St. Louis of France - Rector's Rambling for August 23, 2020

Let’s set the record straight – St. Louis of France was a saint and worthy of our admiration!

This might not be a popular opinion in some circles, but then holiness is not a popularity contest.

St. Louis IX is the only King of France to be recognized as a saint, which is a recognition of his holiness of life that seems to be lost to those reading a 21st century set of grievances into his life.  In fact, he loved Jesus, loved Jesus’ Church, and loved his people.

Much has been made of his leadership of the Crusades, which were actions to free areas that were invaded and occupied by Saracen (Muslim) forces.  In his first crusade he was captured and ransomed, and he also ransomed 300 Christians who had been blinded by the Mohammedans, and brought them back with him to France were he established a place to care for them for life.  On his second crusade he died of disease, not an uncommon occurrence in that day.

In addition to his founding of an institute for the blind, he started a theological college, the Sorbonne.  He gave liberally in support of the Church and her ministries to the poor and marginalized.  He reorganized the courts so that law would be equally applied to all citizens, poor and rich alike.

He also had a deep personal piety, and followed a Rule of Life according to the Third Order Franciscan Way.  This Order was founded by St. Francis for those seeking to serve Jesus, but in the world because of their marital status, or other responsibilities, could not leave everything to become a friar or monk.  As the Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts notes, “Because of his determined effort to live a personal life of Franciscan poverty and self-denial in the midst of worldly power and splendor – he wore a hair shirt (rough penitential garment) under his royal dress – Louis is honored as patron saint of the Third Order.”

Or as the Anglican Breviary notes about St. Louis, “In a rough and cruel age he had ruled justly with mercy, and in such wise in him were united the qualities of a great king and saint.  Although he had longed to see the Faith of Christ reign throughout the world, and especially in the Holy Land itself, he took comfort, when he understood that God willed him to fail in this his purpose, in surrendering himself to the divine will.”

St. Louis of France – pray for us.

Coming back to Church - Rector's Rambling for August 16, 2020

Today is our seventh Sunday open since the shutdown for Coronavirus.  I am so grateful that we are here together to worship Almighty God, and to receive the Blessed Sacrament!

Back in March, when things started to shut down, if you had told me that in August we would be at 33% average Sunday attendance, wearing masks in church, no choir, and only receiving Communion in one kind, I would have thought you mad.  Now here we are, doing all those things as precautions against the spread of infection.

As of last week, of the nine Episcopal churches in the city limits, we are the only one open for public worship.  Additionally, many of the suburban parishes are still not open for worship for a variety of reasons.  I understand that there are many parishioners with pre-existing health issues, and even some older clergy who would be considered high risk, that precludes them from participating in public worship.

We all want to be safe, and keep others safe too.  But to be honest, I have been surprised that more church members here and elsewhere are not as anxious to get back to the worship of Almighty God.

I am coming to believe that the devil is using our best intentions to keep others healthy and distorting it to keep us from worshipping Our Lord and receiving the Blessed Sacrament.  There is nothing the evil one hates more than Christians worshipping and being strengthened by the Grace of our Lord’s Body and Blood.

Thanks be to God for those who are present here at St. John’s today to worship and receive Communion, and for those tuning in on our livestream to worship but can’t be with us because their health precludes their being here with us.  And let us pray for those who are just not sure yet, that God will help them to have the strength to venture here in faith.

A few weeks ago, at Sunday Evening Prayer, a parishioner asked me a question that practically devastated me.  He asked, “do you think we will have a normal Christmas Eve Service?”  It hadn’t crossed my mind that this could go on until the end of December.  When can we have the choir back?  When will we have regular worship?  When can we fill the pews?  These are all things to add to your prayer list, trusting God in His Providence!

St. Clare of Assisi - Rector's Rambling for August 9, 2020

When I was in the discernment process, trying to figure out whether God may be calling me to seminary or perhaps to join a religious order, I decided to spend a long weekend at the Friary of the Society of St. Francis on Long Island.  The goal of my visit was to try to get a sense of what life was like for Episcopal Franciscan Friars living in community, and was also hoping that God would make it abundantly clear what I was supposed to do about my sense of vocation to the priesthood.

