Milner-White's Prayer for the beginning of Lent

The Very Reverend Dr Eric Milner-White (1884 - 1963) was Dean of York between 1941 and his death in 1963. This prayer is taken from his collection, My God my Glory, SPCK London, 1967 edition.

LORD, bless to me this Lent.

Lord, let me fast most truly and profitably,
by feeding in prayer on thy Spirit:
reveal me to myself
in the light of thy holiness.

Suffer me never to think
that I have knowledge enough to need no teaching,
wisdom enough to need no correction,
talents enough to need no grace,
goodness enough to need no progress,
humility enough to need no repentance,
devotion enough to need no quickening,
strength sufficient without thy Spirit;
lest, standing still, I fall back for evermore.

Shew me the desires that should be disciplined,
and sloths to be slain.
Shew me the omissions to be made up
and the habits to be mended.
And behind these, weaken, humble, and annihilate in me
self-will, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction,
self-sufficiency, self-assertion, vainglory.

May my whole effort be to return to thee;
O make it serious and sincere
persevering and fruitful in result,
by the help of thy Holy Spirit
and to thy glory,
my Lord and my GOD.

John Paul II on the boundaries of the Eucharist

This is part of the English translation of Pope John Paul II's Angelus Address given on 3rd November, 1996:

'. . . the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed have enabled us to feel the intimate communion linking us to our brothers and sisters who have already entered eternity. They are now having a deep experience of God; they sing his mercy; they celebrate his love. The liturgy we celebrate on earth is a mysterious participation in this heavenly liturgy.

'The sense of liturgy is particularly vivid among our Eastern brothers and sisters. For them, the liturgy is truly "heaven on earth" (Orientale lumen, n. 11). It is a synthesis of the whole faith experience. It is an involving experience which touches the whole human person, body and soul. Everything in the sacred action aims at expressing "the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured": the shape of the church, the sounds, the colours, the lights, the scents. The lengthy duration of the celebrations itself and the repeated invocations express the progressive identification with the mystery celebrated with one's whole person (cf. ibid).

'The special care that Easterners devote to the beauty of form is also at the service of mystery. According to the Kiev Chronicle, St. Vladimir is supposed to have been converted to the Christian faith also because of the beauty of worship in the churches of Constantinople.

'An Eastern author has written that the liturgy is "the royal gate through which one must pass", if one wishes to grasp the spirit of the Christian East (cf. Fr Evdokimov, The Prayer of the Eastern Church).'

Dr Darwell Stone on the boundaries of the Eucharist

Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was an Anglican theologian and Principal of Pusey House, Oxford from 1909 to 1934. His major work, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, published in two volumes in 1909, continues to be regarded as the best compendium in English of the Eucharistic teaching of both East and West. The following is taken from The Faith of an English Catholic, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1926.

In the great sacrifice the Church offers the body and blood of our Lord. The offering of His body and blood is the pleading of His whole human life. His conception by His virgin mother, His life as a child living but not yet born, His birth and infancy and childhood and youth and manhood, His ministry and passion and death, the stay of His body in the tomb and of His soul in the unseen world, His resurrection, His sojourning on earth in His risen life, His ascension and session at the right hand of the Father on high, - all these have their place in the prayers with which the pleading is made. And this majestic sacrifice is offered for the manifold needs of mankind. It is offered for saints and for sinners, for the faithful and the tempted and the backsliding and the apostate, for the work of the Church all over the world, for nations and statesmen and kings and subjects, for societies and individuals, for the needs of capital and of labour, for family and household and friends, for the living and the dead. In it joy and sorrow, toil and conflict and rest, health and sickness and death, are gathered up into the one offering of Christ.

Haiti . . .

It is not possible for us ordinary Christians to avoid some of the hard questions that arise from tragedies such as the recent earthquake in Haiti (or tsunamis, or bushfires). The scale of the suffering tears our hearts asunder. On top of that, we are interrogated by atheist or agnostic friends about how how it is possible that there is a God of love who is all powerful if he lets these things happen. A handful of responses like that of Pat Robertson - i.e. this was God's judgment on the people of Haiti on account of the voodoo practised by some! - makes a humble and reasoned Christian response both more difficult and more necessary.

So, I was moved by an article in the Catholic Herald by Mark Dowd, Where was God when the earthquake flattened Haiti? I'm sure he is on the right track. This is how his article finishes:

'I would never invoke the intellectual arguments about a "creation defence" for God with those whose lives had been directly afflicted. They would appear crass and insensitive. But there are others of faith, several stages removed, who are troubled and disturbed by what they see on the television screens and I think we should speak out as best we can. Sir John Polkinghorne, the great Christian physicist, has articulated his view that in a material world, whenever you cast a light you cannot but help cast a shadow. "Why can't we have all the good bits in creation and leave out the bad side effects?" we might ask. Well, everything we know about evolution and the journey to bring about complex intelligent life like our own suggests that death and some form of suffering are integral parts of a process of the passing on of genetic material.

'Is it possible to create a better world free of these downsides? This is the territory that Job wanders into in chapter 38 of that great Old Testament book and when he demands that God explain all this to him, he is greeted with: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand."

