May 26: St. Augustine of Canterbury

Via JohnTheLutheran:

England was converted to the faith when St Augustine of Canterbury arrived on the island of Thanet with forty companions. They might have offered service and they probably preached, but they certainly settled down to Benedictine stability and contemplated God. That is one out of thousands of examples of the mystical process of spiritual power. It is mysterious but indisputable.

When we look at our contemporary trouble spots, at violence in the inner cities, at racial hatred, or torture, murder and rape, I can muster little faith in the efficacy of ‘praying about it’. I have absolute confidence in the efficacy of planting a contemplative community in the middle of it and letting God manifest his power. Prayer, real prayer, is no last resort but the first priority.

Martin Thornton, A Joyful Heart.

/via @martin_thornton

More about Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop and Missionary (26 May, 605), whose feast day it is today:

The Christian Church was established in the British Isles well before 300. Some scholars believe that it was introduced by missionaries from the Eastern or Greek-speaking half of the Mediterranean world. Celtic Christianity had its own distinctive culture, and Greek scholarship flourished in Ireland for several centuries after it had died elsewhere in Western Europe.

However, in the fifth century Britain was invaded by non-Christian Germanic tribes: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They conquered the native Celtic Christians (despite resistance by, among others, a leader whose story has come down to us, doubtless with some exaggeration, as that of King Arthur), or drove them north and west into Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. From these regions Celtic Christian missionaries returned to England to preach the Gospel to the heathen invaders. 

Meanwhile, the Bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great, decided to send missionaries from Rome, a group of monks led by their prior, Augustine (not to be confused with the more  famous Augustine of Hippo). They arrived in Kent (the southeast corner of England) in 597, and the king, whose wife was a Christian, allowed them to settle and preach. Their preaching was outstandingly successful, the people were hungry for the Good News of salvation, and they made thousands of converts in a short time. In 601 the king himself was converted and baptised. Augustine was consecrated bishop and established his headquarters at Canterbury. From his day to the present, there has been an unbroken succession of archbishops of Canterbury.

In 603, he held a conference with the leaders of the already existing Christian congregations in Britain, but failed to reach an accomodation with them, largely due to his own tactlessness, and his insistence (contrary, it may be noted, to Gregory's explicit advice) on imposing Roman customs on a church long accustomed to its own traditions of worship. It is said that the British bishops, before going to meet Augustine, consulted a hermit with a reputation for wisdom and holiness, asking him, "Shall we accept this man as our leader, or not?" The hermit replied, "If, at your meeting, he rises to greet you, then accept him, but if he remains seated, then he is arrogant and unfit to lead, and you ought to reject him." Augustine, alas, remained seated. It took another sixty years before the breach was healed.

PRAYER (traditional language)

O Lord our God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thine Apostles and send them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless thy holy name for thy servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating thy Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom thou dost call and send may do thy will, and bide thy time, and see thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

PRAYER (contemporary language)

O Lord our God, who by your Son Jesus Christ called your Apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The readings for the day are here:

2 Corinthians 5:17-20a
Luke 5:1-11
Psalm 66:1-8 or
Psalm 103:1-4, 13-18

Here's Auggie carrying Canterbury Cathedral:

Once I get my post for "Common of Saints: Feasts of a Confessor" done, I'll link to it!

Falling in love with God

“We Anglicans are not given to writing great theology. There are notable exceptions, but they are difficult to remember; but when Anglicanism is at its best its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world of wonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with God. We are much more adept at the left hand than at the right.”

- Urban T. Holmes, What Is Anglicanism?


 

"Electronic Anglican Breviary Project on Kickstarter"

For those interested in such things, Derek has launched his new Electronic Anglican Breviary Project on Kickstarter.  I (obviously!) love the fact that so much is happening online these days; there's so much available to us all today that we might never even have known about in earlier eras.  And, Derek's the creator of the St. Bede's Breviary, so he's got some serious chops in this area.

Here's an excerpt from his post, with a link to the Kickstarter page if you'd care to support this effort.

