Episodit
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Our gospel story gives us again the beautiful, simple, and touching story of the poor widow. And it is held up in our lectionary in our stewardship season, as it is reaching its conclusion. And that is so very fitting. Because Christian stewardship, for as much as I have said about it in my recent preaching, really is as simple as the poor widow. Just as she put in everything she had, her whole living, so are we to give our time, talent, and treasure for the glory of God and for the benefit of this parish church. Giving to the church her whole living, everything she had, means she gave her heart.
It means that her intentions in giving could not be but pure and godly. She was humble like the Tax Collector; she made no pretense of long prayers or showiness like the Pharisee. Her offering meant everything to her, and God beheld her offering and lifted it up to heaven, lifted it into glory for all to behold. I wish we knew the name of this poor widow. We are not told her name. But if we were told it, I am certain she would have the word “Saint” before her name and a feast day on the calendar. She surely was full of the Holy Spirit, and she shares that dual-quality of the Saints: that in all things she is to be admired, and that we should imitate her how we can. We admire her for her humility and her faith; let us imitate her in giving to the Church all we can: our heart.
In all things of the Christian life, the Saints are always to be remembered, celebrated, and venerated. I spoke these words about the Saints last Sunday: The Saints are examples to us of genuine stewardship. We can speak of the Saints as gardeners, in that they are dedicated to helping growth happen. Likewise the Saints certainly show humility before Almighty God, Who alone gives the increase. Saints are filled with the awe and fear of God, of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. And the Saints know that in Christ’s garden, which is the Church, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. The Saints themselves do not imitate the Pharisee, who does works to be rewarded by God, but rather they imitate the Tax Collector, the Publican, who is pure humility falls to his knees before God and asks simply for His mercy.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we say that we believe in the Communion of Saints. We say that because the Saints are the living foundation of the Church. They are the living foundation of the Church, the living foundation of the Body of Christ, because Christ lives in them. Certainly Christ was living in the poor widow. He lives in all the Saints. And Christ lives in the poor widow and all the Saints because the Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. We remember the Saints, we celebrate the Saints, we venerate the Saints, because in looking with the eyes of faith upon the Saints who are our fellow wayfarers, our friends, our contemporaries, our colleagues, the “Hall of Fame” Christians: in looking upon the Saints we see people whose ordinary lives were transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ into extraordinary lives of virtue, of faith, hope, and love, and divine wisdom. But it really is as simple as this: the Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. They were full of the Holy Spirit during their existence on earth, and they remain full of the Holy Spirit having run with patience the race set before them, and set before us, they have been taken up into heaven and received the crown of glory that fades not away, the same crown promised to all those who maintain a lively faith in Jesus Christ.
I say “lively faith”—not just “faith,” but faith that is “lively.” What do I mean by that? A lively faith is life in the Holy Spirit: constant wonder, constant awe, ever-sensing the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure: a constant openness to God’s revealing something of Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If a parish takes seriously Christian stewardship, it becomes a garden with gardeners seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of Life: the giver of growth, and the only giver of growth, the only giver of increase. Gardens have a culture of biological and microbial activity; without that microbial culture, little to no plant growth happens. A parish is a garden that will grow if it has the right culture, as well: a culture of genuinely spiritual activity. A parish will grow if its culture is of the Holy Spirit and His Kingdom – indeed, a “Kingdom Culture,” within which our Saviour Jesus Christ lives and reigns as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lamb of God around Whom worship all the Angels and all the Saints, through Whom all things are made, and Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.12
While the King was on His dining couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance. My Beloved is to me a bundle of myrrh that shall lie between my breasts. My Bloved is to me a grape-cluster from Cyprus in the vineyards of Engaddi.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Surely the Church, having received such gifts or promises from her Creator, continually responded and further declared the devotion with which she would undertake these works, saying: “While the King was on His dining couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance.” Now “the King’s dining couch” is what she calls the time of His Nativity, during which He deigned to be humbled for our sake and to be brought down Himself so that we might be raised up. Clearly, on this dining couch He has willed both to refresh His Church with life-giving food and to be refreshed Himself with her good deeds. For this reason He says: “I am the living bread that came from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever” (Jn 6.51); and again to the disciples, concerning the people who believe in Him, He says, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (Jn 4.32). And the fragrance of nard represents the ardor of right action. “While the King was on His dining couch,” she says, “my nard gave forth its fragrance,” because when the Son of God had appeared in flesh the Church increased in its fervor for heavenly virtues – not that she had no spiritual persons devoted to God before His Nativity, but because she subjected herself without any hesitation to the more rigorous practice of virtues at the time when she learned that access to the heavenly kingdom is open to all who live rightly, as soon as the bonds of flesh are dissolved. Now we should note that the figure in this little verse was also fulfilled according to the letter in the deeds of Saint Mary Magdalene, who contained a type of the church when she anointed the Lord’s head and feet with an ointment of nard as He was reclining at supper, “and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment” (Jn 12.3), as the holy Gospel accounts bear witness. In one of them it is also indicated what kind of nard that was, for it is said, “A woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment of nard of very precious spikes” (Mt 14.3), evidently because its tips extend themselves into ears and therefore they will up the spikes and leaves with a double portion of nard oil. The naturalists write that it is the chief among ointments, hence it was deservedly used in anointing the body of the Lord.
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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In professional sports there are all-star games. This is certainly true of professional baseball, professional basketball, professional hockey, and professional football (although football calls theirs the “pro-bowl” and basically no one pays any attention to it). To arrive at the group of players in these sports that participate in the all-star game involves balloting, they are elected. What are these all-star teams but those players who have been given gifts by God up and above their colleagues, and who have cooperated with those God-given gifts, in a way notable and singular, so as to be recognized by the peers as extraordinary? This same sort of thing is seen as well in the halls of fame in professional sports (and college sports, I might add). Those elected to the hall of fame play the same sport as young children do in their pick-up games, or their little league games. The game is basically the same no matter if you are playing in your backyard or the local park or arena, or if you are playing at the highest professional level. There is a spectrum of skill, and certain players are given gifts up and above the rest; those players are admired and imitated.
It is the same with the Saints of holy Church. Whereas in sport the discipline is centered on developing skills, in Christianity the discipline is centered on discipleship. Every baptized Christian is a disciple, but like sport we see in the Church a spectrum of discipleship. On one end are the Christians baptized yesterday – no matter the age, because every baptized person starts at square 1 in terms of relationship with God, Who (in the teaching of both S. Peter and S. Paul) shows no partiality, emphasized by the famous teaching of S. Paul to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” And on the other end are the canonical Saints of the Church, “canonical” meaning on the Kalendar with the title “Saint” before their name. Saints are those holy men and women who have been given certain gifts by God of prayer and service, and who in recognizing the gifts given them by God have cooperated with this grace so as to give all of their time, talent, and treasure to the glory of God and the upbuilding of His Church.
Thus we see how, on the Feast of All Saints, the Saints are examples to us of genuine stewardship. We can speak of the Saints as gardeners, in that they are dedicated to helping growth happen. Likewise the Saints certainly show humility before Almighty God, Who alone gives the increase. Saints are filled with the awe and fear of God, of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. And the Saints know that in Christ’s garden, which is the Church, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. The Saints themselves do not imitate the Pharisee, who does works to be rewarded by God, but rather they imitate the Tax Collector, the Publican, who is pure humility falls to his knees before God and asks simply for His mercy.
In the Apostles’ Creed, which in Anglican liturgy is also called our Baptismal Creed, we say “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints.” These all go together, not merely in a sequence of words but the very nature of God’s economy and saving plan: the Holy Spirit establishes the Church, which is Christ’s Body, and He calls men and women as Holy Saints to lead the Church, both in their life and in their heavenly intercession and supplication. The Saints are full of the Holy Spirit. The Saints have been transformed by the Gospel. Thus the Saints are concrete proof that the promises of the Gospel are true. We are in communion with the Saints through Jesus Christ: they are our friends, they are our colleagues, they are our teachers in how to follow Christ, they are our contemporaries.
