For Meditation: "and when my all of strength shall fail"

"What though my shrinking flesh complain
  And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain;
  When I am weak, then I am strong;
And when my all of strength shall fail
I shall with the God-man prevail.

Yield to me now--for I am weak
 But confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
  Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or thou never hence shall move,
  And tell me if thy name is LOVE.

'Tis Love!  'Tis Love!  Thou diedst for me;
  I hear thy whisper in my heart,
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
  Pure Universal Love thou art;
To me, to all, thy bowels move--
  Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE."

Charles Wesley, "Wrestling Jacob"

The Passing Bell's Question

“Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”  Romans 13:11

I walked down the street from the hospital with my faith renewed, full of joy, grateful to be a priest.  I had been called in a few hours earlier because Gertrude Worrall, my oldest parishioner, had reached the end.  She was 98, baptized at Christ Church when William Howard Taft was president, a saintly woman, greatly loved by her family.  They had surrounded her in the hospital room, four or five generations of them.  We’d prayed and sang hymns together.  There was laughter and tears, and she was delighted by all of it until she slipped peacefully away.  It may sound very odd if you haven’t seen one, but there are beautiful deaths, and sometimes, as a priest, I’m invited to be part of them.

I was walking a few inches above the sidewalk as I made my way back to the church to put away my stole and the communion kit.  And I decided this would be just the moment to expand the use of the passing bell at Christ Church. 

Our Crowns at His Feet

“He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  Colossians 1:18

I went to see a friend recently who has come to a certain age, and is in the process of moving from her grand old house into a retirement community.  She’s made the decision with proper deliberation, and she knows it’s the right choice.  A smaller space means freedom for her, the ability to age with more dignity and grace.  But it’s a challenging and sometimes sorrowful task to sort through all these things that fill her old house, and to make those inevitable decisions about what can be taken and what must be left to others.

She wanted me to see the house in all its glory, before the packers descended, stirring up the dust and setting things ajar.  She led me from room to room, and told me the stories behind the furniture and the pictures on the wall.  This piece was her grandmother’s and that one she spotted at a sale in the rain and bought it for a song.  The friend who painted that picture has been gone for years, but this artist went on to become a smashing success.  The things we gather together over a lifetime do clutter our houses and accumulate ever so much dust.  But they are the tangible signs of our memories.  They express our relationships.

My friend seemed most excited about the things in the house she was preparing to send on to others.   A local museum in her grandfather’s home town had agreed to take a few items that couldn’t really fit in anyone’s drawing room.  Her son had said he would like to have a cherished collection.  She was surprised by that.  He’d never shown so much interest when she’d tried to explain all the parts to him before.  But she smiled when she thought about how he had already decided where it would fit in his own home.  She would make him notes about where each piece had come from, why it was significant.  He would never be able to remember all of it, she guessed.  But it reminded him of her, of course.  He knew how much she loved the collection, and that matters.

Ponder:"as the First Man partook of it, so must the last"

"Christian Redemption is God's mercy to all Mankind; but it could not be so, if every fallen Man, as such, had not some Fitness and Capacity to lay hold of it.  It must have no Dependence upon Times and Place, or the Ages and several Conditions of the World, or any outward Circumstance of Life; as the First Man partook of it, so must the last; the learned Linguist, and the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb have but one and the same common Way of finding Life in it.  And he that writes large Commentaries upon the whole Bible, must be saved by something full as different from Book knowledge, as they were, who lived when there was neither Book nor any Alphabet in the world...It must be something as grounded in human Nature, as the Fall itself is, which wants no Art to make it known; but to which the common Nature of Man is the only Guide in one Man, as well as another.  Now this something, which is thus obvious to every Man, and which opens the Way to Christian Redemption in every Soul is, a sense of the Vanity and Misery of this World; and a Prayer of Faith and Hope to God, to be raised to a better State.

William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728).

Our Delight and Our Duty

You may have noticed that the Saint Francis pledge cards sent to you a few weeks ago are headed by II Corinthians 9:7, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”  It’s perhaps the most famous passage in the New Testament about giving to God, and it’s a very fitting way to encapsulate one set of reasons why we commit part of what God has given us back to His Church, to use in doing His work. 

Saint Paul is identifying giving as a free and loving response to God’s generosity to us.  Giving brings us joy because it allows us a stake in the way the good news about Jesus is advancing and changing people’s lives.  Giving is a delight, a way to express what is most meaningful in our lives.  To fully account for these factors, giving should be without compulsion.  We discern carefully the kind of commitment we have been called to make.  We place our hearts in the brass collection plate.

The passage is a wonderful summary of one set of reasons why we give. 

Like Christians, Not Bears

“Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” Hebrews 10:24

If there were websites that allowed students to review boarding schools, I imagine that most of you would have a few complaints to air.  It may be that a few of these slip out from time to time when you are calling, or texting, or face booking a friend back home who hasn’t had the fortune of ending up in this exotic place called Saint James.  When I taught here, I was always very careful not to look over the shoulders of my charges who flocked to the computers after study hall was over, but I had some idea what was being said: can you believe they give two hours of homework in this place?  You can’t imagine what they serve in that dining hall.  I’ve never lived this far from a decent mall in my life!

Last week, I happened upon a letter written by a boarding school student to his father nearly two hundred years ago, and believe me, next to him your life here is a walk in the park.  Young Henry describes rations of black bread, mattresses stuffed with wheat chaff, all the boys washing once a week at a long horse trough, with never enough soap to go around.  The headmaster, Henry said, inspected all the letters, so he had to slip this one to a friend of his father’s at church.  When the lights were out, in the dormitory, it was every man for himself. He begged his father to let him come home for Christmas, if God permitted him to live so long.  He closed the secret missive with these words: “I assure you we are used more like Bears than Christians and believe me, my dear Father, I would rather be obliged to work all my life time than remain here another year.[1]”

Ponder: "it is this only that can make us free"

"They who imagine that self-denial intrenches upon our liberty, do not know that it is this only that can make us free indeed; giving us the victory over ourselves; setting us free from the bondage of our corruption; enabling us to bear afflictions, (which will come one time or other;) to forsee them without amazement; enlightening the mind, sanctifying the will, and making us to slight those baubles which others so eagerly contend for.,,It is the greatest mercy, that God does not consult our inclinations, in laying upon us the Cross, which is the only way to happiness.  Jesus Christ crucified would have few imitators, if God did not lay it upon us, by the hands of men, and by His providence."

Thomas Wilson, Sacra Privata.