A Collect for the Catholic Church

I'm going to Toledo for the next two days to spend some time with the Heart of North America network, our colleagues in the Anglican Mission. I am, God willing, to be given the canonical standing of "lay catechist" in the Church of Rwanda, with the apostolic commission to preach the Gospel, seek wandering sheep, teach the Faith, and otherwise function as a pastor.

It's an interesting thing to do, just after GAFCON, and during the Lambeth Conference. I wouldn't have seen this in the summer of 2002, that's for certain.

I wrote another collect last week. I like to read them during the Prayers of the People (the intercessions), and I always have them approved by the Rector, since they are intercessions with particular theological content.

Loving God, you founded your Church on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ to experience and implement your plan for the world's redemption, and gave us the Scriptures and the Creeds to guide us in your Truth. Grant us the gift of your Spirit so that we would always continue in that religion which is both Catholic and Biblical.

Lord, in your mercy
Hear our prayer

Collect for the Memorial of Mary Magdalene

Some of the things I find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts are not as theologically rich as I would prefer. If you're going to commorate something, do it write. So in true LOLAnglicanz fashion, I duz it bedder.

Almighty God, by your deep compassion you delivered and healed Mary Magdalene from the affliction of demons. Secure in your love even after the Crucifixion of the Lord, she emerged from the night of shattered hopes to anoint the Body of your Son at the morning light. Upon her encounter with the Risen One, Jesus sent her as an "Apostle to the Apostles," proclaiming, "I have seen the Lord!" For the sake of your mission and this same compassion, we beg you to heal us from the dark forces that keep us from abundant life, and set us free to love you with undivided hearts and preach with boldness the Resurrection of your Son.

Collect after the Commemoration of Benedict

Lately, whenever the commemoration/feast day of a saint comes 'round, I take time to write a collect that highlights the way a particular sister or brother served God's purposes, and ask God to give us a measure of the same Spirit. I offer it during our free intercessions, which is where we put in any "extra" collects beyond the Proper for the day.

Almighty God, you desire all your people to walk in holiness, and to know the transformation of our lives that comes with the continual renewing of our minds. You moved your servant Benedict of Nursia so long ago to establish communities that would shine as “schools of the Lord’s service,” and offer a beacon of hope in a dark culture. Give us this same grace, to order our houses and our common life in such a way as to cultivate holiness and love for our neighbor. Make us faithful and fruitful like your servant Benedict, and cause us to persevere in disciplining our desires, until the Day when, through your mercy, we may with Mary, Patrick, Benedict, and all your saints, attain to your eternal joy.

Lord, in your mercy

Hear our prayer

Christian Education Projects

I'm back, I think. Anybody still out there? I've started my new job at library technician at the Georgetown College LRC, and I've been appointed as missioner for the college and town. You'll see my promotion soon at LOLAnglicans (a-puh-STOL-ik Xianity: let me show you it).

More on that to follow. In the meantime, here are some of the sessions I've been working on for our occasional Christian education work:

• Fear and Loathing in the Spiritual Life: How to Practice an Incredibly Rigorous Fast
  
  
• Listening: The Practice of Centering Prayer
  
  
• Respect Your Mother: Praying the Angelus
  
  
• Respect Your Mother, Session 2: Building a Grotto
  
  
• Lectio Divina // Holy Reading
  
  
• "Intinction Cup? What Intinction Cup?" An Introduction to Eucharistic Piety
  
  
• Ora Pro Nobis: Sucking up to the Saints (bring $15 for holy cards and Chinese-made ceramic statues)
  
  
• Praying the Office

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right

A middle aged man in a polo shirt stopped by the table of my Christian author friends to ask where they "go to church." They told him. He responded, "If you ever want to go to a church that really knows how to rock, check out Quest." Then he walked away. Quest is increasingly notorious for trying to evangelize people who are already committed Christians.

