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.

The Holy Week Passion Narratives in the Anglican Rite

Dear N.,

You raise a simply fantastic question as to why we have the readings we have for Holy Week, beginning on Palm Sunday. As you no doubt noticed, this year we began the liturgy of the Blessing of Palms with what one would naturally consider the logical Gospel reading for the day, Saint Matthew 21.1ff, the Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem. Following the Blessing of Palms, the Eucharist includes the reading of Saint Matthew's Passion, chapter 27. During Holy Week, the Prayer Book appoints all four Passion narratives from all four Gospels to be read. The first is the Passion of Saint Matthew, then that of Saint Mark on Monday and Tuesday, the Passion of Saint Luke on Wednesday and Thursday, and the Passion of Saint John on Friday. This way, the entire written record of the saving Death and Passion of the Redeemer is proclaimed in church for the hearing and meditation of the people. The unique details of the salvific event of the Passion from each Evangelist are then collated and brought together to weave one great narration of the story of salvation. The BCP anticipates that the faithful will be in church for the liturgy every day of Holy Week in order to hear and receive the entire New Testament record of the Passion of Christ. Thus, by Easter Day, the whole preceding New Testament account of the Death of Christ has been presented in anticipation of His Resurrection.

Also, the Passion of Saint Matthew is read in church on Palm Sunday just in case someone should not be in church again until Easter Day. Even if one were to be absent from the liturgy for the whole of Holy Week, one would still hear the narrative of the Passion in advance of the Resurrection the next Sunday. This ensures that Easter will not be celebrated without first a consideration of the Passion and Crucifixion of Our Lord which makes Easter possible. There can be no Empty Tomb without Good Friday, and so the Church sets before her faithful the witness of Redemption in the Cross of Christ before the exaltation of the Easter Feast.

Let us forever adore the Most Holy Sacrament

Bishop Michael Wright RIP

From A Conservative Blog for Peace...

Born 1933, he was a military chaplain for many years, and then Director of the Anglo-Orthodox Society, until its self-dissolution in 1994 — this society was a sort of Anglo-Catholic Orthodoxophile equivalent of Anglo-Papalists — having decided in the aftermath of the 1992 Gen. Synod vote for WO that its goal of “orthodoxizing” the Church of England (cf. Hodges’ “Anglicanism and Orthodoxy” pamphlet) was incapable of realization and that in consequence the AOS’ continued existence was pointless. He eventually entered the Anglican Catholic Church (Original Province) but, with some of its strongest Orthodoxophiles, left with those who in 1997 formed the “Holy Catholic Church – Anglican Rite” and when this body divided in 1997 into a “more Anglican” HCC-AR and a “Western Orthodox” “Holy Catholic Church — Western Rite” he was part of the latter. He served as a bishop for a time in South Africa before retiring to England.

I personally had the great privilege of meeting Bishop Wright in July 1994. May he have a sweet repose and holy progress in Paradise. Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord.

Anglicans and Assyrians

... Sadly, there seem to be few of us non-Assyrians who are much interested in the life and history of this glorious and venerable Church. The Church of the East should have a unique and dear place in the heart of every Anglo-Catholic: in the nineteenth century High Church Anglicans, authorised by the Archbishop of Canterbury, sent a mission to modern Iraq to help save the Assyrian Church and to preserve its heritage, culture and civilisation. I have loved the Assyrian Church since I first learned of its existence, for it is the oldest Eastern Church - with a direct linguistic and cultural link straight back to Our Lord and the Apostles. Thank you for your wonderful questions - here are a few thoughts on what you ask.

1. As I understand it, a number of local Synods and Councils of the Church of the East formally accepted the Christological Defintion of the Council of Chalcedon in the years immediately following AD 451, although the Church of the East has never formally accepted the canons, synodical actions or disciplinary decrees of the said Council. The liturgical texts of the Church of the East clearly assert two distinct natures in the Person of Our Lord, emphasising the Antiochene tradition of clearly distinguishing the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ. The differences of Assyrian theology with that of the wider Catholic Church is primarily semantic, and great confusion has emerged over the centuries because of the nuances and complexities of the Syriac language. The Church of the East has always held to what we would loosely translate as 'One Person' and 'Two Natures' in the Person of God the Son. The words they employ are patient of different meanings and interpretations, but it is clear that the Assyrian Church has always believed in the hypostatic union of Our Lord, a true Incarnation of the Word, and has never held to the widely-believed and falsely-presented caricature of Nestorius's teaching that Jesus Christ is merely a saint or God-possessed human being. I vividly recall both Bishop Kallistos Ware and Mar Bawai Soro asserting the fact that the Assyrian Church holds to the Definition of Saint Leo the Great in a lecture I heard on the subject in 2001, although I sadly fail to remember the exact Assyrian synod which affirmed Chalcedonian orthodoxy. The Roman-Assyrian Christological Agreement of 1994 certainly settles the question for us in a permanent way, as it directly embraces the Christology of Chalcedon.

