My absolute favourite thing to wear is my scapular. It reminds me that I carry Jesus everywhere I go, and perhaps much more importantly, it reminds me that Jesus is with me always. It is not an Anglican thing to do and often confuses people, but it is meaningful to me. I also like to wear “suspenders.” Since I have no hips, they keep my pants from falling down. See picture!!!
Have you ever wondered what we did when we only had “landlines”? How did we survive? And before that, when people communicated by hand-written letter? And, guess what, we survived.
So, what technology would I be better off without? My “smartphone”! It serves no purpose. I do not receive calls, texts, DMs, or iMessages from anyone. Yet, somehow, I feel I should carry it everywhere with me. And check! Check if someone has emailed. I listen to music, but I could do that a different way. I spend way too much time looking for it or worrying about it.
If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
To be honest, I would probably sleep! I love sleeping and try to do it as often as I can during the day. And as long as I can during the night. Personally I think there is nothing better.
I was thinking about the table of fasts and abstinence in the 1662 Prayer Book. Since nothing like it exists in modern Prayer Books, I assume that it still stands. So, I was wondering what the Prayer Book required of me. I found these PRECEPTS OF THE CHURCH by Bishop John Cosin:
- To observe the Festivals and Holy Days appointed.
- To keep the Fasting Days with devotion and abstinence.
- To observe the ecclesiastical customs and ceremonies established, and that without frowardness or contradiction.
- To repair unto the public service of the Church for Matins and Evensong, with other holy offices at times appointed, unless there be a just and unfeigned cause to the contrary.
- To receive the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ with frequent devotion, and three times a year at least, of which Easter to be always one. And for better preparation thereunto, as occasion is, to disburthan and quit your consciences of those sins that may grieve us, or scruples that may trouble us, to a learned and discreet priest, and from him to receive advice, and the benefit of Absolution.
It needs a little re-jigging but I think it is a workable Rule of Life. What thinkest thou?
Christianity is no doctrine; all talk of offense with regard to it as doctrine is a misunderstanding, is an enervation of the thrust of the collision of offense, as when one speaks of offense with respect to the doctrine of the God-man, the doctrine of Atonement. No, offense is related either to Christ or to being a Christian oneself…. No, Christ’s life here on earth is the paradigm; I and every Christian are to strive to model our lives in likeness to it, and this is the primary subject of preaching, since it is to serve this—to keep me up to the mark when I want to dawdle, to fortify when one becomes disheartened. — … But Christendom has abolished Christ; yet, on the other hand, it wants—to inherit him, his great name, to make use of the enormous consequences of his life. Indeed, Christendom is not far from wanting to appropriate them as its own merits and to delude us into thinking that Christendom is Christ.
Christianly, struggling is always done by single individuals, because spirit is precisely this, that everyone is an individual before God, that “fellowship” is a lower category than “the single individual,” which everyone can and should be. And even if the individuals were in the thousands and as such struggled jointly, Christianly understood each individual is struggling, besides jointly with the others, also within himself, and must as a single individual give an accounting on judgment day, when his life as an individual will be examined.
Practice in Christianity
Jesus said:
If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Matthew 16:24 (KJV)
The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.
CCC, 2015
So, I am going to be honest and give my actual pet peeves:
Perhaps I have had many hard decisions to make? Not all are worth sharing, and some are very private. Also, most are painful and triggering.
But the clearest insight, and the hardest decision, is that I control who has access to me. No one has a right to me as a person or an individual. Yes, I have a duty to others, which is ultimately a duty to God, but that duty (to other people) is not my relationship with God – it is my duty to my neighbour. The call is to follow Jesus.
While the above is not a huge problem, no one has contacted me with demands for access. Yet, I feel I should be available to people more out of self-serving motives.
As I have written before, the thing that I pray for (solitary life) is also the thing I fear the most. The decision to control access, to deny access for some, is emotionally difficult and is the hardest decision I have had to make.
I was thinking about William of Glasshamption (aka Fr William Sirr SDC), especially a piece he wrote about the contemplative life in the Anglican Communion.
When I read the letter, I was struck by the need for contemplative life within the Anglican Communion. In a world full of action and busyness, contemplative life is a secular necessity. There is no return to the old days. Contemplative life in a social media age!
But, I wonder, is the contemplative life possible within the Anglican Communion? Is there room in the Anglican Communion for individuals who separate for “prayer and mortification”? Does it fall inside of “mission action plans”?
So, read! Reflect! Share!
Spring, 1933.
“Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother”
To our FRIENDs
THE COMPANIONS OF
BLESSED MARY AT THE CROSS.GREETINGS TO YOU ALL.
