Maundy Thursday

On the night before he suffered, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. In doing so Christ draws his friends, his Apostles into communion with his own paschal sacrifice. Take, eat, this is my body given for you... this is my blood shed for you, given and shed upon the cross for our redemption. 

Jesus invites us too into this saving mystery, into union with his own sacrificial action on Calvary. In the words of Austin Farrer:

"Do the disciples understand the nature of the bond? Jesus has blessed his food, to be the body he will offer in his sacrifice; do they know that they are committed to membership in such a body as that?  A body flogged, broken, crucified - see, he crumbles the loaf before their eyes.  Do they perceive the new meaning in the ancient custom, the breaking of the bread?  Are they willing to be parts of such a body, are they willing that his body, with its sacrificial destiny, should be theirs?  

The disciples were not yet fully willing, but they came to be, and so we all must; for if we do not want to be given and surrendered to God, why touch religion at all?  By partaking of the sacrificial body, we are to be made capable of sacrifice, taken up, as we are, into the sacrificial being of Christ." (From This is my Body, 1958 Eucharist Congress)

Tonight, as we watch and pray with Jesus in the Garden before his betrayal, ask him to fill our hearts with his love. The same love given on the cross and commanded of us at the Last Supper, "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34-35) The same love which takes us up into the "sacrificial being" of Christ himself.

ALMIGHTY Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, did institute the Sacrament of his Body and Blood; Mercifully grant that we may thankfully receive the same in remembrance of him, who in these holy mysteries giveth us a pledge of life eternal; the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

God bless,

LSP

Advent

It's the first Sunday of Advent, and we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas and preparing to meet Him on the Last Day, the second Advent. Here's a prayer, the governing collect of the season:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The armour of light. The Apostle teaches us (Rom. 13:11-14) that this is nothing less than Christ Himself.  Austin Farrer illuminates:

Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

If you're a bit slow on the uptake, like me, you might want to read the above several times. In the meanwhile, Paris burns.

God bless,

LSP

Epiphany

You may have missed it in your rush to buy Bitcoin but today's the Feast of the Epiphany and the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. I like this:

THE Magi took the lids from their urns and unfastened their caskets, when they presented the symbols of universal homage to our infant prince. But when a woman came to anoint the king in his royal city, she shattered her alabaster jar, that she might pour the precious spikenard on his head. There was a sympathy between her action and the approaching Passion: the perfume of man’s homage could not be offered to God, without breaking the veined alabaster, the body of the Son of Man. Our incense may rise, like that of the Magi, from unbroken vessels, if we present our bodies a living sacrifice. Yet a living sacrifice is also a sacrifice, and is made so by some participation in the shattering of the vase. Christ, sacrificing himself, joins us with him in sacrificing him; Christ, sacrificing himself, sacrifices us, for he has made us parts of him. We come to offer our homage to Christ, but his star has brought us, and the breaking of his mortal vase has furnished all the perfume of our offering.

                                                                                  The Crown of the Year, Austin Farrer.

Elf

With that in mind, it's only fair to say that several members of this popular information brokerage have also had epiphanies. Viz. Justin Welby is not so much an Archbishop as  a Comedy House Elf. 

There's no need to get into Mantis People, that's a different post.

Quo Vadis,

LSP

Sutherland Springs, Apocalyptic Reflection

Last Sunday we walked out of Mass uplifted, at least I did, refreshed in mind, body and spirit and then on arriving back at the Compound, pouring a glass of the right stuff and clicking on Drudge, things didn't seem so good.

There it was, Devin Kelley had killed 26 people and wounded at least 20 in an act of murderous, irrational, rage. "Why," asked one hardened LE Officer, "was it Satan?" Good question. Try phrasing the act another way. "A man of iniquity, full of bestial wrath, blasphemously profaned the Temple with the blood of the martyrs."

Satan

Put that way, Kelley's massacre sounds apocalyptic and it was, quite literally, for his victims; they met their last day. As such, Sutherland Springs serves as a partial type or prefigurement of the Apocalypse. What does this look like? We know the broad outline because Christ tells us, in Matthew 24.

Wars and rumours of war, earthquakes and false Messiahs. Here we find the birth-pains of the second Advent. Then follows the birth-crisis, the triumph of paganism and the setting up of idolatrous cult, the abomination of desolation on Mount Zion, accompanied by ferocious, such as the world has not yet seen, persecution of the Church. 

Virgins Wise And Foolish

The Apostle Paul and St. John The Divine  add to the mystery, telling us that this phase of blasphemous ascendance is led by a man, the son of perdition, or Antichrist, who is endowed with supernatural ability to "deceive the very elect." At this time there will be a great "falling away" or apostasy.