I said before that the all-star professional players are admired and imitated. Again, this is the same as with the Saints. Everything about them we should admire – and there is so much to admire in the lives of the Saints, for the diversity of the Saints baffles simple analysis. And what we can imitate of the Saints, we should be ever trying to do. To imitate the Saints is to imitate how they follow the Law as summarized by Jesus: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind: and to love our neighbor as ourself. In loving God and our neighbor, the Saints demonstrate what Christian love is, how Saint Paul describes love: love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And without this love, says Saint Paul, no matter what we do, we are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal; indeed without love, we are nothing.
What Saint do you seek to not only admire but imitate? If you do not have one, it is time to get one. Who is your favorite Saint? If you do not have a favorite Saint, start to read about the lives of the Saints, and start to come to our weekday liturgy where we keep the feast days of the Saints of the New Testament as well as certain other important Saints, like S. Francis of Assisi and several others. If we want the Holy Spirit to come, to inspire our souls, if we want to be gardeners in Christ’s garden, if we want the culture of our parish must be one in which we are constantly asking for the Holy Spirit to come, which means His Kingdom come – let us deepen our communion with the Saints, let us build our living relationship with the Saints, one Saint at a time. To celebrate and venerate Saints is to celebrate and worship Christ in them, because Christ is in us and we in Him. In the simplest of terms, the Saints teach us how to be a better parish, better disciples, better gardeners: indeed the Saints teach us how to be an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God. All because the Saints are completely full of Christ, full of grace and heavenly benediction, completely filled by Him Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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“And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’” What could sight be for us, except the capacity to discern what is holy from what is unholy? As we heard from the Epistle to the Hebrews, having the “faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” To distinguish what is of the Holy Spirit from that which is from the flesh, the world, and the devil? So that we can recover our sight, so that we can truly see. And in seeing, all the more readily and effectively exercise our stewardship, through our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure.
This is the third of my sermons on stewardship. I am offering sermons on this topic because our stewardship reflects our entire attitude to the Church, which is realized within our parish. In my first sermon I spoke of stewardship as seeing ourselves, members of this congregation, as gardeners: that we are to do what gardeners do: help growth happen, through cooperating with God; gardeners who have in mind an image of the harvest to get through the difficult work, which for us is the image of an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God.
In my second sermon, I spoke of being gardeners who show humility before Almighty God. As Saint Paul teaches, it is not us but God Who gives the growth, only God Who gives the increase. And we are made humble by our awe of God, from Whom all growth comes – in awe of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made.
Stewardship entails being a gardener in the garden of Christ with profound respect for the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life. In Christ’s garden, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. For our parish to be Christ’s garden is for us to recognize that the Holy Spirit can act powerfully, such as to make the impossible possible. Our stewardship is thwarted by pride, yet it is genuine in humility. I spoke of always seeking to serve our awesome God, serve His awesome power, serve His incredible creativity, serve His loving energy that gives all things life, that fills all things with His sacramental blessing, that shines with the brightness of heaven in even the darkest of places, illumining all things with the torch of Christ’s light which ever burns with health, with salvation, with the peace that passes all understanding.
In support of all of this understanding of stewardship, we hear this teaching from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for His sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” In hearing these words “our work and the love which we show for His sake in serving the saints,” as about us as well, we can hear them as directly about our stewardship. Our work and the love which show for God’s sake in serving the saints, which here means fellow Christians alive as well as faithfully departed, this is our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure. Our tithe is for God’s sake, that He will give the growth if we, as gardeners, through work and love shown for God’s sake, truly serve Christians; that is through work and love help Christians grow in their faith. For that to happen, we need to give our tithe: of time in worship and prayer, that we ourselves are fed by grace and remember God’s law to love Him with our whole being, and love Him in our neighbor; for that to happen, we need to give our tithe of talent, in support of the ministries ongoing in this parish (Vestry, liturgical ministry, ECW, Daughters of the King, Atrium catechesis, the various teams we have, and the rest); and for Christians to grow in their faith, we need to give our tithe of treasure, to allow the parish to operate within the financial realities of the world today.
Yet the passage from Hebrews recognizes a common problem in parish stewardship, which is sluggishness. Sluggishness is really a word that often describes normal parish life, isn’t it? We know the Gospel, and we are sluggish in proclaiming it. We know the Gospel, but we are sluggish in living it out, day to day. We know the Gospel, but we are sluggish in offering our threefold tithe, especially our tithe of time and talent. And so understanding the remedy for sluggishness is central to stewardship.
“And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he recovered his sight and followed Him on the way.” And immediately his sluggishness gave way to a full-hearted offering of himself as a disciple of Christ. And so, as part of our stewardship, which emerges from our whole attitude toward the Church, we must ask Jesus to help us see. We must ask Christ for His mercy. We must ask for the Holy Spirit to come, to inspire our souls. The culture of our parish must be one in which we are constantly asking for the Holy Spirit to come; constantly seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit; constantly aware of His power, His creativity, ever humble before Him Who is the Lord and giver of life: a culture soaked in relationship with the Holy Spirit. Let us ask, knowing that our Saviour Christ hears all prayers, and sends His Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, to those who are humble and devout; all because Christ lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe -
Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Emphasizing the importance of keeping the sobriety of a turtledove, the Bridegroom adds: “Your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.” Surely it is through the neck that we both take in food to nourish the body and bring forth words with which we declare the secrets of our hearts to our neighbors. For this reason the role of the church’s teachers is rightly represented by the neck, since they both instruct the unlearned with an edifying word and in the process of that same instruction convey the food of salvation to the members of the holy Church entrusted to them. Clearly, this neck is rightly compared to jewels. . . . The necklaces are also ornaments for a virgin’s neck, namely, little chains woven with golden bands. . . . These aptly signify the weaving together of the divine scriptures through which the loveliness of holy Church increases when every single one of the faithful strives to shine with virtues by observing the words and deeds of the fathers more and more. For the gold from which He says that the necklaces are made is the splendor of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and the silver with which he states they are inlaid is understood as the luster of heavenly eloquence. Now what He promises in the plural (“We will make you”) is said with reference to those through whom sacred scripture has been ministered to us by the agency and cooperation of God’s spirit, of whom there have been very many from the time in which Solomon foretold these things until that which is to come. Therefore, He encircles the Bride’s neck with gold necklaces inlaid with silver because He has prepared divine diadems for the Church by inspiring those whom He has placed in authority with responsibility for teaching His faithful, and He encircles her neck with necklaces fashioned by the craftsman’s art when every faithful soul continually looks towards the holy Scriptures in all that she says or does, or perhaps I should say in everything that she lives and hopes, and diligently directs both her mind and her words according to their pattern, and thus this little verse is joined to the one above, for the reason that holy Church’s cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s (that is, that her modesty remains inviolate) is because frequent meditation on divine Scripture does not allow her to err.
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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Our Gospel passage picks up with two of the close apostles of Christ – Ss James and John, sons of Zebedee, sons of thunder—asking our Lord to sit one at His right hand and one at His left in His glory. This is their processing of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which they, along with S. Peter, witnessed. They were in awe of Christ’s Transfiguration, and wanted to emulate the two they saw with Jesus at that moment: Moses and Elijah, and Christ’s right and left hand. They wanted to emulate Moses and Elijah out of their yearning for intimacy with Jesus, of Whom they were utterly in awe. And their awe, along with the awe of the whole of the Upper Room Church of Jerusalem grew when they read passages out of the prophet Isaiah as we hear today—that this Jesus, the eternal Son and Word of the Father, begotten before all worlds, King of kinds, Lord of lord, this Jesus has bourne our griefs and carried our sorrows; that this Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. And their humility grew when they realized they too were the sheep that had gone astray, that they too had turned every one to his own way, away from Him who poured out His soul to death, bearing the sins of us all.
