of the Altar, the Communion with the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In all of their very sincere love for Jesus, there came a point, nonetheless,
when they had a very difficult time with those aspects of our faith that involve
the senses of taste, touch, seeing, and hearing. Any honor given to the Blessed
Virgin mother of our Lord was, for them, uncomfortable. They profess belief in
the two natures of Jesus Christ, that He is both Fully God and fully Man in One
Person; but in every practical way,
they fear and step back from the full implications of what that means. They
fear to come close, fearing all of the echoes and ripples of what it means that
"the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." They confuse the
implications of this, and misunderstand those things as if they were some sort
of idolatry.
Please do not misunderstand me. They were, as I knew them, full of faith, and
quite sincere. But I say these things for your sake, that you will never fear
to embrace the saving revelation that "the Word was made flesh and pitched
the tent of His human nature among us." I say these things so that you
will be liberated in your heart and conscience to come close and touch Christ.
I say this, because of how Saint John (one of those three apostles who are part
of today’s Gospel reading) described what the Church truly is, and what it
shall continue to be for all time until Christ returns on the Last Day. In the
opening of his first Epistle, the Beloved Disciple wrote:
(I John 1: 1-4)
You see, the fear is that worshiping Someone Whom we see, and touch and hear must be some form of idolatry. Let me help you by being very clear. Once you know that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, it is idolatry to worship only a god whom we cannot see. Idolatry is to worship the images we ourselves make from our own minds, and therefore, it is to worship a god who is not the One known by the revelation He gives of Himself. We, who would bow down at the feet of the Man Jesus, should He walk into this room right now, would not be idolaters. Our God is not confined to heaven. The true God revealed Himself, most perfectly by taking human nature into the Divine Person of the only and eternally begotten Son of the Everlasting Father.
This is why we are not afraid to, as the hymn says, "touch and handle
things unseen"- nor even to look upon visible things that both effect and
signify what is invisible. We are not afraid of holy water, or visible
reprentations such as icons and crosses. We do not treat the Blessed Virgin
Mother, through Whom God the Son recieved His human nature, as some sort of
outcast. Furthermore, we know that the bread and wine that will be placed upon
this altar today, will be taken into the Person of the Son of God, and given
back to us as "the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood
of...our Saviour Jesus Christ." And, as the Apostle John wrote, we will
look upon, and our hands will handle the Word of Life." In this way, you
will have fellowship with the Church of the Apostles, and in that fellowship
you will have fellowship with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ,
"that your joy may be full."
On the Mount of Transfiguration, which Saint Peter called "the holy
mount"- itself a phrase showing the effect of the presence of the
incarnate Lord upon all creation- what the apostles saw was not actually the
Divine Nature itself, because that remains invisible to the eyes of every
created thing. What they saw was the Shekinah,
the manifest Glory of God. They saw a manifestation of our ultimate hope, theosis. They saw that human
nature itself is transformed by the presence of God; a certain kind of
blindness, that protects the eyes of our yet fallen and imperfect humanity, was
removed for a brief glimpse of deified human nature. Christ’s human nature was
revealed to be glorious, because in His Person he is fully God. Because of
God's human nature in Christ, our transformed and resurrected human nature is
destined to be glorified by grace when we partake of the divine nature, as
Saint Peter wrote earlier in the same epistle appointed for today
(II Pet. 1:4).
In the Transfiguration of our Lord we see our hope, and we see why we need have
no fear of death. Christ let His disciples see why His coming death should not
fill them with dread. How strange that in this scene, while shining with the
light of His glory, the Lord speaks to Moses and Elijah about the death He
would accomplish at Jerusalem. Notice, His death would be His own to give. This
was Luke’s way of telling us the same thing that John tells. No Man took His
life away; He laid it down freely, and freely took it again. In speaking of His
death to Moses, Christ showed that He was going to fulfill all the Law, and be
the One Who dies for us that our sins could forever be taken away; that in
dying He would fulfill the types and shadows of every sacrifice ever offered on
the Old Testament altars. In speaking with Elijah, He showed that He is the
fulfillment and subject of prophecy itself. It is He of Whom Moses and the
prophets spoke. And, in this scene on the holy mountain, it is He of Whom the
Father speaks: "This is my Beloved Son; hear Him."
The way into the holy of holies, to the throne of God, is Christ's own human nature, as says the Epistle to the Hebrews.
"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:19-22)."
I want the words of this sermon to ring in your ears, because my desire for you is that you never fear to come close and touch the Lord; that you never fear to live within the fellowship of the Church, and by that, within the fellowship of God the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ; that your joy may be full.
And now, unto God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed,
as is most justly due, all might, majesty, dominion, glory and power, now and
forever. Amen
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Thursday, August 05, 2021
David Virtue's interview of Yours Truly
The Trumpvangelicals had been people afraid of their own shadow. Instead of seeing themselves as an occupying force ("Occupy until I come"), instead of realizing that it is the powers of darkness that tremble because we are "terrible as an army with banners," that we, armed with the Gospel, are the superior force, they chose to live in fear of unbelievers. They might think they need a "Messiah like Cyrus" to save them. But I don't need any Messiah other than Jesus. I guess that makes me more like the Canadian and European Christians, and more like our [American] minority Christians.