Then after the travail comes birth itself, the second Advent of the Son of Man, presaged by cosmic upheaval, who appears on clouds of divine glory to vanquish evil and vindicate the faithful. At last the Bridegroom returns. In the onrushing face of this, where do we stand?

A Typical Wise Virgin

Hopefully like the wise virgins who had the sense to stock their lamps with oil.  Herein lies a symbol. The lamps represent faith, which holds the light of good works, of mercy, love, forgiveness and compassion, all fueled by the oil of love and the indwelling presence of the Spirit who is the personification of love.

The message, then, is simple. We must be filled with the fire of divine love, as light shining in the darkness and then, when the Bridegroom finally appears, we will see Him and He us, granting us admittance into the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Bad Virgins!

To return to Sutherland Springs; those people, knowingly or not, were prepared for their apocalypse. They were loving God in worship. 

May God grant us grace to do the same. And, not to put too fine a point on it, if you're licensed, carry.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

The Feast of the Ascension

It's the great, and all too sadly ignored, Feast of the Ascension today in which we celebrate the ascent of Christ into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father as our eternal mediator and High Priest. 

Austin Farrer reflects on this upwards movement:

WE are told in an Old Testament tale, how an angel of God having appeared to man disappeared again by going up in the flame from the altar. And in the same way Elijah, when he could no more be found, was believed to have gone up on the crests of flaming horses. The flame which carried Christ to heaven was the flame of his own sacrifice. Flame tends always upwards. All his life long Christ's love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God. The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord.

And here's today's Collect:

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

God bless,

LSP

Transfiguration

"Christ, like the sun, too bright to look upon, reveals his luminous power." Austin Farrer 

Today, in St. Matthew's Gospel, we witness the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor where, for a moment, Jesus' divine radiance, the light that shines in the darkness, is revealed to Peter, James and John.

Peter babbles, understandably, until he's cut short by the voice of the Father, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him." Rather than listen to my babbling, here's a poem by Malcolm Guite:

For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

I like that.

God bless,

LSP

153 Fish And The Mystic Lamb

Did any of you get to Mass yesterday? If you did, you may have noticed that the disciples caught a miraculous catch of 153 fish under the direction of the Risen Lord. Why 153? Apparently the ancients believed there were 153 different species of fish, and so the catch represents all of humanity. The Gospel is of universal application to all men, everywhere; to put it another way, it's catholic. But here's the detail, from Rebirth of Images:

"Sir Edwyn shews that the number of the miraculous catch, 153, is what the ancients called the triangular power of 17... Here Sir Edwyn stops, because 17 considered in itself is a meaningless number. But we do not need to consider it in itself; we may consider it as the diagonal of the square twelve, as the measure of that river which, issuing out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, cuts Paradise from top to bottom. It is then obviously good sense to see the fishes as the ‘fullness’ or the ‘complement’ of the River of Life, just as the citizens are the fullness or complement of the square city.

"But why, we may still ask, does St. John take the triangular power of 17 as its ‘fulness’, rather than the square? The answer is that the square (289) is a meaningless number, whereas the triangular (153) receives an appropriate sense from that very treatise of numbers which St. John found in Solomon’s temple-building. The labour of the building was done by the non-Israelites of Solomon’s dominions; 153 thousand and some odd hundreds were set to work (II Chron. II, 17-18: VIII, 7-8). What could be more appropriate to St. John’s purpose? The miraculous catch, as has long been recognized, signifies Gentile converts: it is these, rather than the Jews, who build up the temple of God, the church."

Some people think that the New Testament is two dimensional, or less. That would be an error. Others think that St. John the Divine had too much time on his hands while in exile on Patmos. Perhaps, but I prefer inspired, holy, brilliance.

God bless,

LSP

Judgement Runs Out Into Mercy

Listen up, you lot. It's not Christmas yet, it's Advent, and you've probably forgotten this so I'm posting it again. Wisdom, from Austin Farrer:

Our journey sets out from God in our creation, and returns to God at the final judgement. As the bird rises from the earth to fly, and must some time return to the earth from which it rose; so God sends us forth to fly, and we must fall back into the hands of God at last. But God does not wait for the failure of our power and the expiry of our days to drop us back into his lap. He goes himself to meet us and everywhere confronts us. Where is the countenance which we must finally look in the eyes, and not be able to turn away our head? It smiles up at Mary from the cradle, it calls Peter from the nets, it looks on him with grief when he has denied his master. Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgiveness on his lips and succour in his hands. He offers us these things while there is yet time.Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer's love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.

Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

I love that.

LSP 

Almost Christmas

While you're all recovering from Festivus and getting ready for Kwanzaa, I'm gearing up for the first Masses of Christmas, fortified by Huevos Rancheros, strong coffee, and corn tortillas.

