The Original Old Catholic Succession of the Anglican Province of America

For those who may be interested... subsequently our hierarchy was consecrated by Bishops of the Anglican Communion episcopate in 1981 and 1991.

The English Old Catholic Succession from Bishop Arnold Harris Matthew

Gerardus Gul, 8th Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht on 28th April 1908 consecrated, with JJ Van Thiel, NBP Spit, and J Demmel, at Utrecht according to the Pontificale Romanum,

Arnold Harris Matthew, Regionary Old Catholic Bishop for Britain, who on 28th October 1914 consecrated at Bromley, Kent,

Frederick Samuel Willoughby, Bishop Coadjutor of the Old Roman Catholic Church, who on 9th July 1922 consecrated

James Bartholomew Banks, who, with James Dominic Mary O’Gavigan, on 28th May 1940 consecrated at East Molesey, Surrey

Sidney Ernest Page Needham, who on 4th January 1945 consecrated sub conditione

Hugh George de Willmott Newman, who, assisted by John Sebastian Marlow Ward and William John Eaton Jeffrey, on 25th August 1945 consecrated sub conditione, at New Barnet,

Joseph K. Chengalvaroyan Chittoor Pillai, Metropolitan of the Indian Orthodox Church, who on 29th December 1968 at Cincinnati, Ohio consecrated

James Hardin George, Junior, 2nd Bishop Primus of the American Episcopal Church, who on 11th February 1970, consecrated

Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier, 3rd Bishop Primus of the American Episcopal Church, who on 26th March 1976 in Knoxville, Tennessee consecrated

Walter Howard Grundorf, Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of the Eastern United States.


The American Old Catholic Succession from Bishop Arnold Harris Matthew

Arnold Harris Matthew in London on 29th June 1913 consecrated

Prince de Landas Berghes et de Rache, Archbishop of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church, who with William Henry Francis Brothers, on 4th October 1916 at Saint Dunstan’s Abbey, Waukegan, Illinois consecrated

Carmel Henry Carfora, Archbishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church in North America, who on 15th August 1943 in San Jose, California consecrated

Frederick Littler Pyman, who on 8th July 1972 in San Jose, California, consecrated

Larry Lee Shaver, who was received into the communion of the American Episcopal Church in March 1975, and who on 26th March 1976 in Knoxville, Tennessee consecrated

Walter Howard Grundorf, Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of the Eastern United States.

The Old Catholic Consecrators

Following on the intriguing discussion at The Continuum, below is the carefully-researched essay by Father John Jay Hughes found in his 1970 defence of Anglican Orders, Stewards of the Lord:

Whatever view one takes of the criticisms of Apostolicae curae in this book, it is indisputable that the situation envisaged by the Bull no longer exists. In the course of the last half-century bishops recognized by the Holy See as validly consecrated have taken part in a considerable number of Anglican episcopal consecrations as co-consecrators. A majority of the Anglican bishops in the world today, and probably the large majority, can trace their consecration to bishops about whose episcopal character there is no doubt. This has rendered the verdict of Apostolicae curae obsolete by creating a new situation which could not be foreseen in 1896. As exact information about the new streams of succession introduced into the Anglican episcopate in the last half-century is difficult to come by, we present here a brief list of consecrations and of the bishops concerned. Although the information which follows is believed to be accurate in all details, it can make no claim to completeness.

On 28 April 1908 three bishops of the Dutch Old Catholic Church consecrated the former Roman Catholic priest, Arnold Harris Mathew, a bishop in Utrecht. On 29 June 1919 Bishop Mathew consecrated Bishop de Landesberghes et de Rache.1 He was a co-consecrator on 12 January 1915 of Hiram Richard Hulse as Episcopalian Bishop of Cuba. Bishop Hulse, through his participation in numerous subsequent consecrations in the Episcopal Church, appears in the Table of Succession of almost all present bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States,2 and in the Table of Succession of many of the present bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Subsequent to the establishment of full intercommunion between the Anglican communion and the Old Catholic Church, bishops of the two churches began to take part as co-consecrators in the episcopal consecrations of the other church on a reciprocal basis. Each church recognised the validity of the other's ministry in advance. The exchange of consecrators was not motivated, therefore, by any residual doubts on one side or the other about the validity of the orders conferred in the two churches. The mingling of the two lines of episcopal succession was desired by both sides as a logical consequence of the existing relationship of intercommunion. Old Catholic bishops have acted as co-consecrators at the consecration of the following Anglican bishops:

George Francis Graham-Brown, Bishop in Jerusalem; and Betram Fitzgerald Simpson, Bishop of Kensington, 24 June 1932

Harold Jocelyn Buxton, Bishop of Gibraltar; and Alfred Morris Gelsthorpe, Assistant Bishop on the Niger, 24 February 1933

Geoffrey Francis Alien, Bishop in Egypt(later translated to Derby, England); and Kenneth Charles Harman Warner, Bishop of Edinburgh, 25 January 1947

Robert Wright Stopford, Bishop of Fulham (now Bishop of London); and John Keith Russell, Assistant Bishop on the Upper Nile, 11 June 1955

Stanley A. Eley, Bishop of Gibraltar; John H. L. Phillips, Bishop of Portsmouth; A. W. Goodwin Hudson, Bishop Coadjutor of Sydney (Australia), 25 March 1960

George Christopher Cutts Pepys, Bishop of Buckingham; and Ronald Cedric Osbourne Goodchild, Bishop of Kensington 3, 1 May 1964

In addition bishops of the Polish National Catholic Church, whose orders are also recognized as valid by the Holy See, have taken part as co-consecrators in the consecration of the following Anglican bishops in North America:

United States of America

Harold E. Sawyer, Erie, Pa.; Horace W. B. Donegan, Suffragan (later
diocesan) of New York, 6 November 1946

Lauriston L. Scaife, Western New York, 28 October 1947

David Ernrys Richards, Suffragan of Albany, 19 July 1951

Donald H. V. Hallock, Coadjutor of Milwaukee (two Polish National Catholic
co-consecrators), 10 January 1952

Frederick J. Warnecke, Coadjutor of Bethlehem, Pa., 5 February 1953

William S. Thomas, Suffragan of Pittsburgh, 29 September 1953

John H. Esquirol, Suffragan of Connecticut, 9 April 1958

Charles Packard Gilson, Suffragan of Honolulu, later Bishop of Taiwan, 28 September 1961

Charles Waldo MacLean, Suffragan of Chicago, 14 February 1962

James Winchester Montgomery, Suffragan of Chicago, 29 September 1962

Albert Arthur Chambers, Springfield, Illinois, 1 October 1962

Charles Bowen Persell, Jr., Suffragan of Albany, 9 February 1963

Canada

Walter E. Bagnall, Niagara, 21 September 1949

Frederick H. Wilkinson, Coadjutor of Toronto, 6 January 1953

William A. Townshend, Suffragan of Huron, 30 November 1955

George B. Snell, Suffragan of Toronto, 25 January 1956

Henry R. Hunt, Suffragan of Toronto, 6 January 1960

Harold F. G. Appleyard, Suffragan of Huron, 6 January 1961 4

It is sometimes argued that the participation of these non-Anglican bishops as co-consecrators is worthless because a defective sacramental form was used at these consecrations,5 or because the co-consecrators in the Anglican rite do not join in reciting the words of the essential form, but merely lay their hands on the head of the bishop being consecrated while the form is said by the archbishop or other chief consecrator alone. The assumption underlying the second of these two objections is not entirely correct. The custom at the consecrations in England is for the Old Catholic bishops to lay on hands either with the Anglican bishops or subsequently, and to say, 'Accipe Spiritum Sanctum'.6 To argue, however, that the silent imposition of the co-consecrators' hands in the Anglican rite, while the chief consecrator alone says the form in the name of all, is worthless is to impose upon Anglicans standards which Roman Catholic theologians would not think of imposing upon their own bishops. This argument is like saying that all Roman Catholic ordinations to the priesthood today are invalid because the essential laying on of hands is separated from the utterance of the essential form as defined by Pius XII in 1947. The answer to this objection is that there is a 'moral unity' between the silent and essential laying on of hands and the following prayer which contains the words of the essential form. On the same principles the silent participation of co-consecrators in the laying on of hands in the Anglican rite of episcopal consecration is a 'moral participation' in the essential form, which is said by the chief consecrator alone.7

The second objection, that the participation of Old Catholic and Polish National Catholic consecrators in Anglican consecrations over the last decades is worthless because of the use of an invalid form, may be dealt with even more briefly. The form condemned in Apostolicae curae has not been used since 1662: the Bull deals specifically with the form in use from 1552 to 1662. And we have already noted the opinion of the Bull's principal author, that the form as expanded in 1662 could conceivably be valid.8

The consecrations listed above are of significance not only for the Anglican bishops concerned, but for all other bishops to whom they have passed on their succession, and to the clergy ordained by such bishops. Since the required minimum of three consecrators is normally greatly exceeded at Anglican episcopal consecrations, the bishops who have been listed above have very quickly passed on their succession to others.

