Rector's Rambling - August 15, 2010 - St. Mary the Virgin

August 15th is a major feast day in the life of the Church. Today we are commemorating that feast with the second Collect of the Day.
Known in Anglicanism as The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, August 15th is a day commemorated in Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and some Lutheran bodies, to honor Jesus’ mother.
For the Roman Catholics this day is known as The Feast of the Assumption. Tradition says that Mary, after her death, was bodily taken into heaven to be with her son. This is what the Church believes will happen to ALL OF US at the end of time, known as the General Resurrection. At that time, all will rise from the dead with their resurrection bodies. The Roman teaching is that Mary received this in anticipation of the General Resurrection since it is from her body that the Son of God Incarnate took his flesh. Although not explicitly contained in scripture, it is attested to by multiple early writers and by the lack of any bodily relics of Mary (something for which we have for all the apostles and many biblical characters).
For the Orthodox this day is known as The Feast of the Dormition, or the falling asleep of the Theotokos (God-bearer).
For Anglicans and Lutherans it is a recognition of the importance of Mary in the story of our salvation. She gives her “fiat” at the Angel Gabriel’s announcement of her being chosen to be pregnant with the second person of the Trinity (Luke 1:38). She raises Jesus to be a good Jew in accordance with the original covenant. She is complicit in his first public miracle at Cana, interceding for her son, and instructing the servants to “do whatever he tells you” (John 2:3–5). She is faithful and present at His public ministry, His Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost.
When Mary visits her kinswoman Elizabeth, she deflects Elizabeth’s praises, pointing instead to Our Lord. “My soul doth magnify the Lord…” and a recognition that “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:45–56).
We call Mary blessed for Jesus’ sake.

Musing on the Feast of James Otis Sargent Huntington

Today we once again celebrated the Feast of Fr. Huntington, the founder of the Anglican Religious Order of The Holy Cross. At one time this order was a POWERHOUSE in the Anglo-catholic movement. My old parish in Rosemont, PA, had Fr. Huntington in their stained-glass windows, and older parishioners mused about the days when the were always an OHC priest at the parish for retreats and quiet days, and at the old Valley Forge Conference (the precuror to the St. Michael's Conference for Youth).

Alas, the Order is not what it once was - a bastion of solid Anglican Catholic theology and priests living the unique rule of Fr. Huntington - making and impact on the Church at large- with parishes, schools, etc.

I recently read on their website in a sermon for the founder's day that their average age is 70, and another blog entry back in October talks about the changes in leadership which is a lot of changes for a community with 10 monks. I have seen pictures from youth conferences in the 1950's and 1960's with 10 monks there! I wonder how many were in the order then! They abandoned in 1984 Fr. Huntington's rule of life for a generic benedictine rule (benectine rule is great for benedictines, but it was never their charism) which focuses them on life in the monastery rather than outwards to the parishes (which fosters vocations as well).

Whereas their retreat topics (I several books and pamphlets from the Order from "back in the day") dealt with issues like The Holy Eucharist, the Real Presence, making one's confession (our brochure "Why I make my confession and why you should too" is written by an old OHC brother), I read on their current website that they are hosting retreats with leaders like this,

Waiting for Christ in the Womb of Mary

Led by XXXXX XXXXXX
Embody the spirit of Advent: opening to the indwelling of Emmanuel and waiting for the incarnation of God's love. Enter the mystery, power, and rhythm of your body through yoga, chant, and mindful walking. "XXXXX XXXXX, teaching yoga since 1989 and Iyengar certified, teaches at Unity Woods Yoga Center and in the Sacred Circles program at the Washington National Cathedral."

Hardly Catholic Anglicanism as Fr. Huntington would have recognized.

I wonder what an order like this, or perhaps the Society of St. John the Evangelist who also has abandoned their founder's rule and the Catholic Anglican theology of the Church, would be like if it were to be converted to the fullness of the faith, and restored their particular charism. Would God bless them with new vocations?