2. The Assyrian Church still strictly refers to Our Lady as 'Mother of Christ,' Christotokos, in her liturgical texts - and employs the phase often, both in the Anaphora and in the liturgical texts for feasts and special celebrations. In theological writings, sermons and commentaries I have come across the term 'Mother of God' in a conditionalised sense. Theologically the Assyrians no longer object to the term, or at least no longer object to the theological implications of the term, although in deference to the Antiochene Fathers and especially 'Saint' Nestorius, it is not used in public worship. The Church of the East is very eager to conserve and preserve its liturgical patrimony, which is the oldest extant in Christendom. This was a point of severe contention in the now-suspended dialogue of the Assyrian Church with the Oriental Orthodox: the Oriental Churches demanded that the Assyrians remove Christotokos and replace the word with Theotokos. The Assyrians felt they could afirm Ephesine and Chalcedonian orthodoxy without the necessity of altering their ancient liturgical texts.

The Assyrians have a profound love for the Blessed Mother and a deep Marian piety which penetrates the heart of their Eucharistic liturgy. They invoke her in public prayer and ask for her intercession in the Holy Qurbana. They pray to, with and for her in the Communion of Saints. The Assyrian Church even has a tradition of Marian apparitions not unlike those of the Roman and Byzantine Churches, and a great number of parishes and shrine churches in Iraq and Iran (and in the diaspora) are dedicated to her. Assyrians cultivate a stirring filial devotion to Our Lady and frequently include her in their personal acts of prayer. The Assyrians observe annual feast days in honour of Our Lady, including her Assumption into heavenly glory. In this, the Assyrians possess the consensus fidelium of the whole Catholic Church of Christ, and in common with the Latin West and Constantinopolitan and Oriental East venerates the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother of the Redeemer and Icon of the Church.

How Do Anglo-Catholics Practise Confession?

In order faithfully to live out the full Catholic vocation in the Anglican Rite, one should receive the Sacrament of Penance at least once a year, preferably in Holy Week or Eastertide, in preparation for the making of one's Easter Communion. In Anglicanism, the reception of Penance is absolutely voluntary— no Anglican must receive this Sacrament in order to be considered a practising Christian. However, as we have before discovered, this Sacrament is vitally important, and should certainly be received by any person who is troubled and disturbed in conscience because of sin, or by any Christian who wishes to deepen one's spiritual life and advance in holiness. No one should approach Our Lord's Precious Body and Blood in the Holy Communion in a state of sin; for this reason, if there is any question at all about the state or health of one's soul, one should seek the spiritual counsel and advice of a Priest, and receive this Sacrament for the forgiveness of all sins— then one can approach the Holy Mysteries properly and reverently.

As the 1662 English Prayer Book reminds us in the exhortation at the Mass: 'let him (a penitent) come to me, or to some other... Minister of God's Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God's holy word he may receive the benefit of Absolution, as may tend to the quieting of the conscience, and the removing of all scruple and doubtfulness.' To use a version of the old Anglican adage about Confession: All may, none must, most should. All Anglicans should use this great sacramental gift to their spiritual benefit, which gift increases grace, guarantees forgiveness of all sins, and allows the penitent carefully to examine the conscience and soul— as one faces the brutality and horror of sin and its consequences, and seeks to amend one's life from sin. Only by confessing our personal sins to the Priest, who awaits in love to offer spiritual advice and counselling, and to provide the gift of forgiveness, do we truly recognise the impact, consequences and error of sins, and the need to eliminate sin from our lives. No one should 'enjoy' the painful process of Confession, but all should rejoice in its ultimate benefits and graces for the soul.

It is most unfortunate that more traditional Anglicans do not take full opportunity to receive the gift of Absolution, and the special graces of this Sacrament. Unlike Catholics of the Roman Rite, Anglo-Catholics are not required to go to Confession at any time in order to be in good standing in the Church; however, like all branches of the Universal Church, we possess and use this glorious Sacrament. In the Anglican Rite, there are characteristically no confessionals or 'confession boxes;' rather, the penitent makes his Confession before the Priest as he kneels at the Altar rail, facing the Altar. The Priest is seated within the Sanctuary, poised to hear the Confession quietly. Holy Penance is mentioned twice in the 1928 American BCP, in the second exhortation in the Mass (page 88) and in the office of the Visitation of the Sick (page 313).

Penance clearly has an important function within the life of the Church, especially for those who are troubled in soul after having committed particular sins or who are sick or near death and wish to enter Paradise free from all stain of sin. However, we all should use this Sacrament at every opportunity for our spiritual welfare, for it is a 'school of sanctity,' a teacher of repentance and amendment: it is the divinely-appointed means by which God imparts forgiveness of sins to penitent sinners, a Sacrament of grace in which God and God alone forgives sins and communicates His life, through the instrumentality of His Priests in the Church. Always remember that Priests do not, from any individualised or personal power, forgive sins: they administer a Sacrament of forgiveness as they act in the Name and Person of Jesus Christ, representing in their ministry the Holy Catholic Church.