The new situation thus created has not yet been the subject of a formal ruling by the Holy See. However as long ago as 1960 Rome took official cognisance of this changed situation by granting to a convert Anglican priest in the United States a dispensation from the diriment matrimonial impediment of major orders so that he could convalidate his putative marriage of many years, which was invalid according to Roman Catholic canon law. This case is especially significant in view of the fact that one of the precedents cited by Apostolicae curae involved 'a certain French Calvinist' who had been ordained priest in the Church of England and, after subsequently entering the Roman Catholic Church, desired to marry. It was decided in 1684 that he had not contracted a diriment impediment to marriage by being ordained in the Church of England, since the ordination was invalid.9 The present author's conditional ordination to the diaconate and priesthood by the then Bishop of Munster, Dr Joseph Hoffner, on 27 January 1968 was based upon the facts set forth in this appendix. These facts form no part of the argument of this book. They are included here merely for the sake of completeness, and because the rather 'mechanical' or 'pipeline' view of apostolic succession assumed here governs the practice of the Holy See, and will continue to govern it until catholic theologians are able to find general acceptance for a reasonable restatement of prevailing notions of apostolic succession. The understanding of apostolic succession here criticised has been correctly described by Roger Beckwith as 'un-Anglican'.10 The present author hopes to see the day when it may be generally regarded as un-catholic as well.

____________________________________

1 Cf H. R. T. Brandreth, Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, London 1947, 12, 16, and 24.

2 The Table of Episcopal Succession for all living bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America is published annually in The Episcopal Church Annual. Prior to 1952 this work was published annually under the title, The Living Church Annual and contained the Table of Succession of all deceased bishops of the American Episcopal Church as well.

3 Information kindly supplied by the Rev'd Canon J. R. Satterthwaite of the Church of England Council on Foreign Relations. The first of these consecrations, that in 1932, is attested by a lengthy Latin protocol preserved at Pusey House, Oxford, and Lambeth Palace, London, in which the Old Catholic Bishop of Haarlem, Henry Theoroe John van Vlijmen, declares that when laying on hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury and saying the formula, 'Accipe Spiritum Sanctum' he 'formally intended to confer . . . the order of the episcopate according to the mind of our holy mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . and to impart the same episcopal character which . . . we bishops of the Old Catholic Church possess, that is, the fullness of priesthood with each and every function pertaining thereto and with the faculties inherent in the same, in the precise sense in which the fullness of the priesthood has been understood everywhere, always, and by all.' (Emphasis in original.) The document also states that the reason for the Bishop of Haarlem's participation was 'to mingle as two streams the episcopal succession which has come down from the Apostles, namely that derived through the bishops of the Old Catholic Church and that which has come down through the Anglican hierarchy until the present time.'

4 Information kindly supplied by the Ven. Henry P. Krusen, Archdeacon of Western New York.

5 Cf AODI 192f

6 Information kindly supplied by Canon Satterthwaite.

7 It is interesting to note that the Second Vatican Council conformed the practice at the consecration of bishops in the Latin rite to that of the Anglican Ordinal: henceforth all the bishops present may join with the three consecrating bishops in the laying on of hands. Cf CLit 76.

8 Cf the letter of Cardinal Merry del Val on p 237 above.

9 Cf ANUV 297f

10 Cf Roger Beckwith, 'What are Anglican Orders?': CIRev 53 (1968) 879-84. However see also the present author's 'Ecumenism is a Two-way Street: A Reply to Roger Beckwith': CIRev 54 (1969) 275-80.

Father Steel Popes

From here...

Our prayers and best wishes go with him.

Revelation and Dispensationalism

Dear N.,
You raise a most important question and one that has particularly vexed Traditional Anglicans in recent years. False understandings of eschatology and the Four Last Things, death, judgement, heaven and hell, abound in our age, an age which seems obsessed with questions about the End. Dispensationalism is rife and has infected even the most traditional churches. With the popularity of the Left Behind series and the Omega Code, and other sensationalistic 'end times' motion pictures and books, the errors of the dispensationalist movement have permeated every part of American Christianity. We are certainly called to be vigilant and to 'test the spirits' where such teaching is concerned.

It is possible that some orthodox teachers have come across protestant texts on the Book of Revelation and have embraced the teaching contained in them, innocently, but perhaps uncritically and unwarily. I am sure many such teachers intend to teach orthodox doctrine, but I am the first to admit that the Book of Revelation is a complex and difficult text to explicate and interpret, and should best be left alone by the greater number of parish teachers for that very reason. Revelation is easily susceptible to misinterpretation and speculation. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox Church considers Revelation to be canonical Scripture, but prohibits the reading of it in public worship and the Liturgy, for precisely the reason that it can be so easily misunderstood and misapplied. I think the Orthodox, as usual, are probably right about that centuries-old discipline and prohibition; it would seem to be validated by the spectrum of heresies produced out of the Book of Revelation in our own time. It may be that some teachers are unwittingly presenting a wrong interpretation simply because the interpretation is so very common today. I would venture to say such teachers have obtained their material from frequently-used modern books.

The most reliable boundary of orthodoxy on eschatological doctrine is primarily located in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. So long as a teacher clearly and unambiguously affirms the Second Advent of Our Lord - a single Coming Again of Christ publicly and visibly at the end of time in which all men will be judged and in which the Kingdom of God will be ushered in and at which the Last Judgement and the General Resurrection of all men, good and evil, will occur - then there is some room for theological or pious opinion, theological belief outside that which is de fide tenanda, that is, that which must be believed for salvation and is proven from Holy Scripture. Such views are theologumena, or theological opinions privately held. But one may never teach a pious opinion as a dogma or truth of the Gospel. For example, Anglicans are free to believe that Our Lady was conceived without original sin and was bodily assumed into heaven, but these pious beliefs do not constitute saving faith and are not to be taught as essential Articles of the Catholic Creed.

Likewise, one may hold speculative views on the so-called 'tribulation period' at the end of time or the schedule for the arrival of the Anti-Christ, so long as one does not teach these concepts as necessary doctrines, and so long as one does not contradict the established teaching of the Church found in the Creeds and the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Several of the early Church Fathers, including Saint Justin Martyr and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, believed in a premillennial coming of Christ to earth in which Our Lord will rule on the earth for a literal one-thousand year period before the inauguration of the Eternal Kingdom. But even for Fathers of such magisterial authority, these were but theological opinions based on ideas at the time, and the doctrine of a literal 1,000 year reign of Our Lord on earth before the coming of the Age to Come was decisively and forever condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople I in AD 381: the Council added the phrase, 'and his kingdom shall have no end,' to the Universal Creed deliberately to refute the heresy of chiliasm or the literal Millennium. The Millennium is symbolic of the Church Age, which is not limited to a particular number of years or time period. The number 1,000 represents completeness and perfection - hence the perfection and completeness of the Church's life and mission on earth. The Millennium is the Church. Tribulations and Anti-Christ itineraries are, at best, pointless conjectures, and, at worst, stumbling-blocks to the faith of God's People.

All in all, one could say that certain theories and speculations which do not contradict the general meaning of Scripture received by the Church may be postulated so long as one does not enforce them as being of the substance of the Catholic Faith. Were one to deny the teaching of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, one would have stepped over the line into heresy.

Our eschatological faith comes out of the classical patristic and Western Catholic milieu on the subject. Saint Augustine of Hippo as well as the later Greek Fathers were all amillennial. The Church has been definitively amillennial since the golden age of patristic theology. If a Bible study continues to cause concern, I believe it would be appropriate to approach one's teacher and ask about the primary sources used, delicately and charitably. Dubious instruction on eschatology may not lead souls astray into heresy, but it could needlessly disturb consciences and generate fear, which things are most unhealthy and unnecessary. Dispensationalism is a religion based purposely on fear, as it is meant to frighten people into conversion, and it has no place in the Catholic Faith.

Father Cutie and TEC

This action, both on the part of Father Cutie and the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, is so deliberately provocative and sensationalistic that I do not even know where to begin commenting on it...

Institution of the IV Rector of Saint Barnabas Church, Dunwoody, Georgia

Deo Volente

The Right Reverend C. Peter Brewer, OSF
Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of the Eastern United States
of the Anglican Province of America

will canonically institute

The Reverend Canon Chandler Holder Jones, SSC

into the Office of Rector of
Saint Barnabas Anglican Church
4795 North Peachtree Road
Dunwoody, Georgia 30338

during the offering of the Holy Eucharist
in celebration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of
Saint Barnabas Church,
being the commemoration of the Feast of
Saint Barnabas the Apostle,
on Sunday, the Twenty-First Day of June
in the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand and Nine
at ten o’clock in the morning

Your prayers and presence are joyfully requested

Clergy, red stoles Celebration luncheon follows

The Anglo-Catholic Standard

A new magazine has been established to defend and promote traditional Prayer Book English Catholicism. The first issue of The Anglo-Catholic Standard has just been published and contains articles on:

War! What is it Good for? An Analysis of Just War in Anglican Worship

Two Integrities: Can They Really Co-Exist?

and the following personal contributions:

A Communion of Communions: Orthodox Anglican Ecclesiology

Authentic Catholic Anglicanism

The Intermediate State

This professionally produced and printed magazine also contains poetry and a book review.