Today I have officially launched a Kickstarter project to convert the Anglican Breviary to digital form and to make it available as a completely free web application.

For those not familiar with it, the Anglican Breviary is one of the great liturgical works that has come out of the Catholic movement in Anglicanism. 30 years in the making, it was produced in the year 1955 by the Frank Gavin Liturgical Foundation. Like all breviaries, it contains the traditional hours of prayers of the Western Church: the long early morning Matins office with its readings from the Church Fathers interspersed with psalms; the main offices for the hinges of the day, Lauds and Vespers; the daytime offices of Prime, Terce, Sext, None; the bedtime office of Compline; and the brief Capitular office that includes the martyrology recounting the saints to be remembered. Built on the structure of the Roman Catholic Divine Office according to the usage established by Pius X, it utilizes the Scriptures of the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalms of the Book of Common Prayer to place these prayer hours within an Anglican idiom.

For more information on the Anglican Breviary itself, visit its home site at www.anglicanbreviary.net, owned and operated by Mr. Daniel Lula, the man responsible for keeping it in print. We have corresponded regarding this initiative, and I have his blessing to proceed.

More at the link.

"Happy Hallowmas!"

Fantastic article this week from Anglicans Online; check out the "Find a Grave" section.....

Hallo again to all.

Happy Hallowmas! Yes, that is easier to say than 'Have a happy triduum of All Hallows'.

Hallowmas, the Triduum of All Saints, the Triduum of All Hallows. Whatever it might be called, it's a time to remember the dead. Its three days are All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Day (All Saints Day), and the Day of All Souls. In countries that were once British colonies, the general public is very aware of All Hallows Eve, has probably heard of All Saints Day, and usually conflate All Saints Day with All Souls Day if they find the need to mention either.

We like to conflate the three days of the Hallowmas Triduum, even though we have carefully educated ourselves on the theological and historical nuances of each. The silly celebrations of Hallowe'en, the church service celebrating All Saints, the somber reflections on All Souls. While no child is likely to go guising on All Hallows Day itself, adults can remember and pray for the souls of the departed even while waiting for the next disguised child to say 'trick or treat'.

In Mexico, the entire Triduum is called 'Día de los Muertos' (Day of the Dead), though there are day-to-day nuances embodied more in local tradition than in formal scholarship. Mexican celebrations prominently feature skulls and skeletons as decor, not to scare children but to help remember and celebrate the dead.

It is nice to have time set aside each year for remembrance of the dead. But the mechanics of such remembrance have become more complex through the centuries. Once there were churchyards, and friends and family were actually interred there. One could stop at their headstones on the way to church each Sunday, to remember and pray. No more. There are now so many choices for final resting places that one can not make assumptions.

What to do? Can technology help? We at AO often reflect on the many ways that communication technology has enabled change to longstanding traditions. The internet might well have killed newspapers, but it didn't kill churchyard burials and Sunday visitations thereto. Those practices died a natural death, quite unaware of bits and bytes and bauds.

We claim that the answer is 'Yes, technology can help make up for our inabiity to remember our dead by visiting churchyards.'

Two characteristics of the internet come into play here. If you are going to look at something online, then it doesn't matter where it is. Distance and location don't matter. And the internet enables anyone and everyone to broadcast information in a manner once available only to owners of radio stations and publishing companies. No one is obligated to read what you write or say, but anyone can, and those who can might tell their friends about it. These two characteristics combine to enable a process widely known as 'crowdsourcing'.

When distance doesn't matter and crowdsourcing works, then something like Find a Grave can exist and flourish. And flourish it does. The server computers that sustain it can be anywhere*.   Crowdsourcing technology enables thousands of people all over the world to enter information and photographs. You can in a twinkling visit the gravesites of C S Lewis, St Augustine of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, Thomas Tallis, George Herbert, or Omar Khayyam.

Now that Find a Grave exists and has done its flourishing for a while, the notion of virtual churchyards becomes entirely practical. You can make a virtual churchyard that contains links to the grave records of a geographically diverse set of people. While viewing online a photograph of a gravestone is not at all the same experience as touching it and smelling it and kneeling in front of it to pray, it is certainly better than nothing and is a good way to remember, to keep alive the memory of the dead. Maybe someday in the future some kind soul might make a virtual churchyard of all of us who work on Anglicans Online.

