Eastern Anglicanism?

M mentioned to me that she’d seen something on Facebook about an Eastern-leaning Anglican group.

The Eastern churches are a very interesting bunch.

We—I—sometimes talk about the theology of the Undivided Church in a frequently simplistic fashion. Typically the phrase “the Undivided Church” refers to the things held in common by the churches East and West before the official never reconciled separation of the Great Schism in 1054. But dating the divide strictly at 1054 ignores the tensions between the Greek-speaking and Latin-speaking sides of the church that existed almost continuously through the first Christian millennium. I have written on this before.

There are  interesting things that we can and should learn from the Eastern churches. Just as there are interesting things that we can learn from the pre-Reformation Western churches and from the Roman Catholic Church. Just as there are interesting things that we can learn from non-Christian Eastern and Western thought…

We are Anglicans, though. As Anglicans, we have committed ourselves to the belief that the Christian gospel is effectively and completely mediated in the habits and patterns laid down in the Books of Common Prayer. We are a Western church. Our liturgies partake of the Historic Western Liturgy grounded in the doctrine and practice of the Latin Fathers. There have been points of cross-pollination at various times both before and after the Reformation and I’m not trying to deny nor diminish these. On the contrary, I think a realistic appraisal of these serves to reinforce our ecclesial identity as fundamentally Western.

Learning about the Eastern churches and learning from them is good and important.

But we do this best and most faithfully when we are grounded in an understanding of who and what we are as Anglicans. We have to know who we are, what we believe, and where our commitments lie to get the most out of an encounter with any other tradition. While learning Eastern ways can provide a helpful alternative angle on the faith for those grounded in prayer book practices, all too often liturgical lingering looks over the Bosporus have more to do with a desire for exoticism than anything else.

Sanctoral Criteria: On Objectivity and Subjectivity

I sat down with Holy Women, Holy Men yesterday in the presence of my handy spreadsheet from whence colorful graphs issue. I added several new columns to it and grouped them all under the heading of “HWHM Criteria”. After consulting HWHM pp. 742-6, I labeled 6 columns:

  • Historicity
  • Discipleship
  • Significance
  • Memorability
  • Local Observance
  • Perspective

These are the labels in the criteria, after all. I omitted “Range of Inclusion”, “Levels of Commemoration”, and “Combined Commemorations” as I see these as directives concerning the shape of the kalendar as a whole and not directly applicable in assessing a particular commemoration.

Looking at these, I thought I’d try and tackle the easiest first. Which are the easy ones and which the hard? Well, in my book the two simplest are the first and last. “Historicity” isn’t without its gray areas, but it’s a lot more black and white than the others. Similarly, “Perspective” includes an objective value: “fifty years have elapsed since that person’s death.”

“Local Observance” is also a fairly objective measure though by no means a simple one. The central clause in this one is the following: “…significant commemoration . . . already exists at the local and regional levels.” Then, two and a half pages (744-6) are substantially devoted to outlining the process of what local/regional commemoration looks like, then how these are moved to the national/churchwide level. As a result, there ought to be a significant paper trail that will objectively demonstrate “local observance” in a satisfactory fashion. Thus objective, but needing a certain amount of leg-work to hunt all of this stuff down…

“Christian Discipleship” is complicated. The heart of this criterion is “the completion in death of a particular Christian’s living out of the promises of baptism” from which we can draw two objective measures: 1) were they baptized? 2) did they die in the communion of the Church? The wording of this criterion strongly suggests to me a set of sub-criteria: “the promises of baptism” short-handed as holding the Apostles’ Creed and exemplifying the 5 promises of the Baptismal Covenant.If we were to introduce these as supplemental guides to the fulfilling of this criterion do we take a minimalist or maximalist approach? Do we look for historical evidence of fulfillment of all six sub-criteria, or does a significant failing of one or more of the sub-criteria indicate a negative judgement on the larger criterion? (I’m told there was great resistance to adding Martin Luther to Lesser Feasts and Fasts back in the 80’s/90’s due to his anti-Semitism; perhaps that debate can shed some light here…)

“Significance” heads into some interesting territory. Perhaps the best summary of it is captured in the binary nature of the final line: “In their varied ways, those commemorated have revealed Christ’s presence in, and Lordship over, all of history; and continue to inspire us as we carry forward God’s mission in the world.” I see at least two things here. First, the commemorated must have achieved a notable revelation of Christ. But, second, it must be the kind of achievement that inspires us.  Consider the implications of the second one… I can use an objective checkbox for “achieving a notable revelation of Christ”, but that’s incomplete without an assessment of what inspires us. Our church and its needs are now a necessary aspect of the decision-making process.