To order a copy send your name and address and $5.00 to:

The Anglo-Catholic Standard
P.O. Box 444
Ivy, VA 22945

A Neo-Anglican Convert to Orthodoxy

Edith Humphrey, a prominent speaker and laywoman within the neo-Anglican movement, has converted to Eastern Orthodoxy:

At the same time, I have wondered for several years about the possibility of our continuing together, given the foundational differences that we have in our understanding of the Church, of the sacraments, and of the place of tradition. Recent developments, including the continuing autonomy of AMIA within the proposed new Province, suggestions that we can continue in parallel with TEC, Primatial statements that expressed satisfaction with the last Primates’ meeting when it seems to contradict GAFCON, and continued attention to pragmatics rather than to the nature of the Church have been very problematic, in my view. All the while, I have been drawn for some time in a compelling manner towards the Eastern Christian tradition, and have gained deep appreciation for its apostolic claims, its ancient theologians, its healing disciplines, its sacramental spirituality and its rich liturgical tradition. Despite my temptation to stay and fight for the Anglican way, it seems clear to me now that I must go where the Lord is directing me.

This eloquent and graceful testimony explaining the reason for her conversion to the Orthodox Church bears witness in a fresh and poignant way to our absolute need to recover the patrimony, apostolic, patristic and conciliar, of Catholic Anglicanism.

It has been some time since I have read in the blogosphere a more succinct description of what orthodox Anglicanism should look like, to what it should aspire and attend, and what is in fact the proper and acute vocation of the Continuing Anglican Church.

The Internet Monk has prophesied that evangelical conversions to the historic Apostolic Churches are part of the wave of the future.

Catholic Anglicanism, we insist with vigor and a sense of urgency, is Anglicanism fulfilled, Anglicanism completed, the Anglicanism to which the Ecclesia Anglicana has always tended and in which she is truly vivified and embodied.

Doctrinal Anglo-Catholicism is not just a party or group within Anglicanism: she is the Church in her full being, plene esse.

Does not Catholic Anglicanism place the nature of the Church and Sacraments and the role of Sacred Tradition at the centre of her ecclesial life? Does she not also have apostolic claims, ancient theologians, healing disciplines, sacramental spirituality and a rich liturgical tradition? Indeed she has all of these and more - and so we are rightly pressed to bring to the fore once again who we are and what we are... positively and energetically.

Catholic Anglicanism will never entirely fulfill her destiny so long as she focusses on what she does not believe and fails to express with contagious joy and unmistakable lucidity what she actually does believe. The call remains before us to be the Church and to be authentically Anglican and Catholic...

Tracts for New Enquirers: Roots - The Oxford Movement and The Prayer Book

In the 1800s, the Anglican Church had a revival, a new birth of faith and practice, which is called the Catholic Revival, the Tractarian Movement, or the Oxford Movement. Our Church today is the heir of this wonderful re-starting of Anglo-Catholic belief and worship. This movement, of which we are members, is called 'Tractarian' because the Priests who started it shared their faith in tracts, or little books they wrote. It is also called the Oxford Movement because it began at Oxford University in England.

The Oxford Movement recovered the faith and teaching of the Book of Common Prayer; its founders and leaders did not go outside the Prayer Book to find the Catholic Faith of Christ: it was waiting there all the while to be believed again. The Oxford Movement served the Church by showing her again that the official teaching of the Anglican Church is Catholic AND is found in the Prayer Book. The Prayer Book contains all the essential parts of the Faith and Sacraments. It also continues the traditional Church Year, the feasts and fasts that teach major doctrines and mark the important times of the year. The Prayer Book also helps Christians lead a life of discipline and personal prayer. The Book of Common Prayer is 80% Holy Scripture, and explains the meaning of the Bible. This is what the Oxford Movement wanted: the Doctrine of the Bible and the BCP.

Here are the contents of the Prayer Book - the whole Church's system of prayer and worship is in it:

1. Psalms and Lessons for the Christian Year
2. The Calendar
3. Table and Rules for Feasts, Fasts and Days of Supplication
4. Tables for finding Holy Days
5. The Order for Daily Morning Prayer
6. The Order for Daily Evening Prayer
7. Prayers and Thanksgivings
8. The Litany
9. The Penitential Office for Ash Wednesday
10. The Order for the Administration of the Holy Communion
11. Collects, Epistles and Gospels
12. The Ministration of Holy Baptism
13. Offices of Instruction
14. The Order of Confirmation
15. The Solemnization of Matrimony
16. The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth
17. The Order of the Visitation of the Sick
18. The Communion of the Sick
19. The Order for the Burial of the Dead
20. The Psalter or Psalms of David
21. The Form of Ordaining Bishops, Priests and Deacons
22. The Litany for Ordinations
23. The Form of Consecration of a Church or Chapel
24. The Office of Institution of Ministers
25. The Catechism
26. Form of Prayer for Families
27. The Articles of Religion

In truth, the Ordinal, the service for ordaining Bishops, Priests and Deacons, and the Articles of Religion are not part of the Book of Common Prayer itself but are published with it in one book.

As hoped by the Catholic Revival, anyone who uses the Prayer Book as the BCP intends gets a full course in the Apostolic Faith and practice every single year. The Prayer Book is simple enough to be used by laymen and clergymen alike. The clergy say Morning and Evening Prayer daily. Many lay people also pray these Offices each day too. The Prayer Book is in English so that those who use it can understand its meaning. Many, many people have joined our Church by reading the Book of Common Prayer or by attending the services offered with it. The Prayer Book speaks for itself.

The Movement which brought about a return to the Prayer Book and Prayer Book Catholic doctrine started at Oriel College at Oxford University. Four men were its first leaders. Father John Keble (1792-1866) was the son of a Priest and was himself ordained. A famous poet, he became professor of poetry at Oxford and wrote a book called The Christian Year. Father John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was a famous teacher, writer and Priest of Oxford's University Church of Saint Mary's. Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) was a great Priest scholar and professor of Hebrew at Oxford. Father Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836) was a Priest and teacher at Oxford and died at a very young age. The Oxford Movement began with a sermon preached by John Keble in 1833, in which he taught that the Church is the Body of Jesus Christ, God's Family, not to be controlled by the government of the country. The Church, he taught, has its authority and power directly from Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and should never be told what to do by any country or state. He also taught that the Sacraments and Ministry of the Church come from Jesus Christ and not from any other source.

Tracts for New Enquirers: The Oxford Movement - How The Church Got Her Groove Back

The story of the Catholic Revival continues when a meeting of clergy was held in a town in England called Hadleigh. The Priests who gathered there agreed to teach the Catholic Faith and to show what the real teaching of the English Church is. To do this, a series of popular little books or tracts was put out at Oxford with the title of Tracts for the Times. Our four leaders, Keble, Newman, Pusey and Froude, were among the first authors. The teaching of the Prayer Book and of the Anglican Fathers of the 1500s was put forward. These men also published a series of books called The Library of the Anglo-Catholic Fathers. This series showed that the Anglicans of the 1500s and 1600s taught the same beliefs that were taught in the ancient Church of the 300s and 400s. The Church's teaching is always the same. Anglicans should always be proud to call themselves Anglo-Catholics.

In 1841, John Henry Newman wrote a tract called Tract 90. This Tract, the last one in the Tracts for the Times, taught Anglicans that the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, found at the back of the Prayer Book, do not reject any Catholic doctrine or any part of Catholic worship. Many people did not understand the meaning of John's tract because for so long they had understood the Faith of the Church wrongly. Many people hated this little book because their ideas about the Church were wrong - nevertheless, Tract 90 helps us even today to understand what the Articles of Religion really mean.

The Catholic Revival did not invent anything new; it only kept the Faith as it has always been believed and practiced in the Church of England. Unfortunately, because so many people were confused by the little book of John Henry Newman, he felt he could no longer stay in the Anglican Church, and so he left in 1845. The leadership of the Oxford Movement passed to Doctor Edward Pusey. Father John Keble went to become a country Priest. As the most respected man in Oxford, Dr Pusey rose to defend and teach the Truth in a very powerful way. He was the greatest scholar of his age. Pusey brought back the Sacrament of Penance, or Confession, to the Church of England. He helped many young men become Priests. He was a Saint; he had a deep life of prayer, and helped others to pray. He built a great parish and gave away his money to help the poor. The Anglican Province of America, with the whole Anglican Church, is what it is today because of men like Dr Pusey and the other leaders of the Catholic Revival.

