St John's Chapel

Fr Martin writes an article each week for the St John's Messenger

January 12, 2003

In this morning's Epistle reading -- taken from St. Paul's address to the Roman Christians -- we are called to present our "bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God..." These words, no doubt, sound strange to modern ears. After all, we live in an age of unprecedented individual freedom. Each man does what he pleases -- usually without any thought given to notions of sacrifice or altruism.

Far from thinking about what he can give to an institution, a community, or even a family, contemporary man tends to ponder what he can get out of his multifarious relations and involvements. The self seems to come first in our age, and in the end it will mean the destruction of what is left of Western Civilization.

Think about it: Have you heard recently of any human being, save perhaps Mother Theresa, who put the service of higher principles before himself? For example, those "hollow men" whom we elect as our leaders -- do they really sacrifice themselves for the sake of higher principles and norms of truth? I think not. Rather their end or purposes in life seems to be the determination to secure their own power and position.

Think how mercurial and shifty our politicians are. With daily shifting winds of popular opinion, our leaders change their minds. Why? Well, in order to remain in office, of course. Our leaders are truly followers of unstable emotional opinions, tracked by the polling companies of the media. Our politicians are interested in themselves and the retention of power. They are not the servants of the truth. They do not sacrifice self-interest for the good of the nation. They sacrifice the good of the truth for the promotion of the self.

This behavior is mirrored in other spheres of life, too. In the modern church, many priests and ministers have sacrificed the truth of God, for the sake of being "loved and affirmed" by churches full of dim-witted, emotionally retarded congregations. Or if they are not seeking to be "affirmed," they are intent upon assaulting their sheep with their own personal neuroses and psychological traumas.

So many individuals go into the church today to obtain a soapbox, from which to broadcast their special interests to the world. They join the church for themselves, in order to secure a podium and an audience. Like the politicians, our modern clergy pursue the will to power and the preservation of its gains.

Neither the modern politicians nor clergymen seem much interested in the traditional message of sacrifice to which the Blessed Apostle exhorts us this morning. Paul is a Christian. Paul seeks to welcome God's life and wisdom into his own. He passionately desires to do the good of God the Father.

He knows that he can accomplish this only if Jesus lives in his body. He knows that unless Christ transforms him by moving his body through "the renewing of his mind," he is lost. In sum, he knows that unless he sacrifices himself to the love and wisdom of God that Jesus wants to bring alive in him, he is bound for hell.

True love is sacrificial. Jesus gave up all so that His Father's will and way could animate His whole life. Jesus sacrifices all self-interest and vain ambition, so that God the Father can make Him an instrument of truth and enlightenment. Jesus sacrifices all for His Father's truth, and in so doing gives the whole of His life to mankind.

True sacrifice becomes a gift. Jesus is our gift. As our gift, He wants to be present in us, alive in us and offered to others. We cannot imitate Jesus unless we deny ourselves and offer our lives to God the Father. With sacrifice, the true self is born -- made and preserved in the image of God and reflective of His truth. This self serves and loves and gives like God. †

January 19, 2003

In Epiphanytide, we turn our mind's contemplation towards the manifestations of God's life in the person of our Saviour Jesus Christ. On the Feast of the Epiphany, we came with the Wise Men in spirit to behold the glory of God as revealed in the infant Jesus.

Before our faithful gaze, a newborn King disclosed Divine Presence. Last Sunday, you and I went with Mary and Joseph to find the young Jesus whom we had lost. We discovered where he had been and what he had been doing.

Our souls learned the Jesus was, and is, always "about his Father's business." Jesus, the Son of God, is always in his Father's spiritual presence and occupied with the truth that the Father imparts. The glorious babe whom the Wise Men had worshipped had grown into a prudent young boy who manifests and imparts the Father's Wisdom to your soul and mine.

God's glory issues forth in his Wisdom. God's wisdom, Jesus teaches us, is given to us in order to reveal the eternal purposes and reasons of life and salvation. The Wisdom of God teaches us that we must repent us of our sins and turn to the Lord. But we cannot repent us of our sins until we allow the Lord to teach us how they are inconsistent with his purposes.

Sinful behaviour is a deviance from God's intentions and purposes for his creatures. The Wisdom of the Father that Jesus imparts to us indicates not only what constitutes sin but also why it is inconsistent with the knowledge of God. The Wisdom of God reveals to us that all sin originates within the soul of man. Jesus reminds us that it is not what goes into a man that is sinful, but what comes out of him.

Sin begins its journey internally and spiritually in the soul and heart and then pushes into the outer and external world of the body. So sin is really a misuse of the body and mind by the soul. Sinful choices are a result of our failure to allow Divine Wisdom to rule the mind and body. When we sin, we act without the direction of God. When we sin, we try to see and know the world and its offerings without relation to God's purposes and intentions for them.

Sadly, many churches do not believe any longer that men's minds and bodies must follow the Wisdom of God. In many places the Wisdom of God has been sacrificed completely; what remains is a kind of "love" that masquerades as Divine Charity. What we love is what we choose or will in our lives.

Love that is free of God's wise direction and governance becomes lust, greed, covetousness, sloth, wrath, envy or pride. Our sinful choices -- desires and loves -- manifest selfishness in relation to a number of activities.

Lust, for example, is the false love of another human being, where the purposes of intimacy are abandoned and the pursuit of pleasure is the sole good that is sought. The other sins are also manifestations of false loves. Abandon the Wisdom of God in any sphere of life, and the beast who dwells within and/or the false gods who live without soon rule us.