In the Roman Church, groups that have returned to the original rules of their Orders that were abandoned after Vatican II have shown a marvelous increase in vocations while the 'post-council 1970's rule of life' orders grow grayer and monasteries emptier.

For example, Fr. Benedict Groeschel's newer order that seeks to restore the Capuchin Franciscan Rule of Life. He started with 8 people in the late 1980's, and pictured here are a group of the brothers in 2008 http://www.franciscanfriars.com/vocations/index2.htm

I doubt there are this many Capuchins left in any of the provinces of the 'regular' order.

May God grant a similar renewal and reclaiming of the Rule of the founders of the great Anglican Orders, and men with hearts to serve according to biblical standards to answer the call to participate.

My High School produces saints?

I read with interest in the alumni magazine for my high school, Orchard Lake St. Mary's Prep, that one of her sons, Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J., class of 1926, is up for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church!

If holiness 'rubs off', it is nice to know I have walked and prayed in the same places as a future saint! (ps - it doesn't 'rub off', but holy places, things, and people can inspire one to greater devotion!).

Here is a biography that I found here http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1682244/posts

Note that it is written by Fr. George Rutler, a former Episcopal Priest and onetime Rector of the parish where I was the curate in Rosemont, PA.

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Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J. (Survivor of the Siberian gulag)

June 2006 Fr. GEORGE W. RUTLER
Walter Ciszek(1904-1984)
Before there was an Armistice Day, Walter Ciszek was born on November 11, 1904, and lived through a crucified century. Death came gracefully in 1984 on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
In boyhood he was a bully in a gang on the gritty streets of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and Ciszek’s Polish immigrant father dragged him to the police station, hoping to put him into a reform school. Everyone thought he was joking when the eighth grader announced that he would enter the Polish minor seminary. The seminarian swam in an icy lake and rose before dawn to run five miles, pummeling the body like his forebear in holy belligerence, Saul of Tarsus. A biography of St. Stanislaus Kostka inspired him to go to the Bronx in 1928, where he told the Jesuits he wanted to join up.
Guileless Ciszek then informed his superiors that God wanted him to go to Russia, where in ten years more than 150,000 Russian Orthodox priests had been wiped out. They sent him to study in Rome at the “Russicum,” the Jesuits’ Russian center, and finally in 1937 he celebrated his first Mass in the Byzantine rite. Aiming to infiltrate Russia through Poland, he taught ethics in a seminary in Albertyn. But in 1939 Hitler invaded from the west and then the Russians came from the east, despoiling the seminary, and so the young alter Christus was on the cross between two thieves. In 1940 the Ukrainian Archbishop of Lvov permitted him to enter Russia, and he headed for the Ural Mountains, a two-week trip in a box car with 25 men. While hauling logs in a lumber camp, he said Mass furtively in the forest. Secret police arrested him as a Vatican spy when they found his Mass wine, which they called nitroglycerine, and kept him in a cell 900 feet square for two weeks with 100 other men.
After six more months, beaten with rubber truncheons, starved, and drugged, he signed a confession, and this he called one of the darkest moments of his life. On July 26, 1942, he was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor, starting with five years of solitary confinement in Moscow’s hideous Lubyanka prison, and then off to Siberia. After a slow 2,500-mile trip to Krasnoyarsk in a sweltering boxcar, he was sent on a barge to Norilsk, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and worked 12-hour days shoveling coal into freighters, with rags for shoes. In hushed tones he said Mass for Polish prisoners using a vodka glass for a chalice and wine made from stolen raisins. Having been transferred to work in the coal mines for a year, he became a construction worker in 1947, returning to the mines in 1953.
Release came in 1955 and he got news to his sisters for the first time since 1939 that he was alive. In Krasnoyarsk he quickly established several parishes. Then came four years just south in Abakan, working as an auto mechanic. In 1963 the KGB hauled him back to Moscow and handed him over to the American consulate in exchange for two Soviet agents. As the plane flew past the Kremlin, he related, “Slowly, carefully, I made the sign of the cross over the land that I was leaving.” In New York, undeterred by arthritis and cardiac ailments, he gave spiritual direction at Fordham University in a residence now named for him, writing his monumental books With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me. One summer day I was driven by some parish teenagers to a barbeque with him in New Rochelle. We arrived in the quiet suburban neighborhood in a noisily combustive van painted in psychedelic designs, used by the boys for their rock band. My last sight of him was in the garden, bouncing a small girl on his knee. His hair was very white and his radiance was not of the summer sun. “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rv 7:14).