But the Oxford Movement wasn't just in Oxford: it spread like a wildfire all over England... and then America. Another great Anglo-Catholic Priest and leader was Father John Mason Neale. A Priest, husband and father, Father John helped bring back Religious Life, monks and nuns, to the Anglican Church. Yes! That's right, the Anglican Church has monks and nuns - they are called Religious or monastics. Fr Neale was an expert on liturgy and worship and wrote-out most of the hymns now found in our Hymnal 1940. With Dr Pusey's help, in 1841, the first Anglican nun since the Reformation took her vows. In 1849, the first Religious Order for women was created at Oxford, the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. The first convent in the Anglican Church since the Reformation was formed in 1845. The first Mother Superior was Priscilla Lydia Sellon. The first Religious Order for men, the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, was formed by Father Richard Meux Benson in 1866.

The Catholic Revival began as a Movement of the mind and heart - it first wanted to teach and instruct people about the Faith. It taught two main ideas that we should hold very dear today:

1. The Church is the Body of Jesus Christ, not made by man but by God. The Church is the Home of the Holy Spirit.

2. The Sacraments are God's means of grace. God conveys His Grace, His Life, in the Sacraments.

The Oxford Movement held to the importance of the Church and Sacraments. But, the Movement also wanted prayer and devotion. Spiritual life, fed by prayer and Sacrament, was returned to the Church. The Oxford Movement then restored beautiful ritual and ceremonial to the Church, to show in outward ways, by sight, touch, taste, smell and sound, the mystery of God's presence in His Church. Catholic life was taken into parishes. People who had no education or could not read were taught the Faith by outward signs and symbols. The people were shown in dramatic ways the Real Presence of Our Lord's Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. This could only be done by treating the Most Blessed Sacrament with amazing reverence, adoration and love. It is the Mass that matters.

The Catholic Revival also gave birth to new missionary work. Monks and nuns preached to pagan people who had never heard the Gospel before. Several groups were created to do missions. The greatest missionary of the Catholic Revival was Bishop Frank Weston (1871-1924) of Zanzibar, Africa. He built up a strong Diocese and served as a defender of the orthodox Faith.

Tracts for New Enquirers: Catholicism - The Whole Faith For The Whole World

Why do we call our Faith the Catholic Faith? Because the word Catholic means 'according to the whole' or 'fullness.' The word Catholic also means 'Universal' or 'worldwide.' The Catholic Faith is the Faith once delivered unto the Saints, which has been believed by all Christians, in every place, for all time. Those who believe the whole Faith given by Christ to the whole world are called Catholics. The Catholic Faith has been believed everywhere, always and by all.

Our Holy Mother is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church:

The Church is One, because her members agree in One Faith, have the same Sacrifice and Sacraments, and are members of the One Christ.

The Church is Holy, because she teaches holy doctrine and offers to all her children means of holiness.

The Church is Catholic, because she endures through all ages, teaches all nations, and is the one Ark of Salvation for all.

The Church is Apostolic, because she holds the doctrine of the Apostles and derives her Orders and Mission from them.

The Catholic Faith, that is, the Faith of Christ's Church, is shown forth with traditional ceremonies, which include the vestments of the Priests, the Altar and its candles, Cross, and cloths, and special music and ritual. Anglicans show great respect and dignity to the Altar, which represents Christ. The centre and heart of the Catholic Faith is the Holy Eucharist, or the Holy Mass, which is celebrated every Sunday and Holy Day. The Mass has always been the chief service of the Church. We best prepare for Mass and Holy Communion by going to our Priest for Confession, in which we confess our sins to God and receive Absolution, or the grace of forgiveness for our sins from God.

Many Priests of the Catholic Revival have worked very hard to spread this Faith we believe. Father Charles Lowder (1820-1880) formed a special group of Priests called the Society of the Holy Cross for this purpose. He built a lovely parish Church in the poorest part of London and gave his life in service to the poor. He helped bring back the beauty and reverence of Anglican services. Other wonderful Priests like Father Robert Dolling (1851-1902) and Father Arthur Stanton (1839-1913) built
up the Catholic Faith in the poorest parts of some of the poorest cities in the world. The saintly Bishop of Lincoln, Edward King (1829-1910), lived the Catholic Faith in his ministry and amongst his people. Wonderful laymen like Charles Lindley Wood (1839-1934) put together groups like the English Church Union to spread the Faith. These are but a few heroes of the Anglo-Catholic way.

The Anglican Church is not protestant; she differs from protestants in that she keeps Apostolic Succession and her book of worship teaches the traditional faith. The Anglican Church keeps the doctrine and morals which she had before the Reformation. Anglicans believe that the Mind of Christ is the Mind of the Whole Church. Only that which has been taught at all times, in all places, by all good teachers, and confirmed by the Bible, is held by Anglicans to be true belief and teaching. No individual person can claim to be the only authority for the Church; individual people cannot make up the Faith for themselves. Only the Church as a whole has authority to define the Christian Faith. All Churches that keep the Apostolic Succession and the Creeds share a common belief about what is essential for Christians to believe. For Anglicans, the final authority for what we believe and how we act is the universal, or Catholic, teaching of the whole Church throughout all ages. Nothing less than this will do.

But there is also freedom in the Anglican Church. Since only that which the whole Church of all times has believed is what is required, things which the whole Church has not decided on can be left up to people to believe or not to believe. 'In essentials, unity, in non-essentials, diversity, and in all things, charity or love.' The Catholic faith is the same, yesterday, today and forever. In the end, it wins.

To be Catholic means to include in the Church many different ideas and points of view concerning those things which are not essential to salvation. We call this inclusiveness or being inclusive. Another word for it is 'comprehensive.' The Church comprehends, that is, brings together, different ideas or views in one Family. One of the Anglican Church's greatest strengths is her freedom of thought, ideas and expression. People may differ on how many candles should be on the Altar or what kind of vestments a Priest may wear, but, in the Anglican Church, with a shared Prayer Book, Creed, and Ministry, they agree on what is really important. And that's also being whole, complete, entire, full - Catholic.

Now you know a lot about the Anglican Church!

Tracts for New Enquirers: The Book of Common Prayer - Glory Since 1549

The Apostolic Succession is the lifeline that keeps the Anglican Church joined to Christ and the whole Catholic Church which He instituted, the Body of Christ. The Book of Common Prayer has preserved for the Anglican Church the whole Catholic Faith as it has been handed down from the Apostles. The Prayer Book is a unique feature of Anglicanism.

In 1534, King Henry the VIII, the King of England, separated the Church of England from the Church of Rome. He did so in order to save (as he saw it) his country by preserving the kingdom. His first wife could not have a son. Without a son, no rightful heir would come to England's throne. The Bishop of Rome forbade King Henry from putting away his first wife and re-marrying, although his first marriage was actually illegal according to Church law. Many people in England were also tired of paying taxes to Rome. At the time, the Pope was a king, a political ruler who required people to pay him taxes if they wished to remain in communion with him. The Pope directed the affairs of the English Church from abroad. With the support of many English people, and by act of the English Parliament, the ancient Church in England separated herself from the Bishop of Rome and began to reform herself. The Church King Henry separated from Rome existed before the Reformation. She has existed since the first century. She is Apostolic and she is ancient. King Henry did not form a new Church at all. He introduced the independence of the ancient Church of the English people.

The Church of England was not a new Church - she was the old Catholic Church in England, which was renewed and restored to earlier and more biblical doctrines and practices. 'Where was your face before you washed it?' Part of the reform of the English Church was allowing Bishops, Priests and Deacons to marry. Another reform was returning the reading and study of Scripture to the people in their own language. Another was the restoration of Holy Communion for the laity under both kinds or forms of Bread and Wine. Yet another, most importantly, was the recovered emphasis on the primacy and authority of Holy Scripture as containing all things necessary to salvation. Another reform was the restoring of the worship of the Church to the people in their own language. Before, it had been in Latin. During the reign of King Edward VI, King Henry the VIII's son, in 1549, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, compiled a book of prayers which includes all the essential services of the Christian Church. The Book of Common Prayer is a Catholic book, because it contains the prayers, rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church. It is in English so that English-speaking people can understand it and use it in worship. The Prayer Book has preserved the Faith during many hard times in Church history, when people tried to change or even destroy the teaching of the Church of England.

Even when people have tried to impose their own false views on the Prayer Book, it has served to keep together what the Church actually believes. In fact, some people have kept on using the Prayer Book even when they have not believed what it teaches. The Prayer Book contains the official teaching of the Church. Next to the Holy Bible, the Book of Common Prayer is the authority for what Anglicans believe, teach and pray. It is the great responsibility of the Church to make sure that nothing is taught about the Christian Faith which is contrary to the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer.