Awe and humility—I believe both are tied in to stewardship, as I will seek to illustrate.
This is the second of my sermons on stewardship. I am offering sermons on this topic because stewardship summarizes our entire attitude to the Church, which includes the local expression of the One Church our parish. In my first sermon I spoke of stewardship as seeing ourselves, members of this congregation, as gardeners. Understanding the stewardship of this parish means seeing ourselves, seeing this congregation, as gardeners.
I went into last Sunday what this means. God has brought each and every one of us here, to this Parish, to be gardeners of His new creation. God wants us to help Him bring about the increase of the harvest. God has called each of us forth to do in this Parish what gardeners do in their garden: help it grow. That is what our tithe of time, talent, and treasure is for: the means for growth. If we want this parish to grow, then let us do the hard work of giving our time in attending the Liturgy and praying at home, let us give our talent in support of the ministries ongoing in this parish, and let us give generously of our treasure, to allow the parish to operate within the financial realities of the world today.
I also spoke last Sunday about having an inspiring image in our minds, as we take up the work of offering our threefold tithe. We need such an image because the work is often arduous, difficult, and in the immediate sense, it can be not very rewarding. A gardener would have in his mind the image of the harvest, and this image inspires hard work in the present. For us, I offered up the image of an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God. Adoring: in that with reverence we adore God Who transcends all conditions of time and space; merciful: in that we perform acts of mercy to help those in need; all with a strong desire to know God: in that we are a congregation with inquiring minds, discerning hearts, a courageous spirit that perseveres to know and love God, with the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works, and in God Himself, as He is known in the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. This image, this portrait, is both who we are now, and who we seek to become more intensely, more thoroughly. We seek here nothing less than participation in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, not as a superficial social club as is sadly too common in today’s American Christianity, but as a holy organism, in holy fellowship, filled with the Holy Ghost.
Another aspect of stewardship is humility. If we are gardeners in the garden of Christ, then we must be humble. As Saint Paul teaches, it is not us but God Who gives the growth, only God Who gives the increase. As it is with a garden, so is it with our parish: God gives the increase, the growth: our job is to cooperate with God, and do all within our power to cultivate the conditions by which God-given growth can occur.
And we are made humble by our awe of God. Let again be in awe of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. To be a gardener in the garden of Christ is to have profound respect for God’s omnipotence. It is to have profound respect as well for the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life. In Christ’s garden, the Holy Spirit dwells. For our parish to be Christ’s garden is for us to recognize that the Holy Spirit can act powerfully, such as to make the impossible possible. Our stewardship is thwarted by our pride, yet it is genuine in our humility.
As is written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” And, the Epistle goes on to say, “Before Him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.” This is true power, indeed flowing from the heavenly realms, the aroma of which fills our church. Our God is indeed an awesome God, because of His awesome power, His incredible creativity, His boundless loving energy. He gave Himself on the Cross that we might grow into Him through the Sacraments. Let us in the stewardship of our parish always seek to serve our awesome God, serve His awesome power, serve His incredible creativity, serve His loving energy that gives all things life, that fills all things with His sacramental blessing, that shines with the brightness of heaven in even the darkest of places, illumining all things with the torch of Christ’s light which ever burns with health, with salvation, with the peace that passes all understanding because it is of the mind of Jesus, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe -
Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Because the verse “I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots” teaches how the Lord protects the Church in the midst of misfortunes, it remains to be shown how much the Church herself preserves the love of the same Lord and Protector when misfortunes occur. There is added: “Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s.” It is said that it is the nature of the turtledove that if it is deprived of the companionship of its mate it will never be joined to another. This is appropriately applied to the chastity of the Church, for even though death has deprived her of the Lord Who is her Bridegroom, nevertheless she can by no means accept the company of strangers, since she holds so dear the remembrance of the One Whom she knows to have been resurrected from the dead and to reign now in heaven, and she is content with only the love of Him to Whom she longs to come one day. For this reason she is accustomed to declare in words she learned from an eminent teacher: “For neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, for depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). This is what holy Church says when she is fearful that perhaps she might turn aside from the way of truth by wandering after the examples of the foolish: “Let I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.” Therefore, since the seat of decorum is in the cheeks, Truth Himself rightly says to her in reply: “Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s,” which is to say, “I have adorned you with such virtue of wholesome modesty that neither the desire for transitory things nor the noisy dogmas of the foolish ever seduce you into drawing back from the chastity you have promised to me in good faith.”
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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This is the first of several sermons on stewardship. Yes, it coincides with the fact that pledge cards for next year are being sent out to every household. Yet it will be a sermon series not merely because of pledge cards. It is a sermon series because the topic of stewardship includes not only the household tithe for next year’s budget, but really the entire attitude we have toward the One, Holy Church and her local embodiment, this very church of Saint Paul in New Smyrna Beach where we are worshiping. To flesh that out will take a number of Sundays.
I want to begin by noting that one of the primary themes of Saint Mark’s gospel is creation. It is Mark’s argument that Jesus of Nazareth initiates a new creation, and is Himself the new creation: that the new creation is embodied in Him. Saint Paul picks this up in his teaching, that everyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The first words of Mark’s Gospel account are: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and this was an intentional move by Mark to immediately bring to mind the Book of Genesis, which starts in a similar way, “In the beginning…”. Christ is the true beginning of the new creation, which is in Him. At the end of his Gospel, Mark describes the women at the empty tomb as full of astonishment. That is a translation of a Greek word, the root of which is our word “ecstasy,” but it has to do also with creation. That is shown by the fact that this same word “ecstasy” used to describe the holy women at Christ’s resurrection is the new word that Moses used in Genesis to describe Adam when God fashioned Eve from his rib, and Abraham when God was making a covenant with him, both moments of new creation.
If Christ is the new creation, and every person who is in Him is a becoming a new creation, our human destiny, our vocation, the way God called (and calls) us into existence, is to become partners or agents of Christ’s new creation, ambassadors for Christ, that God makes His appeal to the world through us, His Church. Another image for this is that God has called us to be gardeners of His creation, the growth of the world and the people of the world into His new creation in Christ. And what do gardeners do but help things grow? It is patient work. It is work based upon hope—hope that the conditions will prevail and the flowers and fruits will bear forth. And indeed it is that thinking about the harvest that fuels the patient, arduous work.
Understanding the stewardship of this parish means seeing ourselves, seeing this congregation, as gardeners. God has brought each and every one of us here, to this Parish, to be gardeners of His new creation. God wants us to help Him bring about the increase of the harvest. God has called each of us forth to do in this Parish what gardeners do in their garden: help it grow. The Church asks of her members, and this church is asking of each one of us, to continue and even increase our tithes—to continue and even increase our offerings to the Parish of our time, our talent, and our treasure. Our tithe is not merely of money: it is of time, talent, and treasure. This is the patient work of the gardener in the time before the flowers and fruits come: tilling the soil, planting seeds, watering, pulling weeds, pruning, fertilizing, and all the rest. Without that work, there will never be beautiful flowers, ripe fruit—and so without our tithe of time, talent, and treasure, the garden here will not grow, but its holiness will wither away.
I said a moment ago that it is that image of the harvest that fuels the patient, arduous work. What such images can inspire us now to continue and even increase our tithe to the Parish? As your Rector I witness many inspiring images, and I know I am not alone in seeing them. We have a beautiful church, a truly holy house of God’s sacred presence and power. We have truly reverent worship, with real devotion to the Eucharist. We are a church that outwardly shows our inward adoration of God. We have a strong sense of outreach to those in need. We have daily activity on our church campus, in our Liturgy, our Fellowship ministries, our Preschool ministry. We have a growing and lively Atrium for our youngest members. These are images that keep us inspired.
