St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Breastplate,
A more literal translation, by Kuno Meyer,

I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of
Christ's birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of
His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of
His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of
His descent for the judgement of Doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of
the love of the Cherubim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In the hope of the resurrection
to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In prediction of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak to me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me,
From snares of devils,
From temptation of vices,
From every one who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in a multitude.
I summon today all these powers
between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless
power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and
smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge
that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poising, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So there come to me
abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of
every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of
every one who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye of
every one who sees me,
Christ in every ear
that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

From the Mission of the St. Clares

Steve Bell, Jean Vanier, Avatar and Seeing

Just read this and felt the immediate need to share it. May we all be see-ers and seen.


Thanks Dale for the link.

The Rev'd Canon Marjorie Kennon

A faithful servant of the Lord and deeply loved. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Anton Rublev

Twenty years ago I first saw the Russian film Rublev. It is the story of the monk and icon writer Anton Rublev. The film was shot in black and white as it relates his life in an incredibly violent age but then at the very end as some of Rublev's icons are shown in switches into colour. I still remember how overwhelmed I felt sitting in the theatre seeing the beauty of Rublev's icons. But icons aren't meant to be works of art but rather windows to another reality.

Here are Henri Nouwen's words on Rublev's famous icon of the trinity from today's post on "Speaking to the Soul."

Hardly a day passes in our lives without our experience of inner or outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions and preoccupations. These dark powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among them, but to choose the house of love as our home. This choice is made not just once and for all but by living a spiritual life, praying at all times and thus breathing God’s breath. Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of love.

I have never seen the house of love more beautifully expressed than in the icon of the Holy Trinity, painted by Andrew Rublev in 1425 in memory of the great Russian saint, Sergius (1313-1392). For me the contemplation of this icon has increasingly become a way to enter more deeply into the mystery of divine life while remaining fully engaged in the struggles of our hate-and-fear-filled world.

Andrew Rublev painted this icon not only to share the fruits of his own meditation on the mystery of the Holy Trinity but also to offer his fellow monks a way to keep their hearts centered in God while living in the midst of political unrest. The more we look at this holy image with the eyes of faith, the more we come to realize that it is painted not as a lovely decoration for a convent church, nor as a helpful explanation of a difficult doctrine, but as a holy place to enter and stay within. As we place ourselves in front of the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation to participate in the intimate conversation that is taking place among the three divine angels and to join them around the table.

From Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons by Henri J. M. Nouwen (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1987).

What I did in Rome

Here is an article by my friend, Betta, who was a wonderful guide and companion on the Pauline pilgrimage. It was a great pilgrimage - the only thing I didn't enjoy was trying to find someone at St. Peter's who knew anything about it so that I could get my sticker for my credential. My favourite spot on the pilgrimage was the Abbey of the Three Fountains.
My pilgrimage credential. It was unbelievably difficult to collect the sticker from St. Peter's.

The cell thought to be where Paul was held before his execution.
The Abbey church. These pilgrims were singing, reading and praying and it was very moving.

One of the three springs were according to tradition water sprung up when Paul's head bounced after he was beheaded.
The column that is considered to be the one upon which Paul was beheaded.

St. John Lateran - corrected

The baptistery was stunning



Statues of the twelve apostles were added to the church in the 18th cent.
Giotto
Scala Santa - these steps were brought from Jerusalem and are said to be the steps from Pilate's palace that Jesus climbed. The faithful climb them on their knees.

Spectacular Mosaics and Frescoes

The Amalfi Cathedral of St. Andrew

The relics of St. Andrew

Holy Ground - Assisi

This is really an incredible place. It is difficult to describe how the spirit of prayer and peace pervades this town. St. Francis is one of the patron saints of Italy and when I was going through the Vatican Museums I noticed that images of him showed up in Italian art early. This isn't surprising when you consider that he was canonized almost immediately. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside the churches but the frescoes of Giotto are breathtaking.