What three actions, again, are necessary for a penitent rightly to receive the Sacrament of Penance?

1. Repentance. True repentance from sin begins with contrition, true sorrow of heart for sins committed, for without contrition there is no desire for forgiveness and for the amendment of life. Contrition, which should arise from Faith, is the hatred of sin because of love for God. A contrite heart sees sins as a horror, an outrage against God's love for man, and perceives the Passion and Death of Our Lord as the necessary result and cure of its sin. Real repentance through contrition brings us reconciliation with God and forgiveness of sins. Our repentance should flow from our love for the Thrice-Holy God and for God's Church. Even attrition, mentioned earlier, is a grace of God, because it is a prompting of the Holy Ghost which leads a person, albeit through fear of hell or punishment for sins, to seek forgiveness of sins through the Sacrament of Absolution. However, contrition is the true source of real, life-changing, life-healing repentance.

2. Confession. If we are truly repentant, truly contrite for our sins, we will naturally confess our sins, that is, we will acknowledge before God our sins and trespasses in order that we may be forgiven. Real confession is self-accusation, the truthful and honest admission of speaking, acting, and thinking wrongly. The fact that we confess our sins demonstrates that we are really sorry for our sins, we really are repentant. Confession, a sincere and sorrowful acknowledgment to God of our sins, is the proof of contrition, and of our desire to be forgiven and to be granted the grace to change. For this reason, God requires us to confess our sins to Him. 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins' (1 St John 1.9). In confession of sins, we are set free from slavery to sin: we take responsibility for our sins and reopen ourselves to the grace and mercy of God. In the Sacrament of Penance, one should confess all known and remembered serious sins committed since one's last Confession. We should not withhold any known sins, for 'if we, as sick persons, are unwilling to disclose every wound to the doctor, the medicine cannot heal what it does not know' (St Jerome). Regular reception of this Sacrament helps us to develop a right conscience, and empowers us to fight temptation and evil desires. In Penance, we are healed, sanctified and transformed by Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. In the Anglican Rite, this is the traditional Confession prayer:

I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and to all the Saints, and to thee Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault - and especially I confess I have committed the following sins - For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am heartily sorry, I firmly purpose amendment of life; I humbly ask pardon and forgiveness of God and of thee, Father, penance, counsel, and absolution: Wherefore I beg Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and all the Saints, and thee Father, to pray for me to the LORD our God. Amen.

3. Amendment of life. We must forsake sin and change our lives— this is the ultimate test of genuine repentance; amendment is the sustained and determined resolve to sin no more and to live a better and holier life. If we have hurt others, we must make restitution for the injuries done. Real repentance demands that we do better, and change, by God's grace. In the Sacrament, before Absolution is given, the Priest may give the penitent an act to perform, such as a prayer or a reading from Scripture, as a sign of the repentant person's willingness to change: this is called a 'penance.' Doing the penance demonstrates our willingness to amend our lives and manifests our union with the Crucified Lord— it helps us to contemplate the change which is required for the health of our soul; our spiritual father gives it to us for our own good.

The Fate of Anglican Religious Orders

From The Church Times:

The restoration of the religious life to the Anglican Church was an enduring achievement of the Oxford Movement. Three hundred years after monasteries were swept away from this country, members of the Church of England felt again the call to serve God in communities.
The early Sisters faced hostility from clergy and laity, who regarded them as agents of popery. Today, mem­bers of the religious orders are found in many dioceses and are represented in General Synod. Countless people are deeply grateful to these Anglicans who have followed a vocation to live under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Religious have provided havens for those living their Christian vocation outside community walls; they have worked in the grimmest parishes; and they have guided individuals through spiritual direction. They have sup­ported the Church by their prayers, and borne witness to the priority of the things of the spirit. They have been both visible and invisible: seen when engaged in pastoral work, and hidden when in community.

Something is now clearly amiss with our religious communities, how­ever. Membership is rapidly declin­ing, average age is high, recruitment is desperately low, and some commun­ities have ceased to exist. Many who come to test a vocation leave before taking vows, and some of those actually in vows have also left.

In at least one community, the num­ber of formerly professed mem­bers now exceeds the number of those remaining. A community for women recently had a substantial number of professed sisters leave over a period of 18 months. In other communities, diminishing membership has led to the decision to close branch houses and pull everyone back to a mother house.

The shrinking seems to be acceler­ating. Within the next ten years, the disappearance of several more of our orders may be expected. As the chaplain to one community has said, the situation is not one of crisis, but of meltdown.