Let me share another image that fuels me. It is that we are a parish that wants to learn about God. This is fresh on my mind because we started a new Bible study session on Saturday mornings, which came out of our Summer book study, and because I am soon to announce the subject of the Advent Sunday study. We are getting great turnout at these and our other formation opportunities. We are a parish that wants to learn about God, and we have the resources to provide a godly pedagogy that is wholesome, engaging, and comprehensive.
This is a very important thing. The importance is underscored in the concluding prayer in the Liturgy for Holy Baptism. To the newly baptized person, we ask God to give him “an inquiring mind and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love Thee, and the gift of joy and wonder in all Thy works.” As your rector, this is what I want our parish to support: a congregation with inquiring mind, discerning hearts, a courageous spirit that perseveres to know and love God, with the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works, and in God Himself, as He is known in the power of the Holy Spirit through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The secret of parish growth is spiritual growth in the existing congregation. This is because spiritual growth is the result of the Holy Spirit’s power. And the Holy Spirit acts especially in groups of people that decide to want to learn more about God. The questions that arise in these groups are heard not only by the priest or formation leader, but more importantly these questions are heard by God. And God always responds to the faithful, always responds to those who show they love Him and want deeper relationship with Him.
Having brought to mind all these different images of what our parish is and what it can be, let us put them together: A reverent, merciful, adoring congregation in a beautiful church with strong desire to know God—what an a garden, brothers and sisters. Implant this firmly in your mind and hearts as you receive this week the 2025 pledge cards. Growing this garden demands the patient work of time, talent, and treasure. But God wants His garden to grow, to flourish abundantly through Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Because the Lord does not want holy Church to be ignorant of her true self, but that she should readily desire to learn what gifts she has received from Him and what she ought to suffer and to do for the sake of His love, He consequently indicates what her status is when He goes on to say: “I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh’s chariots.” Surely His “company of horsemen” is what He calls the host of the children of Israel whom He freed from slavery in Egypt. Leading them through the Red Sea into the desert, He eventually brought them into the land promised to the m as an inheritance. The chariots of Pharaoh, who were pursuing them because Pharaoh wanted to drag them back into servitude, He caused to sink into the same sea. Now He calls them a “company of horsemen” from then on, because just as a charioteer is accustomed to preside over a company of horsemen, the Lord Himself then ruled over that same people in such a way as to take charge of it, and guided it in such a way to lead it along the way of salvation. Clearly the one being compared to this company of horsemen is His Church, which He made His friend through the water of regeneration, for He has taught her that when persecutors threaten she should always have faith in His help, just as that former people was certainly terrified and very fearful when Pharaoh’s chariots came upon them but was saved at that time by heavenly protection. For it happened then that a fiery pillar gave light for the people of God but thickest darkness covered the Egyptian hordes so that all through the night they were unable to come near to one another, and this constantly happens also in the night of this world when Divine Providence uses meticulous discernment to separate the righteous from the reprobate, illuminating the righteous with His grace and leaving the reprobate in blindness as they deserve. But since it also happened that when they came to the Red Sea the children of Israel were delivered by the parting of the waves, but the waters returned upon the Egyptians and they were drowned along with their horses and chariots, is it not evident that the very stream of death that will come upon all mortal beings carries away the wicked to destruction while for the pious it opens up the way to salvation? And so far all the rest of the things that we read as having happened to that same company of God’s horsemen (that is, to the Israelite people) in the time of the Egyptian persecution, the more diligently they are examined the more clearly are they found to have anticipated in figure the holy Church of which this people was a portion. And since this verse teaches how the Lord protects the Church in the midst of misfortunes, it remains to be shown how much the Church herself preserves the love of the same Lord and Protector when misfortunes occur.
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Our Lord teaches us today about the Sacrament of Matrimony. He says to the Pharisees: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Saint Paul, writing to the Ephesians, adds “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Why does God want man and woman joined? And what does it mean to say that this refers to Christ and the Church?
One thing we see in the Genesis creation story is that God has endowed human beings with a great deal of freedom. You may eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, God told Adam, which in the literal interpretation means: have at it, enjoy yourself. This is not an unqualified or unlimited freedom, for there is one tree forbidden: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet overall, freedom abounds. What is this freedom for? What is its purpose? What is more, male and female united in matrimony somehow express or make known what it means to exist in this world of God-given freedom. How does this work?
This country has a lot to say about freedom. It is part of our identity as a nation. Ingrained in us is the phrase, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In the Declaration of Independence these are called “unalienable Rights,” meaning impossible to take away. That is because these rights come from God: they are endowed by the Creator. That which comes from God mankind has no ability to remove. We the creatures live within the parameters of creation set forth by our creator God who is omnipotent (everywhere powerful), omniscient (everywhere knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere present).
All people, whether married or unmarried, are created to worship God. We are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord. Fueled entirely by His grace, this is how we save our souls. And as an aid to that activity, an aid to our worship day in and day out, all of the other things on the face of the earth are created for mankind to help us in attaining the end of worship. “It is not good that man should be alone,” our Lord said, and it is as if He might have added, “amid all this freedom.”
And so out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air. They were formed of the same substance as Adam: the dust of the ground. So although humans and animals share an origin in earthly material and are both conceived in His mind, the primary difference between man and animal in Scripture is this: unlike the rest of animals, man has the ability to name the animals, that is, to reflect on their existence. Animals cannot do that. Men and women can. We can reflect on the creatures of the world, and name them. In the ancient world of Scripture, naming something is an action that comes only from understanding the true nature of that thing.
It seems as well that not only can we reflect on the true nature of our fellow creatures, but that it appears that we must. Again Saint Paul, to the Romans: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” Clearly perceiving things that God has made, that is His creatures, reveals God’s power and deity. We must have a constant awareness that everything around us is made by God, and this comes from deep, spiritual perception. The Devil, on the other hand, wants us to be oblivious to this fact; or, if not oblivious, then to have the attitude of “Yes, God man everything; so what, no big deal.” And yet, it is more than a big deal, and for this reason: God makes Himself known to us through creatures. How to worship the Lord—which means to know and love Him—is revealed by understanding the nature of human beings.
Freedom – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – summarizes how to live in God’s creation. As Saint Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” The fully Christian understanding of freedom is poetically expressed in the ninety-sixth Psalm—O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him. To be free means the freedom to fully experience holiness, which comes through worshiping the Holy Trinity. Through “holiness” we recognize God’s presence intimately—an intimate presence in the world, an intimate presence in another person, an intimate presence in each of us. And so, freedom is worshiping the Lord in the beauty of His intimate presence; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him. Awe and wonder—the technical term for which is “fear”—this is the beginning of wisdom. Awe and wonder is the beginning of discipleship. Our ongoing transformation into more mature Christian spirituality happens with awe and wonder at the sheer beauty of the maker of all that is, both seen and unseen—utterly transcendent in His power, knowledge and presence—impossibly close to our hearts and minds, closer to us ever than our own breath. What profound intimacy God has with us!
Man and woman united together in the Sacrament of Matrimony are able to know that kind of profound intimacy. And in knowing with such intimacy, they can experience Christ in each other in the most mysterious of ways. The man experiences Christ in his wife; the woman experiences Christ in her husband. They experience Christ together, for they are one flesh. The Sacrament of Matrimony makes the fundamental unit of humanity–male and female, united –into the fundamental unit of worship. Through each other, they worship the Creator present in His creatures. This is how Matrimony refers to Christ and His Church. The mystery of Christ in us, as Paul again writes: “the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The mystery of man united with woman replicates the mystery of the Church because God seeks to be known intimately, and man and woman united in matrimony are able to know God intimately in each other, and constantly live deeper into that intimacy.