I spoke to a Disciples of Christ minister who told me he was thinking of using Tolle's A New Earth (think new age teacher that Oprah loves) in his church to "expand their horizons." I thought about suggesting he teach them the Christian religion, but decided to leave it alone (I was at work, after all).

Some reading

Mormons are not permitted access to Roman Catholic baptismal records. For obvious reasons.

In case you suffered religious abuse this weekend, and were subjected to a sermon about mothers rather than the Feast of Pentecost, go read Alan's reflection on the day. For penance and healing and such.

(Once again, say it with me - I am a Church calendar fundamentalist. Very good.)

Mothers are wonderful things, and my own mother is quite wonderful. It would just be a much better idea to honor them on a liturgically appropriate day, like one of the several commemorations for Our Lady. Why, we could even pass out bumper stickers in the parish hall that say, "Respect Your Mother," and kill two birds with one stone. Um, as it were.

Recovering the lost language of lament: Michael Spencer asks, "Can a Christian Sing the Blues?" Make sure you follow this link to Michael Card's lectures on the topic at Southern Seminary.

And if you're following the discussion on why the whole question of contemporary/traditional worship is bad (mmkay?), Bryan reflects on a line in the Mass. Okay, I think that's what the topic is about. Not everybody else. But just to be fair, here's a word from a friend who does believe that creativity has a place in the liturgy.

To Live and Die in the Catholic Faith

Cardinal Kasper recently challenged Anglicans to ask themselves whether they belong to the ancient Churches of the first millennium, or the Protestant churches of the 16th century. The Dean of Nashotah House, Robert S. Munday, responds with a short post on the nature of Catholicity (think Vincentian Canon) and the nature of Anglican protesting.

Notes on Christian Worship

Note: I first wrote this with small group home-based worship in mind.

Worship as Response

Simply put, worship is the response we make to the Lord's initiative in our lives. He created us to live joyfully in community with him and one another. Because of the Fall, this is neither natural nor intuitive. Happily, the Christian story is all about Jesus winning us back to God and giving us his own Spirit that we might learn to walk in the ways he originally intended. We can simply be with him.

I often keep a cluttered space at home, and when someone comes to visit, I have to pick up all the clutter, coats and clothing off the chair so they can sit down. Worship is somewhat like this – making a space for God to enter, by quieting our hearts and being still. The liturgy we use - whether simple or complex – is a way of knocking away the clutter and inviting Jesus in.

Creating Space for the Presence

“You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

— Ephesians 2:19.

Christ dwells in our common life. We are the temple of the Living God; we are the Body of Christ. He is here among us not because of any good and right things we say, or bad things we don’t do, but because of who we are.

That means the pressure is off. Choose to waste time. Don’t try to figure out anything new, either in regard to him or yourself. Don’t worry about saying the right things, or saying anything at all. You can speak to him, or just sit and listen. We will create an open space for him to simply be, for no particular purpose. This is a wasted time, wasted energy that could be spent getting something done. This blesses him.

Expectations

Jesus will come to be among us. He enjoys our presence, and desires that we would enjoy his. Several of us may not. We’ve been forced to sit with destructive, exploitative images of God and sitting with Jesus while those old ideas are still banging around in our hearts can be uncomfortable. He’s really very much okay with that. Where Jesus is, he heals.

Avenues into the Presence of God

Invocation. Jesus comes to be with us because he loves us and because we need him; that’s why he first came to us. We can invite him into our midst on that basis; we need no other.

Praise and Thanksgiving. Sit. Remember the works of Yahweh. Acknowledge the good things you have received as being his gifts. Cite those moments of the day when some word, action or remembrance reminded you that you are loved and cared for. Thank him. Say, “I love you, too.” Tell him he’s wonderful.

Confession. Welcome him into the dark places. Don’t try to fix them up. Certainly don’t keep him out of them. Ask forgiveness only for actual sins: brokenness and need are not sins, and do not require apology. If you’ve got an incredible problem that you can’t seem to work out, tell him about it. Not that it will fix anything necessarily, but we need to cultivate a habit just being with Jesus in those places where we are uncomfortable being ourselves. If you’re not sure what to say to him because you just realized he’s not the horrible trickster god you were brought up with, say so. You don’t have to talk beyond that. Don’t make promises, just be there with him.