Jesus came to reveal the face of God to us. In the face of God we begin to see the Truth and Wisdom of our Maker. If we stare at that face for long enough, we will realize that it is not only the source of understanding but also the inspiration for all beauty and new life. †

January 26, 2003

We have been making our way through the liturgical season known as Epiphanytide. Epiphany is the season of manifestations and showings-forth of Divine truth and love. The Gospel lessons for each Sunday within this season reveal some aspect of the life of the Father to the world.

Christians believe that God reveals his Divinity to man most fully through the human life of his Son Jesus Christ. Yet Christian thinkers have always believed that God the Father has illuminated the world and the minds of men in various ways from the beginning of the ages.

Every operation of life -- and thinking about it -- owes its inception and preservation to God who moves and enlightens the world. Even those who do not believe that Jesus is the light of the Father -- or worse still that God is the cause of all life and thought -- reveal His presence in their mundane occupations.

One of the greatest Christian theologians to lend sense to the presence and power of "God the Illuminator" was St. Bonaventure. Bonaventure was born in Italy in 1217 and spent his life as a Franciscan searching for the truth of God manifested both in creation and in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

St. Bonaventure was named the "Seraphic Doctor" of the Church because he maintained that the burning fire of God's love, moving out of itself, created all things and sustained all things leading them back to its own Divine ground of being.

For St. Bonaventure, the Divine love of God descends into creation and returns to itself, while in the process illuminating the minds of men with the knowledge that all things have their beginning and end in Him. God, then, is the source of life and the fount of all knowledge. As Father Zachary Hayes said, "For Bonaventure, the entire world is drenched with the presence of the divine mystery."

The whole of creation bears the marks or vestiges of God's presence and power. Prior to the deeper knowledge of God's presence that Jesus' earthly visitation reveals, nature itself stands open to the mind of man as a reservoir of truth revealing the handiwork of the Maker.

As St. Paul said in his Epistle to the Romans, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead…"

For St. Bonaventure, man is called to discern the presence of God in all of creation. Man's vocation is to perceive the illuminating light or wisdom of God in the world. He says, "there are many lights which flow generously from that frontal source of light." The "frontal source of light" is God the Father. His light is dispersed throughout the world in different modes or ways. Each light enables man to grasp a level of truth or wisdom. †

February 2, 2003

St. Bonaventure, as we have said, was a great student of Epiphany manifestations. He taught that God gives birth to various forms of wisdom -- each growing and giving rise to potentially more potent types. And each level of wisdom leads the human mind progressively back to God.

Some forms of wisdom enable man to meet his basic needs. For example, Bonaventure tells us that God bestows the light of natural wisdom upon man so that he can govern nature and use it to provide his needs of nourishment, clothing, shelter, etc.

God gives the light that allows man to survive physically -- bestowing the light of practical knowledge so that he can fulfill his basic material needs. God is present and leading man into a basic but necessary kind of truth.

Bonaventure reminds us that "the first light, which sheds its beams on the forms of artifacts -- things which are, as it were, external to the human person and intended to supply the needs of the body -- is called the light of mechanical art." This light teaches man to hunt, farm, navigate, to defend himself, to cure his ailments, and to act dramatically. This light generates either comfort or consolation -- yielding either utility or enjoyment.

The mechanical light enables man to fulfill his bodily needs, to ensure his physical health, and even to enjoy the world in which he lives through drama and poetry, music and song. The radiance of the first light that God gives to man and the world around him unites the human mind to nature.

Yet this light generates the first form of intelligence in man. This seems to be the highest form of life in modern America and should not distract us from seeking those forms that Western Christendom has always considered more intellectual and spiritual.

In our own world we think that the mechanical arts are high and lofty. These arts and sciences depend upon necessary but not advanced forms of truth. It is necessary to have good doctors and dentists, candlestick makers, bakers, and even actors. In their respective ways they administer truth to the world. They who master such arts and crafts -- in one way or another -- promote the body's nourishment and health.

These arts are useful and can generate joy. But for St. Bonaventure and the saints, these craftsmen cannot offer intellectual or spiritual goods to the souls of men. Other arts must be pursued if the soul will be led into the dimension of higher principles relating to the health and well being of the mind and spirit of man. †

February 9, 2003

We have been talking about a search for the truth or a quest for the light that generates knowledge and understanding of creation and the Creator. St. Bonaventure tells us at the beginning of our journey we rely upon a first kind of light that God showers on creation and the minds of men. This exterior light enables man to know the created world in such a way that he can usher in its potentials to serve his physical needs and desires.

This light inspires man to develop arts and crafts to meet fundamental human necessities and generates a certain amount of pleasure. The mechanical arts enable man to control the forces of nature that might threaten human survival. The exterior light relates primarily to those arts and skills that conserve the body or physical nature.

At this point, the seeker after truth -- the spiritual pilgrim -- might be inclined to rest contented with the discovery of the exterior light. Like so many modern men, the pilgrim might conclude "life is not [about] more than meat and the body than raiment." Having secured the necessities and luxuries of life, having straightened teeth and artificially reconstructed and … err … perfect bodies, the pilgrim might cease his exploration. St. Bonaventure would consider such a pilgrim an uncultivated dolt.

The exterior light is meant to stir the mind towards the discovery of other lights. From the realm of the exterior light, Bonaventure shows us that we are led inward and upward towards the discovery of the next light. We discover in our interaction with the world that the use of the exterior light to secure our bodies' needs and wants depends upon another light.

This higher light is the light of sense knowledge. Sense knowledge begins in the external world and then enters the mind. It relies upon the five senses of sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing. Through these created abilities, the human mind comes to know something more about the world around it. Knowledge of the external world enters the soul through the body. The senses are "the doors through which the sensible world may enter and impinge on human consciousness."