This is I think gets at, perhaps in the deepest sense, why God made them male and female. He created us male and female to properly be free, needing to be joined together to experience Christian freedom, which is freely choosing to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbor (in this case, our spouse): choosing a life of holiness, which is a journey of understanding Christ in each other, and sharing this understanding with everyone around them: children, relatives, and neighbors. A man and a woman need each other to properly worship God, and the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony enshrines this truth. Matrimony is a true embodiment of the Church on earth: that through the man and woman united as one flesh sacramentally in matrimony, the grace of Christ can truly be known, for Matrimony is a channel God uses to pour upon the world the sacrificial grace of His Son. To put it simply: to be a Christian is to be in love with Jesus, even He Who lives and reigns for ever with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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There are two equal and opposite ways to devalue something. One way is to ignore it, which says that it is unimportant. The second way is to give it lots of exposure but in trivial ways, which teaches that it has no significant value. Angels have in recent times been devalued in both these ways.
Angels have been dismissed as religious fairy tales by those who consider themselves too intellectually sophisticated to believe such notions. On the other hand, angels have been trivialized in visual renderings (which almost always seem to be very bad art) as well as being the subject of non-theological myths and fantasies. For example, human beings do not, in fact, become angels when they get to Heaven. Angels are a completely different order of God’s creation. It is like saying oranges become apples when they die. We all know this is wrong: oranges become orange juice.
What is an angel? An angel is a spiritual creature and part of God’s great unseen world. The word angel means “messenger”: messenger of God and His will.
Why are angels important to us? Beyond being messengers of God they are guardians to human beings against danger and temptation, and they especially watch over children. They remind us that we are part of a great spiritual world that is bound up with our material world.
Is belief in angels scriptural? Yes, without question. Mention of angels is found frequently in both the Old and the New Testaments. The Bible refers to cherubim, seraphim, archangels, guardian angels, and more. Saint Paul lists nine kinds of angels, what are often called the nine orders of angels. Angels played a significant role in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.
The doctrine about Angels of the historic, sacramental traditions of Holy Church—that is, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriential Orthodox, Anglican, and Old Catholic—teaches that:
* Christ is the center of the angelic world. They are His angels. They belong to Him because they were created through and for Him. They belong to Him still more because He has made them messengers of His saving plan. They are present with Christ in heaven.
* In the Liturgy of the Church—both Mass and the daily Offices—we join in our worship with the worship of the angelic choir. This choir is ever singing Holy, Holy, Holy. Worship on earth that is holy and sacramental participates directly in the angelic singing: we singing with the Angels, and the Angels singing with us. The Liturgy is an immediate participation in the heavenly reality, which is why ancient Liturgy proclaims: “Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and all the company of heaven [meaning the Saints], we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
* Angels have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announcing this salvation and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan. In the Gospel accounts, Angels are everywhere. From the Incarnation to the Ascension, the life of Jesus Christ is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. They protect Jesus in His infancy, serve Him in the desert, strengthen Him in his agony in the garden. It is angels that proclaim the Good News of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection.
* From its beginning, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life. Everyone has a Guardian Angel.
* Angels are a real part of God’s creation. They are not physical; they do not have material bodies; but they are quite real. Like all of God’s gifts, however, we must cooperate with God’s will in order to receive the guidance and protection God promises us through their ministry.
In light of all this, let us hear the words Our Lord Jesus Christ told His disciples: "I say unto you that their angels ever behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." By these words it is shown that an angel is appointed for every believer as a guardian, who shields him against the devil’s plotting and supports him in holy virtues. As the Psalmist says of every righteous person: “God commanded his angels about you, that they should hold you and bear you in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” It is a great honour for Christians that each person, from birth, has an angel assigned to him as a guardian. Just so it is written of the Apostle Peter that the angel led him out of prison and he came to his companions and asked for entrance, knocking, and the faithful ones said, "It is not Peter who is knocking, it is his angel."
Truly, the angels whom God has appointed as guardians for his chosen never leave his presence, because God is everywhere, and wherever the angels fly they are ever in his presence, and enjoy his glory. They take news of our words and deeds to the Almighty, although to Him nothing is hidden; as the Archangel Raphael said to the man of God, Tobias, "When you prayed, I offered your prayers before God."
The Old Testament tells us that archangels are set over every nation, above the other angels, so that they may protect the peoples, as Moses, in the fifth book of the Old Testament, reveals in these words: "When the high God separated and scattered the offspring of Adam, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the numbers of his angels". The prophet Daniel agrees with this in his prophecy: a certain angel of God spoke to Daniel concerning the archangel who guided the Persians, and said, "The archangel came to me, the leader of the Greek people, and none was my helper but Michael, leader of the Hebrews. Even now Michael, one of the foremost of the leaders, came to support me, and I remained there with the king of the Persians." With these words, when he said that Michael came to help him, it is shown what great care the archangels take in their authority over mankind.
The archangel Michael has care of Christian people, as he had for the Hebrew people of old while they believed in God. It is arranged by God’s dispensation that the glorious angel of heaven Michael is continually the helper of Christians on earth and their advocate in heaven before Almighty God, and His Son Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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I want today to unpack the doctrine taught by the Church Father S. John of Damascus, which is included on our service bulletin. S. John of Damascus says, “The day of the Nativity of the Theotokos [that’s the title of Mary, it means “bearer of God”] is the feast of joy for the whole world, because through the Theotokos the entire human race was renewed and the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy.” The Church rejoices at Mary’s nativity, in other words, for two reasons. The first is that through it the entire human race was renewed, and the second is that through it Eve’s grief was changed into joy.
I will start with the second reason. We rejoice because through the Nativity of Mary, the grief of the first mother Eve was changed into joy. Eve grieved because of her disobedience to God’s will. Her disobedience is her saying “No” to what God ordained for their food. Eve’s “no,” is a refusal of God’s plan of creation. In this, her “no” summarizes and embodies our sinfulness, for we are all sinners in a fallen world. And her “no” summarizes and embodies the entirety of the disobedience toward God seen throughout Old Testament Scripture; the Old Testament is an extensive elaboration of Eve’s refusal of God. Eve’s grief is heard in Moses and Joshua bemoaning the disobedience of the sons of Israel; Eve’s grief is heard in the prophets, rebuking Israel of their stiff-necked hardness of heart. Eve’s grief is the grief of a people lost and alienated from God. Mary changed all this. She counters Eve’s no with a holy and obedient “yes.” Her yes to God comes in her whole life and especially at the annunciation – Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word – her yes, which cooperates with God’s plan of creation, redeems and transforms Eve’s no. Mary’s whole life was a yes to God, and yes which opens the doorway to Christ. Mary’s yes changes the grief of the people of God into joy.
That’s the second part of the teaching of S. John of Damascus. For the first part of S. John’s teaching, let us consider the Gospel passage from Matthew. There are two genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament. These are the genealogy in S. Matthew’s Gospel account, which we just heard, and also that in the Gospel account of S. Luke. Neither make for the most gripping narrative or story, yet there are details of Matthew’s genealogy to notice.
For one, Jesus is described both as the son of David and the son of Abraham. This identification of Jesus as the son of David echoes the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary at the annunciation. To Mary, Gabriel says, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there will be no end.” In 2nd Samuel, chapter 7, God tells David, through Nathan, that “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.” Jesus being the son of David, therefore, ratifies the testimony Christ Himself gave anonymously to David, and makes the physical lineage traced from David also sacred lineage. It is holy because it is physical: body to body, mother to mother.