The turn towards us only accelerates as we consider “Memorability.” This is not Memorability simpliciter; we’re not asking if these people should be remembered by history students, correct-thinking members of progressive circles, or the general public. Rather, we’re after those who “deserve to be remembered by the Episcopal Church today.” A few key things here… “Deserve to be” which is different from “are” sticks out. Also, “the Episcopal Church today.” This criterion is less about the historical person being investigated, and is much more about who we are as a church and what we need to remember—or be reminded of. That is, I can’t chalk this one up based on historical research on a person’s life. Instead, we have to take stock of who we are and how that person connects with and/or challenges our self-understanding.

Indeed, this is the place where memorability begins to help us see the failure of the “Range of Inclusion” criterion. As I said before, the Range is properly applied to the kalendar as a whole and not to individual candidates thereof and the problem is that it is too narrow in scope to be fully useful. It identifies a variety of diversities needed in the kalendar: race, gender, ecclesial affiliation, ordination status, but misses the really big one—charisms. That is, the kalendar needs to have an effective balance of the charisms and virtues that are needed for the church as a whole to reflect itself as a reflection of Christ. Attention to ordination status only begins to take notice of this.

What are the charisms that define the Church and are necessary, even essential, to the Church? How do the saints individually and collectively coherently display the dispersed virtues of Christ?

I see I’m starting to wander a bit from my topic…

There are some objective measures that can be tallied to determine whether a candidate should or shouldn’t enter the kalendar. There are more subjective measures. But there are additional necessary inputs regarding who the church is, and what the church needs to represent itself to itself. And, again, the kalendar cannot simply be a collection of worthy individuals but must be a coherent collection that reflects an authentic Christology.

I’ll let you know how the spreadsheet goes…

On Space in the Church

If you haven’t seen the piece on space for theological conservatives in the Episcopal Church by Christopher Wells yet, do go and read it.

Christopher’s work is always worth reading, even when I don’t agree with it, but in this case I certainly do. I note that this work is part of a series and I look forward to see how he develops it. What strikes me at this point is that his definition for “conservative” may actually be a bit too big…

He writes:

With that said, let me propose what I take to be a useful hermeneutic for “conservative” self-reflection and -identification, in the form of a thesis: Conservative Episcopalians will, or should, be those who define and approach all things ecclesial in a steadfastly theological way, by asking first about God’s character, his person and promises, his history and the record of his actions, so that all else is tied to, interpreted in light of, and otherwise subjected in obedience to him.

Some non-self-nominated conservatives may wish to do this, too! And arguably such an approach is simply and straightforwardly Christian. Ruled out, however, is an approach that starts with or subsists in human wisdom and experience, which requires a fundamental retelling or reworking of classic Christian doctrine in light of what may have happened to us lately — since, say, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the 1970s, or what have you. Conservatives may be more or less gothically Anglo-Catholic, buoyantly evangelical, or determinedly progressive with respect to various liturgical, catechetical, or social commitments. But we take a revealed body of texts as normative, across time and space — sacred Scripture, and the creeds as its summary — and we order “all things” with respect to this trust, in Christ. That is, we accept God’s ordering of the world in this way: God, who “has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22-23).

Yes, starting with the character and identity of God revealed in the Scriptures, history, and pre-eminently in the person of Jesus Christ is basic Christianity as far as I’m concerned. I can easily find myself in his definition.

But is it too broad? I know he’s walking a tightrope because one of his commitments is holding Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the same group. But are their theological commitments what hold this disparate group together? In my experience, the reason why the “conservative” elements of these two church parties barely tolerate each other hang together is precisely because they are united on a moral/social platform that closely mirrors the platform of the conservative political party. I look forward to what he says next…

Considering Ferial Days

Ok, so I’ve been mulling the issues with Holy Women, Holy Men (HWHM) around in my head for a while, trying to look at it from as many different angles as possible. One of the frequent criticisms of the work that I’ve encountered is that it seems to be trying to fill every available day. My own short-hand for this is “no feria left behind.”

A feria is a technical liturgical term whose basic English meaning is a regular weekday; Hughes helpfully and accurately describes it as “a day which is neither a Sunday nor a feast.”

One more time, here’s the chart of observances—take a good look:

Entries 1957-2013Now—how many fewer ferias are there now (2013) than what we had in 2003 when HWHM was officially authorized?

Are you calculating?

The answer—wait for it…is: none.

Indeed. There are precisely no fewer ferial days now than there were then. Yes, the observance count has jumped up dramatically, but none of these days, none of these liturgical events are required or enforced by the church. Zip. Nada.