This second light begins with sensations, leads to the collection of them in the mind, and then results in their ordering and arrangement. The external world is internalized or collected within the mind or soul. The senses convey information from the external and physical world to the mind. The mind concludes that some sensations yield pleasure, and some generate pain. Within the mind is a light that enables man to know attraction and repulsion based upon sense impressions.

What is most important is that there is a light that allows the human mind to bring the whole of nature and the external world within. The light can image or reproduce the whole of nature within the mind. Nature is not merely to be used and governed in the service of the body. Nature can be known and understood in the spiritual seat of the soul.

Perception and experience give way to knowledge and wisdom. Nature can be ordered and governed -- known in a scientific way in the mind. The second light has moved us closer to God's knowledge of all things. †

February 16, 2003

For St. Bonaventure at each level of human perception, God offers a particular kind of light to the human soul in order to stimulate a journey of ascent back to truth. We say "an ascent back" because man has descended "away from" Divine truth by reason of his sinful and selfish disposition. St. Bonaventure provides us with the tools for a return journey towards and into the mind of God.

Remember that Bonaventure maintains "the entire creation is drenched with the presence of the Divine mystery." Yet man so often despairs that he does not have the light by which to see the presence of the Almighty. Man claims that he cannot discern the footprints of God, his hand, his heart, and his mind at work everywhere in creation.

For Bonaventure, it is by the light of faith and the spiritual journey of love that man is endowed with the ability to see all things in God. All knowledge begins and ends with faith in Christ. Human sinfulness and wickedness have rendered man blind to the vision of God. Christ's lights enable man to perceive -- to see and to know God at every level of creation.

Knowledge is generated only in the light of God's Divine principle that is present to the soul of man. Utilitarian or practical knowledge that ministers health and joy to the body of man depends upon the exterior light. Sense knowledge or the experience of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing depends upon an inferior or lower light. This light generates sense knowledge and then organizes experiences into categories through common sense. Notions of pleasure and pain are generated as a result of sense perceptions.

The next kind of light that is born in the soul of man is called the "interior light." This is the light of philosophical truth that leads closer to God. Philosophia is the Greek word for "the love of wisdom." The interior lights emanate from the mind of God and reveal the ideas and principles that form and define all things. Through these lights, man comes close to seeing and grasping God's thoughts and how they define all things.

The thoughts and ideas of God are eternal and unchanging. Through the ascent to philosophy, man is lifted up out of nature and the physical universe and into the realm of God's truth. Bonaventure says that this light "is interior because it inquires into inner and hidden causes through principles of learning and natural truth, which are connatural with the human mind." "Connatural" means belonging to one by nature or from birth; inborn.

According to this theory, the principles of learning and nature are potentially present to the mind of every man. They are present to the mind in a potential form. God means to bring them into actuality -- to make them come alive -- through the inner eye of the intellect. God creates man "in his own image." This means that God intends for man to know how "he is the cause of life, the meaning of life, and the order and rule in man's life." Next time we shall look at the different kinds of wisdom that reveal these truths. †

February 23, 2003

Bonaventure tells us that God imparts lights to the human mind in order that men might see and know how all things are suffused with His wisdom. We have been looking at the third light of truth called the "interior light." This light leads man closer to God than the former two lights because it is less dependent upon the external world.

This light transports the human mind into the domain of philosophy. It reveals the causes and principles that move and define the created order. According to our Franciscan spiritual guide, there are three kinds of philosophy disclosed by the "interior light." They are rational philosophy, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy.

The first is synonymous with logical truth and examines the meaning of words and ideas. It studies how words form statements and conclusions. Rational philosophy is divided into logic, grammar, and rhetoric. It comprises the Medieval "trivium," or the lower division of the study of the seven liberal arts.

The second kind of philosophy contemplates things in themselves. The first type studies words, concepts, and ideas; the second studies created entities and relates them to God. This philosophy is divided into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. Physics is the study of created things; mathematics is the study of number and relation; metaphysics is the study of what causes all things and binds them together in principle.

The third branch of philosophy is called moral philosophy. This branch deals with human choices and activity. In a way it binds together the first two kinds of philosophy and unites concepts and ideas with created natures. The human mind learns to moderate its relation to all created things by reference to what it knows. What a human being knows on the interior -- in the mind -- is expressed outwardly through his relation to things.

A man may come to grasp the idea or concept of a virtue like "moderation" by the light of rational philosophy. A man may also come to know a whole host of created things outside of himself by the light of natural philosophy. The combination of the two requires a new kind of knowledge. This type of knowledge is moral philosophy. Through it man learns to apply the principles of knowledge and virtue to the external world.

Bonaventure says that there are three kinds of moral philosophy: individual morality, family morality, and social morality. The first involves the individual's formation of virtuous habits; the second brings godly living into family relations; the third makes for a nobly driven and inspired city. Through moral philosophy the human being conforms created reality to the norms of truth and exercises the will or choice.

Man may choose to relate all things back to the wisdom of God. He may use all things according to their created purposes. Moral philosophy takes the good that is known and applies it to things in the world. The "interior light" enables man to join two worlds. Through its operation man can use created things in accordance with truth. †

March 2, 2003

Bonaventure tells us that the fourth light is the Light of Sacred Scripture. This is the light of saving truth, and it is called superior because it leads man beyond the realm of reason and thought in the temporal world. The Light of Sacred Scripture reveals truth and wisdom that cannot be derived from earthly philosophy and science.

Up until this point we have examined created lights that enable man to use his reason and to live virtuously in this world. Bonaventure then introduces a light that is bestowed upon man by Grace and Revelation. Bonaventure tells us that this light "comes down from the 'God of lights' by inspiration."