The identification of Jesus as the son of Abraham creates a specifically spiritual lineage to go along with the physical lineage from David. Abraham expresses faith in God. Genesis 15:6: “And he [Abraham] believed the Lord; and he [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham is known as a father of our faith, because those that believe in the Holy Trinity share in Abraham’s faith, and are children of Abraham: spiritual children, sharing and participating in the Holy Spirit. As S. Paul said to the church in Corinth: “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Cor 6.16). As the Holy Spirit lives in us and moves among us, we are participating in the Kingdom, which is life in the Holy Spirit, the same life initiated in Abraham. S. Paul is even more specific in his Epistle to the Galatians, when Paul writes, “So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. . . . Those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.” Hence within the faith community of the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ. He is part of that spiritual lineage.
Yet Jesus is more than a mere part or participant in the spiritual lineage of Abraham and the physical lineage of David. For the genealogy of S. Matthew concludes by acknowledging Blessed Mary, of whom Jesus was born, Who is called Christ. Jesus is the anointed one, which is what “Christ” means. He is the anointed King Who reigns over the kingdom. He reigns as King on the throne of David over the house of Jacob, and He is the anointed King of the historical faith community of Abraham. Thus the entirety of the revelation was made manifest in Christ; in the words of S. Paul, “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.”
We see clearly that Mary’s role in the economy of God’s plan of salvation is unmistakable. She is part of the physical lineage, and she is part of the spiritual lineage. While salvation history had been unfolding long before she was born, God’s plan of salvation began to come into clarity when the person of Mary herself was born. Without the birth of Mary, the King would not be known. Hence her birth is a feast of joy for the whole world, as S. John of Damascus teaches.
Because of Christ, through her the entire human race was renewed, he also teaches, not because she is the savior, but because He Who is the Saviour, the King, Christ Jesus, is known through her birth of Him, physically and spiritually. Physically, because He was actually born from her; and spiritually, because of Mary’s faith. Because all of the Church celebrates Mary’s acceptance, her cooperation with grace, her yes to God’s initiative to reveal through her the fullness of His plan for salvation, which is Jesus Christ, which came from her yes – because of all this the Church celebrates Mary’s nativity.
In Luke 11 we hear this: “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Blessed is Our Lady because of the physical (the womb that bore, the breasts he sucked), but even more so, Blessed is Our Lady because of the spiritual (hearing the word of God and keeping it); Mary recapitulating Abraham’s obedience and doing so on behalf of us all, changing the Eve’s grief into Gospel joy, for Christ redeems Eve’s disobedience and loss of paradise through the Gospel: the Gospel which is Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
This same Bridegroom (that is, Christ the Eternal Word of God), continues by saying, “And pasture your kids beside the shepherds’ tents,” that is to say, “Feed the lost disciples who have abandoned the words that are given by the one Shepherd through the council of prudent teachers and followed after the doctrines of foolish teachers, for surely I have commanded you that if you love Me, you will indeed pasture, even feed, my sheep (that is, the souls who serve Me in simplicity and innocence) with the word of salvation, and it is My will that you should attend to this duty with so much care that you would prefer to suffer every misfortune and even to undergo the anguish of death rather than to leave off feeding them. How can you not know that you have been betrothed to me Me under the condition that you are to pasture your kids (that is, those who have associated with erring teachers) rather than to wait on the wanton and proud, who are rightly called both “kids” and “your kids,” namely those who are to be positioned on the left hand at the judgment, but they are yours since they have not been instructed according to the rule of my commandments but rather according to your errors (that is, the ones in which you were held fast before you were united with Me).” Now the Lord is not saying these things by way of commanding but rather by way of threatening and insinuating what would happen to those who separate themselves from the unity of ecclesiastical peace because they cannot bear the misfortune of trials, as in the Gospel when Our Lord says, “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Mt 12.33), He is not commanding us to do evil, but He is teaching what reward awaits those who do evil.
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And so it was that when Jesus taught the truth of the Eucharist, many of His disciples drew back and no longer went about with Him. The Gospel both attracts, and it repels. The Gospel attracts those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who know they are in need of a Savior; the Gospel repels those who think themselves already righteous, not in need of a Savior. The specific teaching that repelled many disciples and caused them to not follow Him was the teaching on the Eucharist: that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” When they heard that Jesus is the living bread which came down from heaven, it threw these disciples over the edge. It was obvious to Jesus, not only in that they walked away, but before that they murmured amongst themselves. And, as S. John tells us, Our Lord knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. It makes one wonder if our Lord knows this about disciples in the Church today, that He likewise knows who those are today in the Church that do not believe, and who those are today in the Church that would betray Him, which must mean teach about Him falsely and in a way contrary to Church tradition?
Be that as it may, from this episode comes important teaching, for our Lord teaches that it is the Holy Spirit that gives life. Indeed, the importance of this teaching in John 6 is attested by the fact that it is part of the Nicene Creed. For we say about the Holy Spirit that He is the Lord and giver of Life. The Life is Christ; the giver of the Life is the Holy Spirit. The basis for the Church is the presence of the Holy Spirit in His power; likewise, the basis for a parish church is the presence of the Holy Spirit in His power. As our Collect reads, the Church is gathered in unity by the Holy Spirit. If God chooses to take away His Holy Spirit from a place, which is His prerogative being as He is God, then without the Holy Spirit, a parish church loses unity and shrivels up and dies. It may still exist as a social gathering, a social club, a community of like-minded individuals, but it is not part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
If this sounds too drastic a statement, I present to you the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit as He who “will teach you all things, and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.” Jesus also said that it is the Holy Spirit Who guides us into all truth. Without the Holy Spirit, we have no one to teach us, no one to bring to our remembrance the words of Christ, no one to guide us into truth. Without all that, of course there cannot be the Church. And so we must take our Lord’s teaching today with full seriousness: It is the Holy Spirit that gives Life.
And while many stopped following Jesus, some did stay, and we have a glorious account from Saint Peter, who responded to our Lord’s question “Do you also wish to go away?” by saying, “Lord, to Whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” This shows the Holy Spirit active in His power within S. Peter and the other disciples that agreed with Peter and stayed. For Peter spoke truth, and no one can speak truth about Christ without the power of the Holy Spirit working in him. Peter in this moment is seeing beyond mere flesh and blood, and into the divinity of Christ. S. Paul teaches that the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Peter was beholding Christ with the eyes of Spirit, eyes opened and illumined by the Holy Spirit. Peter was glimpsing how Christ is the icon, the image, of the invisible God the Father, that Christ is the Holy One of God. The Holy Spirit, Who is the Kingdom of God, bore witness to Christ among Peter and the disciples that did not draw back and instead continued with Jesus.
And so we see that the joy of the Gospel is life in the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, we recognize the presence of Christ, like Mary and Elisabeth at the Visitation. By the Holy Spirit, we accept our Lord’s teaching that the consecrated bread and wine in the Liturgy is transformed and changed into His most precious Body and Blood. Jesus said so, and the Holy Spirit lets us see these words about the Eucharist as the words of eternal life. And indeed, by the Holy Spirit we accept the Sacred Scriptures as Holy, as Inspired, as the Library about Christ. By the Holy Spirit we are united in the confession of one faith, with the power of serve Christ as a royal priesthood, even to preach the Gospel in our lives both in word and in deed: the Gospel of Him Who is the Eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.8
If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
Because this same bride (that is, the Church of Christ), when she had sought the help of His presence in the midst of tribulations, had gone on to say in the persona of the fainthearted, “Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions,” He at once responded to her anxiety with kindly rebuke like that saying in the Gospel: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mt 14.31). For there follows: “If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks.” He asks, “How can you talk as if I could on any account forsake you in the time of trial, and how can you complain that you have been blackened by too much heat as if from the noonday sun while you were keeping our vineyard? Through the washing of regeneration I have previously made you the fairest among women (that is, among the synagogues of other doctrines), but I have arranged for your beauty to be restored through the great ordeal of tribulation. But if by chance you neither know these things, nor remember that no one “is crowned without contending according to the rules” (2 Tim 2.5), then “go forth” from my company “and follow the tracks of the flocks” (that is, imitate the erratic deeds of those who go astray), although I myself have resolved that you are truly the keeper of my one flock, for which there is “one sheepfold and one shepherd” (Jn 10.16).
