De mortuis nihil nisi bonum

Do not speak ill of the dead

On Wednesday, April the 10^th, Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest from Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. In the midst of the beautiful service, the Bishop of London delivered a moving sermon in which he stated:

This, at Lady Thatcher’s personal request, is a funeral service, not a Memorial Service with the customary eulogies. At such a time, the parson should not aspire to the judgments which are proper to the politician; instead, this is a place for ordinary human compassion of the kind that is reconciling. It is also the place for the simple truths which transcend political debate. Above all it is the place for hope.

Despite the fact that the Bishop stated that this was “neither the time nor the place” for debating the merits of Lady Thatcher’s political career, there were still protestors at many stages along the funeral procession outside the cathedral. Many of the demonstrators expressing their contempt for the former Prime Minister hadn’t even been born when Margaret Thatcher was in power, and yet they still felt compelled to protest (loudly) at a Christian funeral.

As the Bishop wisely noted in the beginning of his sermon, there is a time and a place for debate and discourse and disagreement in a free society where individuals are entitled to their own opinions and free speech, but there is also a time when such disagreements need to be put aside out of respect for the humanity of others. There is a time when our individual opinions need to be put aside so that we can remember that the person we are arguing with is just as much a human as we are. We forget that at our own great peril.

The same week that Margaret Thatcher was buried, we in our own country were in the midst of a furious manhunt, looking for two individuals that planted homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The human lives of the individuals standing at the finish line mattered little to these men; they didn’t care about the victims’ hopes or their dreams, or what struggles the victims may have overcome in their own lives. The two men that committed this heinous crime only cared about their own opinions and taking an opportunity to make a political statement.

Showing respect to others, whether living or dead, is not just about creating a polite and genteel society anymore: it is about life and death itself. Once you have refused to recognize the humanity of another person it is a pretty short road to refusing to recognize any of their human rights, including their right to live. Protesting a funeral, and taking a life are clearly not the same thing, but they do both share a similar disrespect for the life of another. Both actions attempt to turn a human life into nothing but a political agenda.

The great truth of the Incarnation and the life of Jesus Christ, is that God refuses to be made into an abstraction or an idea or an agenda. God invites us to see him as a person. He invites us to see each other as people too. Sometimes we may have to put compassion ahead of our own individual opinions, so that we don’t fail to see the humanity of the one standing before us. In Britain and in America we enjoy the right to free speech and to make public demonstrations, things which are to be treasured and valued, but we should also never forget that sometimes it may be more valuable to exercise that other important right that we have: the right to remain silent.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

If you lived during the middle ages, not only would you have given up meat for all of Lent (not just on Fridays), you would have also given up eggs and dairy as well. To this day, many in the Eastern Orthodox tradition abstain from eating all meat and animal by-products during Lent, but in the West it has been a long time since we routinely gave up eggs or dairy. It is no wonder then that the tradition of Easter Eggs may seem a bit odd to us. For years I have observed people fumble around trying to explain the significance of Easter Eggs to their children or to other adults (Christian and non-Christian alike). Most of the time the best answer we can come up with is that “eggs symbolize new life,” and are therefore a symbol of resurrection and of spring. This is partially true, but in order to appreciate the true significance of the Easter Egg we also need to remember that for most of Christian history, the faithful had given up eggs for all of Lent. The eggs that were decorated and celebrated on Easter Sunday morning, were done so by people that had lost them for a time. This wonderful and nutritious food had been forbidden to them during Lent, and now at last they could feast on them again, along with everything else that they had given up.

Easter Eggs are symbolic of life, but they symbolize life that has been lost and regained. They represent a natural gift of God, that because of our sinfulness and broken human nature we have had to give up for a time (during the penitential fasting of Lent), but now because of the grace and forgiveness of God has been restored to us. The Christian celebration of Easter is not about new-birth; it is about re-birth. It is not about the discovery of something new; it is about the recovery of something that was lost.

We have a tendency to lose things in this world: we lose our innocence, we lose our joy; we lose our sense of wonder. Sometimes we lose things because they are actually taken from us: like our loved ones, or even perhaps, our health or our own lives. Easter is a festival when we as Christians proclaim that we have a God who restores things that have been lost. Because of what we witnessed at Christ’s tomb, we believe that God has the power and the will to restore life, even to our mortal bodies. This is our unique hope as Christians: finding that which was lost.

This year we will, like many churches, have an Easter Egg hunt in the garden following the Easter Sunday Mass. We will have a special visit that morning from the Easter Bunny as well. Despite what many people say about the Easter Bunny, there really is no evidence that rabbits or bunnies ever had anything to do with ancient pagan customs. The same is true of the Christmas Tree. Historians and theologians are equally reluctant to admit when they do not know something, but when it comes to the origins of the Christmas Tree and the Easter Bunny, the real truth is: we just don’t know. What we do know, is that for the past few hundred years, Christians have used both the Tree and the Bunny to inject a bit of joy into their lives. They have used them to inspire their children to wonder and marvel at a world that is sometimes magical and mysterious.