Excuse me?

Here's some Austin Farrer to reflect on before Mass:

“WHEN Mary laid Jesus Christ upon her knees, when she searched him with her eyes, when she fed him at the breast, she did not study to love him because she ought, she loved him because he was dear: he was her Son. His conception had been supernatural, perplexing, affrighting; it had called for faith in the incomprehensible, and obedience beyond the limit of human power. His nativity was human and sweet, and the love with which she embraced it was a natural growth, inseparable from the thing she loved. She was blessed above all creatures, because she loved her Maker inevitably and by simple nature; even though it needed the sword—wounds of the Passion to teach her fully that it was her Maker whom she loved. The Son of Mary is the Son of all human kind; we embrace him with the love of our kind, that we may be led up with Mary to a love beyond kind, a selfless love for the supreme Goodness, when we too shall have climbed the ladder of the cross.”

I love that -- the Farrer, not the random dancing priestess, obviously.

God bless,

LSP

Advent 2014

It's Advent now, which means I have to at least attempt to be serious and positive on this lame excuse for a "blog." But I'm not sure this is possible without help; so I enlist Austin Farrer, who described the season like this:

"Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity."

Judgement runs out into mercy.

So Money

Maybe there'll be some for Bishop "Dick" Harries who thinks England should have a Muslim coronation ceremony. "Dick" once wrote a book called Is there a Gospel for the Rich? which featured him grinning on the front cover.

Go figure,

LSP

Hitchens Is Dead

Everyone knows that Christopher Hitchens has died. He was an outstanding writer, drinker, smoker and contributing editor to Vanity Fair. VF gushed this morning:

"Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22, and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor."

Hitchens, unlike his brother, didn't believe in God. Now he will find out. 

I'll say a prayer for his soul.

Dies irae, but remember Farrer's words, Advent is a time when "judgement runs out into mercy."

LSP

Hail the day that sees Him rise

After an invigorating evolution of strong coffee, Morning Prayer, and cantering about on the horse, I set my mind to the Feast of the Ascension. I liked this, from Austin Farrer's 'Crown of the Year',

“All his life long Christ’s love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God. The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord.”

Farrer was, to my mind, genius and a holy man with it.

Have a blessed Feast,

LSP

PS. Some people have rashly supposed that this site is against Mr. Steyn. That is not true.

Good Friday

I was struck by the following, from Rebirth of Images, by Farrer:

"On the sixth day of the week, and the sixth hour, says St. John (Jn. 19: 13-22; cf. Rev. 13: 16-14:1), the kingdoms of Christ and Antichrist looked one another in the face in Pilate's court, and the adherents of the False Prophet (Caiaphas) firmly wrote on their foreheads the mark of the Beast, when they said, 'We have no King but Caesar.' Presently they saw the Lamb uplifted with his true Name over his head, 'King of the Jews': and for all they could do, they could not get it erased: 'What I have written,' said Pilate, 'I have written.' Christ's Friday victory is the supreme manifestation also of Antichrist."

Do note that Antichrist is captain of the losing team.

Have a blessed Good Friday!

LSP

When there's no more room in Hell...

...the Dead shall walk the Earth.

Taught the usual course on the Book of Revelation tonight, going over the structure of chapter 6 and St. John's use of the four angelic "beasts around the throne" to launch the sevenfold series of visions brought on by the unsealing of the scroll.

According to Farrer, the beasts have astrological significance - Lion, Bull, Man, Eagle, or, Leo, Taurus, the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and the constellation of the Eagle, which is the heliacal equivalent of Scorpio. These serve as 'leads' for the four horsemen of the apocalypse - Leo/Lion for the conquering rider on the white horse, standing for Christ, the victorious Lion of Judah. The Bull/Taurus follows next, as the beast of slaughter, with the rider of the red horse bearing a sword. Then the Eagle, the rider of the black horse carrying scales, signifying famine, and lastly the Man/Water Bearer rides on as pestilence - a summation of the series.

But why the inversion of Eagle for Man? Because St. John is following Ezekiel's list of plagues - sword, famine and pestilence (Ez. 6:11) - and the constellation of the scales, the sign of scarcity, is in the very claws of the Eagle's zodiacal equivalent, Scorpio. Man, standing for winter and the death of the year, serves duty as the final rider, bringing pestilence ('the Death'). And the horsemen? St. John has gone back to the Prophet Zechariah (Chs 1, 6), where four angelic riders on white, red, black and dappled horses scout the earth.

The following three visions take up the imagery of the first three, ending with a new series of angelic trumpet blasts which unfold sevenfold pestilence upon the earth. And so the series of apocalyptic visions rise in intensity towards the enthronement of Antichrist and the False Prophet.

