Ghostly Counsel

I find this helpful, you might too:

WHO has not sometimes thought: If I could see Jesus Christ as he was on this earth; if I could talk with him, if I could have certainty from those divine lips, and read assurance in those steady eyes, then I should lay hold of God.  So we think, but not so he teaches.  He is in the Supper Room, desiring in that last opportunity to enlighten his disciples' minds and to assure their faith.  But beyond a point he cannot.  He cannot teach them as fully, he says, as the Holy Ghost will teach them hereafter.  It is not so much the word of Jesus knocking at the mind's door that secures his admittance; it is the God within drawing the bolts with invisible fingers.  When your pride, he says, when your self-sufficiency has been shattered by the experience of my death, the Spirit will secure the admittance of all the truth you need to know.  And so it is: after half an hour's repentance before the cross of Christ, the Spirit shows us what years of study cannot discover, and what Christ present in the flesh might not avail to make us see. (Austin Farrer, Crown of the Year)

 

I can't and won't add to that.

God bless,

LSP

Ash Wednesday 2022

 

Lent's begun and with it a confrontation with reality, Remember O man that thou art dust to dust thou shall return. And with that we're knocked firmly back onto the first rung of the ascent to holiness, humility and repentance. After all, the most exalted of human endeavor is dust and ashes before the perfection of God.

So we cry out, heartrended, have mercy on me a sinner and depart from me for I am a sinful man and Christ in his turn, lifts us up upon the Cross to the Father. Consummatum Est, it is finished. Dust and death, judgement, turns to mercy and redemption won by our Lord's sacrifice on Calvary. 

In union with that we find life, and ashes turn to glory.

God bless you all,

LSP

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saturday Sermon

 

Jesus says to his disciples, who were annoyingly busy fighting among themselves over their respective positions of power in the  coming Kingdom, "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk. 10:45)

Christ does so on the Cross, the throne of his sovereignty, by which he exercises dominion over sin and death, opening the gates of heaven to the faithful and inaugurating the Kingdom. I found this, by the Anglican bishop NT Wright helpful:

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook of our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is much, much more. It is the moment when the story of Israel reaches its climax; the moment when, at last, the watchmen on Jerusalem’s walls see their God coming in his kingdom; the moment when the people of God are renewed so as to be, at last, the royal priesthood who will take over the world not with the love of power but with the power of love; the moment when the kingdom of God overcomes the kingdoms of the world. It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with him. The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. 

 

The dark power that stood in the way of this kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Yes, powerful, though I'd change "garden city" to "heavenly Jerusalem."

That aside, how easy it is to be a porch warrior or for that matter an armchair Christian. Our Savior demands more, we're to take up our cross and follow him, entirely. 

In the end, all will be asked of us. Pray that with James and John we will, by the grace of God, say yes and that by loving as Christ loved us find greatness in the Kingdom of God. And know that the demons, to say nothing of their temporal allies flee before the sign and the life of those who live in Christ crucified.

In Hoc Signo,

LSP

Ash Wednesday Valentines

It's Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day, when we celebrate a martyr, love, and mark our foreheads with an ashen cross as a sign of penance; remember, O man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.

Love is the unifying factor in this apparent clash of Feasts. The love of the martyr for Christ, even to death, the love of a man for a woman and the love of our Lord, supremely manifested on Calvary. So perhaps the calendar isn't as confusing as it seems but I'll spare you the sermon. Here's the Collect instead.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

God bless you all this Lent,

LSP 

Christ the King

Viva Cristo Rey!

Christ's kingship is exemplified in the sacrificial love of the cross and it's frightening to see the irrational rage that can evoke in people.  Why? Perhaps because deep-seated wickedness hates to be exposed and reacts first with derision and then with a kind of brute fury against its opposite.

Christ the King

The Church, which is inevitably drawn to the cross, will have to expect more of that as we get further into our brave new secularist experiment. 

Viva Cristo Rey.

LSP