He describes it as a unifying light that has three different modes of operation. Like the Trinity, this light is one, and it is three. It is one in essence, and yet it is three in its different relations to understanding the Bible. This light enables man to interpret Holy Scripture in three ways. The Light of Sacred Scripture reveals mystical truth and leads the human mind beyond the literal and into spiritual truth.

This light leads all men to salvation and redemption. Without faith, this light is not actualized in human thought. The three kinds of spiritual meaning that are revealed are the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. Each in its respective way leads to and cultivates the redemptive process.

The first of the superior modes of light is the allegorical. An allegory is a literary device in which each "character, object, and event symbolically illustrates a religious principle." One thing leads to the truth of another. So Bonaventure uses the example of Christ's humanity -- which is the object or event that leads to the truth of His Divinity.

Faith is enlightened in all natural truths, all natural things -- like Christ's human nature -- and leads to the deeper acknowledgment of His Divinity. Through Jesus' humanity the mind is led to His eternal nature as the Divine Son of God. This light gives birth to the life of faith.

Faith begins its journey with the conviction that Christ leads us through His humanity to His Divinity, or from earth to heaven. The moral light teaches faithful believers how to live. Faith in Jesus as the Son of God leads to the desire to follow His Godly example all the days of our lives. The moral light teaches man how to live according to the will of God and how to live well while on pilgrimage.

Faith without works is dead and does not reveal externally and visibly what moves the heart internally and spiritually. The moral life is an external manifestation of belief in Christ's presence and faith to embrace His guidance. The moral light leads a man to give evidence of what the analogical light reveals: faith in Jesus as the God-Man. †

March 9, 2003

We have been examining Bonaventure's Light of Sacred Scripture. The fourth part of God's light that generates man's knowledge of creation and redemption is superior because it cannot be derived from man's reflection upon nature and human activity. It is bestowed upon man by Grace and through Revelation.

This part of the Divine Light is given to man through the life of Christ and His church. The inferior parts of light lead man to knowledge of the created universe and of civil society. The fourth part of the light draws men upward and into the higher truth of God's wisdom.

There are three divisions of the fourth part of the light. We have learned that the first is called allegorical and guides the mind from one reality to another. Bonaventure uses the example of the humanity and Divinity in Christ. Christ's human nature is a vehicle that transports the mind from earthly experiences to heavenly truth.

In Christ, one begins with earthly reality -- what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. Then one moves into the realm of principles and ideas. In Scripture, Christ says to His listeners that He is the "bread of life." Of course, He does not mean that He is a freshly baked loaf of the finest wheat flour. He uses an earthly image to convey a deeper meaning. He means that He is truth or reality that nourishes and fortifies, strengthens and equips human beings to be healthy.

What kind of health is He most concerned with? The spiritual health and well-being of you and of me. But He uses the earthly image of food, eating and health, to carry our minds into its more important spiritual equivalent. Is the image He uses a symbol only? No. The image or picture that He uses leads to and discloses a deep truth.

"Bread" is used to alert the mind to a spiritual need. The image awakens us to our inmost need for spiritual and intellective feeding and health. Through earthly images and pictures, human beings are led towards the truth of God.

The second division of the superior light is called moral. This phase of the mind's reception of the superior light depends upon what is received from the allegorical mode. What the mind comes to know through faith's journey from the natural to the supernatural or through Jesus' revelation is then applied to human life. The pattern of Christ's life is not only known and understood but is now imitated and exemplified.

Christ leads us to the Father through His own Godly example, and now He bids us to partake of the vision He has revealed to us. This means that we must begin to make choices that Christ would make -- to think, speak, and act as He would. "Faith without works is dead."

We strive to act as Christ would because we have seen what He has brought to us from the Father. The moral truth that Christ reveals in Scripture constitutes a way of life that is unified to the will of the Father. We persevere because of what we have yet to see -- through Christ -- of the Father in the future.

The last division of the superior light is called anagogical. Anagogical means that which leads upward. This mode of enlightenment leads our minds upward towards the hope of everlasting life and its possession. By this light we are taught "to cling to God." †

April 6, 2003

In the Nicene Creed, we profess that Jesus Christ is "God of God and Light of Light." We express our belief that the Lord Jesus is very God and the eternally begotten Son of the Father.

As God, Jesus is the light of the world. Through His light, His illumination, a sinful man begins to see. Without His light, man is left in a state of spiritual blindness -- not knowing how to return to God.

St. Bonaventure taught us that man is able to perceive and know the truth through a series of lights emanating or issuing forth from God. Perception and knowledge enable man to make virtuous choices and righteous decisions that carry man back to God. Without Christ, we cannot perceive and know good and then embrace it as the means of return to the Lord.

Jesus bestows His lights upon the minds of believers. He does this because the goal of human life is union with God. God intends that man should be united with Him forever. Through sin, man has fallen from Grace. Through the redemptive life of Jesus, we can be reunited with God. Our reunion depends upon a new life which sees creation in the light of God's truth and will.

According to St. Bonaventure, God gives His lights to our minds in a variety of ways. The most important of the ways relates to our grasp of the Bible. These lights enable us to begin the journey of faith. The first light leads us to faith in Jesus who is God and Man and our Saviour. This is the light of spiritual knowledge.

The second light helps us to begin to turn to Him, asking that He "should dwell in us, and we in Him." This is the light of spiritual application.

The third light is the powerful emanation from the presence of God that draws us to Heaven in hope and confidence. This is the light of spiritual confidence.