On that first Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene found what she was looking for, but it wasn’t in the tomb. May our celebration of Easter help us to find what we are looking for too: our hope, our joy, our innocence, our loved ones, our childhood or even our own lives. May we too discover that what once was dead, through God’s grace, is now alive and well.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

As we approach the holy season of Lent, I am reminded of a line from Joy Davidman’s book “Smoke on the Mountain”:

How does one keep a day holy? By making it unpleasant, and restrictive, and boring – or by making it joyous? By making it as much as possible like hell, or as much as possible like heaven?

We don’t usually think of Lent as a joyous season: Our church services are more somber, we refrain from using the joyous expression “Alleluia,” and we are encouraged to be more mindful of our sinfulness and or mortality. But the Spartan and penitential nature of Lent, need not remove all joy from our lives every February. In fact, when understood properly, our Lenten journey can actually help us to find and hold onto the true source of joy in our lives.

Life has a way of distracting us from what is really important. We are always tempted to put our faith (and our time, energy and resources) into things other than God. Maybe our desire for food controls us more than it should. Maybe our television habits are poisoning our view of humanity. Perhaps we need to spend less time chasing after life and more time just living it. The world always wants us to believe that joy is to be found in more stuff, but our faith is always calling us to remember that sometimes true joy is to be found in less.

Less drama, less noise, less clutter, less dessert: Lent can be the spiritual and emotional equivalent of cleaning out the basement, the attic and the garage. The austerity of Lent is not meant to be an arbitrary punishment for our sins; it is there to focus our attention on those things that are truly important. It is there to remind us of how much the world tries to distract us from the love of God.

We worship the same God during Lent that we do during Christmas and Easter. The God that we celebrate feasting on pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is the same God that calls us to fasting with ashes on Ash Wednesday. The God that confronts us with sin and death on Good Friday is the same God that offers us forgiveness and life on Easter Sunday. We need both, and God knows it.

Now we are come to the beginning of Lent. We are all given the opportunity to make this season truly holy, not by giving up joy, but by focusing ourselves on what the true source of our joy really is. We may put aside some things for a while, not because they are necessarily bad, but because we recognize that we don’t need them as much as we need God.

Joy Davidman (that author I quoted above) was the wife of C.S. Lewis. When she died prematurely of bone cancer in 1960 he had the following epitaph placed on her grave:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,


And field, and forest, as they were


Reflected in a single mind)


Like cast off clothes was left behind


In ashes, yet with hopes that she,


Re-born from holy poverty,


In lenten lands, hereafter may


Resume them on her Easter Day.

The ashes that we are anointed with this Ash Wednesday are a reminder of our mortality and all that we must let go of, but they are also a sign of hope: Hope that no matter how much we have to let go of in this world, there is so much joy waiting for us in the next.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

God knows we all love Christmas. The food, the decorations, the traditions…it can be a fun and exciting time of the year for children of all ages. It is hard to contain all that fun and excitement into one day (Christmas Day) or eight days (the Octave of Christmas) or even twelve days (Christmastide). The fun and the excitement, and the celebrations and the preparations long ago spilled over into the season of Advent, which originally had very little to do with celebrating the Nativity and was mostly concerned with the Second Coming of Christ. Now, most people think of Advent as (at best) a season to prepare for Christmas or (at worst), Christmas itself. For years I struggled with what to do with Advent. As a good Anglo-Catholic, I want to be faithful to the tradition, but I also have to be honest and admit that I do like to have fun in December as well. Mostly I am tired of listening to clergy complain about how Advent has been lost to secular Christmas, so I am just not going to do it. I don’t think that we are going to be successful at getting people to stop celebrating Christmas before December 25^th, and I am not sure that I even want to try. I have not given up on Advent though.

There just might be something to be said for preparing to celebrate Christ’s birth at the same time that we are talking about his Second Coming. We have been taught for years that we should be joyful at the Nativity and fearful at the Second Coming, but why must this be so? Perhaps God wants us to look to his Second Coming with the same joy and anticipation that we do with Christmas. Perhaps we need to be preparing for both in the same way. No child is afraid to open their presents on Christmas morning; if we truly love God and believe in his love, then we shouldn’t be afraid of the gifts he has for us either.

I have decided to stop complaining about Advent and to start celebrating Christmas early. But I won’t settle for starting as late as October, like the retail stores. I am going to start advocating that we start Christmas even earlier than that! September, August, July…nah, those months are for the late-comers. We should really start celebrating Christmas on December the 26^th, that way each and every day of our lives would be a preparation for the coming of Christ. That way we could live in a perpetual Advent: always remembering the great gift that God has given us, and always looking forward to the great gift that he still has in store.

May this Advent season help you to prepare for the coming of Christ….the first one, and the second one.