The Church and Prayer Book teach and the Bible proves truth. Anglicans have been able to keep right doctrine (which we call ORTHODOXY) throughout the centuries because of their love of the Prayer Book. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1500s, people who believed the errors taught by a man named John Calvin were corrected by the Prayer Book - as the reformed Catholic Settlement was established. When Puritans, who rejected the Catholic nature of the Church, attacked the King and the Church of England in the 1600s, it was the Prayer Book which preserved and saved for Anglicans the Catholic Faith. In the 1700s the Prayer Book's teaching was ignored by many people - but it remained an unchanged witness to the truth. In the 1800s, the Book of Common Prayer produced the Catholic Revival, which caused the rebirth of Anglicanism. In the 1900s, the Church struggled to preserve the Prayer Book and did so in the Continuing Church. We keep the Prayer Book to this day.

Here are the important versions of the Book of Common Prayer:

1.1549 (English) - compiled by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer

2.1552 (English) - never officially accepted by the Church

3.1559 (English) - the Prayer Book of the Elizabethan Settlement

4.1604 (English) - a slight revision made by King James I

5.1637 (Scottish) - issued by Saint Charles I King and Martyr and Blessed William Laud, Archbishop

6.1662 (English) - restored with the Church, official Book of the Church of England

7.1764 (Scottish) - official Book of the Scottish Episcopal Church

8.1789 (American) - first Book of the American Church, based on the Scottish Book

9.1892 (American) - updated version for the American Church

10.1928 (American) - official Book of the Continuing Church

The history of the Prayer Book is really the history of the Anglican Church. In addition to the Book of Common Prayer, Traditional Anglicans also use the Missals, which provide extra collects, epistle readings, and Gospel readings for weekday Masses and special Feast Days.

Tracts for New Enquirers: Anglicanism - Yesterday, Today and For All Time

The Anglican Province of America is an Anglican Church, which means she is a part or branch of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ our Lord. The Church is the Body of Christ, the Divine Family, of which Our Lord is the Head and all the Baptized are the members - and in which Bishops, Priests and Deacons minister and the Sacraments are given. The Anglican Church is the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ and found in Great Britain, the United States, and other English-speaking countries. Anglicans are Catholics who belong to the English Church.

The Church founded by Our Lord has the Faith, Order and Sacraments which Jesus Christ gave to the Twelve Apostles. The Anglican Church receives from Christ the same teaching, ministry and Sacraments that He gave to the Apostles. The Anglican Church is an episcopal Church, which means 'Church of Bishops.' The Anglican Church is governed, that is, led, by men called Bishops. The word Bishop means 'overseer' or 'supervisor.' Bishops have the exact same ministry which Jesus gave to the Apostles. The Bishops are the Apostles of Jesus Christ today. Only Bishops can ordain other Bishops. Only Bishops can ordain Priests and Deacons. Only Bishops give Confirmation. The Apostles handed down their authority to teach, govern, and bless to the Bishops. The Bishops of the Church are the Successors of the Apostles. The Bishops of the Anglican Church descend directly from the ancient Church. The Body of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, always has Bishops as its leaders. The Catholic Church is present only where Bishops lead. No Bishop, no Church.

The Anglican Province of America, because she is an Anglican Church, has received her Bishops, Ministry and Sacraments from the English Church. 'Anglican' means 'English' or 'British.' The Anglican Church comes from England, where the Church is called the Church of England. The faith, teaching and worship of the Anglican Church originally come from the Church of England. Our Bishops have an English Succession, meaning that the Bishops who consecrated our Bishops originally came from Great Britain.

The service book which contains all the essential services or liturgies of the Anglican Church is called The Book of Common Prayer. 'Liturgy' means 'work of the people.' All true Anglican Churches use the Book of Common Prayer, which was created in 1549.

The Book of Common Prayer takes all of the ancient services of the early Church and translates them into beautiful English. Each Anglican Church in each country has its own government, with the right to draw up its own constitution (the document which it uses to govern itself) and to create or revise its own Book of Common Prayer. All true Anglican Churches recognise that the faith and doctrine of Christ's Holy Catholic Church is best expressed in the Book of Common Prayer. The Prayer Book is the chief bond which has always held Anglicans together as the Church.

The Anglican Church is part of the Catholic Church because she has kept what is called Apostolic Succession. Together with the Faith of the Church found in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, and with the Seven Sacraments, Apostolic Succession is necessary for the Church's life and ministry.

What is essential to Anglican belief?

Anglicans share with the whole Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ:

1. The Holy Scriptures: The 39 Books of the Old Testament, the 27 Books of the New Testament, and at least 7 Books of the Apocrypha.

2. The Three Creeds: The Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Saint Athanasius (the Athanasian).

3. The Seven Holy Sacraments:

a. The two Greater or Dominical Sacraments of the Gospel: Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion.

b. The five Lesser Sacraments: Confirmation, Holy Orders, Matrimony, Penance and Unction of the Sick.

4. The Apostolic Ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.

Our succession of Bishops ordained by Bishops right back to the Apostles is a lifeline that hands-down and safeguards the teaching, faith, ministry and Sacraments of Jesus Christ. Apostolic Succession means that the Bishops, Priests and Deacons of the Church can trace their ordinations in a direct line, a chain, straight back to Our Lord and the Apostles. Apostolic Succession is the authority and commission of Christ which guarantees that the Sacraments convey grace. Men ordained in Apostolic Succession act not in their own name or power, but in the Name and power of Christ, who gives them His power in Ordination. Only Bishops, Priests and Deacons act in Christ's Name in this way. We call this the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Latin Rite

Concerning sacerdotal celibacy, another altogether more traditional perspective from the Roman Communion:

A selection from The Form of the Priesthood and the Formation of Priests

Father Jay Scott Newman

Pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Greenville, South Carolina

As recorded in Chapter 19 of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus proposed celibacy as a freely chosen and permanent state of life and as a witness to the kingdom of heaven, and this was a true revolution in Judaism. Because marriage is, as the Nuptial Blessing puts it, the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood, and because we are commanded by the one, only, living and true God to be fruitful and multiply, marriage was considered by Jews to be not simply a happy domestic arrangement but a sacred duty. And for this reason, not being married was usually thought of as at least a tragedy and perhaps a punishment. Scholars tell us that religiously motivated celibacy was a feature of life in the Essene community to which it seems John the Baptist had connections, but this was surely outside the mainstream of Jewish life.

From the time of the Apostles, however, celibacy for the sake of the kingdom has been a regular feature of Christian life in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and although there is no essential or intrinsic connection between the priesthood and perpetual celibacy, it has long been required for priestly ordination in the Latin Church because it is held to be most fitting for the priestly life. The Second Vatican Council expressed that conviction this way:

“Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven was recommended by Christ the Lord. It has been freely accepted and laudably observed by many Christians down through the centuries as well as in our own time, and has always been highly esteemed in a special way by the Church as a feature of priestly life. For it is at once a sign of pastoral charity and an incentive to it, as well as being in a special way a source of spiritual fruitfulness in the world. It is true that it is not demanded of the priesthood by its nature. This is clear from the practice of the primitive Church and the tradition of the Eastern Churches where in addition to those—including all bishops—who choose from the gift of grace to preserve celibacy, there are also many excellent married priests. While recommending ecclesiastical celibacy this sacred Council does not by any means aim at changing that contrary discipline which is lawfully practiced in the Eastern Churches. Rather, the Council affectionately exhorts all those who have received the priesthood in the married state to persevere in their holy vocation and continue to devote their lives fully and generously to the flock entrusted to them.” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16)

But, the Council continues, “there are many ways in which celibacy is in harmony with the priesthood. For the whole mission of the priest is dedicated to the service of the new humanity which Christ, the victor over death, raises up in the world through his Spirit and which is born ‘not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God’ (John 1:13). By preserving virginity or celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, priests are consecrated in a new and excellent way to Christ. They more readily cling to him with undivided heart and dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and of men. They are less encumbered in their service of his kingdom and of the task of heavenly regeneration. In this way they become better fitted for a broader acceptance of fatherhood in Christ.

“By means of celibacy, then priests profess before men their willingness to be dedicated with undivided loyalty to the task entrusted to them, namely that of espousing the faithful to one husband and presenting them as a chaste virgin to Christ. They recall that mystical marriage, established by God and destined to be fully revealed in the future, by which the Church holds Christ as her only spouse. Moreover, they are made a living sign of that world to come, already present through faith and charity, in which the children of the resurrection shall neither be married not take wives.” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16)

So, to summarize, although there is no necessary connection between celibacy and the priesthood, the Catholic Church finds that it is a fitting discipline for priests freely to embrace the celibate state for these reasons: to be conformed more completely to Christ, to serve more freely the people entrusted to their care, to live as Christ lived—as a spouse only to the Church, and to bear witness to the life to come in which there is no marriage. There are and always have been married priests in the Catholic Church, but in the Western Church for more than a thousand years, the norm has been and continues to be that only celibate males are eligible for priestly ordination.