We'll probably submit to Find a Grave a better picture of the Portland Stone marker at the grave of former Anglicans Online worker Frederic McFarland. But that marker, designed by Lida Kindersley and hand chiseled by one of her lettercutters, is something that must be seen and touched and walked around in order to understand fully.** The virtual world is better than isolation, but there is not any substitute for being there.

See you next week. Right here, which, um, is online and virtual.

 

All of us at Anglicans Online

3 November 2013

http://anglicansonline.org

*Not that it matters, but the Find A Grave server is in Salt Lake City.
**Frederic McFarland's headsone is the only Kindersley work installed in North America.

"Hallo again to all....."

Anglicans Online's article about Marcella Pattyn is so lovely that it actually deserves its own post. Here it is, in full.

Hallo again to all.

We're people with what some may think quirky habits.

When we first learn a route through a city, we tend to keep using that route even if navigation software tells us there is a better or shorter one. On Sundays, we sit in the same pew week after week. We eat the same lunch nearly every Thursday, and read the newspaper in the same spot nearly every Thursday evening with the same beverage at our side. On Tuesday mornings, we drink coffee in the same spot with the same company. We like to sit to the left of our conversation partners, and to read The Towers of Trebizond once a year. We choose a window seat when we can on trains and aeroplanes. We take off our shoes as often as decent, and wear pyjamas whenever possible. These habits aren't objectively good, and we have enough self-knowledge to understand that. But they are little bricks in the architecture of our days and weeks, and they help us to bring comfort and order out of what might tend otherwise in the direction of chaos.

One of the most consistent of our habits over the last decade has been reading The Economist on Saturday mornings. We often find ourselves a little more bolshy than they; a little amused at their reference to themselves as a 'newspaper'; somewhat vexed by the incessant gift subscription solicitations; and sometimes wishing the price were a bit lower; but always a touch refreshed by contrariety, consistency, hilarity—have you seen the photo captions?—and variety.

The first thing we read every week is the obituary (singular, as there is only ever one) printed on the second to last page of each issue. This is no morbid fascination; the obituary is written in exquisite English without fail, and it is never a bare recitation of dates and places. Instead, one learns something about the shape of a person's life and impact on the wider world. Ecclesiastical obits in The Daily Telegraph—especially those by Trevor Beeson—also do this, but they only appear when someone churchly and important dies, rather than every week without fail.

Our devotion to the penultimate page of The Economist is the only reason we learned of the death in Belgium on 14 April this year of Marcella Pattyn, the last Beguine. Though this 92 year old was touted as the last living link to a way of life stretching back some 800 years, her death went unnoticed in wider news outlets. We felt compelled to write in praise of Beguines and their distinct way of living out the Beatitudes.

Beguines* were lay women throughout what are now France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany who organized their lives around shared religious ideals but did not take vows as nuns—and, in fact, could and did leave their communities to return to their families or to marry if they wished. From the 1200s until 2013, they lived out Christ's declarations about the blessedness of the poor in spirit, the peacemakers, the meek, the merciful, the persecuted, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and those who mourn, in ways that were and still are revolutionary. These women retained rights to own and inherit property. They were highly educated, and shared their education with the inhabitants of the cities where they lived. They chose to form urban families of affinity whose temporal stability was rooted in the beautiful béguinages that are still the architectural-historical pride of many northern European cities. The names of some Beguines are bright stars in the history of Christian mysticism: Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, for example. It may come as no surprise that some of them were also accused of heresy, and that they suffered their own persecutions at the hands of the Church whose best ideals they refreshed and enlivened through many generations.