If you turn with me to the front of your prayer book, you’ll note that the Calendar section identifies the days that are to be publicly observed with Eucharistic celebrations (with propers provided for in that book).

  1. Principal Feasts: these are the big 7 feasts which take precedence over everything else. 
  2. Sundays: There are 52 of these—although we’ve already accounted for three of them in the previous section.
  3. Holy Days: This is where things can and have changed. When the Calendar was originally proposed in 1964 there were 25 of them; in 1980 this number jumped to 32.
  4. Days of Special Devotion: As I’ve suggested before, this is more accurately an ascetical category than a liturgical one. No days are added here.
  5. Days of Optional Observance: These are days that “may be observed with the Collects, Psalms, and Lessons duly authorized by this Church.” But you don’t have to. They are entirely optional.

By my count, then, since 1980 there are (7+49+32=) 88 Sundays and feasts authorized by the prayer book in each year. Accordingly, there are 277 ferial days in a common year; 278 in a leap year.

What can we do liturgically on these days? This is the crux of the issue as I see it. So much of the discussion around HWHM seems to assume its use. It’s as if we have forgotten that we have options. But we do have options! And it’s worth thinking through what they are…

Option 1: We can choose to observe a Day of Optional Observance. So, using the trial resource HWHM or LFF 2006 which (as far as I can tell) is still the official non-trial document. (Isn’t it strange that you can’t buy it from Church Publishing, though? And that the cheapest edition of LFF currently on Amazon is $258[!?!]). This seems to be the default option in the heads of most people. To let it remain that way, though, is to miss the freedoms that the Calendar gives us.

Option 2: We can choose to observe the feria. The simplest way to do this is noted in the prayer book on p. 158: “The Proper appointed for the Sunday is also used at celebrations of the Eucharist on the weekdays following, unless otherwise ordered for Holy Days and Various Occasions. . . . Directions concerning the Common of Saints and services for Various Occasions are on pages 199, 199 [i.e., Rite I], 246 and 251 [i.e., Rite II].” For the Daily Offices, this means simply using the Collect from the previous Sunday (with a couple of exceptions around days like Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Ascension, etc. as noted in the Collects). For the Eucharist this also means what it says—the Sunday Propers are repeated.

Prayer Book Studies XII (1958) gave a fair amount of thought to the Lenten season. Between the 6th and the 8th centuries the Roman Church had given special attention to these days and gradually assigned propers to all of them. Noting this, but further noting that most Episcopal Church parishes didn’t need nearly that many propers, this work offers proper readings (“Epistles” and Gospels [scare quotes required as these were all OT or Prophecies following ancient precedent]) but not collects for the old Station days—Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent. In the first authorized version of Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1964), both the readings and collects for these days were printed. (And here we actually have the eponymous “fasts” of the title. Ember Days for Advent, Summer and Autumn were also provided though I don’t consider them ferial in the technical sense as they would receive prayer book collects with the advent of the ’79 book and be listed amongst the “Days of Optional Observance”.) The rubric at the head of these weekday propers states that the priest may use these or the appropriate Sunday propers at his discretion on any day within that week.

With the advent of PBS19 and the move towards a three-year Sunday Mass lectionary with a psalm and three readings, this all changed. The note in the front of the Revised LFF (1973) makes reference to “Optional Collects and daily schedules of Psalms and Lessons for the weekdays of Lent.” Two weeks of optional collects are given. The general rubrics begin by saying that while this sequence is provided, the priest may use the proper of the preceding Sunday or the proper as appointed for a Lesser Feast or Ember Day. So—now there are readings provided for all ferial days in Lent, but no other season.

A full-on set of collects and lessons for every day in Lent appears in the next revision, LFF 3rd Ed. (1980). Lenten ferias get privileged, now: “In keeping with ancient tradition, the observance of Lenten weekdays ordinarily takes precedence over Lesser Feasts occuring during this season” (LFF3, 20). Easter ferial material appears now as well.  Twenty collects are provided as are ferial Eucharistic readings for every day in the Easter Season. The notes in this proper keep the flexibility of using any weekday reading on any other day in that week that stood at the head of the Lenten materials. However, the discussion of the Easter proper states the following:

Since the triumphs of the saints are a continuation and manifestation of the Paschal victory of Christ, the celebration of saints’ days is particularly appropriate during this season. On such days, therefore, the Collect, Lessons, Psalm, and Preface are ordinarily those of the saint. Where there is a daily celebration, however, the weekday Lessons and Psalm may be substituted. (LFF3, 56)

(Mark those words and the context in which they’re given…) With only 20 collects given for the Great Fifty Days, though, quite a number of Days of Optional Observance are in view if one doesn’t use the Sunday collect. So, with LFF3 ferial Eucharistic readings and collects are given for Lent and Easter.