Listen. Read the scriptures. Let your friends affirm and challenge you. Sit and receive.

I utilized Richard Foster’s chapter in Celebration of Discipline to cover the bases.

Neeeerds

With this new 2008 Anglican Prayer Book, I have a +1 traditionalism, and a +4 Anglican cantankerousness. It brings a -2 debuff for all stats on nearby Episcopalians. It does however give me a -1 ecumenism and a -3 relevancy.

However, if somebody plays the "contemporary worship" dilemma card, the lower relevancy stats will double my clerics' XP.

Let the reader understand.

Liturgical Issues

Last week before Mass as I was ironing the lace cottas, a couple of our parishioners approached me about starting something they called a "contemporary worship service." I couldn't make out all of what they were saying, but I understood the gist of it to include guitars and Hawaiian shirts. I spoke to the clergy about this later, and we puzzled over it for some time - "contemporary worship" seemed like an oxymoron at least, if not some kind of practical joke they were going to play on the MC.

We finally decided that they had gotten their words confused, and that after our recent reaching series on Christian mission and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, this was part of a groundswell of people panting after a fuller experience of *Eucharistic adoration.* We had an emergency meeting with the liturgists in the cloister, and started putting together a basic sketch for a Service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

I couldn't find mention of these "guitars" or "Hawaiian shirts" anywhere, though, and for some reason I could only find Benediction rubrics in liturgy books that date back a few hundred years. I was wondering if any other AMiA parishes have already developed some "contemporary" version of these rubrics for your own Eucharistic adoration that we might lean upon?

Cheers!

You Want It

In case you've missed my cantankerousness...

I continue to be disturbed at my recent discovery that in our present ecclesial culture in the United States, Christian worship is a spectator sport. It's not an issue at Saint Patrick's Church, but if I were the rector of a congregation that refused to participate in congregational singing, I would eliminate the music program. I'd also put the choir/worship band/charismatic worship leader in the back of the nave rather than the front.

Hell, who am I kidding? I might celebrate Mass facing east, for that matter.

"After all, you have a degree in God-bothering."

Today, I shall return to thinking and writing about life with the Christian God. The other stuff was very boring for me.

Saint Patrick's Church made a retreat in southern Kentucky this weekend. I was able to spend a little time with some of the people that I usually don't see apart from Sunday mass, and of course several folks that I see very often. I really enjoyed the opportunity to "get with nature" and just relax with friends.

I took the opportunity to think on some difficult things, that I'll be ruminating over for some time. I've come to the slow realization over the past few months that much of my spiritual life has been characterized by a certain degree of self-pity. About two years ago, I was deliberately sabotaged by a friend who decided his role as a Christian leader and God's self-appointed representative (a protestant layman!) was to expunge me from the life of God's Church.* It grieved me tremendously that I had somehow turned this individual's dedication and camaraderie into hatred over a very very short span of time. I say "sabotage," because it worked. It got to the point where my friends in Oxford asked me not to correspond with anybody in the United States. I learned over time that the reason this hit me so hard was that both I and my friends already struggled deeply with the evil that this fellow thought he'd so doggedly uncovered in me - it was like telling a drowning man that he shouldn't have gotten so close to the tide.

The reason I was so vulnerable - aside from distance, culture shock, and the stress of my studies - is that someone I had trusted decided to speak God's condemnation into an aspect of my life where I was already desperate to receive God's healing. My problem - the real one, I think - is that I took it as a word of condemnation from God, even as my theological mind rebelled against it. Over a period of many months, I gave into the temptation to abandon myself, as I was no longer certain that God had not. Many of my decisions were colored by self-pity, and ambivalence toward this Christian God, whom I had believed up until this point to be saving me.