'I think old Leibniz is treated rather badly. If we could somehow prove that God has done a botched job of all this then there would be a case to answer. But if positives and negatives in a material world are impossible to separate, then the real question is this: "why create at all?" Why push that button if you know that creation involves death and suffering? This was the point I put to Professor Philip Clayton at that Castel Gandolfo conference. When the programme was repeated on December 27 of last year it was watched by a Catholic priest who had been dealing for years with the torment of watching his elderly father suffer from dementia. He told me that he had started and stopped the programme four times because its subject matter was so painful. Then came Clayton's words five minutes before the end.

'"I filled up with tears at the image of a creator God weeping before pressing the button to bring us into being, and the prospect that he pressed it knowing that the destination would outweigh the pains on the journey," the priest wrote to me last week. "The image of a God who would weep at our sufferings and the sufferings of his own Son, knowing that the bond of love between us in the end would be preferable to an eternity without us, in a God-filled emptiness, is just so overwhelming. At last something had resonated and struck a chord of truth."'

This article elicited some letters to the editor. One of them made the point that believers must do more than just defend our position, and referred to a paper by Dr James Franklin (from the School of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales, Australia) which seriously undermines the atheist case. Franklin says:

"The problem of evil has a kick in its tail for the atheist... Consider, for example, the materialist world-picture which most atheists believe in. Is there really evil in the materialist world? Of course, there are animals in pain and distress, but one who takes an absolute perspective can well ask, why does that matter? Ordinarily one thinks that the suffering of a human is a tragedy but the explosion of a dead galaxy is just a firework. Materialism, though, denies the distinction between the two, since it takes humans to be the same kind of things as galaxies, namely, moderately complicated heaps of matter. If the fate of a galaxy cannot give rise to a problem of evil, because its fate cannot in any absolute sense matter, then neither can the fate of a brain. In posing the problem of evil, the materialist who does not really believe in positive worth is cynically trading on our sense of the importance of those who suffer, knowing he will undermine it later."

In other words, the standard materialist answer to the problem of evil is to imply in the face of all our instinct to the contrary that evil and suffering are of no significance. Franklin concludes:

"The very existence of evil as a matter of absolute seriousness is a substantial reason to believe that the materialist world picture is false. Since the leading alternative theory involves a good and powerful God, that is a reason to believe there must be some solution to the problem of evil."

Go HERE to download a pdf of Franklin's paper.

Not unconnected with this is an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald about a man of faith whose wife and two sons died in the tragic bushfires one year ago. It, too, is well worth reading.

Fr Schmemann (again) on the boundaries of the Eucharist

In this passage, Fr Schmemann talks about the Eucharist taking us into heaven, the age to come. Go HERE to read his entire essay, Theology and Eucharist.

' . . . the Eucharist . . . is a passage, a procession leading the Church into "heaven," into her fulfillment as the Kingdom of God. And it is precisely the reality of this passage into the Eschaton that conditions the transformation of our offering - bread and wine - into the new food of the new creation, of our meal into the Messianic Banquet and the Koinonia of the Holy Spirit. Thus, for example, the coming together of Christians on the Lord's Day, their visible unity "sealed" by the priest ("ecclesia in episcopo and episcopus in ecclesia") is indeed the beginning of the sacrament, the "gathering into the Church." And the entrance is not a symbolical representation of Christ going to preach but the real entrance - the beginning of the Church's ascension to the Throne of God, made possible, inaugurated by the ascension of Christ's Humanity. The offertory - the solemn transfer of bread and wine to the altar is again not the symbol of Christ's burial (or of His entrance into Jerusalem) but a real sacrifice - the transfer of our lives and bodies and of the whole "matter" of the whole creation into heaven, their integration in the unique and all-embracing sacrifice of all sacrifices, that of Christ. The prosphora (offering) makes possible the anaphora - the lifting up of the Church, her eschatological fulfillment by the Eucharist. For Eucharist - "thanksgiving" - is indeed the very content of the redeemed life, the very reality of the Kingdom as "joy and peace in the Holy Spirit," the end and the fulfillment of our ascension into heaven. Therefore, the Eucharist is consecration and the Fathers called both the prayer of consecration and the consecrated gifts "Eucharist." The insistence by the Orthodox on the epiclesis is nothing else, in its ultimate meaning, but the affirmation that the consecration, i.e., the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, takes place in the "new eon" of the Holy Spirit. Our earthly food becomes the Body and Blood of Christ because it has been assumed, accepted, lifted up into the "age to come," where Christ is indeed the very life, the very food of all life and the Church is His Body, "the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). It is there, finally, that we partake of the food of immortality, are made participants of the Messianic Banquet, of the New Pascha, it is from there, "having seen the true light, having received the heavenly Spirit," that we return into "this world" ("let us depart in peace") as witnesses of the Kingdom which is "to come." Such is the sacrament of the Church, the "leitourgia" which eternally transforms the Church into what she is, makes her the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.'