The knowledge of God and its governing power in our lives lead us to union with God through the light of hope and confidence. †

May 4, 2003

In Eastertide, you and I are called to "return to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls." This means that we are meant to exit the wilderness of sin and death and find the green pasture of goodness and life. The goodness and life which we seek is embodied in the Resurrection of our true Shepherd and Bishop, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who has gone into the hostile wilderness of sin, who has endured physical death in that desert, and who has reemerged having conquered both sin and death with the power of goodness and life. Jesus Christ laid down His life for His sheep and rose from the dead. He is the eternal living Shepherd who will take us out of sin and death and usher us into that goodness and vitality that lead into Heaven.

Eastertide, for those who are still living on this planet, is all about our spiritual resurrection from sin. In heart and mind, you and I are called to be lifted up by Jesus out of every habit and custom that is at enmity with eternal life and truth.

In today's Epistle reading, you and I are exhorted to embrace one aspect of this spiritual resurrection from sin. Throughout the time of His earthly visitation, the Son of God endured all manner of animosity, rejection, cynicism, hatred and in the end, undeserved murder.

Jesus endured all grief from men while passionately bearing the will of God. He was never reduced to the level of sinful men. As a result we see that Jesus never answers men's vengeance and animosity with impulsive and parallel reactions.

This is not to say that Jesus does not respond to his attackers. Rather He responds to them either with silence or with a few pearls of spiritual wisdom received from His Father. When His responses to ill will and cynicism are verbal, they are always spiritually instructive and challenging. Christ was sent to the earth in order to communicate the wisdom and mercy of God the Father.

Jesus manifests and imparts that reality to sinful men. Trying to impart the good will of God to men, Jesus "was buffeted and suffered and yet took it patiently." The malevolence of men can never eliminate the good will of God. Jesus endured the ill will of men, suffered for it and yet fixed His heart and mind on the permanent habit of receiving and passing on the benevolence of God.

The final punishment inflicted upon the Son of God by men -- for cleaving to God's will -- was execution by crucifixion. Even then, Jesus endured the pains of death in order to bring new life and the continued offering of His Father's good will to men. The good will of God the Father is operative through the death of His Son. The good will of the Father lifts the Son out of death and transforms all human life in the process. †

May 11, 2003

In Eastertide, you and I are called to walk in the steps of Christ and be guided by our true Shepherd and Bishop. We need to rely upon His strength and steadfast courage as we seek to conquer evil and death with God's goodness and life. With Christ as our Shepherd, with Christ as our Risen Life, you and I can die to sin and come alive to righteousness.

In this week's Eastertide, Epistle St. Peter reminds us to "have honest conversation" both with non-Christians and with ill- willed Christians. St. Peter uses the term "Gentile." (From a Christian standpoint, a "gentile" is one who either "talks the talk but does not walk the walk of Christ" or one who does not even bother to "talk the talk.")

Those who have "risen with Christ" are called to speak with honesty and to conduct themselves honorably. Christ expects us to embrace a goodness that is undistracted and undeterred by evil.

Last Sunday, we were encouraged to move beyond the historical fact of Christ's Resurrection and into present possession of the benefits pertaining to the Resurrection. What does this mean? It means that Christ rose from the dead once in order that we might rise from the death of sin again and again. Our lives -- experienced here and now in time and space -- are meant to embody the habit of rising out of sin and into goodness and holiness.

Again and again we sinful Christians are called to rise out of the lifeless grip of wickedness in order that Jesus may breathe the vitality of joy and peace into our souls. Eastertide is not only about Christ's literal and historical Resurrection. It is about ours also.

Today St. Peter exhorts us to "put to silence the ignorance of foolish men by well doing." The good has overcome ill will and evil in Jesus Christ. That goodness is a vital power extended by Him to us that we may do the same. The Resurrected Christ desires to lift you and me out of sin. He provides us with a power that can overcome sin in others. That power's substance is good will and love.

It is not easy to use. Many "adults" in modern American society never shed the immaturity and self-absorption of adolescent life. Habits of psychological retardation dramatically display the need to control and to manipulate, to conquer and to rule other people. In the end they come to nothing.

Easter teaches us that all evil is revealed to be powerless and nugatory. Love and benevolence are the true victors in God's world. In Christ, they conquer the enemy. In us, they are meant to do the same. Let us ask Christ to introduce us to the power and efficacy of goodness.

Let us pray that He will accustom us to its ways and finally to enjoy its liberating presence in our lives. The goodness of God lifts us up and establishes us in the presence of God. It puts to silence or extinguishes the power of evil in others' lives. †

May 18, 2003

In this morning's Epistle, St. James writes that we should be "slow to wrath." Wrath or anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. These include lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Yet the deadly sins are not all equal. For while each relates to the other as parts do to a whole, some are more serious than others.

The great medieval doctor St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his great Summa Theologica that "The capital vices (the Seven Deadly Sins) are those which give rise to others by way of final cause." What St. Thomas means is that when a man is moved to pursue a particular sin, he usually ends up acquiring other vices in the process.

For example, a man spends a night out on the town eating and drinking too much (gluttony) and finds himself lethargic and enervated (sloth) the following day. As a result of an excessive love of this world's goods like food and wine, the man finds himself consumed by the defective habit of laziness.

Laziness or sloth reveals a kind of despair about caring for and cultivating the self. One sin leads to another in a kind of causal chain. One sin leads to another because the opposite good habits or virtues have not been permanently embraced in the course of life. Sin is the avoidance of good and the pursuit of its opposites.

St. Thomas teaches us that there are three kinds of goods that a man pursues. There is the good of the soul, the good of the body, and external good. The first good relates to the soul's happiness. The second good provides nourishment and ensures the survival of the species. The third good bestows earthly riches or comforts upon an individual and, as a good, can be used to promote the peace and well-being of an individual and his neighbors.