There are, of course, social and cultural factors speeding this decline. Communities suffer from the same forces that cause weakened commit­ment in the Church as a whole, and Roman Catholic orders are experi­enc­ing the same difficulties.

Equally, a Church of England pres­ently over-weighted towards the Evangelical is not fertile soil for community vocations, and the uncer­tainty and division evident among Catholic Anglicans intensifies the prob­lem. The Church also has a re­spons­ibility for the situation through her failure to encourage her members to consider this calling. When did you last hear a priest or bishop speak publicly about the importance of the religious life?

Yet our communities were founded in circumstances even less propitious for their appearance and survival than those of today. Emerging to answer a need, they were fostered by visionary leaders such as Dr Pusey, Mother Marion Hughes, Mother Lydia Sellon, Canon Carter, Fr Benson, and Dean Butler. The call to serve God has not vanished from among us; so why are pitifully few people considering the consecrated life as their response?
Although we still hear sometimes in formal intercessions a prayer “for vocations to the ordained ministry and the religious life”, there is little discussion taking place of what exactly we mean by the religious life. It was inevitable that when the Victorian founders of communities designed rules for their orders, they turned to Roman Catholic patterns, and in particular to monastic models.

Whatever external work was done, the centre of life was to be the daily community offering of the Divine Office and the eucharist. Anglican reli­gious have not departed from this structure to any marked degree, and most of us who are aware of the communities tend to picture them in terms of withdrawal, formal prayer, rules of silence, and a habit either odd or picturesque. Yet this is by no means the only possible model for religious life, as the example of the Jesuits makes clear.

Among religious themselves, there appears to be a faltering sense of direction and purpose, accompanied by an increasingly inward-looking and self-referential approach to com­munity life. One detects in some communities a reluctance to face squarely the questions: “Have we a reason for continuing to exist?” and “What is our particular charism, the mark printed upon us by our founder which declares God’s special vocation for us?”

The result can be a temptation to seek a corporate identity by retreating into a rigid adherence to “our way of doing things”, or to adopt a more congenial self-perception. We see the latter when communities that were founded for apostolic work decide, in the absence of obvious work to do, that they should now become mon­astic or contemplative, even if this flies in the face of their given charism.

A further danger is that while the C of E has too little understanding of the religious life, it also tames reli­gious by drawing them into the estab­lishment. Any sense of the religious life as a vocation lived “on the edge” is emasculated by this, as is the likelihood of religious’ becoming a challenging witness to the Church.

As someone who is concerned for the future of the religious life, I ask where our communities believe they are going, how they are discerning their purpose afresh, and where they look for help with that discernment. It may be a natural historical process that many communities should be born, flourish, and die, but what will take their place?

Joan Chittister, an American Roman Catholic Benedictine, who did important work in helping her community through the days after Vatican II and its call to the renewal of religious life, writes: “What had sus­tained us, identified us, secured us for our first hundred years was gone now. Going ahead was the only possible direction left to take if we wanted to exist. . . But what was the way for­ward? By what method? And, most of all, with what effect on all our lives?”
Anglican religious need to grapple with such questions in a radical exploration of religious life’s prin­ciples and possibilities. They need to engage in serious dialogue with in­formed, sympathetic but critical out­siders, if they are not to fall into the traps of complacency or despond­ency.
Communities need to hear a prophetic voice spoken to them, if they are to recover their own prophetic voice. They must ask why those coming to try religious life do not find what they seek and so leave. They must ask why those already committed feel they can no longer stay. And, like the Church, commun­ities need to recognise that the Spirit blows where it wills, and is not restricted to established patterns.

The Church must embrace its duty towards the religious life. The Advisory Council on the Relations of Bishops and Religious Communities needs overhauling in both its mem­bership and its brief. It is not enough for it to be merely advisory. It must become the organ through which the Church exercises its ministry towards religious, and can call them to give an account of themselves to the Church. At present, communities have little sense of that accountability.
The Advisory Council must also take responsibility for helping some communities to recognise their approaching end, and must assist them to give a Christian example of preparation for a good death. (I know one community of Sisters which is an inspiring demonstration of how this can be done.)

In addition, all members of the Church of England need to ask: “Do we believe that religious communities are a vital part of our Church?” If we say yes, then we must ask how a Church that seems to have bought entirely into committees, careerism, and management techniques will find the knowledge and spiritual depth needed for it to give our religious the guidance and support that they deserve.

If our reply to this question is a frank no, it will show us starkly that the spiritual health of the Church of England is in more disturbing decline than even the most pessimistic among us dared to think.

The Revd Dr Barry A. Orford is Priest Librarian and Archivist at Pusey House, Oxford.

A Catechism on the Holy Sacrament of Penance: Confession and Absolution

What is the Sacrament of Penance or Confession? Did Our Lord institute it?