Making stock is perhaps (next to peeling potatoes) one of the most boring things to do in the kitchen. You spend hours cutting and cooking spare bones and vegetables, and for what? Something most people never ask about or care about! But despite the fact that making stock is rather uninspiring and tedious, each Fall I end up spending several days in the kitchen boiling bones and freezing broth for use throughout the rest of the year. Of course I realize that you can purchase canned stock in the grocery store, but it never even approaches the flavor that homemade stock has (it’s way too bland), not to mention that it is filled mostly with salt and preservatives. You have to use good stock when you are cooking, because stock forms the foundation of whatever dish you are trying to make, and in that sense it works just like the foundation of a building: you don’t usually stand around and admire it, but it is what holds the entire building together. Even the grandest cathedral will fall over if its foundation is not deep enough and even the most elaborate and expensive meal can be ruined by using bad cooking stock. There are some places in life where you just cannot cut corners and foundations are one of them.

People often think of Anglo-Catholics as people that are primarily concerned with the “frills” of religion: the gothic buildings, stained glass, incense, candles, statuary, music, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. The primary concern of Anglo-Catholics, from the time of the reformation through today has always been the foundation of their religion. We want a church whose foundation runs deeper than the past thirty years. We want a church that rests upon the foundation that Christ himself created when he called his disciples to follow him. We want a church that honors the contributions to our faith made by saints over the centuries. It’s not about the “smells and bells.” It’s about remaining connected to our history, connected to Christians throughout time, and connected to Christ.

Our traditions, our history, our beliefs, our scriptures, these things form the stock of our faith. They are the broth that pulls everything together and give our worship depth and character. As Anglo-Catholics we hold onto our past, not because we are afraid of the future, but because we know that a building is only as strong as its foundation, just like a soup is only as good as its stock.

I am reminded of the words of a great old hymn:

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
 Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As thy days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

May we always remain connected to that foundation and may no one ever accuse us of being bland!

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

August 2012 Witness Letter

Why is it that old churches seem so much holier than new ones? Is it the architecture? the old wood? the dust? I have spent that past week touring many beautiful and historic churches in London and Paris and I reflected while I was there that there is something powerful about these buildings that goes far beyond their style of architecture or their state of repair. I’m sure that others have experienced this as well: that feeling of walking into a place and knowing instinctively that the spiritual world is somehow closer to us there. While I think that architecture, age and grandeur all play an important role in drawing our minds and hearts to God, I do not think that it is what gives these places their sense of transcendence. What makes these churches holy is the effect of prayer over time.

Prayer has a cumulative effect over time. Day after day, year after year, century after century, people come to these places to present to God their hopes and their fears, their thanksgivings and their petitions. Churches are witnesses to the joy of baptism and new life; the hope and commitment of weddings, confirmations and ordinations; the sadness and grief of reconciliation and burial, all the while being filled by the adoration of the faithful and the presence of Christ’s body and blood. How could the effect of such weighty matters not transform a place over time? I think that prayer works upon the world in much the same way that a glacier does. A glacier’s movement is usually imperceptible, but it is one of the most powerful natural forces on earth. The Himalayas, the Alps, and even the island of Manhattan all owe their form and existence to the work of glaciers. I think that those centuries of prayer scratch away at the material world like a glacier pushing away the earth’s crust and they allow us to reach a place that is much deeper and closer to the foundation of our existence.

I once worked in a church that had a sign near the entrance that read: “This is a place where prayer is wont to be made.” You knew that what the sign said was true; you could feel it in the walls of the building. The years of daily prayer and almost daily Eucharist had transformed that building into a sacred space, the holiness of which no one could doubt. Once when visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, I leaned up against a wall for just a moment, only to discover when I pulled away that my hand now smelled strongly of incense. It was a delightful reminder that prayer becomes a part of the fabric of our churches, as much as, if not more than, the bricks and mortar. Prayer transforms buildings over time.

Prayer has the power to transform and shape us as well. This year the Church of England and many other churches in the Anglican Communion are celebrating the 350^th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The cumulative effect of centuries of using the same prayers (themselves often translations of prayers that had seen centuries of use before the Reformation) has had a profound impact not just upon the Anglican churches, but upon the English language as well. For centuries people have been coming into God’s presence using words that they had learned from their parents and grandparents, often using the same prayer books as well.

There is something truly wonderful about having a prayer work its way into your memory, and your soul. I’m not talking about the kind of rote memorization that schoolchildren are sometimes forced to do; I’m talking about the familiarity that comes through use: knowing a prayer because you have prayed it time and time again. That sort of thing can’t happen if the liturgy is completely different each and every time you walk into a church. It also won’t happen if we don’t use the prayers regularly in the exercise of our faith. We must allow prayer to shape us over time, just as it has transformed the ancient churches of the world into blessed and sacred spaces.

As I begin my time at the Church of the Ascension I have many hopes, and maybe even a few ideas, but my supreme hope, wish and goal is that the Church of the Ascension will continue to be, as it has been: a place that is shaped by prayer, filled with people that are shaped by prayer; to be unquestionably “a place where prayer is wont to be made.” There are sure to be many parties and many missions, much joy and much work, but through it all should be the unending river of prayer, praise and adoration that is at the heart of who we are as the church. In the end, the legacy we leave should do honor to the legacy we have received: a deep and profound faith in God’s love and redeeming work done in Christ; a faith whose prayers may not always seem to work instantly, but when given time (like a glacier), have the power to move mountains.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin