/ Anglican
The Rt. Rev’d Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham (England), on infant baptism.
“I have a cousin in Vancouver. He and his wife sat me down for dinner one evening just before their child was born, and they said, ‘We’ve got a question for you?’ They were a bit shy about it because they weren’t explicit, deeply confessing Christians, but they wanted to kind of find their way in. They said ‘We want to know how old does a child have to be before the child can actually know anything about God?’ And I think they were expecting me to say ‘About six or eight or ten’ or something like that. I said ‘O, about three minutes.’ And they stared at me.
I said, ‘Well you’ll find if the child is born even reasonably healthy, that you will be able to establish a very intimate relationship with that child from those very, very early moments. The natural focal point of a newborn child’s eyes is the distance between the breast and the mother’s eyes, so that the natural thing that the child does is to establish eye contact with mom while feeding at the breast. And I remember establishing eye contact with my children very very early on in their first minutes. And there’s this extraordinary sense of knowing which passes between parent and child.’
And I say to myself, and I said to my cousin, ‘If that is so between the human parent and the child, are you really going to tell me that the living God who created heaven and earth and made whales and waterfalls and little penguins and all the rest of it, cannot establish contact with a lovely little creature who bears his image, but has to wait until that lovely little creature becomes five or six or seven or ten? Forget it! God has ways of making himself known intimately to children from their earliest days. And perhaps one of the dare I say sacramental ways by which God does that is precisely by the loving welcome of the Christian community.
Now of course children can’t articulate it. The five-minute old baby can’t put her hand up and say, ‘Okay, I believe in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ But I actually suspect—and I’m being very serious here—I suspect that some of those little children, to the God who knows the hearts of all, have a deeper and fuller faith than a lot of people who say those words every Sunday but have long since allowed them to drift off into the distance somewhere.”
This is a wonderful talk, every bit of it.
The Rt. Rev’d Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham (England), on the sacrament of baptism, continued. Referring to St. Paul (in Romans 6) appealing for faith on the basis of baptism, he speaks of doing the logical sums of baptism and λογιζεσθε, the need for the baptized to reckon themselves, to figure it out—it being baptism. He says, “Of course God welcomes us as we are, but God’s welcome never leaves us as we are. God’s inclusiveness is always a transforming inclusiveness…. Baptism is about dying, and then rising again, not somehow evading the challenge and getting in without any dying and rising to be done. As C. S. Lewis was always fond of emphasizing, there is nothing in this world which cannot die and be raised into God’s new world; but there is nothing in this world which will make it into the new world if it does not die and be raised.”
Tomorrow, Wright on infant baptism.
The Rt. Rev’d Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham (England), on the sacrament of baptism.
A Prayer of Jane Austen
Almighty God! Look down with mercy on thy servants here assembled and accept the petitions now offered up unto thee. Pardon oh! God the offences of the past day. We are conscious of many frailties; we remember with shame and contrition, many evil thoughts and neglected duties; and we have perhaps sinned against thee and against our fellow-creatures in many instances of which we have no remembrance. Pardon oh God! whatever thou has seen amiss in us, and give us a stronger desire of resisting every evil inclination and weakening every habit of sin. Thou knowest the infirmity of our nature, and the temptations which surround us. Be thou merciful, oh heavenly Father! to creatures so formed and situated. We bless thee for every comfort of our past and present existence, for our health of body and of mind and for every other source of happiness which thou hast bountifully bestowed on us and with which we close this day, imploring their continuance from thy fatherly goodness, with a more grateful sense of them, than they have hitherto excited. May the comforts of every day, be thankfully felt by us, may they prompt a willing obedience of thy commandments and a benevolent spirit toward every fellow-creature.
Have mercy oh gracious Father! upon all that are now suffering from whatsoever cause, that are in any circumstance of danger or distress. Give them patience under every affliction, strengthen, comfort and relieve them.
To thy goodness we commend ourselves this night beseeching thy protection of us through its darkness and dangers. We are helpless and dependent; graciously preserve us. For all whom we love and value, for every friend and connection, we equally pray; however divided and far asunder, we know that we are alike before thee, and under thine eye. May we be equally united in thy faith and fear, in fervent devotion towards thee, and in thy merciful protection this night. Pardon oh Lord! the imperfections of these our prayers, and accept them through the mediation of our blessed saviour, in whose holy words, we further address thee.
Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
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This prayer is one of three known to have been written by Jane. She intended that it be said in the evening by one person in the company of family or friends, who then recited together the “Our Father”. See The Works of Jane Austen: Volume VI: Minor Works.
Q: Where do the ashes come from that are used on Ash Wednesday?
A: Palms collected from the previous year’s Palm Sunday services are burned on Shrove Tuesday by a priest who prepares them for Ash Wednesday’s Services of Holy Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes. Here’s a six-second clip of some palms being burned this year at Saint Francis. The bowls we use in services to contain the ashes came back with Father Ellsworth and the Bahar family from their visit to Kyoto, Japan.
Little Gidding
If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
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T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding, I, lines 41 – 50
George Herbert, April 3, 1593 – March 1, 1633
PERSEVERANCE
My God, the poor expressions of my Love
Which warm these lines, and serve them up to thee
Are so, as for the present, I did move
Or rather as thou movedst me.
But what shall issue, whither these my words
Shall help another, but my judgment be;
As a burst fouling-piece doth save the birds
But kill the man, is seal’d with thee.
For who can tell, though thou hast died to win
And wed my soul in glorious paradise;
Whether my many crimes and use of sin
May yet forbid the banes and bliss.
Only my soul hangs on thy promises
With face and hands clinging unto thy breast,
Clinging and crying, crying without cease
Thou art my rock, thou art my rest.
The choir and congregation of Westminster Abbey singing Thaxted (“I Vow to Thee My Country”)
Setting: Gustav Holst. Lyric: Cecil Spring-Rice
- I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
- Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
- The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
- That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
- The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
- The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
- And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
- Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
- We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
- Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
- And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
- And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
John Polkinghorne on the problem of evil
The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne FRS KBE, formerly a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, is an Anglican priest.
How to Pray for the President. A sermon preached January 18, 2009, by the Rev. William M. Shand, III, at Saint Francis Episcopal Church, Potomac, Maryland.
thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; Most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour, to behold and bless thy servant, The President of the United States, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way: Endue them plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant them in health and prosperity long to live; and finally, after this life, to attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