Not least among many marvellous recoveries the Anglican Communion has restoration of the made in the last hundred years is the vigorous Religious Life which had been so rudely suppressed at the Reformation. We realise not only what has already been done in this direction, but also how much more must yet be achieved ere we reach the goal set before us. But whether we consider the immediate past or the unknown future, we thank-fully take courage and press on again.
Now as we look around at this stage of the revival we find contemplative communities of women happily established in our midst. This is the highest peak we have attained in the recovery of the Religious Life. It gives promise that the men will soon follow.
We cannot, however, forget the great shock it gave Newman, those many years ago, when he first realised there were no monks and nuns in the Church of England, and we wonder whether we are sufficiently concerned to-day to find we are still left without one established community of men set apart wholly for this supreme work of prayer and mortification. Are we fully alive to the serious loss it must be for the Church to remain bereft of monks of this description?
There can be no doubt of the increasing need there is of men who will make daring adventure in the field of prayer. We mean men after the pattern of what Jacob once proved himself to be. He determined he would by prayer win a blessing from God. For this purpose he carefully sought and diligently planned to be alone, and alone he wrestled in prayer through the long watches of the night until the breaking of the day. “I will not let thee go unless thou bless me.” He declared he had seen God face to face, and as a prince, he won power with God and with men. It is true he ever afterwards bore the marks of the struggle he had gone through-but he prevailed.
It is men like that the Church needs so desperately today-men who will deliberately go apart to be with God alone, and stay. They must be men wholly surrendered, and determined with dauntless courage to follow God through every tedious and painful vicissitude, and to endure in prayer right on to the very end, whatever the cost may be. That is the way prescribed by God, and it is in that direction such men of God have always “I give myself unto prayer.”
“The help that is done upon earth, God doeth it himself.” But He deigns to ask for our co-operation as fellow-workers together with Him. God will not consent to act in loneliness.
Think—a divided Christendom has to be reunited, a distracted world has to be mended, all nations have to be brought to do Him service. These are blessings we all yearn for. And these are blessings we know God wills to give. Indeed, He is even now holding them out and waiting to bestow them upon us. without our utmost co-operation. Wherein, then, do we fail?
It is not in activities that we are in danger of falling short. In some respects our activities are excessive. It is in prayer and mortification we sorely need strengthening. And it is to monks we must look to help us to fill up this deficiency.
In our recovery of the Religious Life we have reversed the true order in which the Religious Life originally came into being. In the early days of the Church the solitaries came first, and then the monks and nuns. Men were the pioneers, and the women Then out of this monastic life of prayer and mortification sprang the various orders of active religious, raised up one after the other to meet the pressing needs of the time.
We, on the other hand, started in the revival by first recovering the active life-Sisters of Charity devoted to the poor and sick. Then came other active Sisters for the purposes of educational, preventive and rescue work. After that the men followed-mission priests and lay Brothers, communities of men for training ordinands, for the care of aged and infirm sailors, and for the ” downs and outs ” And most of these communities of men and women have spread out into the mission field.
Now we discover that, quietly and without observation, enclosed nuns have come to life, like the seed hidden and growing secretly in the earth. We find them here just as we suddenly find the flowers in full blossom in the garden, without seeing them unfold. There is yet awaited, last of all, the coming of enclosed monks as of men born out of due time. Then we shall have completely recovered.
Until the enclosed monks are born to us the power of the Church is seriously weakened. We suffer because of the absence of their lives of prayer and mortification-the two most essential implements needed in the terrific warfare for God against the world, the flesh and the devil. The Church is waiting for such lives-waiting for you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the wicked one, you who can ensure that there are men as well as women always standing by night and day to praise the Lord.
Without such monks we are in grave danger of losing sight of the fact that there are some things God has set the Church to do for Him that can only be accomplished by prayer and mortification. Is it not precisely to this purpose of prayer and mortification our Lord was referring when He said to His disappointed disciples, “this kind goeth not out except by prayer and fasting”?
God’s arm is not shortened. Somewhere among us are those to whom God is waiting to impart this rare vocation. And we ask for your prayers during this centenary year, that He will graciously impart it now; and that they to whom this call shall come will fully and courageously respond to it; and that, please God, once again the desert will shoot out her blossoms and restore to the Church these specialists in prayer and mortification, monks as well as nuns, monks who will, like Moses on the mountain-top, stretch forth their hands in strong and never-failing supplications while those on the plains beneath continue their heroic activities.
Who can doubt that we, too, shall then prevail? It will be the breaking of a new day. With the help of our God, we shall leap over the wall.
God bless you.
I was thinking this morning that I am in a little slump regarding people. I’m not sure who to trust at the moment.
So, Jesus! Perhaps that is a little strange, odd, or weird?! I am not a very good follower. And my sin is ever before me. But I try – I desire to follow Jesus. Resting in Him is my favourite past time.
Sorry is that like superweird and uber-religious?
a fool and his prayer book 