At this point, I have a sizable gap in my LFF collection. Looking at the legislative documents, though, General Convention passed 1991-C025 referring to the SLC the daily Eucharistic lectionary of the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Canada. (I believe Forward in Faith had a hand in this—can anyone confirm or deny?) GC authorized in 1994 the daily (ferial) Eucharistic lectionary for the seasons of Advent and Christmas but gave no new collects. The SLC didn’t like the idea of a continuous reading scheme for Post-Epiphany/Pentecost and chose to explore their options, coming back with a six-week series. In 1997-A073 it looks like an amended six-week cycle was adopted in addition to the CoE/ACC scheme thus giving provisions for all ferial Eucharistic services.

Jumping to HWHM, the question on my mind is whether permission is given for a ferial celebration on any ferial day. In the directions (Concerning the Proper) before the Advent/Christmas section, I see these words:

On days of optional observance on the Calendar, the Collect, Lessons, Psalm and Preface are ordinarily those of the saint. Where there is a daily celebration, however, the weekday Lessons and Psalm may be substituted. (HWHM, 24)

And these are precisely the words that stood in the Easter section following an explanation of why the celebration of saints was especially suitable in that season. Days of Optional Observance seem to be granted a preference given the use of “ordinarily.” (This seems odd given the traditional privileging of Advent ferias particularly upon reaching Sapientiatide…) At the back of HWHM, both the 6-week scheme and the 2-year CoE/ACC scheme for Ordinary seasons are given, but no mention is made of them giving way to Days of Optional Observance.

To summarize, ferial days can be celebrated either in the Daily Office or in weekday Eucharists by using the propers of the previous Sunday (or Principal Feast). This permission is granted in the BCP and is not revoked. Alternatively, ferial Eucharistic propers for the whole year are provided in LFF/HWHM (albeit in a rather disjointed fashion) with collects that could be used in the Office for Lent and Easter. While the rubrics recommend priority going to Days of Optional Observance in Advent/Christmas and an expressed preference for them in Easter, this is not mandated.

Option 3: We can choose to observe a Votive. Votives were common in medieval missals; one edition of the Sarum had 29; others had more. PBS19 reprints the SLC’s report to the General Convention of 1967 on votives which broadly identify two types: intercessory and doctrinal. That is, there are those that focus upon particular intentions, and there are those that focus upon specific doctrines. The prayer book offers 25 votives (see pp. 199-210; 251-261; 927-931) in addition to the 14 commons of the 6 identified kinds of saints. These votives are granted with only the following permissive rubric: “For optional use, when desired, subject to the rules set forth in the Calendar of the Church Year.” (BCP, 199; 251)  HWHM itself adds a combination of 12 commons and votives (including 2 for the BVM) bringing the total authorized votives and commons to 51.

When are these votives used? Well, the first seven in the prayer book loosely follow the typical weekly votive cycle with the exception of Saturday’s which was usually given to the BVM. Otherwise little direction is given. The rubric at their head, though, makes clear that they can be used on any day that is not claimed by a Sunday or Feast…

Of the major complaints I have heard around HWHM, there are three that stand out in particular.

  1. It doesn’t leave enough ferial days. Frankly, I’ve not been convinced that this is a major problem. After all, I’m a medievalist. I’m used to martyrologies that pile multiple people onto every single day of the year and kalendars that choose amongst the options of whom to celebrate. All of these figures are optional. The absence of ferias is only an issue if you choose to celebrate everyone who comes along, and that is not required.
  2. The criteria given were not used with regard to the people chosen. This is more of an issue. And it ties into…
  3. Not all the people chosen pass a litmus test for “sanctity.” In a sense this is a narrowing of the 2nd issue in that it is a focus upon the criteria around leading a sufficiently holy life. What counts and what doesn’t? I have a certain sympathy with this one. There are folks in HWHM who I don’t feel belong due to a lack of sanctity. But sanctity is not an easy thing to quantify…

What if…

What if—we made the options more clear?

What if we held a book clearly entitled “Optional Observances”? What if “Holy Women, Holy Men” was the title of a subsection of it rather than the whole? And if the ferial material was not scattered throughout it in disjointed fashion but presented as a coherent option equal to HWHM?

What if we promoted the votives more and gave them a focus?

There are people in HWHM whom I have a hard time honoring eucharistically as saints. However, I think many of them could be illustrations at votive masses for, say, “Artists & Writers” (HWHM, 728) or “Care of God’s Creation” (HWHM, 731), or “Social Justice” (BCP, 209/260). What if an almanac section—apart from the HWHM section—were to collect them and unite them with particularly appropriate votive occasions? The individuals in question would be remembered and commemorated, and the Church would only have to demonstrate “importance” or “significance” rather than the higher bar of “sanctity.” Perhaps this would give us the mechanism for remembering those figures of the past concerning whom we can’t render a full decision now but whom we do not wish to forget, or those who come close to the sanctoral criteria but fail on just a few.