To our mind, one of the most significant things about the Beguines was their decision to live lives of Christian fruitfulness, simplicity and seriousness not in isolation or rural retreat, but rather in the heart of bustling cities. With remarkable wealth around them thanks to the cloth trade in particular, Beguines situated themselves outside of prevailing economic patterns in favour of an individualism-in-community that allowed them both urban solitude and opportunities for effective service. Urban solitude is a thing known well to thoughtful persons who live in cities, but generally experienced only by individuals, and not in ways that make for wider cultural constructiveness. Whilst sleeping and rising alone-together, Beguines prayed bright fires of joy into being through dark nights near the North Sea, and they forged attitudes of apostolic generosity outside the conventions of their time.

As Anglicans, we believe that there are many good flavours and streams in the broad river of Christian spirituality. When identifiable emphases—in this case, on the gift of the individual to community without a loss of autonomy, on the ability of women to make their own religious decisions, on the primacy of mystical, contemplative prayer to bring about the soul's right relationship with its creator, and on the humble goodness of the created world—we can't help but see a wonderful way of doing something beautiful for God. Nobody who has read and understood John Keble could reject this confluence of attitudes as outside the inheritance of all Anglicans and Episcopalians.

We also can't help but reject the idea that Marcella Pattyn was really the last of her kind. Maugre the fact that all the béguinages of the middle ages are now empty but for scents and books and ghosts, we don't have enough fingers and toes to count all the urban mystics we have met in our lives. Some have jobs in cubicles or at desks in nondescript office buildings; some are homeless; some are clergy who have bloomed where they were planted, and never sought other soil or toil; some are waitresses; one is a barber; one shined our shoes last week; one is a phlebotomist; two are cooks; and most are not aware themselves of the reality of the effect of their concentrated prayer on the lives of the world around them. We feel a fair certainty that the things separating today's Beguines from the now-defunct Beguines who perpetuated much that was beautiful and good from the late medieval northern European world are linguistic, cultural, chronological and structural rather than otherwise substantial.

The Economist's obit ended with a line from Agatha Christie: 'And then there were none'. Our preference would be the more joyful 'Their sound has gone out unto the ends of the world, and their words unto the ends of the earth'.

See you next week.


12 May 2013
http://anglicansonline.org

* Some men, called Beghards, also embraced this way of life, but they were never the dominant participants in the movement.

"Evelyn Underhill – Call to the Inner Life"

From Interrupting the Silence; Evelyn Underhill died on June 15, 1941.

Sometime around 1931 Evelyn Underhill wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1928-1942), about the inner life of the clergy. Her concern was that the multiplicity of the clergy’s duties had diminished some priests’ grounding in a life of prayer.

Underhill’s concerns are as relevant today, perhaps more so, as they were when she wrote the letter. However, we should not limit her concerns and proposals to only the clergy. They are equally applicable to the laity. The life of the Church and the life of humanity, lay or ordained, must begin within and arise out of a life of prayer.

The following are excerpts from her letter:

• “Call the clergy as a whole, solemnly and insistently to a greater interiority and cultivation of the personal life of prayer.”
• “The real failures, difficulties and weaknesses of the Church are spiritual and can only be remedied by spiritual effort and sacrifice, and that her deepest need is a renewal, first in the clergy and through them in the laity; of the great Christian tradition of the inner life.”
• “A disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls.”
• “We look to the clergy to help and direct our spiritual growth. We are seldom satisfied because with a few noble exceptions they are so lacking in spiritual realism, so ignorant of the laws and experiences of the life of prayer. Their Christianity as a whole is humanitarian rather than theocentric.”
• “God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God. But only a priest whose life is soaked in prayer, sacrifice, and love can, by his own spirit of adoring worship, help us to apprehend Him.”
• “However difficult and apparently unrewarding, care for the interior spirit is the first duty of every priest. Divine renewal can only come through those whose roots are in the world of prayer.”
• “We instantly recognize those services and sermons that are the outward expression of the priest’s interior adherence to God and the selfless love of souls.”
• “I know that recovering the ordered interior life of prayer and meditation will be very difficult for clergy immersed increasingly in routine work. It will mean for many a complete rearrangement of values and a reduction of social activities. They will not do it unless they are made to feel its crucial importance.”