This public commitment to a life without marriage and therefore a life without sex quite naturally makes Catholic priests objects of ridicule and contempt when we do not live according to that promise, and this is true most of all when the misconduct either is homosexual or is with minors or both. The notorious scandals of the past several years have caused many in the Catholic Church to ask if its time to reconsider the commitment to celibacy for priests, but the basic response of Church authorities so far seems be this: First, celibacy no more causes unchastity than marriage causes adultery, and second, the general promiscuity of our culture makes celibacy for the kingdom a more important witness now than it has ever been. From my own experience of these matters, I would say that the discipline of celibacy for priests is here to stay.

Married Priests in the Latin Rite?

From America magazine...

Silence and fervent prayer for vocations are no longer adequate responses to the priest shortage in the United States. As the church prepares to observe the Year of the Priest, which begins on June 19, open discussion about how to sustain the church as a eucharistic community of faith and fortify the pastoral life of Catholic congregations has become imperative. For making do within the limits set by present demographic trends presents a double threat to Catholic life: Catholic communities will become only infrequent eucharistic communities, or eucharistic communities will be severed from the pastoral care and public witness of priests.

In 2008 the sociologist Dean Hoge said: “We need at least a doubling of ordinations to maintain the American priesthood as we know it now. But this is impossible.” Of current diocesan priests, only 70 percent are available for parish ministry, with the rest sick, retired or absent for a variety of reasons, according to Mary Gautier of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. An increasing number of Catholics are unable to participate in a Sunday or weekday Mass. All this prompts the question, Will the priest shortage impose a eucharistic famine on the Catholic people?

The de facto remedy already applied in many places— making the priest a circuit rider moving from parish to parish to dispense the sacraments—risks narrowing the ministry of the priest and impoverishing the Christian life of the communities he serves. A narrowly sacramental definition of priesthood satisfies the requirements of only one of the three canons that define the pastoral responsibilities of the priest, Canon 530. As a consequence the sacramental office is as a practical matter severed from its integral connection with comprehensive pastoral care. Canons 528 and 529 provide a broader understanding of the priestly ministry. The first sees the priest as one who instructs, catechizes, fosters works of justice, shows special care for the education of children and brings the Gospel to those who have ceased to practice the faith. The second requires that he should come to know the faithful entrusted to his care, visit families, share their concerns, worries and griefs, help the sick and seek out the poor, the afflicted and the lonely. Diminishing numbers make it difficult to carry out this holistic vision of the priest’s pastoral ministry.

We hope that the upcoming Year of the Priest will lead to a broader discussion of the priesthood in the contemporary world and, in particular, will open examination of the various ways the shortage of priests can be addressed honestly and with imagination. New vocations can be promoted through youth rallies, the Internet and, as always, with prayer. In addition, the pastoral needs of parishes may also be met in part by more effective pastoral assignment of permanent deacons and by increased leadership by lay men and women.

What about the recruitment and training of married men as priests? Married priests already minister in the Catholic Church, both East and West. Addressing the married clergy of the Eastern Catholic churches, the Second Vatican Council exhorted “all those who have received the priesthood in the married state to persevere in their holy vocation and continue to devote their lives fully and generously to the flock entrusted to their care” (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests,” No. 16). That exhortation now applies to the more than 100 former Anglican priests and Lutheran ministers who have entered the Catholic Church, been ordained and now serve in the Latin rite. As we face the challenges of the priest shortage, some of the more than 16,000 permanent deacons in the United States, many of them married, who experience a call to priestly ministry might be called to ordination with a similarly adapted discipline. In addition, the views and desires of some of the more than 25,000 priests who have been laicized (and are now either single or married) should also be heard.

Our plea is modest. The bishops of the United States should take greater leadership in openly discussing the priest shortage and its possible remedies. These should not be conversations in which we face a problem only to find every new avenue of solution closed. Rather, they should be exchanges fully open to the possibilities offered by the Spirit.

In March, Cardinal Edward Egan, the newly retired archbishop of New York, said in a candid moment that the topic of married priests “is a perfectly legitimate discussion.” He added, “I think it should be looked at.” The cardinal later nuanced his statement, but the need for a creative re-visioning of priestly life to sustain the eucharistic life of the church in its fullest sense can no longer be delayed.

The Intercession of Jesus Christ

If the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are One, why then does Jesus Christ pray to God the Father? Would He continue to pray to the Father after arriving at the right hand of God? The prayer of Jesus Christ to His Father reflects and manifests the internal and eternal relationship of God the Father to God the Son within the life of the Godhead Himself. Jesus Christ, the Image of the Invisible God, the heir of all creation, firstborn of the dead (Colossians 1), reflects the glory of His Father for all eternity, for He is eternally begotten of the Father 'before all worlds,' that is, before all creation, i.e., forever. From all eternity, there has never been an aeon or epoch in which the Eternal Son was not begotten of the Father. God the Son, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God is coexistent and coeternal with the Father. The Son, within the mystery of the Holy Trinity, 'One of the Holy Trinity,' obtains His eternal existence from the Father forever. 'The Father Unbegotten, the Son only-begotten, the Spirit proceeding' (Athanasian Creed). God the Son eternally prays to the Father, that is, He exists with the Father for all eternity in a perfect communion of love, self-donation, self-giving and self-abandonment, an exchange of life, love and grace which is revealed through prayer, or communication. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and was God' (St John 1.1). The Word of God, or the Logos, eternally begotten of the Father, continually offers to His Father a perfect oblation, a complete oblation, a rendering of sacrificial filial obedience and love - for all eternity. In the very heart of God, the Word of the Father forever offers and presents Himself to His Father in an action of unending worship. God the Son loves and perfectly adores the Father within the eternal relationship we call the Holy Trinity. This endless and perfect love is expressed by means of what we would call prayer, the expression of love through mutual communication. Therefore, God Himself is a Communion of Persons, a divine Family giving and sharing life, eternal existence, and prayer within Himself.

The Tri-Hypostatic God, One God in Three Persons, is forever a life of mutual participation: in technical theological language called 'mutual indwelling,' perichoresis, circumincessio. This language simply means that as a Communion of Persons Who live in each other, each of Three Persons, by participation in Their common Divine Life and Nature originating from the Father, continually supplies and communicates life and prayer to the Others. These Three, Father, Son, and Spirit, are tri-equal and tri-eternal. The Three dwell in one another and make their Home in each other forever. Their Union exists as one of Essence, and is therefore as absolute as the undivided unity of God Himself. Within this eternal Family, this participatory Communion, the Father is the Source, Beginning and Cause of the Godhead, the Fount of Deity. From Him, the Son and Spirit receive what could be paradoxically called 'eternal origin': the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, originating from Him by eternal generation; the Holy Ghost originates from the Father by procession - the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. St Irenaeus of Lyons, therefore, calls the Son and Spirit the 'Two Hands of God.' The unity of the Three Persons of the Trinity is the ultimate Mystery, and the foundation of the fundamental truth about God and His Nature. God the Son is the eternal adorer and worshipper of the Eternal Father, the Eternal Word spoken by the Father, who now and beyond eternity prays to His Father in an indissoluble Communion of Persons, a fellowship of being, love, grace, life and prayer which we call the Godhead of the Blessed Trinity. In short, Jesus Christ prays to the Father because this prayer, the communication, expresses the relationship which Our Lord shares with the Father within the life of God Himself. Jesus, the obedient and loving Son of the Father, prays to the Father.

In the fulness of time, God the Son was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made Man; the Word Himself assumed human nature, thus uniting manhood, the completion and totality of human nature, to Himself as God. 'In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that thou art no longer salves, but sons; and if sons, then heirs; heirs of God through Christ' (Galatians 4.7-8). This mystery is called, of course, the Incarnation, the mystery of God made Man. One Divine Person, the Person of the Son of God, now possesses forever two complete and unconfused natures, divine and human. God became Man, and the Incarnate Lord was given the Name Jesus Christ. So, it follows that the perfect prayer and life of God the Son, His filial obedience and offering, condescended to us, so that now in human nature, God the Son offers His perfect prayer to God the Father, just as He did in Heaven forever before His Incarnation. Jesus Christ, God the Son made Man, now offers to His Father the same obedience, love, fidelity and adoration that He has offered eternally within the mysterious Unity of the Trinity, only now in human flesh, in time and space and beyond, in a completely human life, as the Second Adam, the New Man, the New Creation in whose human nature the whole human race has been recreated and renewed. Jesus Christ, the Perfect Man, the representative Man, brings into the sphere of humanity the all-sufficient response of obedience and self-offering to God that was lost upon the transgression of the first fallen Adam. The hypostatic union, the union of God and Man in Christ, remains forever. Our Lord, after His glorious Resurrection from dead, did not lose His human nature, just as when He took human flesh He did not lose His Deity, but wonderfully united it to human nature. Our Lord came essentially to sweep the human race up into His own prefect life of prayer, so that the whole human race may be made one with God through participation in God's life through Jesus Christ and the human nature He shares with us. 'God became man so that man may become God.' 'We become by grace what God is by nature.'