I had bought into the evil things that others had spoken into my life - not just this one Christian leader, but the evil things that several people had prophesied over me. I faltered severely in my discipleship, and struggled for quite some time over whether and how I would pick up the pieces. At some point, I changed my mind. As I continued in the life of the Church and in encouraging friendships, I gradually changed my mind. If I have hope, and if I have a future, it's with the Christian God. Over the course of the last several months, I've finally been able to articulate some of the things I'm learning in this.

1. It's really difficult to think of oneself as being self-pitying. I couldn't deny it, however, when all of my rationalizations for sin and sloth sounded just the same, and I realized how totally self-centered and coddling of myself I had become. Poooor Kyle. When self-pity offers a story, it sounds like The Sordid Tale of that Awful Thing Someone Else Did. I found that much sin in my life that, serendipitously, could be traced back to The Sordid Tale of that Awful Thing Someone Else Did. Why am I skipping evening prayers tonight? Really, when it comes down to it, I'm justified/excused/allowed because we remember back in the Sordid Tale of That Awful Thing Someone Else Did, much greater evils were perpetrated, so really there's no big deal at all.

It was in our Lenten reading of the Orthodox Christian penitential text, the Canon of Saint Andrew, that God invited me to take full responsibility for my own actions - all of them - and to really think about what that means. This is when I realized that all my actions seemed to hinge upon That Story. When I got up, when I laid down - I might have put it down on a scroll and put it on my forehead like the Pharisees of old. I realized that I had to quit recounting The Sordid Tale of that Awful Thing Someone Else Did. Yes it was awful. No, they weren't sorry. No, I don't imagine that I've been vindicated just yet. It's not that it wasn't evil, and it's not that it wasn't an injustice - rather, I had given That Story power as an explanatory narrative.

2. The other Important Lesson clicked into place for me this weekend. Lots of people in this world will claim to represent God. Some people are even supposed to. Many people will call themselves "fathers," and for some, their fatherhood will be derivative of the fatherhood of the Christian God. For many, it will be derivative of the Evil One. Here's the rub: any representation or interpretation of a "god" that doesn't look like the man Jesus nailed to a cross in suffering love for broken people is a lie. The saints and martyrs stand with the Christian God in judgment against any explanatory story that depicts God as any other than a God who loves sinners with deep and passionate love. Our priest pointed out to us yesterday as well that any faithful proclamation of this God will be Eucharistic - men and women allowing themselves to be broken like the bread and poured out like the wine in gratitude to God, and for the sake of the world.

More will follow, but that's enough for today.

*Don't try to guess who, because you won't. I've never mentioned him on the blog, and only about 8 people know the details of the situation.

The Unity of the Church, part II

Seriously folks, read this and come back at me - I know this is muddled, so help me out.

We discussed in a previous post how catholic Christians understand the unity of Christ's Church in terms of church order and doctrine. I now intend to expand that to cover mission and sacraments, but first let's consider why it's even needful to have the conversation. Catholic Christians by definition have a particular vision for the unity of the Church: in every place, there is a "local church," understood as the diocese. This is the whole Christian community in a particular geographic area with one pastor, the bishop, with subpastors (his priests) holding the charge of particular congregations/parishes. This community as a whole is understood to believe, practice and teach the Catholic faith as found in the Bible, the Creeds, and the Councils, to celebrate the Sacraments (chiefly baptism and Eucharist) and to engage in mission and Christian formation. We seek to become like Christ, and to invite others to be part of God's plan for saving the world.

Here's the awkward question: what shall be our view of other religions, like Methodism?

But seriously: remember that I started the discussion by insisting that everyone should be scandalized by Christian division, because it is a scandal. Everyone should be scandalized by any instance of people who take the name of Christ treating other people in unloving or destructive ways. It should go without saying (but I shall say it) that inter-denominational fighting and punditry is something I have no time for whatsoever, as it hinders both my transformation and yours. You will not hear me sitting around talking about "those awful benighted ______s, who are scarely Christians at all." Not. Interesting.