Happy St. Maximilian Kolbe Day!

Among the Franciscan Third Order I am known as Fr. Max, after Maximilian Kolbe, the great martyr of Auschwitz. But more than voluntarily giving his life another prison, St. Max had a life of holiness: through his devotion to the Lord in the Franciscan Order, founding friaries in Poland and Japan, and a wonderful publishing ministry to propagate the faith.





Below is an article from Wikapedia on St. Maximilian. My interest in him began in high school, my freshman year. Francis Gajowniczek, the man that St. Maximilian gave his life for, visited the school and told us about him. Later that summer I traveled to Europe and visited Auschwitz, seeing the shrine there to him. Since then he has been someone I have been drawn to.



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Maximilian Kolbe was born in January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, which was at that time part of Russian Empire. Maximilian was the second son of Julius Kolbe and Maria Dabrowska. His father was an ethnic German and his mother of Polish origins. He had four brothers, Francis, Joseph, Walenty (who lived a year) and Andrew (who lived 4 years). His parents moved to Pabianice where they worked first as basket weavers. Later his mother worked as a midwife (often donating her services), and owned a shop in part of her rented house which sold groceries and household goods. Julius Kolbe worked at the Krushe and Ender Mill and also worked on rented land where he grew vegetables. In 1914 Julius joined Józef Piłsudski's Polish Legions and was captured by the Russians for fighting for the independence of a partitioned Poland.
In 1907 Kolbe and his elder brother Francis decided to join the Conventual Franciscans. They illegally crossed the border between Russia and Austria-Hungary and joined the Conventual Franciscan junior seminary in Lwów. In 1910 Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate. He professed his first vows in 1911, adopting the name Maximilian, and the final vows in 1914, in Rome, adopting the names Maximilian Maria, to show his veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1912 he was sent to Kraków, and in the same year to a college in Rome, where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and physics. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1915 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and the doctorate in theology in 1919 at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure. During his time as a student, he witnessed vehement demonstrations against Popes St. Pius X and Benedict XV in Rome and was inspired to organize the Militia Immaculata, or Army of Mary, to work for conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. The Immaculata friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative techniques in publishing catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million.[5]
In 1918 Kolbe was ordained a priest. In 1919 he returned to the newly independent Poland, where he was very active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, a seminary, a radio station and several other organizations and publications. Between 1930 and 1936 he took a series of missions to Japan, where he founded a monastery at the outskirts of Nagasaki, a Japanese paper and a seminary. The monastery he founded remains prominent in the Roman Catholic Church in Japan. Kolbe decided to build the monastery on a mountain side that, according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in tune with nature. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Kolbe's monastery was saved because the blast of the bomb hit the other side of the mountain, which took the main force of the blast. Had Kolbe built the monastery on the preferred side of mountain as he was advised, his work and all of his fellow monks would have been destroyed.
During the Second World War he provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
On February 17, 1941 he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and on May 25 was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670.
In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's barracks vanished, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 13 (notorious for torture), in order to deter further escape attempts.[citation needed] (The man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine). One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
During the time in the cell he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three others were still alive. Finally he was murdered with an injection of carbolic acid.[6]

Slideshow of Fr. Jaggs' funeral

Several priests will be familiar among the photos.