In reference to our Epistle for today, how does this relate to wrath? Remember our example of the man who had an excessive night out on the town. Firstly, our bonvivant did not embrace the virtue of temperance or moderation in the body and so was susceptible to gluttony. Secondly, because our friend's behavior did harm to the body, the soul's good was placed in danger. His heavy and tired body distracted him from the zeal and eagerness needed to cultivate his soul.

Gluttony gave birth to sloth when temperance should have generated spiritual zeal. Disgusted with himself and unable to pursue his own good, our friend notices that his neighbor is up early, enthusiastically jumping rope, pumping iron, and moving on to his prayers with zeal and joy.

The love of neighbor, which would have emerged from the care of our friend's own body and soul, becomes the hatred of neighbor and the desire for his harm. Sloth gives birth to wrath. The good of another cannot be seen or desired because the self is sick. Our friend becomes irate at the sight of another's health and well being (to be continued). †

May 25, 2003

Last week, we observed the case of a man whose gluttony led to sloth and whose sloth gave birth to anger. His insouciance in relation to himself led to frustration and irritation with others. Because our slothful man could do nothing beneficial for himself, he wished that others would be deprived of happiness and well- being. The example of our sinner assumed the mantle of an angry and irritable man, and his response to others most likely resembled the character of a barking dog or a squawking bird.

Perhaps our friend had a momentary fall from the heights of an otherwise virtuous life. If this were the case, then his anger or wrath would not have been a permanent habit that possessed him. As the Roman writer Horace said, "Ira furor brevis est." (Anger is a short madness.) Indeed, anger or wrath is temporary if the poor choices that an individual makes are not common or customary.

But what of a man whose regular habit is gluttony, for example? Well, this man is in danger of falling into a habit of sloth. And if he inhabits this spiritual plane for very long, wrath will overtake him as its logical consequence.

Dorothy Sayers, commenting on Dante's "Purgatorio," reminds us that sloth is the equivalent of the Latin "accidia," and it means not only idleness of mind or laziness of body, "but also extends to the deliberate refusal of joy and culminates in morbid introspection and despair." The "deliberate refusal of joy" masquerades as liberal tolerance, and is really nothing other than an approval of evil in the world or as disillusionment -- a refusal to be moved and inspired by the good and beautiful.

Such a spiritual state leads to wrath. The slothful man becomes consumed with anger or wrath. He rejects his rational and spiritual vision in his slothful state, and he becomes more and more possessed by irrational appetites and passions. The slothful man denies the rationally seen and known good and sinks into himself.

Wrath is a kind of blindness to the rational good. Those full of anger cannot see the noble, the beautiful, and the lovely in this world or in the universe behind it. They furiously deny the spiritual peace of God and the stillness of his His calm.

Love of a neighbor's harm emerges from self-loathing. "If there is no good for me, there can be no good for anyone in this world." Anger kills love and good will. The wrathful man or woman is determined to harm others. Wrath leads to envy and pride. We shall meditate on those sins in the coming weeks. †

June 8, 2003

Following His Resurrection and prior to His Ascension, Jesus taught that it was "expedient that He should go away, in order that the Comforter might come." What Jesus meant is essential to our salvation. Jesus is the Word of God joined to the flesh. He is the Divine nature of God united to but not mixed or confused with our human nature.

The Word or the Wisdom of God joined itself to flesh in order to bring sinful and fallen human beings back to the home of God's wisdom and His love. The Word of God chose to incarnate or en-flesh itself because human beings could never have found the road returning to the land of God's spirit on their own. Without beginning to hear about the realm of the spirit with their earthly ears and without seeing the Word in action with their natural eyes, they would have had little hope for salvation.

God chose to lead us back to Himself by beginning in the created world of nature. Thus Jesus has a body and all parts pertaining to the same, and He is here to walk us into the truth of the spiritual world. Fallen man had become unused to the Word and Presence of God. He had forgotten what God's Word sounded like and had no experience of its proximity and bearing.

God chose to re-acquaint man with His ways through a body and an earthly life. We begin our salvation pilgrimage with Jesus in this world and we move progressively into the reality of His spiritual presence. We commence our journey externally and visibly in the church, where our participation in God's life is "natural" and tangible. We come to stand, kneel, sit; we pray, and we sing; we eat, and we drink. These activities directly involve the body.

Baptized Christians are part of Christ's body, and each week we use the parts and passions of our physical natures in God's service. Hopefully, we listen and think and begin to build a bridge from the external and sensible world over to the internal and spiritual world. The actions of our bodies and our physical senses in church ought to create a kind of movement that will pilot us into the reality of the God's Spirit and Truth.

At the time of the Ascension, Jesus returns to His heavenly home. You and I are called to dwell with Him in that place continually. How can this come to pass? He is in Heaven, and we continue our exile on this earth. We are given a way through the church, and this way is found through the Holy Spirit. Jesus leaves a new body on earth when He returns to his Father. He leaves the church. But this church is dead without the wisdom and charity of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus left this world, He intended to reincarnate His truth and His charity in this new body. This process comes to pass when the church -- in all self-denial and humility -- receives the eternally-offered wisdom and love of God through the "descent of the Dove" or our Lord, the Spirit. The church as Christ's body, and our bodies as members of the same, must be brought alive and made part of Christ's constant reincarnation.

The first reincarnation of Christ's truth and His love occurred in an upper room on the first Pentecost. Will the same reincarnation happen at St. John's Chapel today? Will we earnestly desire God's goodness and truth as permanent sources of new life and beneficial change? Will the Word of God, spoken to us through Jesus, be more than spoken once in history, recorded on the pages of Scripture, and left to accumulate dust in the pews of this church?