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One of the mandatory steps within the process of being ordained to the Priesthood is to do an internship as a hospital chaplain. In my case, I spent twenty weeks in four hospitals in suburban Chicago, near where my family lived at the time (this was fall 2015). Although I spoke with priests who bemoaned and even regretted their chaplain internship experience (and I even heard some horror stories), many priests, including my then-Bishop, the Prelate who ordained me, assured me that hospital chaplaincy was for them meaningful, positive, and deeply, and permanently, life-changing.
And I must say, it was for me as well. Thanks be to God! It was never easy, and often unpredictable. My very first overnight duty on-call saw me assist an experienced chaplain whom I was shadowing as we ministered to a large family of over 25 relatives who that night suffered the loss of one of their family members to a kind of brain hemorrhage that, tragically, was inoperable. Talk about being thrown into the deep end of the pool and having to learn how to swim. Over the twenty weeks, in not only hospital patients and their families, but in the hospital staff, nurses, doctors, and my fellow chaplains, I witnessed so many instances of loss, of tragedy, of suffering and confusion, but also I witnessed joy, love, faith, and remarkable examples of God active in people’s lives, holding them up by His grace. These were exactly the kinds of experiences one should have in preparing for the sacrificial ministry of the sacred priesthood.
The ultimate example of sacrificial priestly life is Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His example to us, being divine and human mingled together, is so profound that it is well past our ability to grasp it completely and finally. This is why we continually revisit the accounts of His life given to us by the Evangelists—that by hearing them, by which we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them both literally and spiritually (both senses together always), we are drawn deeper into the mystery of Him, drawn into deeper encounter of Him and His presence, which as well reveals the mystery of Christ in us. This we do even as we read about many actions of Christ, and many of His sayings and words, that are hard to understand.
For example, Jesus says to us today in the Gospel: “Truly, truly, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” This was a teaching, a hard saying, that was so hard, it sifted and weeded out the true disciples from the larger group of Jesus followers. After hearing this, many followers drew back and no longer went about with him. Some of us, even today, might flinch a bit at this saying, at both its physicality (flesh and blood) and its bluntness. Jesus, often winsome and generous in His public ministry, was nonetheless never above teaching in a direct, confrontational, and even aggressive way. Perhaps this is because being poked awake from a cozy, care-free, spectator kind of discipleship into discipleship that is active, engaged, and inquiring is something disciples of Christ constantly need.
And yet the Church, in remembering the words of Jesus, and taking them to heart in prayer in the years and decades after the Ascension of Christ, began to discern within the hard sayings of Jesus a depth that echoed profoundly in the Scriptures. We hear an example of this in our passage from the Book of Proverbs. Wisdom, who we learn was God’s first creation, and who from the beginning rejoiced daily in God’s activities, uses maids (which represent apostles and preachers of the Gospel) to invite simple people (meaning those people, like Nathaniel, who are without guile but also yet to some extent naive about life) to into her house: “Come,” she says, “eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave simpleness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” This elaborates upon our Lord’s hard saying, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” Jesus teaches us that His flesh is bread. Eating His bread and drinking His wine is precisely the nourishment we need to walk in the way of insight, to have the lamp of illumination lighting up our path, because our mind is more Christ-like.
In the Eucharist, our nourishment is Christ. Our nourishment is Him, which means His sacrificial life. To eat the consecrated bread is to receive into our body Christ’s sacrifice: in fact Him on the Cross. To drink the consecrated wine is to receive Christ’s life (blood in ancient understanding being the source of life). Eternal life is received through Christ’s sacrifice and Christ’s life. In receiving the Eucharist, we receive Christ’s sacrificial life, in which the entirety of His sacrificial life is really and truly present: abiding in us, and we in Him.
The Almighty God the Father has given His only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life. As we receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life, we open heart to receive Christ, Who in S. Paul’s words is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This is our participation in the Eucharist. We enter Christ’s redemptive stream, His river of wisdom, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. In the Eucharist, let us ever be still, and know in the Eucharist is God: even the very Christ Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God: world without end.
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Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.5
I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem. Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not think to consider me, for I am swarthy because the sun has discolored me. My mother’s children have fought against me and made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept. Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture Your flock, where You lie down at midday; lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
After saying, “Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture Your flock, where You lie down at midday,” the Bride of Christ, who is Holy Church, then adds, “Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions,” as if she were to say openly, “Since persecution brings me a multitude of adversaries after the fashion of the noonday heat, I beseech You to declare to me, O my Redeemer and Protector, where I might find those who have been refreshed with the grace of Your presence, or which ones among all the dogmas are in harmony with the truth of Your gospel, so that I might not run into the assemblies of those who have been long separated from You and have chanced to stray from Your protection, where I would be without Your guidance and thus could by no means walk in the way of truth.” For even heretics cannot incongruously be called His “companions,” inasmuch as they carry around His Name or Creed or Sacraments. And did the Bride of Christ not do these things when the false apostles (namely, His companions) came from Antioch and proclaimed, “Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15.1)? For after she had been wearied by no little heat of dissension and questioning she at last sent Paul and Barnabas to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to discern with greater certainty what the truth of the Gospel might be, and when the debate was concluded it was determined that the Lord Christ was the Shepherd Who dwelt among those being instructed by James, Cephas (that is, Peter), John, and the other apostles, and that His Church should be kept in His sheepfold, free from the flocks of the companions (that is, the crowds of heretics). And has the Bride of Christ not also done these things often in subsequent times? For when her mother’s children fought against her (that is, when heresies grew up to oppose her from within), she was soon diligently gathering councils of the Fathers together in order to inquire what the truth of the faith might be.
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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Over the recent Sundays I have been speaking about the five ways Christ taught the Church to know His presence among them. Firstly, in every baptized Christian; secondly, in Scripture opened and proclaimed in worship; thirdly, through Bishops, Priests, and Deacons validly ordained in the apostolic tradition; fourthly, in the Eucharist; which yields the fifth way, in the Tabernacle in the sanctuary of the church. Thus, as I said last Sunday, the Mass is a true abundance of Christ’s presence. It is a banquet of Christ’s presence. In the Mass, the heavenly reality of Christ meets our conditions of time and space. Therefore the Mass is not only a banquet but a heavenly banquet: a foretaste of heaven, a foretaste of life eternal. In all of human existence, there is nothing like the Mass, because of the abundance of Christ’s presence in it.
Today I will focus on Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, in His most precious Body and Blood. Over the course of the two thousand year life of the Church, there have been discussions, sometimes disagreements, sometimes arguments, about how the Bread and the Wine become Christ’s precious Body and Blood. I have often been asked a related question: which is, when in the Mass does this transformation happen? At what point during the Mass—is it during the Institution Narrative where we hear again the relevant moments of the Last Supper? Is it when the Celebrant of the Mass holds his hands outstretched over the Bread and Wine? Is it at the Epiclesis, with the grand gesture made by the Celebrant and the petition to the Father to send down the Holy Ghost upon the creatures of bread and wine, that these may be changed and transformed so that we may be partakers of Christ’s most blessed Body and Blood? Is it at the Great Amen before the Our Father? Even during the Our Father? Is it when the Celebrant holds up the Body and Blood and says, “Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him Who taketh away the sins of the world”? Or some other moment in the Mass? When is it that the transformation and change occurs?