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/galleries/jaggs/index.html

Fr. Kenneth Jaggs, SSC - May he rest in peace

I spoke this evening at the Corpus Christi Service about a good and holy priest friend who was buried yesterday in Windsor. Here is an article on him in the Windsor Star




Star staff
The Windsor Star
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Rev. Ken Jaggs died Saturday.
Rev. Ken Jaggs, a well-known Anglican priest in Windsor and founding director of the Teen Health Centre, died Saturday night after a long battle with leukemia.
He was 79.
"He'll leave a hole in a lot of people's hearts," Canon John McIllmurray said Sunday.
McIllmurray, a retired Anglican priest in Windsor, knew Jaggs for 23 years. He said Jaggs was an inspiration, a good man and a faithful believer.
"He had such an effective outreach with people, particularly people who were lost and lonely," McIllmurray said. "And he was faithful to the end."
Jaggs, who continued to lead masses at St. George's Anglican Church in Walkerville despite his progressing illness, told his parishioners that his days were numbered at an emotional Christmas Eve mass last December.
Jaggs was diagnosed in 2000 with a bone marrow disorder, which progressed into acute leukemia in recent years. Doctors had told him he was too old to receive a life-saving bone marrow transplant.
Jaggs recently celebrated his 50th year in the priesthood and had been a pastor at St. George's for 20 years.
Vicki Mikhail, a dietitian with the Teen Health Centre, said centre staff had their chance to say goodbye to Jaggs when he stopped by the clinic about two months ago.
"He came specifically to say goodbye," she said Monday.
Although it was an emotional visit, "he had us in tears, laughing," she said. "He had such a good sense of humour ... and a great way of telling stories. He was always so energetic."
Mikhail said she was very saddened by the news of Jaggs' death. She said people in the community can "learn a lot" from Jaggs' life and the way he gave back to the community.
In the 1960s, Jaggs was dispatched into the community to work with troubled young people and to help them turn their lives around. The Teen Health Centre, as it's known today, was established in 1985. Jaggs was also involved with numerous other community organizations, dealing with cancer, autism and other disorders.
Josh Canty, owner of the Border City Boxing Club and a St. George's parishioner, said of Jaggs: "He was a good man and he was always there for us and supported us in every way that he could."
Canty said Jaggs was the chaplain to the boxing club and attended most of the events the club held.
"Father Jaggs did a lot for the community at large and he will be missed by so many people," Canty said.
Jaggs is survived by his wife, Leda and three children Leda (Sasha), Andrew and Elizabeth. In 1989, Jaggs' son David was killed by a drunk driver on a California highway.
Visitation is continuing today at St. George's Anglican Church from 2 to 5 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m.
The funeral will be held at the church at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
McIllmurray expects the funeral to be very large. He said the church will be bursting at the seams with mourners. He said Jaggs was a humble man who probably didn't have any idea of the impact he had on people's lives in the area.
- With files from Marty Gervais

Another Martyr enters the Kingdom....

It has been said that the blood of the Martyrs are the seed of the Church. May God use this seed toward the conversion of the the people of Iraq - to the revealed faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kim Gamel / Associated Press
BAGHDAD -- An Assyrian Orthodox priest was shot to death Saturday by gunmen using silencers as the Christian cleric and his wife returned home after a trip to the market in Baghdad.
The latest attack against Iraq's Christian minority drew a new plea from Pope Benedict XVI for Iraqis to "find the way of peace to build a just and tolerant society."
Father Youssef Adel, 47, had tried to escape the sectarian violence, fleeing the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora at a time when insurgents were burning down churches and uprooting Christians from their homes on threat of death.