The Witness of St. Francis

A moving post about St. Francis and L'Arche over at Faith and Theology. Read it here.

Updated:

Ben Myers has another posting on L'Arche here.

Feast of Oscar Romero and the Martyrs of El Salvador

Today we remember the courage and the faithfulness of Oscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador and the many martyrs of El Salvador, those known by name and those known only to God.

Resources here. And here. And here.

The Lord's Prayer

I love the Speaking to the Soul site over at Episcopal Cafe and read it most mornings as part of my morning prayer. Today's was really delightful:

Daily Reading for October 16 • Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishops, 1555, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1556

But one word is left, which we must needs consider; Noster, ‘our.’ He saith not ‘my,’ but ‘our.’ Wherefore saith he ‘our’? This word ‘our’ teacheth us to consider that the Father of heaven is a common Father; as well my neighbour’s Father as mine; as well the poor man’s Father as the rich: so that he is not a peculiar Father, but a Father to the whole church and congregation, to all the faithful. Be they never so poor, so vile, so foul and despised, yet he is their Father as well as mine: and therefore I should not despise them, but consider that God is their Father as well as mine. Here may we perceive what communion is between us; so that when I pray, I pray not for myself alone, but for all the rest: again, when they pray, they pray not for themselves only, but for me: for Christ hath so framed this prayer, that I must needs include my neighbour in it. Therefore all those which pray this prayer, they pray as well for me as for themselves; which is a great comfort to every faithful heart, when he considereth that all the church prayeth for him. For amongst such a great number there be some which be good, and whose prayer God will hear. . . . So that it is a great comfort unto us to know that all good and faithful persons pray for us.

From Hugh Latimer’s “First Sermon on the Lord’s Prayer,” in The Works of Hugh Latimer, ed. G. E. Corrie (Parker Society, 1844).

Five Influences

Tim has tagged me to list 5 people living or dead who have influenced me spiritually. Like Tim I've been thinking about this a lot lately. So here it goes:

Fr. Bert Foliot was the pastor of St. Ignatius RC Church in Winnipeg when I was a young Christian. I haven't seen him for years but a week doesn't go by that I don't think about him and wonder what he would do in some situation. He is the model for me of what a priest is about. He is prayerful, dedicated and compassionate. I still remember sermons he preached almost 30 years ago and I am still challenged by his passion for marginalized people.

The folks at Church of the Ascension in Coaldale are a wonderful community of prayer and they have challenged me to live more simply. They have taught me so much about being open and to put people before everything else. This is cheating a bit since they are a group but at the heart of this community is an individual who has had a huge impact on me. The Rev'd Marjorie Kennon was one of the first women ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada and was the first woman priest in this diocese. She has given her whole life to service to God and to God's people. She is prayerful, thoughtful, faithful, hardworking and kind. I have learned a great deal from her and value her friendship and example very much.

The Venerable Sidney Black was the curate at St. Augustine's when I first moved to Lethbridge and now he is the rector of St. Cyprian's in Brockett and the archdeacon for aboriginal ministry in our deanery. Sidney is a powerful example to me of faithfulness and perseverance in the face of discouragement and difficulties. He also makes me laugh and has encouraged me often.

Peter Erb was my MA advisor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Peter is an incredible scholar publishing innumerable articles and books, giving lectures, teaching students who think the world of him. Peter was raised Amish and then his church joined a Mennonite body so for most of the time I've known him Peter was a Mennonite. But six years ago he was received into the RC church. He has taught me much about the value of study to the Christian life over the years, has introduced me to so much of the Christian tradition and through his example has taught me not to take myself too seriously.