Human nature, and therefore the stuff of our reality, is raised up with Jesus to live and reign with Him forever in heaven, in the life of God, to be offered in union with Christ’s perfect self-offering, perfect sacrifice, perfect prayer, which culminated in His human death on Calvary and His Resurrection. Through Jesus Christ, the Father has adopted all who are incorporated into Christ and made members of Christ’s Body by Baptism as His own sons, making them partakers of the divine nature (II St Peter 1.4), divine by grace, sharers of the very life of God through the deified and God-bearing human nature transformed by Our Lord in His Incarnation, death and glorification. In Baptism, we become one with the human nature of Christ which was inseparably united to God - and therefore in our own human nature we now, in the communion of Christ's Body the Church, participate in the very life, energy and power of the Trinity. 'If a man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him' (St John 14.23). 'That they may be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may also be in us.' (St John 17.21).

Our Lord continues to pray to the Father for all eternity, and now His prayer has been perfected by the ultimate expression of His filial love: obedience and worship demonstrated in His Death and Third-Day Resurrection. The Ascended Lord entered into Heaven, before the Father's throne, to plead Himself and His perfect Sacrifice as our great High Priest, our Heavenly Intercessor, our only Mediator and Advocate between man and God. Jesus Christ is our Priest and Victim, who eternally presents before the Father the complete work of His self-emptying and obedience on earth. Now, within the veil of heaven, before the presence and glory of God, Jesus presents healed, restored, divinised, glorified human nature, a human nature we share with the Lord by being incorporated into Him who is the worshipper and adorer of the Father, one Priest with one Sacrifice, one Altar, one Mission, one Prayer. The Father, by virtue of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, loves and receives all regenerate men as His sons, united to Jesus Christ, the consubstantial Son of Man and consubstantial Son of God. The God-Man represents God before man and man before God, and we are in Him, made one with Him by His coming to be one with us in His Incarnation.

Jesus Christ, the Risen and Ascended Lord, prays for you and me before the Father, and unites all of His Body the Church to Himself, thus pleading us with Him in His prayer. We become God's Family, God's Sons, united as Christ's Body to our divine Head in His eternal worship of the Father. 'God has raised us up with Christ and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus' (Ephesians 2.6). 'Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us' (Romans 8.34).

The Easter Altar

The Easter Altar of Saint Barnabas Anglican Church, Dunwoody Georgia.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Exsultet - The Easter Proclamation

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

As we celebrate the glorious Third-Day Resurrection, and the ineffable Ascension, of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, there is but only one important thing to say, one incontrovertible fact of human history to assert, and that is that God the Father has raised Jesus Christ from death. Our Lord, who was dead on Good Friday afternoon, was alive again on Easter Sunday morning. He was not alive in some metaphorical, symbolic, merely spiritual, emotional or psychological manner - he was alive in a true and physical Body, a transformed immortal Body.

Our Lord’s glorified Body, a Body animated and vivified by the Holy Ghost, a Body radiant with the splendour of the Spirit, is a Body that can eat, a Body that can be touched, a Body recognisably identified with the Body that was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and crucified on the Cross of Calvary, but which is a new kind of Body, a Body with a new mode of existence in a new dimension: a Body that can appear and disappear at will; a Body that can transport itself through walls — and transcend even the walls of a tomb. It is a Body that can make itself present as desired, the Body that appeared in the upper room on the first Easter, the Body we now eat for the forgiveness of sins in the Holy Eucharist, objectively and substantially present under the form of bread.

The radical physicality of Jesus Christ after His Resurrection shocked and frightened His disciples, so he ate a piece of broiled fish and then some honey in front of them to show that He was not an apparition or hallucination. And then Our Lord asked the disciples, ‘Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’

The Resurrection of the flesh is not something we just believe exclusively happened to Jesus Christ, although He is the first to receive the mystery. ‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.’ If we are baptised into the Body of Jesus Christ, our Father in Heaven will raise us from death too.

We shall be resurrected in bodies at the Last Day to enter into the Beatific Vision, to enjoy the Blessed Trinity at His heavenly banquet for eternity. Because we have been planted into the risen Body of Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, we possess God's guarantee that what was given to Jesus Christ is exactly what will be given to us. Our Lord was born, we are born. Our Lord lived, we live. Our Lord died, and had He not risen, we too would surely die. But Christ is alive. Jesus lives. And because He lives, we shall live with Him and in Him.

Jesus Christ rose from His tomb in a transformed Body, and because of this, we shall rise from our graves in transformed bodies. Our Lord ascended into Heaven to be with his Father forever - we shall ascend into Heaven to be with God forever. As Saint Paul tells us on Easter morning, ‘When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.’ We shall have our own Easter, and our own Ascension.

The ultimate Gospel of the Easter proclamation is that because Jesus Christ rose from the dead in His Body, and we shall certainly rise from the dead in our bodies, then in the end, the eschaton, the completion and fulfillment of all things, everything is going to be alright. Everything. God shall be all in all. ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.’

In the end, all will be Amen and Alleluia.

The Cross of Jesus Christ: Tree of Life, Tree of Glory

Hymns from the Liturgy:

Vexilla Regis

The royal banners forward go, The cross shines forth in mystic glow/ where he, as man
who gave man breath Now bows beneath the yoke of death.

Fulfilled is all that David told In true prophetic song of old/ How God the nations' King should be, For God is reigning from the tree.

O tree of beauty, tree most fair, Ordained those holy limbs to bear/ Gone is thy shame, each crimson'd bough Proclaims the King of glory now.

Blessed Tree, whose chosen branches bore The wealth that did the world restore/ The
prince of humankind to pay, And spoil the spoiler of his prey

O Cross, our one reliance, hail! Still may thy power with us avail/ More good for
righteous souls to win, and save the sinner from his sin.

Pange Lingua

Faithful Cross! above all other, one and only noble tree! Non in foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thy peer may be: Sweetest wood, and sweetest iron! Sweetest weight in hung on thee. Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory! Thy relaxing sinews bend; For awhile the ancient rigor That thy birth bestowed suspend; and the King of heav'nly beauty On thy bosom gently tend!

Scriptural references:
The teaching of Our Lord concerning His Cross:

'He that taketh not his Cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' St Matthew 10.38-39

'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life will lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.' St Matthew 16.24-25

'Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow me.' St Mark 8.34

'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross daily, and follow me' St Luke 9.23

'And whosoever doth not bear his Cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.'
St Luke 14.27

'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.' St John 3.14-15

The New Testament Epistles:

'Buried with Christ in Baptism, wherein ye also are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcison of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his Cross.' Colossians 2.14

'Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps... Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.' I St Peter 2.21-24

'Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.' Hebrews 12.1-2

The Cross in Holy Tradition:
'The four branches of the Cross, reaching to the four corners of the universe, fill the whole world. The Cross fills the universe and unites the whole of creation through the love of Jesus Christ' (St John of Damascus). The Cross is perceived to extend itself to all the cosmos, with the breadth, length, height and depth of Christ's love for all. The Cross is personified, addressed and venerated, for it is inseparable from Christ and His Passion. The Cross is also called 'Tree,' 'Pillar,' and the 'Ladder of Paradise,' the axis of God's own design which holds together and reunites the three components of the world, heaven, earth, and hell.

The Sign of the Cross serves as the fundamental Sign of the Christian Faith, the badge of the orthodox Christian, the supreme Symbol of the Christian profession. It serves to be the ultimate window to heaven, communicating its grace to all mankind. The Cross is the unmistakable token of all divine grace, the visible seal of the Holy Trinity and Incarnation. The Cross expresses immortality and victory over death; it is the centre of the world which escapes the corruptibility of this mortal life. The Body of the Crucified restores the original and perfect beauty of human nature, which through It is transfigured into glory, even in the midst of the Passion. The Cross holds the immolated Body of God - it offers to the world a suffering which has already transfigured creation to share in God's Life. The Cross is the ultimate Seal - the 'stamp of possession' - of the Christian, by which mankind is purchased for God. We are sealed with the Cross by Christ Himself - to be His own children and soldiers. This mystery especially occurs when we receive the the Baptismal Consignation and the character of Confirmation.

In the ancient Church, the Cross is designated the Life-Giving Cross, a title still used today in the Eastern Liturgy. Christ's death, which is supremely interpreted in terms of glorification and victory, is proclaimed by the Church as the Life-Giving Death. Christus Victor - the Victorious Christ is Christ Crucified, Christ reigning from the Cross. Christ is glorified on the Cross of Calvary, the Tree of Life. Our Lord refers to his impending death on the Cross as follows:

'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him' (St John 13.31-32)

'Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee.' (St John 17.1) The Hour of Christ's Death is the Hour of His Glory, for it He was born (St John 12.27).

'In order that we might live, it was needful that God should incarnate Himself and be put to death' (St Gregory Nazianzus. The Incarnation took place so that the Eternal Word might be capable of death - Christ was born to die. 'It was that He might draw His ancient people with His one hand and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in himself' (St Athanasius). 'Christ stretched out his arms upon the Cross in order to embrace the ends of the earth' (St Cyril of Jerusalem). By the Cross, Christ reconciles the whole fourfold universe, symbolised by the Cross, one horizontal act united Jews and pagans, the other vertical action united man and God. The Cross is the axis mundi, the centre of the world, which by its four sides unites heaven and hell and the whole world in space and time. Christ reigns from the centre of the world as its Crucified King (St Gregory of Nyssa).