On this question, the Anglican position on this is is the same as the Eastern Orthodox position: we do not know. We do not claim to know precisely when the change occurs, but we fully accept that the change and transformation does occur, without question. It is because of the transcendence of God. Because the Holy Trinity is transcendent, beyond time and space, we trust that what the Church has understood to happen ever since the first Eucharist at Emmaus with two disciples, indeed happens. The Bread becomes Christ’s Body; and likewise, the wine becomes Christ’s Blood. Ultimately, the Anglican position is as simple as this: the bread and wine become His Body and Blood because Jesus said so. And that is not surprising because we take Holy Scripture seriously, and take seriously as well that Jesus is both God and man.
If we believe Jesus to be God: to be the only-begotten Son of the Father, indeed that Jesus is the Eternal Word of the Father, and therefore God with the Father and the Holy Ghost, then we believe His life to be divine, and thus all His words and actions to be divine. If we believe Christ to be He through Whom all things are made by the Father, then certainly we believe that because He said the Bread is His Body, that the Bread is His Body; and likewise, then certainly we believe that because He said the wine is His Blood, that the Wine is His Blood. As Jesus said, “He who believes in Me has eternal life.” And He said, “I am the Bread of life.” And He said, “I am the living Bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this Bread, he will live for ever.” And He added, “And the Bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
All of this is direct teaching about the Eucharist. But it is also teaching about the Incarnation. John 1.14 famously reads: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” Often that is taken to mean as referring to His Nativity of Blessed Mary. Specifically “the Word became flesh” is often paraphrased into, “Jesus was born of Mary.” But in our Gospel passage today, Jesus is clear: “the Bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Thus according to Saint John, “the Word became flesh” is better paraphrased as: “Christ became Eucharist,” or “Christ became Sacrament.” His flesh is Bread which is Him given for the life of the world. He dwells among us as the Sacrament of the Eucharist; He dwells among us as we receive the Eucharist in Holy Communion which is Christ received into our body, hence dwelling with us; dwelling in us. So that we can say without guile or doubt: the joy of the Gospel is recognizing Christ’s incarnating presence: His eucharistic presence incarnating in us, in our body.
And in this way the reality of Mary and Elisabeth at the Visitation, where both know the presence of Christ inwardly (Mary because Jesus is in her womb; Elisabeth because her son John leaps at the presence of Christ known through Mary’s greeting), this reality of Mary and Elisabeth is our reality: in receiving Holy Communion, Christ is in us, dwelling in us, making His presence known inwardly, incarnating Himself in us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, even He who is the Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Get full access to Fr Matthew C. Dallman's Substack at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe -
Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.5
I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem. Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not think to consider me, for I am swarthy because the sun has discolored me. My mother’s children have fought against me and made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept. Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture Your flock, where You lie down at midday; lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
As soon as Holy Church has lamented that her mother’s children have risen up against her, as soon as her own vine has been shaken by the assault, it is right for her to turn to the Lord with an anxious heart and invoke the memory of His promise, in which He said, “In the world you have distress, but have confidence; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16.33). Thus she says, “Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture Your flock, where You lie down at midday.” Now, it is appropriate for her to call Him Whose assistance she entreats “the one my soul loves,” because the graver the danger from which she desires to be delivered, the more does she love Him through Whom she knows that she will be delivered. Similar to this is that saying of the Psalmist: “I love you, O Lord, my strength” (Ps 18.1); which is to say openly, “The reason that I do not cease to love You with my whole heart is that I perceive that I can have no strength apart from Your grace.” She also signifies that He is a shepherd when she says: “where You pasture Your flock, where You lie down at midday,” in accordance with what He Himself testifies in the Gospel: “I am the Good Shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me” (Jn 10.14). He pastures His sheep and lies down among them at midday, because He refreshes the hearts of His faithful ones with the memory of His heavenly kindness lest they wither away on the inside from the heat of trials, and it has been His custom to abide graciously among them. For on this account the Psalmist says, “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture” (Ps 23); hence S. John says: “Those who abide in charity abide in God, and God in them” (1 Jn 4.16). Therefore, since “many false prophets” (Mt 24.11) arise in the world saying, “Look! Here is the Christ! Look there!” (Mt 24.23), it is always necessary for the Church of Christ to discern through careful examination who they are in whose profession and work He can be found, and to entreat Him with pious cries that He might deign to show Himself, saying “Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture Your flock, where you lie down in midday.”
If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago.
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Recognizing Christ’s real and actual presence has been the cause of Christian joy from the beginning of creation—“as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Revealing to the Church this presence was also what Christ’s Resurrection was all about: revealing that Christ is present among us, that, because of His presence, He hears us, that because of His presence, He knows us. His presence is why S. Mary and S. Elisabeth were danced and embraced in joy at the Visitation, and that same joy through Christ’s presence is available to us in worship through the Liturgy, and the Christian life that flows personally from the Liturgy. By His presence we are able to put off our old nature that is corrupt through deceitful lusts (according to S. Paul). By His presence we are able to be renewed in our minds, and thus able to put on the new nature. Christ’s presence transforms those who conceive Him in their heart and bear Him in their mind. Conceiving Christ in our heart and bearing Him in our mind is what S. Paul means by “learning Christ.”
I spoke last Sunday about the five ways Christ taught the Church to know His presence among them. First, in every baptized Christian (by virtue of their Baptism); second, in Scripture opened and proclaimed in worship; third, through His apostles, which was transferred to Bishops, Priests, and Deacons following in the apostolic tradition; fourth, in the Eucharist; (which means that there is a fifth way, in the Tabernacle in a church sanctuary). Therefore we can see that the Mass is a true abundance of Christ’s presence, which is why there is nothing else like the Mass in all human existence. The Mass is a banquet of Christ’s presence; Christ’s presence is a heavenly presence amid the conditions of time and space; thus to speak truly, the Mass is a heavenly banquet, a foretaste of heaven, a foretaste of life eternal.
The joy of the Gospel is recognizing Christ’s presence. And so that we could share this joy throughout our life, in a way that is communal, within a Christian community, shared by all who are baptized, young and old: Christ gave us the Eucharist, which He instituted when He chose bread and wine to be the means by which through divine consecration, which happens during every valid Mass, these simple offerings of bread and wine become the Precious Body and Blood of Christ. These are changed and transformed by the Holy Ghost during the Mass, because the bread and wine on the Altar are taken up into God, taken up into the heavenly realm. The very nature of the bread and wine are taken into God, and that which is taken into God is transformed into His nature. That which is taken into God becomes, in the words of Jesus, “the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man gives to us.” He gives it to us, because the Father gives us the true bread from heaven, the bread that gives life to the world. The bread and wine become His Body and Blood because Jesus said so.
For good reason did those who remained with Christ say, “Lord, give us this bread always.” For good reason, indeed! This bread gives life to the world. And it is not life of a mortal, changing, temporal kind. Rather, it is eternal life. Nothing but eternal life can come from the true bread from heaven. Nothing but eternal life can come from receiving the Eucharist. This is why the Eucharist is important; this is why the Eucharist is vital and a necessity to Christian life: it is the food which endures to eternal life.
Because of the importance and necessity of the Eucharist to Christian life, the Eucharist was one of the first things Christ revealed in His Resurrection. As His presence was known to the two disciples at Emmaus, He revealed Himself in the breaking of bread. The Church has always seen the importance, centrality, and necessity of the Eucharist since then, for why else would Christ choose to reveal the Eucharist at Emmaus on the first day of His resurrection unless it is basic and fundamental to living the resurrected life within the Church; basic and fundamental to perceiving His presence? His choice to reveal the Eucharist on the Day of His Resurrection itself shows the Church without question that the Eucharist is a requirement to attain eternal life. Christ is the Bread of Life, He tells us; He who comes to Christ shall not hunger, and He who believes in Christ shall never thirst; for Christ is the Bread of Life, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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