(Now exposing the deep poverty of certain dessicated practices, like the care and cultivation of praise bands, is another matter all together. People need to hear that.)

Keep in mind, then, that I share the concerns of the folks whose opinions I'm about to criticize. Many well meaning Christians conflate Christian charity and fraternal love with the rationalization of division by saying something like the following: "We all have different ways of worshipping and serving God, so it's okay if I go the Baptist church and you go to the Lutheran church, and they go to the Methodist church, as long as we all love Jesus and preach the gospel." This is a charitible stance, and the intent is worthy of respect. However, it is an unintentionally dishonest statement. Even if we imagine that there is some form of "the gospel" that we can understand both outside of and within our own culture and language, all of these separated Christians who want to affirm each other in their separation are actually testifying by their own choices that all of those groups understand the story of the Gospel and its demands for discipleship in radically different ways, and that these ways are radically different enough to be Church divding.

The unity of Christ's church has never been predicated upon warm feelings, but rather unity in teaching the faith and living according to the Christian story. If I really agreed so wholeheartedly with my separated breathern that we teach and live what is essentially the same Christian religion, why we do we consider our Christian communities to be different churches?

To live in separated churches, we have to have a particular reason to do so that we consider more important than the basic blanket demand for Christian unity that we find in John's depiction of Jesus? In the above example, the particular reason is ... personal preference. Does anybody really think it comes down to that?

So let us ask together: what are the important church-dividing issues? What are the ways that our different communities have of teaching and living the Gospel that justify our separation? If we can find no justification, what shall we do to end the separation?

The Unity of the Church, part I

Catholic Christians understand the Unity of the Body of Christ to be a primary concern for all Christians. I have written before that I believe many folks to be "inappropriately scandalized" by the fact of Christian division. If you are a baptized person, it should bother you. Lots. At least enough to do something about it.

For evangelical protestants, the unity of the Church looks like people getting along and sharing prayers and ministry. This is as true and important, as far as it goes. I think many evangelicals would also say that doctrinal unity - specific assent to particular theological points - is an important aspect of unity (perhaps the most important) and is a prerequisite to shared mission in many cases and perhaps a prerequisite to sharing a life of prayer and friendship.

Catholic Christianity is concerned with doctrine, mission, and getting along, but for us, it looks very different - it looks like questions of church order. Of course sacramental validity fits in there as well. For evangelicals, the thing we understand as church order often seems arbitrary, but I'll try to explain.

While it may seem to many that the ancient church consisted of a "mixed economy" of alternative and competing Christianties (much like today's Protestant milieu), from the very beginning churches were differentiated by geography, not by their particular version of the Faith. The "local church" was the assembly of all Christians in a particular place, not a small "congregation" grouped by preference or affinity. Within the first several decades after Christ's Ascension, an order that historians call the "monarchical episcopate" had emerged - instead of the local church in each city being ruled by a college (or council) of presbyters, there emerged one overseer, or bishop, from that college. He was understood to present Christ as shepherd to the Church, and became a focus for unity of the wider Church. It also quickly became important that these bishops have the right relational pedigree; in an age where teachers of alternative Christianities kept cropping up and claiming special revelation or access to secret teaching that had been passed down from Jesus through some shadowy characters in a fashion that was impossible to confirm, it was important to know that a bishop had been discipled (apprenticed or formed in the Christian faith) by someone who was known to be a close associate of the Apostles. The bishop's power and prerogative to ordain was considered to be derivative of the authority Jesus invested in the Apostles, and when priests acted in Christ's name to preside at the Eucharist and to grant absolution of sin, they were understood to derive their authority from their bishop. It was also understood that these bishops and therefore their priests would have been formed according to the Rule of Faith, which later became known as the official creeds of the Christian Church - I mean specifically the so-called Apostles' Creed.

When a community could claim that pedigree, one knew that the community in question professed and practiced the true Christian faith, and that this was a community that Jesus transformed by his ongoing action through the sacraments.