Candlemas : The Presentation of the Lord

Forty days ago we celebrated the joyful feast of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we recall the holy day on which he was presented in the temple, fulfilling the law of Moses and at the same time going to meet his faithful people. Led by the Spirit, Simeon and Anna came to the temple, recognised Christ as their Lord, and proclaimed him with joy. United by the Spirit, may we go now to the house of God to welcome Christ the Lord. There we shall recognise him in the Breaking of the Bread until he comes again in glory. (From the Missal of Paul VI)

Almighty everlasting God,
we humbly beseech thy majesty:
that, as thy only-begotten Son
was this day presented in the temple
in substance of our flesh;
so we may be presented unto thee
with purified minds.
Through the same Jesus Christ
thine only Son, our Lord,
Who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost,
God, world without end. Amen. (Collect)


From a sermon preached by Fr Ivan Aquilina (go HERE for the entire sermon):
Today the Mystery of Incarnation is made manifest in its totality, it is pure light that points towards the Easter Mysteries. Today we are invited to take a last look at Bethlehem and to take our first look at Jerusalem and the cross on that green hill far away. Today is a turning point.

This feast day inspired generations, it inspires us also. Today the great mother of God Mary went in the temple carrying the light - Jesus - in her hands, and likewise we shall do tomorrow as we carry the light in our hands. Mary offered and shared this light to us, and likewise she invites us today to share with gladness and joy the light we carry.

Jesus is our light; he is our light in a manger, he is our light in the temple, he is our light nailed to the cross on Calvary, let us approach him in humility. Let us ask him to dwell in us and give us the grace that like Mary we may be worthy to carry him with us so that with him we can conquer the darkness of evil. Mary carried the Jesus-Light in the temple, today we are to carry the same Jesus-Light not into this temple, but we are being called to carry Him with us outside and share him with a world that is in desperate need for Light. And this is Liturgy according to its real meaning, making Christ alive in the here and now.

The processional hymn:
See how the age-long promise of a Saviour
Spoken through lips of prophets by the Spirit,
In blessed Mary, Mother of the Christ-child,
Finds its fulfilment.

Virgin most pure, and wondrously conceiving,
bearing incarnate God in awed obedience,
Now she presents him for a spotless offering
Unto his Father.

In God's high temple, Simeon the righteous
Takes to his loving arms with holy rapture
That One for whom his longing eyes had waited,
Jesus, Messiah.

Where now his Mother next her Son is seated,
In those fair mansions of the heavenly kingdom,
May Christ our Saviour grant to us his servants
Life everlasting.

Father eternal, Son and Holy Spirit,
Trinity blessed, Maker and redeemer,
Giver of life, and Author of salvation,
Thine be the glory.
(Quod chorus vatum, ascribed to Rhabanus Maurus 776 - 856)

Khaled Anatolios on the boundaries of the Eucharist

Associate Professor Khaled Anatolios, a Melkite Greek Catholic, teaches theology at Boston College. He is the author of Athanasius: The Coherence of his Thought (Routledtge: 1998 & 2004) and the Athanasius volume of the Routledge Early Church Fathers series (2004). The following paragraph is from his article Heaven on Earth in Byzantine Liturgy, published in Antiphon, Volume 5, Number 3. Go HERE for the complete article.

"The fact that the simultaneous looking back at the historical details of the death of Christ and the looking upward in an eschatological gaze occurs most explicitly in the context of representing the sacrifice of Christ should alert us to the fact that this context is crucial for interpreting the phenomenon of liturgical time. From the perspective of the heavenly liturgy motif, we have here an assimilation of earth to heaven in a temporal key, as the assimilation of time to eternity. For the Byzantine liturgy, the saving events of Christ are always celebrated as happening 'today'; and the 'today' of the liturgy is explicated as meaning 'now and ever and unto ages of ages.' The prayer of the anaphora presents a highly concentrated synopsis of salvation, from creation to eschatological fulfillment, and it reads the whole history which extends to eternity as already fulfilled and now liturgically realized in the remembrance of Jesus sacrificial self-offering. The result is that the fulfillment of the Kingdom, which is explicitly qualified as the future Kingdom, is also paradoxically spoken of as a past event, in the same way as creation is something that already happened: 'You it was who brought us from non-existence into being, and when we had fallen away, you raised us up again, and you did not cease to do all things until you had brought us back to heaven and endowed us with your future kingdom.' After the faithful join in the triumphal angelic hymn, chanting, 'Holy, Holy, Holy,' before the divine throne, the priest pronounces the words of consecration. Immediately afterwards, by way of explicating the sacramental remembrance, the priest once again 'remembers' the past, present, and future of salvation as an event already realized in the act of Jesus now being re-presented: 'Remembering, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and the second and glorious coming again, we offer to you, O Lord, your own from your own, in behalf of all and for all.' The future consummation of the kingdom is itself remembered within the remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection. There is nothing beyond the paschal mystery of Christ - not temporally, not logically, not ontologically. Through the Passover of his death and resurrection, Christ has entered once and for all into the heavenly realm, so that henceforth all time, including future time, can be 'remembered' through a double reference to the past event, by which this entrance was consummated, and to the present reality of the person of Christ who reigns eternally at the right hand of the Father."