The Cross is the work of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, for Christ does not act alone, but with the Father and the Holy Ghost to save mankind. The Cross is 'the crucifying love of the Father, the crucified love of the Son, and the love of the Holy Ghost who triumphs by the wood of the Cross' (St Philaret of Moscow). The mystery of the Cross subsists in its apparent defeat, for by death Christ overthrows the power of death. The Cross forever reveals the deepest expression of the Mystery of Christ, of victory by defeat, glory by humiliation, life by death. The Cross becomes the royal insignia of Christ, his royal, priestly and prophetic banner, the Image which heralds his victory and his prerogative as the Redeemer of Man.

The Cross manifests the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, and is the truest Sign of God, who voluntarily wills to become Man and die in order to save his creation. The Cross enshrines the Love of God toward man in its fullness, the love of God which manifests itself in Redemption, in the economy of the gift of salvation. The Cross is offered to the Christian as the essential attribute, the fundamental characteristic that defines the Christian life and union with Our Lord. The entire sacramental system of the Church roots itself in the sacramental presence and efficacy of the Sign of the Cross, in orthodox Christian worship and prayer, and in Church history and experience, as well as in Christian art and architecture. The fruit of the Cross, the merit of Christ, is applied and appropriated to the Christian; one is incorporated into Christ by the Means of Grace, the Seven Sacraments of the Church, which convey the saving reality of Calvary.

The Use of the Cross:

The Cross is ever-present in the life of the orthodox catholic Christian, staying with us from Baptism to death. It is contained in and outside of our Churches, in our homes, sometimes in our schools, and on our persons. It confers upon us, as we trace it on our own bodies, the Life and Resurrection of Christ. Every Friday is a 'little Good Friday,' the day of the Passion, and a commemoration, through fasting, prayer and liturgy, of the Cross. Anciently, the Christians of the Primitive Churches focussed their entire lives on the Sign of the Cross - using it in public and private, always invoking its power and blessing. The Cross was the symbol by which Christians recognised each other. By the Cross literally carried on one's body, indicative of the grace and victory, the Life of Christ, carried in the soul, one's ontological status as a Son of God, a member of Christ in His Church, is identified. St Augustine notes that the Sign of the Cross is imprinted, marked upon one by God Himself, interiorly, when one is baptised, confirmed and ordained. The Cross marks the Christian with sacramental character; it places a permanent status or quality upon the soul, which distinguishes the Christian as God's own child.

The Sign of the Cross was literally placed on one's forehead as a public profession of faith; St Augustine also notes that one could tell a Christian from a pagan, in say, an amphitheatre, because the Christian wore the Cross as a sign on the forehead.

The late second century Church Father Tertullian writes: 'In all our dealings - when we go in or out, before dressing, before bathing, at the table, when we light our evening lamps, before going to bed, when we sit down to read, in every activity of daily life - we make the Sign of the Cross on our foreheads.' Or to quote St John Chrysostom in the fourth century: 'Through the Cross all things are fulfilled. Baptism is given through the Cross; the imposition of hands (Confirmation and Ordination) is done through the Cross. And whether we be travelling, at home or wherever, the Cross is our greatest good, the armour of salvation, the impenetrable shield against demons.'

The original representations of the Crucified Lord in the ancient Church of the first six centuries portray Our Lord as Christus Rex, the glorified King, alive, eyes open, holding Himself aloft on the Cross by His own power, vested in white clothing or in the vestments of the Christian sacerdos, Eucharistic Vestments. The ancient orthodox depiction was preserved more so in the Latin West than in the East: Christ, King of majesty, living, clothed, impassive, glorified, triumphant in His Cross. In this image, Christ looks upon all men with compassion and mercy, His all-seeing eyes still gazing upon the world. The Image of the Crucified is that of transfigured human nature, the flesh of the God-Man transfigured and made alive even in death. The later and more commonly-used image seen today, that of the humiliated Christ of suffering, naked, bloody, dead, the Christ of mortal human nature, first appeared in eleventh century Byzantium.

Above is an example of the Byzantine type, sober, minimalistic, limited to the essentials of the Crucifixion, with Our Lady and St John present. Christ is naked, with a white loin cloth. He leans to his right, with bowed head, dead. He retains majesty in his suffering, the dignity of His Divine Person. Even in death, He is incorruptible. It is the Image of the New Adam, the Incarnate God, who by His Blood redeems the human race. The most ancient form of the Crucifixion possesses eight points as does ours, that is, it includes the sign of inscription (INRI) and the foot-piece which receives Our Lord's nailed feet. Traditionally, the foot-piece rises upwards to Christ's right, symbolising the justification of the good and the damnation of the evil, as represented by the good and bad thief in the Gospel narrative. Christ extends His arms as in open space above - the openness of the Crucifixion portrays it as the cosmic, universal act of salvation, which frees the whole universe from evil, from the spirits of the air, demons. The two holy ones closest to Our Lord at Calvary are subdued, grim, restrained. The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos or Mother of God, appears on Our Lord's right. She appears here as 'Our Mother,' the spiritual Mother presented to St John the beloved disciple, who in turn represents the whole Catholic Church: 'Behold thy Mother.' Mary is given to us by the Crucified Christ as our Mother, the Woman of Genesis 3.15, now here in the new garden, next to the new Tree of Life. She is the Mother of the new human race, the New Eve, because she is the 'Mother of all the living' (Genesis 3.20). Mary is transformed into the Mother of mercy, the Mother of all Christians, the Mother of martyrs and saints, holding a palm of a bloodless martyrdom - and the prophecy of St Simeon, the old man in the temple at the Presentation of Christ, is fulfilled: 'A sword shall pierce your soul, that the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed.' (St Luke 2.35).

This is Our Lady's com-passion, her union with the Crucified Lord. She holds herself upright, standing, facing her Son, her attention concentrated on Christ. She contains her grief, controlling it with an indomitable stamina of faith. The Holy Virgin encourages St John, almost leading him, directing him, to meditate upon the mystery of the Cross and our salvation, the death of her Divine Son. St John expresses his own deep grief, sharing with Christ his own anguish and pain.

Our Lord, in a sense, transcends His own Cross with His glory; He seems to bear it up more than it bears Him. In serenity and peace, the King of creation sleeps, His arms outstretched in a gesture of offering and love. The water and blood of Christ are seen to flow from His right side, as according to the detail of St John 19, in which He was pierced through with a spear, and forthwith came both blood and water. These two represent the two Dominical Sacraments (St John Chrysostom), that of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of New Birth and the Sacrament of Nourishment to eternal Life. We see the New Creation fashioned by the Creator who becomes Man and dies for man. The water of Christ, the Holy Ghost, becomes our possession in Holy Baptism, in which we are united to the death and resurrection of Christ by sacramental participation and adopted as the sons of God.

The Blood shed for our salvation is vouchsafed to us in the Eucharistic chalice, in the mystery of the Mass which re-presents the Sacrifice of the Cross and makes us partakers of Christ's total Person by means of the Blessed Sacrament. The Church also becomes by Christ's death the New Eve, the Bride of Christ, born from His pierced side, just as Eve was born from the side of Adam, whose rib was fashioned into the first woman. The primeval Adam-Eve creation was paralleled by the Church Fathers with the Christ-Church mystery. Just as Eve was taken from sleeping Adam's side, so was the Church taken from the side of Christ who slept in death (St Epiphanius). The One Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, prefigured by the seamless robe of Christ for which the soldiers gambled, gives birth and life to her children through the Sacraments, especially the preeminent ones of Baptism and Eucharist. This Holy Mother Church, the 'mother of the living' without which we cannot have God as our Father, ('You cannot have God as your Father without the Church as your Mother' - St Cyprian of Carthage), nourishes her children, us, by the Sacraments of grace: 'We are nourished by the double stream which the lance made to flow from thy side. From thy life-giving spring we come to draw the water of Baptism and the Blood of the Chalice.'

The Cross alone saves us from sin, a penalty of death alone makes sense of the pain and trial of life, its difficulty and pain, our own crosses. In the paradox of God, it is only by dying that we life, only by the Crucifixion can Resurrection occur.

'Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify'

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross - September 14th

The Holy Catholic Church, East and West, observes a Feast Day in commemoration of the Holy Cross on 14 September, the 'Exaltation,' which refers to the annual raising of the relic of the True Cross for the veneration of the faithful. In the fourth century, St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, discovered the True Cross on Golgotha outside Jerusalem. The True Cross was identified 1. because it was found with two other crosses (those of the thieves), 2. it bore the inscription INRI (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews), and 3. it caused numerous miracles. The feast was instituted 14 September 347 in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.