At which point I asked the people if they suspected that the spirit of Antichrist stalked the land - they did, very much so, and then the heavens opened with a mighty crash of thunder and pounding rain. Dramatic, I tell you.

But speaking of horsemen, a helpful parishioner has found an eight year old thoroughbred, which I could have for the cost of feed. An ex-racer, evidently. Tempting.

And Healthcare? I'm not sure I trust the Executive Order - but what do I know?

Stay on the horse,

LSP

Eschaton

Along with the ride and shoot imperative goes a bit of reflection on the Revelation to St. John the Divine. Why? Because apocalypse seemed suitably Lenten and I foolishly told one of the Missions that I'd teach a course on it - something I've never done before. Farrer gives a powerful account; here's an excerpt, on bestial numerics:

"The number of the Beast reveals him as both the instrument of judgement on the wicked and the object of judgement himself. But that is not all. St. John takes up two mathematical properties of the 666. First, 666 is what we should call the recurrent decimal for 2/3. St. John's age did not talk about recurrent decimals, but of course St. John could recognize 666 as two-thirds of that standard quantity, the thousand. Why is Antichrist two-thirds? because the angels of the trumpets (showing the enthronement of pagan power) have destroyed one-third of everything before he begins to reign, and the angels of the vials return with total destruction as he comes to his end. In the interval he reigns over a kingdom of two-thirds."

Farrer goes on to describe 666 as the triangulation of 6 x 6:

"666, therefore, is a 12 fold triangle with a periphery of 30 x 3 1/2. St. John's calculation of the period of the Beast's reign, in days, is 12 (months) x 30 (days) x 3 1/2 (years). The coincidence between this reckoning and the factors of the 666 triangle is no mere accident... the purpose of the artificial reckoning is to exhibit the Beast's fatally limited reign as a function of his number."

There's a lot of mathematics in the Revelation, unfortunately for me, but whoever said life would be easy?

Speaking of maths, my Revelation class added up the number of horses that were collectively owned by the people in the room and came up with 21 beasts. A decent little force multiplier if things get all eschaton and we have to leave the Union of the False Prophet.

God bless Texas.

LSP

Ash Wednesday

They say that the word Lent comes from the old English for Spring, and it was like that here today after such unseasonably cold weather. Regardless, I always find Ash Wednesday has a bleakness about it, "Remember O man that thou art dust"... But whoever said a penitential season was supposed to be fun.

Still, a parishioner lent me a red-dot optic (Aimpoint copy) for the carbine - well done that man, and the missions seem to be pulling together in a good sort of way. Quite unlike NASA's climatologists, who appear to be little better than a "Kantian fact factory in full swing." Then there's the Arlington Pipebombers that got busted before they could strike a blow for the jihad, or mental instability, or both.

Horses tomorrow and perhaps a shoot - might be interesting to check out the new scope.

Have a blessed Ash Wednesday and a holy Lent.

LSP

A Sign

Some people might say that the above sign is a piece of gun-toting redneck badness. Others might think it greatness. I incline towards the latter.

Thanks, Tom, for the image.

Appointment with horse cancelled due to sleet (for goodness sake), so its back to the Book of Revelation and Austin Farrer. Farrer is genius and, to my mind, the greatest Anglican theologian of the twentieth century - there were several good ones back then.

If the sleet stops might venture out for a shoot.

Cheers,

LSP

Apocalypse

I've been hearing rumours for months, from friends who seem to know about money, that we should expect something nasty on the financial front. I was a bit skeptical, to be honest, but this latest from the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch seems more than a little scary. Here's an excerpt:

"The Big One is coming soon, bigger than the 2000 dot-com crash and the 2008 subprime credit meltdowncombined. A huge market blowout. And as Bloomberg-BusinessWeek predicts: "The results won't be pretty for investors or elected officials."

After the global-debt bomb explodes don't expect a typical bear correction followed by a new bull. Wall Street's toxic pseudo-capitalism is imploding. Be prepared for a massive meltdown. Yes, already the third major bubble-bust of the 21st century, triggered once again by Wall Street's out-of-control Fat Cat Bankers. And it's dead ahead.

Can your family survive in the anarchy after the debt bomb explodes?

America's already descending into economic anarchy. We're all trapped in a historic economic supercycle, a turning point that must bleed through a no-man's land of lawless self-destructive anarchy before a neo-capitalistic world can re-emerge."

I'd say that wasn't very encouraging. Off to study The revelation to St. John the Divine as interpreted by Austin Farrer - Rebirth of Images, well worth the read.

Stockpile ammo and food,

LSP