KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 October

There was war in heaven.

Where does that come from? We have been looking at the accounts of creation in the first and second chapters of the Book of Genesis which complement one another about the place of our humanity in the created order. We have seen that ‘adam’, meaning our humanity collectively speaking, is embedded in the whole order of creation, connected to every other aspect of the natural world, and yet, distinct and different by virtue of being made “in the image of God,” and as “the dust of the ground” into which God breathes his Spirit. The challenge lies in how we think what these things mean.

As we have noted, being made in the image of God counters a modern misreading of dominion. To be made in the image of God means to act in the image of God, to act in the way of divine dominion. What is that? It means to act with care and concern for everything in the created order as derived from God, “to till the ground,” as Genesis 2 puts it. Our “dominion” provides no warrant for our manipulation, abuse, and technocratic domination of the world. Instead we are called to care and respect for the world and for one another. But what if we deny or reject that idea? Therein lies the long, long story of sin and evil. It has to do with the denial of God and of our being made in God’s image.

The reading from Revelation about war in heaven belongs to the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels celebrated on September 29th. It has a particular significance for our school. The Fall term is properly known as Michaelmas Term as derived from the great Medieval universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. Angels in this sense belong to intellectual life. We are with the angels in our thinking and loving the good. The angels are pure intellectual, and non-material spiritual beings, the thoughts of God in creation, the invisible reasons for the visible things of creation. They belong to the spiritual landscape of the Scriptures of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions and to the intellectual world of Hellenic philosophy in its interaction with those traditions.

The angels teach us, Thomas Aquinas, known as the angelic doctor, says “by moving our imaginations and strengthening our understanding”. But what are we to make of this reading? The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine is the last book of the Christian Scriptures. The imagery here looks back to the Genesis story of creation and the Fall. The story of the Fall, as we will see, is about how we separate ourselves from God, the world, and one another through the sin of disobedience and discover division, death and suffering. That is really about a denial of our being as made in the image of God. Genesis 2 offers the possibility of a way of beginning to make some sense of the negative side of our humanity. Not only is our humanity said to be made in God’s image, but it is only our humanity which is given a commandment by God in the paradise of creation. We are told not to eat of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for in the day that you do you will die.” Wow. To be given a commandment implies rationality.  There is more to us than just our instinctual drives and desires.

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Prayers and liturgy

Remigius, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Remigius (c. 438-533), Bishop of Rheims, Apostle to the Franks (source):

O God, who by the teaching of thy faithful servant and bishop Remigius didst turn the nation of the Franks from vain idolatry to the worship of thee, the true and living God, in the fullness of the catholic faith; Grant that we who glory in the name of Christian may show forth our faith in worthy deeds; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. John 14:3-7

Jean Alaux, The Baptism of ClovisRemigius was consecrated bishop of Rheims at age 22. The pagan Clovis I, who had married the Christian princess Clothilde, began his reign as king of the Franks about 20 years later, in 481.

Before entering combat against German tribes at Tolbiac, Clovis prayed to “Clothilde’s God” for victory. His soldiers won the battle, and Clothilde asked Remigius to teach the king about Christianity. Clovis was amazed by the story of “this unarmed God who was not of the race of Thor or Odin”. In the words of Remigius, the king came “to adore what he had burnt and to burn what he had adored”.

In 496, Remigius baptised Clovis in a public ceremony at Rheims Cathedral. Three thousand Franks also became Christians. Under the king’s protection, Remigius was able to spread the gospel and build churches throughout Gaul.

Artwork: Jean Alaux, The Baptism of Clovis, 1825. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rheims, France.

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Prayers and liturgy

Jerome, Doctor and Priest

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Jerome (c. 342-420), Priest, Monk, Translator of the Scriptures, Doctor of the Church (source):

O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant Jerome, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-48

Caravaggio, Saint Jerome Writing, c. 1605-06One of the most scholarly and learned early church fathers, St. Jerome devoted much of his life to accurately translating the Holy Bible from the original languages of Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

Born near Aquileia, northeast Italy, of Christian parents, Jerome travelled widely. He received a classical education at Rome and travelled to Gaul where he became a monk. He later moved to Palestine, spending five years as an ascetic in the Syrian desert. In 374, he was ordained a priest in Antioch. He then pursued biblical studies at Constantinople under Gregory Nazianzus and translated works by Eusebius, Origen, and others.

Travelling to Rome in 382, Jerome became secretary to the aged Pope Damasus. By the time the pope died three years later, Jerome had become involved in theological controversies in which he antagonised many church leaders and theologians. He left Rome under a cloud, returning to Palestine where he lived as a monk in Bethlehem for the rest of his life.

Over several decades, Jerome wrote biblical commentaries and works promoting monasticism and asceticism. Most importantly, he produced fresh Latin translations of most of the Old and New Testaments, based on the original biblical languages. This work formed the basis of the Vulgate, which remained the standard Scriptural text of the western church for over a millennium.

Artwork: Caravaggio, Saint Jerome Writing, c. 1605-06. Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

There was war in heaven

In a world of wars and division, it may be too much to contemplate the idea of war in heaven. The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels reminds us of the spiritual warfare between good and evil. But it doesn’t simply leave us with opposition and division, with war and enmity. In a way, we are saved by grammar. “There was war in heaven, “ not there is! But on earth? In human hearts? That is, I am afraid, another matter. This remarkable feast reminds us of the struggle for the good in human hearts and human lives. The struggle, as Revelation suggests, is cosmic, a struggle against spiritual forces, as Paul indicates, against principalities and powers.

Angels belong to the created order. They are, we might say, God’s thoughts in creation. The Gospel reading touches upon an important intellectual consideration: “angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven,” Jesus says. The Gospel reading recalls us to the biblical witness to angels as spiritual beings that are with us in some sense. They are, as the long philosophical tradition of reflection teaches, pure spiritual beings, sempiternal, defined by their will and attention to God. But Revelation reminds us of the fallen angels, of sin and evil as the principle of the denial of God and of their own creation. It is expressed in a series of terms: “the great dragon”, “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.”  Such images take us back to Genesis and to the conditions of creation in the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to the subsequent story of the Fall with the wiles of the serpent whose questions insinuate doubt and denial of what is called emphatically “good”, indeed “very good.”

The questions of the serpent to Adam and Eve deceive by suggesting an alternative explanation at the expense of what God has actually said. Thus, the Genesis story sees sin and evil as rooted in disobedience. The further ramification of such disobedience is seen in the angelic revolt of that great dragon, that old serpent (recalling Genesis), called the devil and Satan. Another term is Lucifer, meaning the light-bearer who becomes the prince of darkness because he literally turns his back on God and on the vocation and truth of his own being. Such is the radical nature of evil, a denial of the Good upon which our being and knowing utterly depend. It is absolutely self-contradictory; it depends upon that which it rejects. Such is the folly of sin and evil. It means to live in contradiction to the principle of the Good which is by definition greater and prior. The passage from Revelation shows us the victory of St. Michael and All Angels over all that opposes the truth and goodness of God. The victory is through the blood of the Lamb, a reference to Christ and his passion and sacrifice for us, a victory which is cosmic in its extent and force.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Michael and All Angels

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O EVERLASTING God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant, that as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 12:7-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 18:1-10

Guido Reni, Saint Michael Tramples SatanThe name Michael is a variation of Micah, and means in Hebrew “Who is like God?”

The archangel Michael first appears in the Book of Daniel, where he is described as “one of the chief princes” and as the special protector of Israel. In the New Testament epistle of Jude (v. 9), Michael, in a dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, says, “The Lord rebuke you“. Michael appears also in Revelation (12:7-9) as the leader of the angels in the great battle in Heaven that ended with Satan and the hosts of evil being thrown down to earth. There are many other references to the archangel Michael in Jewish and Christian traditions.

Following these scriptural passages, Christian tradition has given St. Michael four duties: (1) To continue to wage battle against Satan and the other fallen angels; (2) to save the souls of the faithful from the power of Satan especially at the hour of death; (3) to protect the People of God, both the Jews of the Old Covenant and the Christians of the New Covenant; and (4) finally to lead the souls of the departed from this life and present them to our Lord for judgment. For these reasons, Christian iconography depicts St. Michael as a knight-warrior, wearing battle armor, and wielding a sword or spear, while standing triumphantly on a serpent or other representation of Satan. Sometimes he is depicted holding the scales of justice or the Book of Life, both symbols of the last judgment.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Link to the Audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 16

To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge

Paul in Ephesians lays out wonderfully the principle that will underlie the itinerary of the soul in what becomes the Trinity season in the liturgy of the Church. It is about our being “rooted and grounded” in love. We journey in love and bylove to love in the growing awareness of God and of ourselves, mysteries which by definition we can never fully exhaust. The journey of the soul is something inward albeit conveyed by our reflection upon things outward in creation and even through suffering and tribulation, our own tribulations as well as others. The love of God is learned through things positive and negative; both lift us up into the mystery of God which is always greater than ourselves and the world.