Will the Word of God be remembered and contemplated? Will it then be re-written or reincarnated and brought alive again on and in our hearts and spelled out in the habits of our lives? The Dove descends to find a place in which to bring the truth of Jesus alive again and again. Will the Descending Dove of God's truth and love find a place to grow this day? †

July 20, 2003

Christians are called to embrace "the double operation of charity." A better way to put it: The faithful ought to embrace the charity of God and extend it to others in courtesy. In the process, those human beings who are receptive to the operations of God's love become vessels or tabernacles of His grace. What ends up happening is that the human being becomes a receiver and a giver.

What is most significant in the process is the self is lost in a double contemplation of God and his fellow man. In our own day, it seems difficult to find people -- even in the Church -- who ever get around to contemplating God. Human beings do not cease from their earthly labors in order to take the time in quiet and stillness to adore the Almighty Creator and Preserver of our universe. It is not surprising that most people do not progress to the next level of adoration -- which is to praise God for what He has accomplished for us in His Son Jesus Christ.

God the Creator and Maker, who is also God the Savior and Redeemer, is seldom if ever acknowledged and thanked for His essential role in all created life. People today tend to contemplate others -- and if they are braver, themselves -- but never seek to see and know God. Christian life is meant to be about turning to behold God and then desiring to be changed by what is seen and understood. In the process of vision and transformation, the Christian is then enabled to see others in God's light and so to illuminate them through charity or courtesy.

The illumination that the Christian offers to others is seldom effected through censure or judgment; rather the Christian receives God's love and truth and brightens other people's lives by reflecting their inherent goodness. A Christian is a man or a woman who is so set on fire by what he sees and knows in God that he or she becomes a vessel of kindness, courtesy, and good will.

For example, think of someone like Mother Theresa. The sainted old sister of Calcutta was so passionately moved by the vision of God that she could not help but reflect and impart the reality of God's love to others. She contemplated the fair beauty of her Lord, received the vision thankfully and lived by it in serving others. Not everyone has been blessed with the deep spiritual desire that was found in a Mother Theresa. But each and every Christian must try harder to contemplate the charity of God and to extend it courteously to others.

One useful tool in achieving this end can be found in the recitation of the "Te Deum" found on page 10 of the Prayer Book. The "Te Deum" is a hymn of praise that incorporates the believer into the eternal song of love and adoration for God. When the Christian recites this hymn, he is incorporated into an act of adoration and supplication that is sung eternally by the angels in heaven.

The believer praises God for who He is, and he has a vision of God's love and wisdom. Then he prays that the vision will define in his life, and he desires to reflect the wisdom and extend the love that he sees. In the process, the believer becomes a receiver and a giver. And that means that God's charity is courteously offered to others in the process of imitating Christ. †

July 27, 2003

Somewhere Charles Williams says "every few hundred years the Church has to reinvent herself." This usually comes about as a result of the Church's laxity and nonconformity to the more literal and imperative dictates of Divine Revelation as found in the Holy Scriptures.

Indeed, some of the greatest reform movements in the Church were initiated as responses to the Church's failure to conform to her Master, the Lord's seriousness and gravity. One needs only to remember St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Erasmus and Luther, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, and others who fought to recall the Church to the meaningful teaching of Christ in times of complacency and comfort or ignorance and error.

Williams does not mean that the Church reinvents God when she is compelled to reform herself. In the past, the Church's reform movements were mostly inspired by the need to be molded more by Divine Revelation and less by the norms and customs of the world. Too often the Church became too comfortable with her power and prestige, her privileges and perks, in this temporal sphere.

At times the Church became too lustful for earthly power; at other times she fed too happily on earthly riches. Sometimes her bishops and priests visibly lived double lives. At other times she tried wrongly to force others to convert to her rites. And as a result the Saints rose up to call the faithful back on to the right road and the straight path that leads into Heaven. In all cases the Church was met with a zeal for reform and a desire to resubmit her body to the rule and governance of her soul -- our Master, the Lord.

You and I live in a day and age that is crying out for reform. All around us we see a Church in the 1st World that is too at ease with the here and now, too much defined by the customs and ways of a Global Village or an earthly empire. The Church has been so obsessed with social justice, human rights, and matters of the flesh that she has forgotten her first Love.

The Church today is truly a political organism whose leaders and members seldom if ever remember their call to lead Christ's sheep towards the Heavenly Kingdom. The recent controversies surrounding sex and gender are mere symptoms of a more deadly disease which has infected the Church's body for some time. The strange innovations that the Church now proposes as "new truths" are nothing but reflections of a sickness that will take some time to cure. †

To be continued ...

August 3, 2003

The real disease that needs desperate curing in the Church is the same sickness that afflicts Western culture. It involves attitudes about truth(s). In the secular West, all truth is now thought to be "relative." Prevailing wisdom demands that no truths are to be judged better than any others, and that no actions can be judged nobler or more virtuous than their counterparts.

Such an attitude poses a real threat to traditional Christianity. For if the truth is indeed relative, then the Christian is forced to admit that his truth is one of many -- neither better nor worse than any other. And this logic threatens the Church's mission precisely because Christians have always believed that God offers a unique possibility of life with Him and through Him in the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord.

What is at stake specifically is the traditional Christian doctrine that God and Man or Heaven and Earth were and are uniquely united in the person of Jesus Christ. The belief that what God promises to men through Christ -- which is significantly different from what can be derived from the teaching of Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed or any other great teacher -- would be threatened.

And a problem emerges immediately. None of these esteemed gurus believed that God and Man could be united. The Christian would then affirm that God can and cannot be united to man; the Christian would say that God was in Christ reconciling the word to Himself and that He could not ever have done such a thing.