What do you think?

 

Thoughts on Saints and Organic Development

I’ve been pondering a passage from W. H. Frere. As I’ve mentioned before, the revision and creation of Anglican Kalendars was in large measure spearheaded by the thoughts laid down by Frere in his 1911 book Some Principles of Liturgical Reform: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Here’s the passageI’ve been mulling over:

Now there are three principles that have operated in the formation of Kalendars. First they are designed to commemorate the chief events of redemption as recorded in the New Testament; secondly to maintain a memorial of local [p. 20] saints, especially martyrs; thirdly to recall the heroes of Christendom, who claim remembrance on other grounds than those of local interest, because of their prominence in the general history of the Church or in the Bible. These principles were recognized as regulative in the various processes by which the present Kalendar of the Prayer Book was reached; but different relative value and force has been assigned to them at different times. (Frere, Some Principles, 19-20)

Looking at Holy Women, Holy Men, one of the chief issues is its massive multiplication of feast days. Our ferial days are disappearing fast. Again, this is represented graphically in this image:

Entries 1957-2013The resolution that originally authorized the work that would become HWHM is 2003-A100 and it says this:

Resolved, That the 74th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to undertake a revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2000, to reflect our increasing awareness of the importance of the ministry of all the people of God and of the cultural diversity of The Episcopal Church, of the wider Anglican Communion, of our ecumenical partners, and of our lively experience of sainthood in local communities; and be it further

Resolved, That the SCLM produce a study of the significance of that experience of local sainthood in encouraging the living out of baptism; and be it further

Resolved, That the General Convention request the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget, and Finance to consider a budget allocation of $20,000 for implementation of this resolution.

I’m thinking out loud right now about the call for local stuff in connection with the Frere quote and a broader question about the nature and purpose of the church-wide kalendar in the BCP…

Does HWHM reflect or forward “our lively experience of sainthood in local communities”? Or does it reflect people that various committees wanted to get included for various reasons?

Wouldn’t the goal of local celebration be better served if we did more work raising up the importance of local parish and diocesan kalendars? If we did that, then the church-wide kalendar would be better seen as a collection of Frere’s 1 and 3; the role of 2 would fall to the local communties who know their own people best…

Could a more minimalist kalendar function to better support local, lay, diverse visions of sanctity than a maximalist list imposed from the centralized authority?

Theses on Sanctity

Looking back at my previous post and assorted comments and at COD’s thoughts on Lent Madness, one of the core problems confronting Holy Women, Holy Men and the efforts to fix it is a lack of an explicit Episcopal theology of sanctity. Of course, there are very few widely recognized “Episcopal theologies of” anything which is simultaneously a bug and a feature.

I once tried to go through the BCP catechism and do for death/sanctity/eschatology what I did for the Sacraments, but found that there was so little reference to these topics that it wasn’t worth the effort. I think that there is a theology of sanctity that can be drawn from prayer book as a whole, but I had neither the time nor energy for that endeavor at that point.

Nonetheless, here are some fundamental theses on an Episcopal theology on sanctity that I believe do proceed from the prayer book and the classic Anglican devotional life. (And, yes, Rdr. Morgan, these may address some of your questions…)

1. A theology of saints and sanctity exists at the intersection of Christology, Ecclesiology, and Sacramental Theology.

As I’ve said before and no doubt will say again, one of the great issues of the modern church is our tendency to compartmentalize and categorize and to treat theological matters as if they existed in their own little glass boxes disconnected from anything else. Theology doesn’t work that way. Inter-relation is the name of the game.

In order to speak meaningfully about the saints, we have to talk about Christ. The Incarnation is central here. Christ is both an exemplar and the one who transforms us. He is the first-fruits of the resurrection. He is the one who did teach us, is teaching, and will teach us in thought, word, and deed. He connects us to himself and transforms us according to his own likeness.

But to speak of this connection and transformation is to speak also of Sacramental Theology—of grace and the means of grace that bind us into the Body of Christ and nourish us towards the Mind of Christ. Baptism and the Eucharist and the sacramental actions by which ordinary material reality is bound within the community to the powerful promises of Christ to be means of grace for the community and beyond mirrors the alchemy of sanctity that transforms our earthen vessels into something more substantial.