Love is learned, not just felt. The passage from Ephesians, like Paul’s great hymn to love in 1st Corinthians, belongs to the intellectual traditions of amor which in turn draw upon the Platonic eros, the passionate desire to know, so profoundly explored and explicated in the Symposium. Love leads us to the Good, to the knowledge of a principle of beauty and goodness upon which every part of the journey, from the very lowest to the very highest depends. It is what Paul speaks of here as “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of love, the love of God running through all things. In the Christian understanding, it means “to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge;” in short, to know what is beyond our knowing.

Such a way of thinking challenges our contemporary assumptions about an instrumental, mechanical, and technocratic reason which reduces us all to objects, to things. That is really a kind of anti-love, a betrayal of the love of God which is the ground of our very being and knowing. It is very much the dilemma and problem of our age. Yet “wisdom taught me,” the Wisdom of Solomon says, but are we teachable? Are we able to learn about the unum necessarium, the one thing necessary which has to do with our life in God and God in us, the very things which the Scriptures, the liturgy, and the Faith would teach us? And how will we learn the lessons of love?

In today’s Gospel, we have a story which teaches the meaning of our being “rooted and grounded” in love, the love that passeth human knowing at the same time as it is the truth of human knowing. What we are presented with is a healing miracle of restoration to life motivated by compassion, a very rich and powerful concept, however much it is misunderstood. The theme of compassion is rooted, even grounded, in something intellectual. “When Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her.” It is a recurring expression – seeing followed by compassion followed by love in action.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 28 September – 4 October

Tuesday, September 29th, St. Michael & All Angels
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, October 4th, Trinity 17
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:13-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17

Jean-Baptiste Wicar, The Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of NainArtwork: Jean-Baptiste Wicar, The Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of Nain, 1816. Oil on canvas, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille.

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Prayers and liturgy

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Bishop of Winchester, scholar, spiritual writer (source):

Lancelot AndrewesO Lord God,
who didst give Lancelot Andrewes many gifts
of thy Holy Spirit,
making him a man of prayer and a pastor of thy people:
perfect in us that which is lacking in thy gifts,
of faith, to increase it,
of hope, to establish it,
of love, to kindle it,
that we may live in the light of thy grace and glory;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 2:1-7a
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:1-4

A prayer of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes:

Thou, O Lord, art the Helper of the helpless,
The Hope of the hopeless,
The Saviour of them who are tossed with the tempests,
The Haven of them who sail; be thou all to all.
The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us,
Prosper thou the work of our hands upon us,
Oh! prosper thou our handiwork
Lord, be thou within us, to strengthen us;
without us to keep us; above us to protect us;
beneath us to uphold us; before us to direct us;
behind us to keep us from straying;
round about us to defend us.
Blessed be Thou, O Lord our Father, for ever and ever. Amen.

Southwark Cathedral, Lancelot Andrewes TombGraphic: Tomb of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 September

Wisdom taught me

Our Chapel reflections on Genesis 1 continue beyond that opening chapter in all its monumental grandeur to later considerations such as in the Book of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon. Genesis 1 has reminded us of the critical point that how we think about the created order ultimately shapes our thinking and acting towards one another especially in the light of our being made in the image of God. God as the ordering principle in creation counters and corrects our misuse of nature and one another as well as our mistaken views of ourselves. Education is about the mediation of ideas to us that are incorporated in us and shape our being and our understanding.

Far from being a one-off concern, the idea of creation is an underlying theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and shapes the later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic imaginary. Creation as the unfolding of the intellectual principle, God, means that how we think about ourselves and our world inevitably and necessarily centers on God. It is in that understanding that we truly begin to learn about ourselves. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God says to Job in that great classic of human suffering and grace. The grace lies precisely in God’s speaking to Job, questioning him and calling him to account through his wisdom in creation. It is the counter to our attempts to make God accountable to us. Job will be at once humbled and exalted. God’s questions, rhetorical and arresting, remind us that wisdom belongs to God, first and foremost. That God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind emphasizes his power and nature as beyond nature and his wisdom as more than human reason. His questions recall both Job and us to God in whose image we are made.

Yet creation is revelation and so it speaks to the dignity of our humanity in terms of our relation to wisdom and truth. The Wisdom of Solomon reminds us that “both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill.” We are taught by Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, and by that wisdom as manifest in creation. “She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty … she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends with God.” In a famous phrase, “she reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well,” suaviter et fortiter, sweetly and strongly. Creation is not static; God sustains its being in the wisdom through which all things are made.

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