These are all people I've known personally and I feel a little overwhelmed trying to think of who I would single out among the writers who've influenced me. Graham Greene was so important to me as a young Christian and I still adore Monsignor Quixote and reread it often. Chaim Potok's novels have had a huge impact on me. Eugene Peterson's books have taught me a lot about ministry and thinking of Peterson I could have also included Pastor John Dozois in my list of influences on me. John was my mentor for several years and gave me a new love for St. Paul and introduced me to Peterson's books. James Alison's books have helped me deal with my anger at times when I've been treated unjustly and so have had a significant impact on me. One of my great heroes is Archbishop Desmond Tutu who models faithfulness, courage, compassion and great humour. And then there is Henri Nouwen who taught me a great deal about vulnerability and grace through his books. And then there are the martyrs Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero who have encouraged me to have courage in the face of violence.

I owe so much to these people and to so many more that I could go on for pages. Instead I think I will return to the person who first taught me that Jesus loved me, who first taught me that I could never get so lost that he wouldn't find me, who first taught me to love Scripture, my grandmother Molly Phillips, of blessed memory.

Now I tag Aaron, Kevin, Lindsey, Kathryn, and Paul

Happy Birthday Desmond Tutu

Today is Archbishop Desmond Tutu's 77th birthday! Happy Birthday!

Archbishop Tutu is one of my heroes in the faith. I was fortunate to hear him preach the week he was given an honourary doctorate by Oxford University in 1990. He was an incredible preacher, captivating the packed church.

There is a wonderful story about him on Telling Secrets. Enjoy!

Feast of St. Francis

There is much about St. Francis that lends itself to a kind of sweet piety and I'm okay with that. I love the images of him with deer and birds and wolves. When I was confirmed almost 30 years ago I took St. Francis as my patron saint because he loved the animals. But I also knew that he was much more than that. He spoke for peace in a time of the crusades and put his body in harms way to try to bring it about. Despite my middle class lifestyle I am convicted by his embrace of poverty and I am challenged by his embrace of the lepers. Today on Episcopal Cafe there is a reminder of this aspect of St. Francis. It is well worth reading.

Chasing Francis

After reading Maggie Dawn's comments yesterday about the novel Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron I went down to our local Christian bookstore and bought it. It isn't a heavy read and I just finished it. It was a good read in many ways...'creaky' as Maggie described it in others.

It is the story of Chase Falson, a pastor of an Evangelical megachurch in New England who goes on pilgrimage to Italy with his uncle, a Franciscan, when his faith goes off the rails. Spending time in the places where Francis ministered in the company of Franciscans helps Chase reimagine and rediscover his faith.

There were a number of things I appreciated about the novel. I too have found that old certainties have become less solid to me over time in ministry. People's lives and God's grace just don't seem to fit all the nice categories I used to have. And I too have found comfort, challenge, new insight from returning to the lives of the saints. I say returning because unlike Chase who is thoroughly shaped by a Protestant evangelical sub-culture my early formation took place in Catholic communities.

There is a lot of good material about Francis and Franciscan spirituality as well for people, especially folks interested in the Emergent Church movement. But if I had a basic criticism of the novel it is the same one that Maggie made:

There are pages where the story has to stand still while a sermon is preached or a lesson delivered. I wonder if there isn't something inherent in the form of fiction that demands that you can't absolutely make a point and still have fiction that lives and breathes.

There is a certain irony when Chase returns to his church and tells them that they need to stop treating the faith as if it is principally a matter of the head instead of something transcendent because much of the novel does read like a lecture on Franciscan spirituality. He says that they have to show people the faith and not load them up with books and yet the first thing his uncle does when he arrives in Italy is load him up with books. His journal which runs through the novel reveals much more about what he is reading than it does what he is experiencing. The most compelling parts of the book for me are instead when Chase goes to Mass and when he serves in a soup kitchen and then AIDS hospice.

It strikes me that there is a difference between Christian fiction and fiction written by Christians that has to do with whether or not the primary focus is make a point or to tell a story. In Chase's words:

"I'm beginning to see that there's a difference between art that trusts beauty's simple power to point people to God and Christian art that's consciously propagandistic. My Uncle Kenny, with whom I spent most of my time in Italy, said something profound--that you can make art about the Light, or you can make art that shows what the Light reveals about the world. I think the latter is what we want to do."