To speak of the sacramental and eschatological Body of Christ leads us to Ecclesiology, the theology of the Church, the persistence of Christ in his Church and the character and mission of the Bride of Christ. Where are the boundaries of the Church? What is the character of the Church? What is our fundamental mission?

A coherent theology of sanctity is incomplete with these pieces being integral parts of the answer. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that there is no explicit Anglican or Episcopal theology of sanctity—there are so many disagreements in these other areas that there is not enough common ground on which to construct one!

2. Sanctity can be simply defined as the aim and completion of a sacramental life of discipleship.

We are a sacramental Church. The sacraments are ecclesially dispensed ordinary channels of grace that bind us into the life of God. The reality of this binding is expressed in a cruciform life of discipleship. Sanctity is the standard against which progress into this cruciform life is measured; sanctity is the incarnate expression of relaxing our humanity into the person of Christ.

We talk quite a lot about the Baptismal Covenant. If things are properly aligned, then sanctity is related to a keeping of the promises taken on in this covenant.

3. We are missing part of the picture if we do not recognize there there are several key facets of who the saints are and who they are for us: they are a) elder siblings on the way of the cross, b) mirrors of the light of Christ, c) present intercessors, and d) pillars for the Church.

I use the word “facets” deliberately. Facets are different faces and aspects of a single thing—not different things that may or may not be grouped together… At the Reformation, protestant reactions against the abuses seen in popular devotion to the saints led to a myopic reduction of the role and identity of the saints. That is to say, I believe that there were legitimate theological problems with the way that devotion to the saints was expressed in late medieval Europe. I believe that some of these issues still persist. And, to touch on a point raised by a comment on the previous post, I think that much Anglican anxiety around Our Lady is because Marian devotion past and present sits uncomfortable near, on, or over the line between veneration (which is appropriate) and worship (which is not). (This is my main statement on Mary from a while back.)

The end result is that the protestant reformers tended to cut things back severely to the degree that they tended to give (a) their grudging assent and preferred to ignore the others. This is what’s in the Augsburg Confession; the 39 Articles don’t even go that far. In doing so, they violated the tradition of the Church and the teaching of Scripture. (I won’t say clear teaching as the most obvious pieces regarding this appear in Revelation and, due to its nature, it’s rather best to avoid the “clear” word.)

What I tend to see in the current Episcopal Church—perhaps as exemplified in some of the Lent Madness discussions—is a similar reduction of the saints to facet (a). As a result, some clarity on the scope of these facets is essential.

A. The Saints are Elder Siblings on the Way of the Cross.

The saints are exemplars for us in that they give us a picture of what faithful lives look like in a multitude of societies and situations. How they acted inspires us and gives us models. In this facet, we tend to cleave closest to saints with whom we share points of identification whether that be gender, race, class, profession, or situation. This is a lot of what we see going on in Lent Madness comments.

This is the “particularity” piece that helps us work through how we live the Gospel in our particularity—by learning about the particularity of others. However, an over-emphasis on this facet can be a danger when we come to believe that our goal is following the direct example of the saint. After all, no matter how closely connected we seem to be, their particularity is not our particularity. Yes, we should imitate them, but we also must be fully cognizant of what it is that we are imitating! And that leads us directly to our next facet…

B. The Saints are Mirrors of the Light of Christ.

Saints are mirrors, not light-sources. They don’t generate their own glow; rather they glow from reflecting the light of Christ. The saints cleave to Christ, and—in so doing—they cultivate the virtues of Christ. The praiseworthy deeds done by the saints are to be followed and imitated because of the way in which they embody the virtues of Christ. For instance, the marches organized by Martin Luther King Jr. reflect a creative combination of the virtues of justice, fortitude, and temperance (specifically in resisting the many temptations to violence). To simply say, “Let’s march!” without grasping these internal principles is not imitating the saint; it is failing to discern the universal—the aspect of Christ—that is bound into the particular.

I can’t help but think of Cassian’s citation of St. Antony in his description of how monks are to learn virtue from their elders:

