Let us now our voices raise,Wake the day with gladness;God Himself to joy and praiseTurns our human sadness;Joy that martyrs won their crown,Opened heav’ns bright portal,When they laid the mortal downFor the life immortal. Let us praise God for mortal men who boldly burned out bright in faith. This day we commemorate St. Bartholomew, to…
Thick, mist-forged shackles held us in the cave, imprisoned for the crime of losing all. We saw nothing but shadows on the wall— they gamboled and they taunted us. We gave in to the dark. A crushing fear replaced our hope for liberation with despair. Our cries withered to whimpers on thin air out in…
Ahead of tomorrow’s anniversary of the coming of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer into statutory force in the Church of England, on the feast of St. Bartholomew, I have thought it good to bring before the public eye what 18th-century English layman Robert Nelson wrote about the feast in his Companion for the Festivals…
Commandment 6 The second table of the Decalogue concerns man’s duty towards his neighbor, and by the time we have arrived at the sixth commandment, we find the very foundation of that duty expressed negatively as “do not murder.” Before reflecting on contemporary Christian reflections on the commandment, this is a good juncture at which…
Words are violence softest. Limits beginning. The course of life by which we will be judged— how our utterance led all others to one thought or eclipsed the next. As boys we were corrupted by a false king and other fantasies, the designs of dirty old men imprinted on us through text with digits ethereal,…
The fractured state of North American Anglicanism is a barrier to faithfully witnessing the faith once delivered in our increasingly ungodly continent. The continent is gradually repaganizing and following the old gods, who are no gods at all. Perhaps it is odd to quote Ben Franklin. Still, his words apply to the state of affairs…
The Lord gives the grace to experience three childhoods in our life. They represent a mystical ascent Adolescence: Awakening In the beginning, you opened your eyes, and there was light. The teachers say that light reaching us in the night sky arrives late from very long ago, impossibly far away. Your infant sight unveiled, and…
My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name. On Christ, the solid rock I stand; All other ground is shifting sand. The dusty road of an August Trinitytide welcomes us exiles with dust filling our lungs. The sweltering…
Commandment 5 ~ Old Testament Context When the people of Israel assembled on the outskirts of the promised land and received for a second time the stipulations of the covenant God made with them, Moses warned the people in the following words: these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You…
It should come as no surprise that Roman Catholics, by and large, do not accept the validity of Anglican orders, as to do so would severely undermine their own claim to be the One True Church. Ever since the Church of England became independent, then, Romanists have lodged a number of arguments against those orders….