The Sacrament commonly called Penance or Confession is provided by the Church in order to assure persons who have sinned after Baptism the forgiveness of all sins. In the Apostles' Creed, we Catholic Christians profess the truth of The Forgiveness of Sins. This promise, and the covenanted means of grace through which God guarantees for us forgiveness of sins after Baptism, is given to us in this Sacrament: Just as Baptism, a Sacrament, washes away all sins and makes us children of God by grace and adoption, so Confession, a Sacrament, cleanses us from all the sins we personally commit following Baptism. The Church Fathers beautifully describe Confession as the 'second plank after shipwreck,' the promised gift of forgiveness of sins for us, even after we have cut ourselves from, or chosen to reject, the grace of God given us in Baptism.

Because we have been made in the Image and Likeness of God, we always possess freedom, free-will, choice, and especially after we have been refashioned and restored to Life in God, born again by water and the Holy Ghost in Baptism. Although Baptism causes the new birth and brings us into the life of grace, it does not remove free-will, or the desire in man, redeemed but still suffering effects from the Fall, to choose his own way instead of God's will. This remaining defect is the 'tinder to sin', the desire for self-gratification or misplaced love or disordered affection, which we call concupiscence. The process of grace roots this flaw out of us as we are changed over time and eternity into the Likeness of Christ the New Man. In short, we can still sin after our Baptism. If we commit serious sins, such as pride, sloth, lust, anger, greed, gluttony, envy, we can, by our own choice, separate ourselves from the grace of God and reject God's Life and Kingdom. It is possible deliberately to sever oneself from grace and lose salvation, that is, to separate oneself from the free gift of the grace of God in His Catholic Church thus rendering the Sacraments ineffective in the soul - in such a case the soul has chosen to displace God and replace Him with self. The cure and remedy for post-baptismal sin, whatever the particular sin may be, is the Sacrament of Penance. When we do sin, we sin particularly and personally, and we sin as members of the Body of Christ, the Church. We are responsible not only to God for our personal sins, but we are responsible to the Church of which we are living members; we are part of the 'blessed company of all faithful (baptised) people,' and we must be held accountable for our sins— for our sins not only offend God's love and honour, but they offend our own human dignity as sons of God by adoption and grace, and they wound and hurt the Body of which we are a living part: 'If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all are honoured' (1 Corinthians 12).

Therefore Our Lord has provided for the Church, through this Sacrament, a promised and sacramental means by which we are individually and personally restored to the full Communion of the Faith and Sacraments which we can abandon when we commit serious sins. It reunites us with Christ in the Church, for the priest who administers it represents Christ Himself as His 'living icon,' the living instrument of Christ. It is the invisible and risen Christ, who, through the priest, hears the penitent's Confession and grants Absolution, which means 'loosening' or 'release,' the official declaration of the forgiveness of all sins. The priest, who represents the Church, has the authority to reconcile the penitent with the Church's communion. The interior means of access to this Sacrament is repentance: we must repent of our sins, which means we must turn the heart, mind, and soul back to God.

In repentance, we must be truly sorry for our sins, sorrowful in heart for having hurt God and having offended His love for us. Repentance requires an acknowledgment of our sins, a recognition that we have sinned in the sight of God. We must turn to God in sorrow for sin and love, not out of fear of God's wrath or hell or for getting caught in our sins. Repentance through fear is not contrition, genuine sorrow for sin, but attrition, fear of God's anger and judgement. Real repentance flows from a 'broken and contrite heart' (Psalm 51) which realises that God has been rejected and unloved, and not from a heart set selfishly on fleeing God's wrath for having been caught sinning. As Saint John Chrysostom says, we must have: 'Contrition on the heart, Confession on the lips, Amendment in the life.' Recognising our sins, hating them, and finding true sorrow for them, we must confess our sins to God, and in Confession we do so in the presence of His icon, the priest. Then, receiving God's great forgiveness, we must amend our lives, changing them, making them better and holier, as we determine not to sin again, fleeing from sins and abandoning them, aided by the grace we receive from God in the Sacrament of Penance. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself has appointed a sacramental means by which we can re-approach God the Holy Trinity after having committed serious sins, and can be restored to the fullness of the life and grace of God— Our Lord directly gave to the Apostles His own personal authority and power to forgive, in His Name and Person, the sins of the faithful, and bring reconciliation, a re-communion, to repentant sinners. The Apostles 'stand in Our Lord's place' as His own representatives on earth, continuing the very work and ministry of Christ the Priest, Christ the Absolver of Sins. 'Jesus said to them, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whosoever sins you retain, they are retained unto them."' (St John 20.21-23). 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven' (St Matthew 16.19).