That such is a rational contradiction seems evident to common sense. The two positions are mutually exclusive. Those who maintain such a position reveal a deeper disease that has infected the Church for some time now. For when Christians admit the relativity of truth, they undermine their own adhesion to Christ and the benefits procured from the same union. Christians holding to this position detract from their expected utter dependence upon God through Jesus Christ.

Inevitably, Christ becomes less crucial to the operation of their salvation or union with God. The complete dependence upon the Father that Christ reveals in the Scriptures and promises to impart to His followers loses its power in the hearts and minds of believers. For what once was taught as imperative now becomes optional as one of many ways to find God.

August 10, 2003

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Episcopal Church of the United States of America has enthusiastically elected its first openly homosexual Bishop. For decades, the Episcopal Church has "affirmed" that truth is relative and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is one of many user-friendly, optional religious expressions. The latest decision taken by the Church's voting members to the General Convention is the result of a chronic spiritual disease.

"Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, * It is a people that have erred in their hearts, for they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath, * that they should not enter into my rest." (Psalm 95: 10, 11)

The hearts of the Bishops and Priests of the Episcopal Church have been hardened against Christ's truth for some years now. Had their hearts been softened habitually, they would have approached the Lord in fear and trembling, knowing that the salvation of many hinged upon their understanding of His Word and Truth.

Had they been humble before God and hungry for His wisdom, the Bishops would have received the religion of the Saints gratefully and unworthily. They would have had "in their remembrance the great treasure committed to their charge." Having been in awe of God's wisdom, power and love, offered to them through the blood of Jesus, by the operations of the Holy Spirit, they would have approached any proposed changes to the Church's doctrine and discipline warily and hesitatingly.

The spiritual disease infecting the Episcopal Church entered her body some years ago. The Church's spiritual immune system was weakened from exposure to proud reliance upon this world and intellectual stagnation. Today it is weakening and killing most of the contemporary Episcopal Church. "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the customs of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."

The Body of Christ cannot be healed without turning again to the Lord in deepest repentance. It will not turn again to the Lord until its clergy and people realize that adolescence is not a permanent state of happiness and fulfillment.

It will not turn again until it realizes that spiritual life is of primary importance and that it is about more than the itches and impulses of the physical flesh. It will not turn until it understands that wisdom rules the world and the flesh according to its creative intentions and purposes. It will not turn until it sees that wisdom's hard order and law tame the sinner and set him on the road to salvation.

We at St. John's reject and repudiate the actions taken by General Convention. We deplore the pride and arrogance of silly clerics who parade around claiming to sell spiritual wares in the shop at Vanity Fair. Their goods are unappealing and uninteresting.

With the help of the Primates of our Communion and the few remaining faithful Bishops of the American Church, we shall consider our future involvement and contributions to the Episcopalian sect. In the meantime, we remain faithful to the traditional teaching of the Christian Religion.

St. John's Chapel has not bowed the knee to Baal in the past, and she will not do so now. Our desire remains the same. We seek the King's highway -- accepting his terms and conditions for travel on the road leading to Heaven. "Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts…" †

August 17, 2003

When Christ as the unique way and means to find God becomes less essential to Christian life, then a variety of effects follow. Christian elders grow to become more immersed in this world, as Christ for them, loses His appeal as mediator of Divine Truth to the Church's soul. Traditional belief about salvation is weakened, and the Church's consciousness of its dependence upon Christ is vitiated.

The Church that thinks itself free to dispense with the essential power and wisdom of Jesus Christ relies more and more upon this world -- its principles, problems and solutions -- to define itself. A new spirit enters the Church, and she begins to use her "authority" to apply selectively or abandon completely the Revelation that has been imparted to her keeping by the Lord. Rather than imparting Christ's teaching as revealed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the Church now proclaims "new understandings of spiritual life" drawn from the world around her.

From a traditional Christian standpoint, the new Church's dependence and reliance upon the world is truly sinful. Sin is a state in which the individual or community lives in exile or isolation from God. The Church that is defined by the world rather than by the Word of God has exiled herself from the presence of God. It is true that in the past the Church often found herself alienated from God through the sinful behavior of her elders and communicants.

But the difference between past ecclesiastical abuses and our present ills is that the former was known as vice while the latter is promoted as virtue. What used to be maintained as sinful behavior is now promoted as virtuous and noble. No erring pope or prelate ever would have dreamed of calling his behavior "right and good." Instead, he would have been more likely to have tried to conceal his sin.

Then when his behavior had come to light, the Church would have seen the need to repent and purify herself by Grace along the straight lines of long-established doctrine and discipline. But the loss of faith has changed all of this. Repentance and returning to God through Christ that used to come alive in the heart of a faithful Church and her members seem part of a distant dream today. Rather than repent, the Church in our day drinks deeply from the wells of this world, moving further and further away from God's nourishment.

For our part here at St. John's Chapel, you and I must pray for rekindling of faith and belief in Christ's Church. It will not be of much use to become angry at the Church's loss of faith. To a great extent all of us are far too defined by the world in which we live. Each of us is a part of the problem. And we are part of the Church. You and I must remember that significant conversion will not come about in the Church without prayer and fasting, deep groaning and longing for Jesus' power and presence in our lives.

The Church, after all, began as a small operation which was driven by the Divine energy of our Lord, the Spirit. Yes, once upon a time, long ago and far away, the energetic dependence upon God and his Christ was found in the hearts of a faithful few who went on to convert the nations. This is our burden and responsibility. The opportunity is at hand. Let us get to it. God promises victory. †

The Saint John's Messenger: 2003