For it is an ancient and admirable saying of the blessed Antony to the effect that when a monk, after having opted for the cenobium, is striving to the heights of a still loftier perfection, has seized upon the consideration of discretion and is already able to rely on his own judgment and to come to the pinnacle of the anchorite life, he must not seek all the kinds of virtue from one person, however outstanding he may be. For there is one adorned with the flowers of knowledge, another who is more strongly fortified by the practice of discretion, another who is solidly founded in patience, one who excels in the virtue of humility and another in that of abstinence, while still another is decked with the grace of simplicity, this one surpasses the others by his zeal for magnanimity, that one by mercy, another one by vigils, yet another by silence, and still another by toil. Therefore the monk who, like a most prudent bee, is desirous of storing up spiritual honey must suck the flower of a particular virtue from those who possess it most intimately, and he must lay it up carefully in the vessel of his heart. He must not begrudge a person for what he has less of, but he must contemplate and eagerly gather up only the virtuousness that he possesses. For if we want to obtain all of them from a single individual, either examples will be hard to find, or, indeed, there will be none that would be suitable for us to imitate. The reason for this is that, although we see that Christ has not yet been made ―all in all‖ (to cite the words of the Apostle), we can nonetheless in this fashion find him partly in all. For it is said of him that ―by God‘s doing he was made for us wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Inasmuch, therefore, as there is wisdom in one, righteousness in another, holiness in another, meekness in another, chastity in another, and humility in another, Christ is now divided among each of the holy ones, member by member. But when we are all assembled together in the unity of faith and virtue, he appears as ―the perfect man,‖ completing the fullness of his body in the joining together and in the characteristics of the individual members. (John Cassian, Institutes 5.4)

For Cassian, the practice of virtue is not fundamentally the cultivation of self-improvement. Rather, as monks grow in virtue they grow into the fullness of Christ and as constituent members of the Body of Christ, they contribute to the eschatological consummation when Christ will be all in all. The quest for virtue is the quest to more fully and completely participate in the life and redemptive work of the Risen Lord.

This is the very same work in which we engage when we study the saints and seek to model their virtues in our lives. Their virtues are theirs only on loan; the heart of their virtue flows from Christ. Therefore, the saints—in congruence with Mary to the servants at the wedding of Cana—always point us back to Christ: “do whatever he tells you.” If we focus too hard on the saints, we end up staring at the finger—not the moon to which it points; yet without their finger we stumble for lack of guidance.

C. The Saints are Present Intercessors.

In Baptism, we are joined into the Body of Christ in all the fullness of meaning that the phrase contains. We share in his resurrection life; we are part of his Church. As members of that Church, one of our fundamental rights and responsibilities is intercession: to pray for one another. As partakers of his resurrection life, at death “life is changed, not ended” (proper preface for the commemoration of the dead, BCP 382). If the saints remain faithful to their baptized identity in this changed life, then intercession  is an inevitable part of it. I’ve written on how I see this functioning in such a way to help anxious Anglicans understand it in this piece so I won’t rehash it all here.

D. The Saints are the Pillars of the Church.

I’m using a metaphor here that I think is helpful because it incorporates aspects of both stasis and visibility. In identifying saints, the Church says something about who it is and how it understands itself by way of the individuals singled out. That is, all responsible theologies of sanctity agree that we on this side of the veil do not and will never know who were and were not saints. There are some presently enjoying the eschatological intimacy with God that would surprise and shock us—of this I have no doubt. As a result, the ecclesial act of recognizing individuals really does say as much about us as it does about them. This is that whole “social memory” thing that I’ve brought up from time to time. In identifying saints we claim them and their history as part of our present identity. Hence the drive mentioned in the previous comments for “how well the saint in question agrees with our own theological politics.”

By including non-Anglican saints we are displaying our greatness-of-spirit by showing that we don’t believe that the holy is restricted to our church. (Did that “greatness-of-spirit” thing sound tongue-in-cheek? Good—it was supposed to…) However, by including Anglican saints we are displaying a conviction that the Anglican path is a true path to holiness (amongst others). Indeed, this was the articulated rationale for only including Anglicans in the post-Reformation period in Prayer Book Studies IX.

So—the individuals we select say something about our identity now. But a pillar doesn’t define a structure; a structure, a Church, is defined by the selection and arrangement of pillars. Likewise, it’s not enough to be selective and intentional about picking individuals; we must be cognizant of how our individual choices shape the Calendar that we offer to the Church. Do the individuals reflect a balanced sense of what we mean by life in Christ or does it get weighted or tilted or skewed in certain directions to the exclusion of others? I think this is one of the big fights around HWHM. It’s not enough to work with the individuals; the structure offered by the whole of the Calendar matters just as much—maybe more.

Ok. There are more theses to theorize, more thoughts to think, and likely more bombs to throw. But they’ll have to wait for another time.

Modern Saints Trending?

beth_may tweeted an interesting thought earlier today:

Well, the @LentMadness 8 seem to support @haligweorc HWHM research that modern Episcopalians now mostly prefer only modern saints

Since I’ve been mostly offline for Lent (more by happenstance than as a discipline…) I actually haven’t been following the brackets very closely. But she’s certainly identified a trend…

What are your thoughts on this?