The successors of the Apostles, who possess the commission and authority of the Twelve to forgive sins, are the bishops in apostolic succession, who in turn share their ministry with the priests, the second order of the apostolic ministry. Together, bishops and priests, both continuing the priestly ministry of Christ, administer this Sacrament. In the Anglican Ordinal (BCP page 546), when a man is ordained to the priesthood, he is ordained with the words of Our Lord in St John 20 (above), which manifest the importance of the presbyterate as the continued ministry of Christ's very priesthood in a sacramental form. So, yes, Our Lord indeed created the Sacrament of Penance, in that He intended His Apostles and their successors in the sacerdotium to forgive the sins of His people through His very power and authority given to them: the power of the Holy Ghost.

This great authority and gift has been entrusted to the Holy Catholic Church, and she has unwaveringly and faithfully administered this sacramental gift of Penance to all who have sought it for 2,000 years of unbroken Holy Tradition. The Sacrament of Penance, or Confession, is the singlemost important aid in the Church for maintaining a Christian life of repentance, holiness and faith. This Sacrament provides all of us the most effective means by which we may examine our lives, repent of our sins, and receive the powerful grace of God, His life and power. Through it we can live better lives and seek to continue to be more and more God-like, as we progress on the path to holiness and are transformed into the Image and Likeness of Christ.

The Outward and Visible Sign: The confession of specific sins by a baptised Christian before a priest in apostolic succession, followed by the Absolution, in which the priest grants the forgiveness of sins through the laying-on-of-hands and the Sign of the Cross whilst he says the following declaration:

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences. And by his authority committed unto me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Inward and Spiritual Grace: The forgiveness of all sins committed after Baptism, the restoration and recovery of baptismal grace, reconciliation with the Catholic Church in Faith and Sacraments, the grace of increased contrition for sins with supernatural power to live in holiness, prayer, and good works, deepening union with Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, opportunity for increase in cooperation with the grace of Baptism, healing in the soul from the effects of sin and power to avoid sin in the future. This Sacrament quiets the conscience and brings spiritual peace and consolation as well as increase of supernatural power in the Christian life to battle for Christ.

Our Lord comes to us through this Sacrament in order to strengthen us in our resolve to flee from sin and live lives of consecration to the Love of God. It is a tremendous benefit to us, for God uses its special grace to make us more and more holy: the inward and spiritual grace given to us in Penance, in addition to the unfathomable guarantee that all sins ever committed are completely forgiven, is a deepening of our contrition, our true sorrow of heart for having offended God's great love through sin, and an empowering by God that we may be changed in our daily habits, thoughts, words, actions, attitudes, and behaviours - so that we may live more closely to Christ and be made more perfect by God's perfect grace.

God the Holy Ghost gives Himself to us through this Sacrament that we may be cleansed, forgiven, and reconciled to the communion of the Sacraments in the Church. This communion is a fellowship of life, love, grace and prayer we lose through our willful and deliberate acts of sin. The Holy Ghost gives us the supernatural life needed to continue on the path to sainthood. We are called to be holy ones transformed by grace into the sons of God. Penance is a key element in the Christian life— an essential instrument through which God calls to us to be made like God. We are becoming by grace what God is by nature, sharing God's life and entering into the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

This Sacrament should be repeated as often as needed, and, in fact, many Christians receive this Sacrament on a weekly or monthly basis in order to have a right context in which regularly to examine their spiritual lives, and receive spiritual counsel and advice by a priest of the Church in an atmosphere of absolute privacy and confidentiality. Christians should feel free to use this Sacrament as often as necessary or desired, for a priest must hear a Confession at any place, at any time, if it is requested. Many of the greatest and holiest of Saints have used Confession as the source of spiritual growth and renewal. No priest at any time may reveal anything ever stated or shared in the Sacrament of Penance— this is called the Seal of Confession. Whatever is stated by the penitent to the priest is known only to the priest and to God Himself— a priest cannot mention any information concerning the Confession, not even to the penitent himself.

The content of a past Confession can only be discussed if the penitent himself wishes to discuss it again and himself reintroduces it to the priest. Otherwise, it is considered past and never mentioned again. This Seal exists to protect the faithful from scandal or personal injury, and serves to allow the Church to minister to the healing of specific sins without fear or difficulty. If a priest reveals any information learned in the context of hearing a Confession, he is automatically to be deposed from his ministry. The penitent is absolutely safe in the context of Confession to reveal all sins and ask of God mercy, pardon, and forgiveness, and of the priest, counsel, advice and Absolution. For the Sacrament to be valid, thus communicating the grace promised, one must not intentionally withhold any sins, but must openly confess all known sins with repentance and faith in the forum of the Sacrament, trusting in God's forgiveness and mercy.

