A Walking Sacrament
“A Walking Sacrament”
An address to the St. John Vianney Chapter of SSC by Fr. David Curry
August 4th, 2022
Christ Christ, Windsor, Nova Scotia
This address can be downloaded as a pdf document (which includes footnotes) by clicking here. A PowerPoint presentation accompanying the address can be downloaded here.
Thank you, Fratres, my brothers, for being here at Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia, and, especially, to those who have travelled such long distances in these seemingly ‘perilous times’ to come to what might seem to some of you to be, if not ultima thule, then at least very much next door to the farthest ends of the world!
SSC is a spiritual fellowship of Catholic Priests within the churches of the Anglican Communion, itself situated at least historically and traditionally within an understanding of how Anglicans, itself a later term, understand themselves as “an integral portion of the One Body of Christ composed of Churches which, united under the One Divine Head and in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, hold the One Faith revealed in Holy Writ, and defined in the Creeds as maintained by the undivided primitive Church in the undisputed Ecumenical Councils; receive the same Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation; teach the same Word of God, partake of the same Divinely ordained Sacraments, through the ministry of the same Apostolic Orders; and worship One God and Father through the same Lord Jesus Christ, by the same Holy and Divine Spirit who is given to them that believe to guide them into all truth,” to quote at length one of the most remarkable statements of catholicity and doctrinal restraint that is the legacy and living force of things in Canada, the Solemn Declaration of 1893 (Cdn BCP, viii). Yet, in my view, it speaks to something much deeper and much more profound and which relates to the aims and objectives of the SSC in the face of the various disorders of polity, moral, and doctrinal understanding that beset the churches in our age.
The task and challenge is to locate the spirituality of the priesthood within such a catholic vision that the Solemn Declaration envisions. That means finding ways to think about our priestly life, what it means in a reformed catholic understanding, and how it speaks to the spiritual confusions of our age. To be a priest is to be a servant of Christ in the midst of the body of Christ. What is impressed inwardly upon our lives of the sacrificial love of Christ is to be expressed outwardly in our work “to the glory of thy Name and the edification of thy Church” (BCP, p. 546). We do not live for ourselves but for others.
Yet we do so as a spiritual fellowship of priests, as those who have been called and chosen, set aside, dedicated, and charged by God’s grace to be “messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord” (BCP, p. 648). It is not us per se but what is given to move in us. SSC at its best, historically and prophetically, is about the radical nature of the call to service in Christ. It is not political or worldly; it is meant to be transformative spiritually. It speaks to the very heart of the ministry: another lives in us so that Christ can live in those whom we serve.