Here's the Collect for the celebration of Evelyn Underhill's day, from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that your Church, taught by your  servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Cecil Frances Humphreys Alexander

Cecil Frances Humphreys Alexander, who wrote the lyrics to some 400 hymns - some of the best-loved of the hymns in the Anglican tradition, in fact - was a woman.  Just didn't know this, that's all!  It's that first name, I guess....

From Cyberhymnal:

Born: Ear­ly Ap­ril 1818, Red­cross, Coun­ty Wick­low, Ire­land. Died: Oc­to­ber 12, 1895, Lon­don­der­ry, North­ern Ire­land. Buried: Ci­ty Cem­e­te­ry, Lon­don­der­ry, North­ern Ire­land.

Alex­and­er’s hus­band was Will­iam Alex­an­der, bi­shop of Der­ry and Ra­phoe, and lat­er the An­gli­can pri­mate for Ire­land. Ce­cil and her sis­ter found­ed a school for the deaf, and she set up the Girls’ Friend­ly So­ci­e­ty in Lon­don­der­ry. Ce­cil Al­ex­and­er wrote about 400 hymns in her life­time. Her works in­clude:

• Verses from the Ho­ly Scrip­tures, 1846
• Hymns for Lit­tle Child­ren, 1848
• Narrative Hymns for Vill­age Schools, 1853
• Po­ems on Sub­jects in the Old Test­a­ment, 1854 & 1857
• Hymns De­scrip­tive and De­vo­tion­al, 1858
• The Le­gend of the Gold­en Pray­er, 1859

Sources

• Hatfield, pp. 9-10
• Julian, pp. 38, 1602
• Nutter, p. 387
• Stulken, p. 212

Hymns

1. All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful
2. Angels Stand Around Thy Throne, The
3. Dear Lord, This Thy Serv­ant’s Day
4. Do No Sin­ful Act­ion
5. Christ Has Ascend­ed Up Again
6. Eternal Gates Lift Up Their Heads, The
   • The Gold­en Gates Are Lift­ed Up
7. Every Morn­ing the Red Sun
8. For All Thy Saints, a No­ble Throng
9. Forgive Them, O My Fa­ther
10. Forsaken Once, and Thrice De­nied
11. From Out the Cloud of Am­ber Light
12. He Is Com­ing, He Is Com­ing
13. He Is Risen
14. His Are the Thou­sand Spark­ling Rills
15. How Good Is the Almighty God
16. In Nazareth in Olden Times
17. In the Rich Man’s Garden
18. It Was Early in the Morn­ing
19. Jesus Calls Us
20. O Love Most Patient, Give Me Grace
21. Once in Royal Da­vid’s City
22. Roseate Hues of Early Dawn, The
23. Saints of God Are Ho­ly Men, The
24. Saw You Never, in the Twilight?
25. So Be It, Lord; the Pray­ers are Prayed
26. Souls in Death and Darkness Lying
27. Spirit of God, That Moved of Old
28. St. Patrick’s Breastplate
29. Still Bright and Blue Doth Jordan Flow
30. There Is a Green Hill Far Away
31. There Is One Way
32. Up in Heaven
33. We Are But Little Children Weak
    • O Lord, the Ho­ly Innocents
34. We Are Little Christ­ian Children
35. We Were Washed in Ho­ly Water
36. When Christ Came Down on Earth of Old
    • O Son of God, in Glory Crowned
37. When of Old the Jewish Mothers
38. When Wound­ed Sore the Strick­en Heart
39. Within the Church­yard, Side by Side

Gloria: Old Scottish Chant

We sang this at my (briefly-attended) childhood Methodist church, which was on the "high" side for Methodism, I do believe (although I don't really have any basis for comparison). Aside from only having Communion quarterly - a practice of which founder John Wesley would not have approved, preferring at least weekly Communion himself - the service leaflets from that period seem to be very like Anglican Morning Prayer of the same period, which was celebrated more often than Communion in most Episcopal Churches then.

The video was made on Christmas Eve at St. John's Episcopal Church in Detroit.