Jesus Christ in His Incarnate, Mystical and Sacramental Body

On Our Lord's Incarnate Life and Passion: Our Blessed Lord has a true and fully free human will and was truly subjected to temptation to sin from without, from outside His own consciousness in an objective manner, and yet He never succumbed to those external temptations because of His complete perfection of mind, heart and will and His holiness. We could even go a step further and say that the temptations of Christ were interiorised to the degree that they were on the spiritual and moral level and not visible to others. The temptation of Our Lord by the devil was not necessarily something we could see with our eyes, the temptations being put directly into Christ's human mind by the devil, as Saint Matthew 4 indicates. And yet, in the inner sanctuary of Our Lord's Sacred Heart no temptation was allowed to fester, to entice or take root because of His perfect union with the Father. Jesus truly endured human temptation exactly as we do, mentally, spiritually, psychically, but unlike us, He never even considered sin although He was subjected to its possibility by an outside agent. But unlike us again, Our Lord never generated His 'own temptation' as we do through our own weakness and concupiscence, because He was perfectly pure and holy in the interior life, in perfect communion with God. He lacks that concupiscence that makes sin appeal to our fallen and wounded nature, and thus He could directly overcome any temptation - which He did. We differ in that we mortals like sin, fallen man is attracted to sin through disordered passions and desires. Christ had none of that, and so could restore what we had lost in human nature through the ancestral transgression. We are saved from sin and temptation as we are inserted through Word and Sacrament into Christ's life, Christ's victory over evil and Satan.

On the Eucharist, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: Although we sometimes tend, unfortunately, to be lax concerning our own discipline for the Blessed Sacrament, I think the Anglican discipline, the ancient, traditional and Prayer Book discipline, for communicants envisions an ecclesiology and 'eucharistology' similar to that of the Orthodox Church - in that we expect and formally require communicants to be baptised, confirmed sacramentally by a bishop in apostolic succession (BCP page 299) and in full communion with a catholic body of undoubted antiquity and orthodox substance. There is in our actual canonical and liturgical approach to Holy Communion the intention to hold together the bond of the Church Catholic as the Great Sacrament and the koinonia of Christ's Mystical Body, the Church, in which and only in which the koinonia of Christ's Sacramental Body, the Eucharist, uniquely takes place. Our actual praxis does not always live up to the theology and clear teaching of the BCP. Were we to enforce our own intrinsic discipline legislated by our own liturgy with greater determination and care, we would see, express and live out a deeper level of Church as organic communio, as integral unity of faith and sacramental life. The Anglican discipline presupposes and anticipates a real dogmatic unity in the communion of the Church and her members based in the apostolic succession and the apostolicity of the Church's order and worship, quite similar to the Orthodox view. We no more encourage 'open communion' than the Eastern Churches - at least in principle. For us the Catholic Church is the amalgamation of all those particular communions possessing the Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments and Apostolic Ministry; those who belong to a catholic church belong to the Catholic Church.

The difference between ourselves and the Eastern Churches is that we are willing to acknowledge the 'branch fact' that the Catholic Church on earth is divided into separate jurisdictions, which, in spite of their visible or organisational disunity, possess an essential and supernatural unity in the Faith of the Undivided Church and the Seven Sacraments. We profess an underlying and overarching catholic unity of the Church located in the sacramental system which even the human sin of schism cannot sunder. The unconfirmed are not to receive the Blessed Sacrament in Anglican Churches (although they sometimes do) because they have not yet been sealed with the Holy Ghost as full members of the Church by the imposition of apostolic hands; they have not yet been fully integrated into the communion of Holy Things in the Church by the confirmational sacrament of apostolicity. This is exactly the same rule as Orthodox chrismation, which treats baptism and confirmation as inseparable. As baptism and confirmation are inseparable, so personal Christian faith and communion in Christ's ecclesial and corporate Body are inseparable. The unity of the Church is grounded in her baptismal, confirmational and eucharistic reality.

So again I think the Orthodox are fundamentally right on this point, and that, in principle, we fundamentally agree with them, although we differ to some degree as to who or what 'the Church' is. I say 'to some degree,' because the Orthodox Churches themselves recognised Anglicanism as orientated towards Orthodoxy, economically and provisionally, as being the kith and kin of the Orthodox, until the women's ordination debacle of 1976 and following. Even today some Orthodox theologians are willing to see Orthodoxy in classical Anglicanism. I recently heard the excellent dialogue between an Orthodox theologian and a protestant professor currently linked on Ancient Faith Radio, in which the Orthodox theologian stated that classical Anglicanism is close to Orthodoxy in its patristic tradition and is in fact the 'Orthodox Church of the West.' That understanding still survives amongst some Eastern Orthodox. I live in hope that we shall someday be recognised as what we truly are.

Rector of Saint Barnabas Church, Dunwoody, Georgia

Praised be Jesus Christ!

It is with the greatest delight, elation, excitement and joy that I today announce that I have accepted the call to serve as the fourth Rector of Saint Barnabas Anglican Church, Dunwoody, Georgia. Please keep my wife Megan, my sons Aidan and Owain, and me in your prayers as we make this important transition and as we prepare for a truly wonderful and challenging new parish ministry in the Diocese of the Eastern United States and the Anglican Province of America. I especially wish to offer my deepest thanks to my dear friend and brother the Reverend Canon William R. Weston and his wonderful wife Valerie, the Vestry and Wardens of Saint Barnabas, and our faithful parishioners for their unconditional love and support. My election as Rector has been one of the greatest experiences of Christian charity and friendship I have ever been graced to receive, and I shall be eternally grateful. Elected on 17 February, I formally accepted the call on 1 March, and I begin officially on 16 March. Thank you very much for your support and your prayers.

