Trinity XVI 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, etc. The address is very simple: ‘O Lord’. The collect quickly moves to the petition. The…
Collect for Trinity XIII
ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service; Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord, etc. ALMIGHTY…
Coronatide, Pascal, and Richard H. Timberlake
There are a few things someone in the United States can safely say in favor of ‘the novel Coronavirus’ (CoViD-19). On the plus side, there’s little traffic and it’s been a long time since a gallon of gas cost $1.56. For another, obsessive news coverage of the virus has displaced obsessive news coverage of the…
The Evidential Power of Martyrdom
The title of this post may recall to some readers Thomas Dubay’s 1999 book, The Evidential Power of Beauty. At one point Dubay suggests a further, and more substantial, reason for my allusion to his work when he quotes Hans Urs von Balthasar on Saint John’s Gospel: ‘it is precisely God’s humiliation which appears as…
Passive obedience: a discussion on authorities
‘Put up thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?’ S.…
Anglican Daily Offices
The first Book of Common Prayer, which is the first of the two Prayer Books authorized in the reign of Edward VI, dates from 1549. The two Daily Offices in this book, Mattins and Evensong, can be seen from different angles as both very traditional and very revolutionary. In fact, I think the Offices are…
Statues, History, Christians
T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ are the greatest English poems of the 20th century. In ‘Little Gidding’, one of the Quartets, Eliot meditates upon time, Christian resignation, and the contingencies of human history in the light of God’s eternity. The particularities upon which Eliot concentrates, the ‘place, / And…people, not wholly commendable’, were ‘[u]nited in the…
Water in Scripture: Part 6 (NT)
Miracles with water Walking upon the water Jesus walks on water in three of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, and John. With this miracle the gospel accounts turn strongly to Old Testament types involving water. In particular this miracle harks back to the wonderful passage of water in the Exodus crossing of the Red Sea, as…
Water in Scripture: Part 5 (NT)
The Baptism of Jesus: Saint Luke 3:21-22 By the time Saint Luke reaches the story of the baptism, his infancy narrative already has introduced John the Baptist, who in Luke is revealed as a cousin of Jesus and who shares with Jesus wonderfully parallel annunciations and births. Luke extends strongly the slight movement in Matthew…
Water in Scripture: Part 4 (NT)
WATER IN THE NEW TESTAMENT Our study of water to this point has presented introductory ideas concerning typological interpretation of Scripture, then has applied such interpretation to uncover the significance of water in Scripture in general and, more specifically in the main passages in the Old Testament that use water in typologically significant ways. All…