Yet I think in many ways Chasing Francis is still an example of the former. Graham Greene and Frederick Buechner would be better examples of the latter.

The Feast of St. Andrew

Today is the feast of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland and Tim has a wonderful posting over at Tale Spin. Please check it out here.

Faithfulness that inspires and that which doesn't

There is quite a lot of talk in the Anglican blogsphere about the Nigerian bishop who apparently said that gays and lesbians were inhuman and not fit to live. I don't comment on my blog very often about the argument that is going on in the church right now because I don't find much of it very edifying. These words are so awful, however, that it felt important to say something. But what? The last time I felt this physically ill when reading about the words/actions of Christians is when I read a news report about a RC priest facing prosecution for war crimes during the Rwandan genocide. How anyone could justify the dehumanization of a group of people or acts of violence towards them and think that it is done in the name of Jesus is incomprehensible to me.

This weekend I rewatched Entertaining Angels. It is an okay movie about an amazing saint, Dorothy Day. She was a communist journalist who came to faith because of the way she saw the church care for the poor. Her commitment to the poor and oppressed took on a whole new dimension as she lived a voluntary life of poverty creating soup kitchens and homes of hospitality through the depression. Later she was active in the civil rights movement and then the anti-nuclear movement. She was getting arrested for demonstrating into her 70s and continued to inspire generations of young people to spend time in Catholic Worker houses serving the poor. Her courage and faithfulness has always made me really uncomfortable with the comfort I live in.

I was mindful of her witness as I read Tobias Haller's latest posting on the Martyrs of Memphis. His very moving account of the witness of these people who cared for the sick in the midst of a Yellow Fever epidemic makes a really important point about what the virtue of fortitude looks like in the face of danger. We may be called on to commit spontaneous acts of courage but we are certainly called on to make those long term commitments of courage to serve those who are in need. Again, his posting made me uncomfortable with my life of comfort. This is a very different kind of discomfort than that produced by reading the reports from Nigeria.

Jesus said, whoever serves me must follow me — and sometimes that following will be the headlong leaping to cover a grenade with ones’ own body, or to enter an inferno and throw someone else to safety even as one perishes; sometimes that following will be a sudden bare-handed wrenching apart of the lethal mass that threatens life and limb — but more often, that following will be the slow and deliberate way of service to others, the way that with hands busy putting others first, sets the self down unselfconsciously on the shelf, sometimes misplacing it, and sometimes losing it. The way that follows Jesus is the way of the cross. Whoever serves him must follow him, and like it or not, that is the way he went, and that is what he carried.

Whether on the road to Jerusalem or the road to Memphis, Jesus goes before us, bearing his cross, and where he is, there will his servant be.+

From In a Godward Direction

Amazing Grace

I went to see Amazing Grace tonight with three friends. Two of us really liked this story of William Wilberforce's campaign to abolish the slave trade, while the other two didn't.

It is a flawed film. There is no chronology - the film jumps back and forth and sideways and for no real reason. It is often very confusing and it is difficult to make out how the legislative campaign developed. Yet there are so many powerful moments and emotions that I loved it anyway. At the end when the pipers played Amazing Grace I was wiping the tears away. The scenes with Wilberforce and John Newton, writer of the hymn and former slave trader, were the most poignant.

In the same way I thought the film Romero was flawed but very moving. There is power in the stories of these saints that transcends the limitations of weak film making.

Lent - Day 36

The goal of our life is to live with God forever.
God who loves us, gave us life.
Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into
us without limit.

All the things in this world are gifts of God,
presented to us so that we can know God more easily
and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we appreciate and use all of these gifts of God
insofar as they help us develop as loving persons.
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives,
they displace God
and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance
before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice
and are not bound by some obligation.
We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,
wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us
a deeper response to our life in God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this:
I want and I choose what better
leads to the deepening of God's life in me.

St. Ignatius, from the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises
http://norprov.org/spirituality/ignatianprayer.htm