God bless you!

Jesus mercy, Mary pray.

Chad+

The Real Temptation of Christ

Our Blessed Lord possesses both a moral union with His Father and the Holy Ghost as well as a hypostatic union both with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and with our own humanity: He is of one substance with the Father concerning His Divinity and is of one substance with us as concerning His Manhood. Because He is perfectly one with His Father, not only morally, but ontologically, it is not possible for Our Lord to reject the Will of God, although He possesses in His human nature a full, perfect, free and totally human will. This debate led in part to the heresy of Monothelitism, 'one-will-ism,' a doctrine related to the error of Eutyches and the Monophysites, which held that Our Lord had only one will, which was Divine. The Lord Jesus has in the order of nature the only truly sinless perfect human free will, a will in human nature completely untainted and uncorrupted by sin. We become by grace what Christ is by nature. The Logos became Man in order to heal, restore, save, redeem and divinise our will injured and impaired, but not destroyed, by Original Sin. In Christ, the totality of human nature, including our will, is restored to communion with God and is made to participate in the Life of the Holy Trinity. Our wills, defective and broken as they are, are redeemed and raised because of Christ's assumption of human will. 'Only that which Christ assumed did He redeem.' And He assumed our human will to redeem it.

For this reason, for the purpose of redeeming us, Our Lord willingly and voluntarily subjected himself to temptation, in order that through His obedience to the Father in temptation he might do for us what we cannot do for ourselves; His sacrifice consists in the obedience of His will to the Father and the utter and unconditional love with which He loves the Father - all in our human flesh. He reconciles us to God through the gift of Himself, His self-donation, His self-oblation, His kenosis, His self-emptying in our flesh for the sake of the Father's will. Our Lord was truly tempted as all men are, but never sinned, because He would not and could not sever His communion with His Father through disobedience. Our Lord brings through His Incarnation into the temporal sphere and the realm of humanity that perfect communion and love, called perichoresis, that mutual indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost within the Life of the Godhead which has existed from all eternity. Jesus Christ reproduces in our human flesh, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, a perfect life of love and communion which He, the Eternal Word, has always enjoyed and has always rendered to God the Father. What happens for all eternity in God has been brought into the bosom of mankind through the hominisation of God. The heart of God is now manifested and expressed in and through our humanity.

Our Lord did not sin in His human nature because sin is contrary to the circuminsession, the personal and mutual indwelling of the Hypostases of the Blessed Trinity which is God Himself, for God is a Communion of Persons united ontologically in the Father and inseparable from one another. The Holy Trinity is a Family, the Family, a Communion of relatio, of interdependent relationship.The Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father - the Persons of the Holy Trinity mutually interpenetrate and indwell each each other; they cleave together in one Essence, one Life, one Being. Sin, from this point of view, is a human and angelic activity, an act for which only a created being is capable. Our Lord possesses a true created human nature, yes, but He is not a human person - and that is the key. Being a Divine Person with a human nature, Our Lord simply does not sin, although He has experienced in His mortal life the full horror and torment of human temptation and weakness. Hebrews 4 is one of most profound and mysterious truths of divine revelation, for it declares that the God-Man has genuinely experienced the full range of all human temptation and moral suffering and yet was perfectly obedient to the Father, that is, He remained in perfect love and communion with His Father in our human nature. Our Lord's temptation was real and personal, as was His response to it - His living out the Divine Life in our flesh now means that, transformed in Him, our human flesh is the location, the arena, in which we may personally overcome temptation and enter into the Life of God.

And that is the moral basis of our salvation, as the ontological basis is the Incarnation of the Word, the union of God and Man in the Person of Jesus Christ, which translates our human nature through theosis into the mean whereby we become Trinitarian. 'God became humanised so that humanity may become divinised.'

The Bishop and Me

A more recent photograph of your blogger with his beloved bishop, the Most Reverend Walter H. Grundorf, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Province of America...

Tu Es Sacerdos

From the family photo album I finally located this long-lost picture of my ordination to the Sacred Priesthood on Saturday 21 December 1996. Here your blogger kneels before the Most Reverend John Thayer Cahoon, Junior, Bishop Ordinary of the Mid-Atlantic States, as he imposes his hand during the final prayer of the Ordination Rite, just before the Blessing. In the foreground to the left, the server kneeling and holding the bishop's crozier is the Reverend Father Emmett Hugh Dobbs, Junior, and to the right kneels the Reverend Father William C. Crites.