So when we consider the question of Christian unity, we believe it to have several expressions:

1. Is this a community of Christians that derives from apostolic continuity, or did it spring up from someone else's peculiar Bible reading, or particular version of Christianity? Unity in the Church requires continuity with apostolic Christianity.

2. Do the bishops of particular communities recognize one another as teachers of the apostolic faith, who have been consecrated in the apostolic succession?

3. Does the community profess and teach the Bible according to the Creeds?

After answering these joint questions of doctrine, church order and sacramental validity, then we concern ourselves with what it means to get along well with one another, and to recognize one anothers ministries as Christian communities, and start agreeing together about what it means to be Christian people.

Saints, Mission, and the Prayers of the People

A long title for a short post.

As you may have noticed by now, our parish's patron is Saint Patrick of Ireland. You may also have intuited by other things I have said, I might well be the only person in the community who refers to the good Bishop as "our parish's patron." I have no problem with that. I have been thinking of late about why it is that we have patron Saints, and what that means for our worship. In the narrative of the Christian Church, we look to particular people who by their lives and teaching give us upstanding examples of how to grow in faithfulness and conformity to Jesus Christ in all manner of instances. We discover in Christ a vision for redeemed humanity at peace and union with God, and we discover in the "Communion of Saints" what it can look like for ordinary people to be healed and redeemed into this new humanity that looks so much like Christ. Essentially, the Church teaches that holiness requires some imagination, and the examples of those who have gone before us serve to fire it up.

One of the reasons our community has Saint Patrick as a patron - as a model of discipleship to Jesus - is that he was a certain kind of missionary in a particular culture. We believe that we need to be a similar kind of missionary in a similar kind of culture. I'll talk about just what I think that means later on. I've been thinking how we can put the life of Patrick more "up front" in our life together as a parish, so I've decided to add this collect adapted from the BCP to our intercessions at Mass:

O Almighty God, who has compassed us about with so great a cloud of witnesses: Grant that we, encouraged by the good example of thy servant Patrick the missionary, may grow in love for those with whom we share our lives, and earnestly work and pray for their healing and salvation. Make us faithful and fruitful like Patrick, and cause us to persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at length, through thy mercy, we may with Mary, Patrick, and all thy saints attain to thine eternal joy; Lord, in your mercy -
- hear our prayer.

Or, "...through Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

So great a cloud of witnesses The language here is from Hebrews 11, which invites us to see those who have gone before us as companions and fellow travelers. These brothers and sisters in Christ enjoy the full presence of God now, and as we worship, we join our own prayers with theirs and Christ's. Their companionship should be seen as encouraging, and the example they offer teaches us that holiness is something that we can know and experience - it's not just a pipe dream; we really can belong to God in every aspect of our lives.

healing and salvation We have a proclamation - a story - about how the Creator God has saved and healed the world through Jesus Christ. that work of healing and restoration is ongoing, and we mean for everyone in the Christian community, as well as our "neighbors" who are not part of that community to experience the benefits of same. Jesus seeks to make us into a people who fervently desire abundant life - a life that is cleansed and healed of bitterness, addiction, and fear - for everyone.

Mary, Patrick, and all thy saints We look to our Lady as a model of discipleship. As she said to the angel, "Let it be unto me according to your word," so we also learn to say to God, "Let the good news of your dominion so form my own life, that I might also become a God-bearer, a conduit of healing and restoration for my friends and enemies alike." Like Patrick, we wish to be missionaries who approach our culture lovingly, nurturing a counter-culture that engenders (are you getting this yet?) healing and restoration.

Father, send your Spirit upon your people, that we might burn with love.
Lord Jesus Christ, continue the work of new creation in us.
O Creator Spirit, come and draw forth that creation in our lives.

O holy Theotokos, pray for us sinners, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Patrick, bishop and elder brother, pray to the Lord for us, that he would continue to form us as healers, teachers and apostles.