One of the things my work on HWHM has done for me is that it’s made me stop and think about what I look for in a saint. That is, I’ve been spending more time considering what is “saintly” and how the saints function in my faith. A big piece of it for me is that the saints are those people who lead me into the numinous presence of God. I have an Ottonian (following Rudolph Otto, not the Carolingian monarch) notion of holiness that has far less to do with ethics and far more with the in-breaking awesome presence of that which is fundamentally non-rational and non-material into our direct experience. I get that with folks like Benedict or Bride or Cuthbert. I don’t get that so much with Frances Perkins or Harriet Tubman.

I’m not saying that these people aren’t saints because they don’t engage my imagination the way I want them to—that’s not my point. What is the role of the mystical and mysterious in our current experience and appropriation of sanctity? Modern Anglican churches have never used miracles as a criterion for sanctity—and that’s probably not a bad thing—but what a reference to miracles does keep in the conversation is a sense of eschatological power. That those who are plugged deeply into the life of God express that power in their interactions almost as a by-product of who and what they are. Have we lost that section of the conversation in our criteria for sanctity?

Conversely, I wonder if my hesitation at so many of the modern candidates is at them or the ways that we choose to tell their stories. To what degree is that otherness, that holiness absent—or to what degree has it been edited out?

Language Comprehension Check

I need to level-set on what’s considered normally comprehensible English.

Here’s the question… Given the samples below, where do we reach the point where an intelligent, literate person would benefit from having a modern language paraphrase? Or, conversely, at what point would the same person have difficulties given archaicisms and technical terms that would be unfamiliar?

Sample 1

Say fyst this psalme with loke dyrecte to heuen
Iudica me deus with hole herte entere
Theyr conscyence purge fro the synnes seuen
Or they presume to go to the awtere
The same psalme sette in the sawtere
For a memoryall of the captyuyte
How Iherusalem stode in grete daunger
At Babylon that frowarde fell cyte.

Sample 2

After Ite missa est. the prest stondeith in the mydes of the Awter . and so blyssyd the people.

Then call to your remembrance thys holly medytatyon . how owr sauyour standyng in the mydes of hys disciples at the movnte of Olyveite . blyssing thaym . dyd ascend to hewyn . where he ys now resydent . and euer more schall be . syttyng on the ryght hond of hys father this Ascensyon of our Lord . ys signefyed by the wordes . which [fo. 25.b.] the prest saith at the end of the masse . that ys to say Ite missa est which wordes doith sovnd after thys Exposytyon of Doctoures . Goo and departt, for our Lord ys send and offerd vp to hys Eternall Father In oblatyon and sacryfyce.

Sample 3

when þo auter is al dight,
& þo preste is reuysht right,
þen he takes in bothe his hende
a clothe o-pon þo auter ende,
and comes obac a litel doune,
dos hit o-pon him al a-boune.
alle men knelen, bot he stondes,
and haldes to god vp bothe his hondes;
þere, or he þo messe bi-gynne,
wil he meke him for his synne;
til alle þo folk he shryues him þare
of alle his synnes lesse & mare:
so dos þo clerk a-gayn to him
shryuen hom þere of all hor synn,
and askes god forgyuenes,
or þai bigynne to here þo mes.

Where do things break down as far as your concerned for the average reader–so, not just did you have problems with it, but where do you think a normal college level English speaker would?

Liturgy as Language

I haven’t been online a whole lot since around the beginning of Lent. The computer dying was part of it as was general busy-ness. In any case, I’m trying to get caught up on things, including interesting things that were happening online while I was away.

One of these things was this talk from Fr. Bosco Peters. Now, if you read this blog, you probably also ought to be reading his blog anyway. I don’t always agree with everything that he says or suggests, but he is a good, thoughtful voice on Anglican liturgy grounded in the history and ecumenical aspects of it. (He’s also a Kiwi so it’s interesting to have his perspective on a book greatly beloved but little understood by many American liberal-types…)

The general approach that Fr. Peters takes in this talk should be fairly familiar. I see him operating within the sphere of the post-liberal/Yale School perspective pioneered by Frei and Lindbeck that understands religion generally to be a linguistic-cultural phenomenon into which one is enculturated. (This is in opposition to, among others, a perspective of religion as a body of ideas to which one does or does not give assent.) Fr. Peters sees liturgy as a fundamental language of the Christian culture. I heartily agree and have used this perspective myself in some of my own presentations.

What I find most interesting here is the way that Fr. Peters pushes this perspective/metaphor. Making the logical next step, he gives us some very interesting thoughts about fluency. This is a very intriguing way to think about liturgy and the church, how we reach out to the non/un/de-churched, and also how we think about clergy and leaders within our own church and their facility (or lack thereof) in the liturgy.

Do take some time to read over the presentation or to watch it.