What I had in my head, perhaps formed by too many TV shows or movies, and the reality of this small religious order couldn’t have been further apart.  They lived in a small house, the neighboring old friary being rented out to a larger Roman religious order.  The chapel was a converted detached garage with chairs in a circle.  And with a brother or two out of town that weekend, there were only two others there in the house who never wore a habit.  It was like visiting at someone’s house, rather than what I thought the religious life would be like.

But the saving grace of that weekend was when I wandered next door to the convent of the Episcopalian Poor Clares of Reparation.  There I found a beautiful chapel with time of adoration for the Blessed Sacrament.  The sisters welcomed me to join them for the formal Daily Offices, and I ended up spending much positive time in prayer there.  And when the sisters came over to the friary to share Sunday supper, they were joyful with a deep sense of peace.

For the next eight years the sisters wrote to me, assuring me of prayer for my vocation.  They rejoiced to hear I was going to Nashotah House, and even said they were praying that I would get to say Mass for them one day.  Unfortunately, the last sisters of the Order were in a nursing home when I was ordained, and the last sister died in 2003.

This week we remember at the altar their patron saint, St. Clare of Assisi.  She desired to live a life of radical poverty as St. Francis and his brothers were doing, but did so in a semi-enclosed convent.  She and her sisters in the 13th Century did as those wonderful sisters on Long Island were doing 750 years later: prayer, reparation for sin, and adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

      St. Clare’s story of her decision to become a nun, escaping from her house after dark to have her hair cut and to be clothed in a habit, makes for a wonderful telling.  And her fending off an attack by Muslim invaders by taking Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and marching him to the invaders (they must have thought she was crazy!) is proof of her great love for and faith in Jesus.  She was not afraid, for she knew if she lived or died, she was Lord’s.  May we have faith like her!

Reflecting Jesus - Rector's Rambling for August 2, 2020

When my wife was expecting our third child, I continued my annoying game of thinking of good biblical or churchy names for our children.  When Jennifer was expecting with Samuel, our first, I rushed back one day from Evening Prayer with the perfect Bible name suggestion: Mephibosheth (King Saul’s grandson, found in 2 Samuel 4:4).  Jennifer was suitably horrified.  She also torpedoed my hoped for three sons, which I thought we could name Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  I got the three sons after all, but not the names.

But when Jennifer was expecting with William, his due date was near The Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6.  I thought it would been nice to incorporate the Feast day into his naming.  But my choice of Fuller was not so popular either: “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.”  Mark 9:3

This week on Thursday we will celebrate at 10:30 AM the Feast of the Transfiguration, where we celebrate Jesus appearing to his inner core group of apostles in this amazing, glowing state.  He also appears with Elijah and Moses.  The apostles are so stunned, Peter offers to build three tabernacles, one for each, as the people of ancient Israel did to house the Ark of the Covenant, as they journeyed through the dessert.

Peter, in seeing Jesus so radiant, must have been reminded of what happened to Moses when he saw God face to face.  God’s radiance reflected onto him and his own face shown so brightly that the people of Israel asked him to veil his face from the brightness.

But in the case of Moses, the brightness was a reflection of God’s glory that lighted him up.  But for Jesus, he did not need an external source of glory to reflect on him, but rather those apostles saw the DIVINITY of the second person of the Holy Trinity which was veiled under his own human flesh while he dwelt on earth.  Almost as if it leaked out in that instance in the presence of Moses and Elijah.

But Peter makes a mistake in offering to build three tabernacles.  The Tabernacle is the place where God uniquely dwelt for the people of Israel, represented by the Ark.  And only one of those three persons they saw was divine – Jesus.  Elijah and Moses were the among the greatest of the old testament personages, and their presence was a sign to the apostles of Jesus’ pre-existence in human form, but a sign to the Jewish hearers of just the right type of company Jesus kept.

Let us let Jesus shine in and through us.