He moved with his wife, Lamia, to a relatively safe area in the mostly Shiite central district of Karradah and presided over services at the nearby St. Peter and Paul church, according to an assistant who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
But in a tragic example of the dangers that continue to face Iraqis despite a sharp drop in violence, Adel was shot to death by gunmen near the gate of his house, another priest in the same church said, also declining to be identified for fear of becoming a target himself.
The gunmen used silencers, and his wife who was with him did not realize what happened until she saw her husband collapse, the priest said.
Neighbors and members of the congregation wept as they flocked to Adel's house to pay their condolences to his wife. The funeral was scheduled for Sunday.
"Everybody is shocked," said Matti Zaki, a fellow priest who was among the mourners. "The sadness is everywhere in the house. I cannot find the suitable words to express the ordeal the family is going through."
Christians have frequently been caught up in the violence or been targeted in this predominantly Muslim country.
The body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, one of Iraq's most senior Chaldean Catholic clerics, was found on March 13, about two weeks after he was seized by gunmen in the volatile northwestern city of Mosul.
Adel's assistant said the priest, who was married but had no children, directed a religiously mixed school for Muslims and Christians at the church.
Adel, an engineer who became a priest about six years ago, was described as a compassionate man who preached about love and peace, and was heavily involved in helping orphans and widows and other charities.
"We never expected today's ugly killing because the assassinated priest has no enemies at all," Archbishop Severius Hawa said

Feast of St. Blase

Today is one of my favorite saints days - the Feast of St. Blase. Yes, this is the saint where we have the Blessing of Throats. We will bless throats tomorrow, Sunday, after the 8am and 10am Mass in the Chapel. Below is the Teaching Note for Sunday to let you know about him, and about the custom of blessing throats. Why is he a favorite? Perhaps it is the fond memories of being bundled up as a kid and brought to Church for a special weekday service in February to have my throat blessed - it made a deep impression on me!
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St. Blase is venerated as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers; which same are certain Saints reputed to have a special power of intercession in heaven on behalf of those in peril or suffering on earth. According to the common tradition, they were all martyrs, except St. Giles. The Seven Holy Helpers are Acaius (against False Accusations), Barbara (Fire and Lightning), Blase (Ailments of the Throat), Catherine of Alexandria (learned peoples), Christopher (travelers), Cyriacus (for Clergy), Denys (mental illness), Erasmus (intestinal problems), Eustace (hunters and those with dangerous jobs), George (soldiers), Giles (good workmen, beggars and cripples), Margaret (the fearful), Pantaleon (those who care for the sick), and Vitus (limb infirmaties).

Devotion to the Holy Helpers is an evidence of belief in the spiritual commonwealth of those on earth with the Saints in Heaven.

The following of St. Blase is widespread because of the blessing of throats on his Feast Day. The legend is that on the eve of his martyrdom, Blasé healed a young man who was dying from having a thorn lodged in his throat. Blasé died in the 316.
From The Anglican Breviary, Frank Gavin Liturgical Press, 1965 p. 1102.

The Blessing of Throats is a request for God’s healing power through the gift of healing intercession given to St. Blase. Just as many people here on earth exhibit special graces given to them by God the Holy Ghost (healing, teaching, speaking in tongues), so too the Church teaches that some Saints continue that gift in heaven by God’s mercy.

St. Lucy's Day

A blessed St. Lucy's Day to one and all! We remembered her at Mass today (bio info below).

Sorry for the lack of posts - things are getting busier around the house and St. John's as the holiday's approach! And today we have another showing on our house (S. Joseph - ora pro nobis!).

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from Justus.anglican.org

The early Roman lists of martyrs commemorate Lucy, virgin and martyr, on 13 December, and her name, with that of Agatha, appears in the Roman Liturgy as an example of those who have gone before us, in whose company we join in giving thanks and praise to God. Aside from this, little is known of her, except that she lived in Syracuse in Sicily, and probably died around 304. Her name, which means "light," probably accounts for the story that her eyes were put out and her eyesight miraculously restored, and may be connected with the fact that her feast occurs near the time when (in the Northern Hemisphere) the nights are longest.

In Sweden and elsewhere, the day is observed by having one of the daughters of the house dress in a white robe with a crown of lighted candles and go singing from room to room (presumably followed by an adult with a fire extinguisher) early in the morning when it is still dark to awaken the other family members and to offer them St. Lucy's Cakes and hot coffee.
Ember Wednesday (of the winter season) is defined as the Wednesday after Lucy's Day. (An equivalent definition would be: the Wednesday preceding the last Sunday before Christmas.)
Agatha was from Catania in Sicily, and probably martyred in the late 200's. Nothing else is known of her.