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Celebrating Epiphany/Theophany and 25 Years of Marriage

January 6 is the celebration of Epiphany/Theophany, the end of the 12-day Christmas season. Khouria Susan and I also celebrate the Nativity season as our wedding anniversary: we were married legally before a judge on December 25, 1983 and celebrated a Blessing of Marriage on January 6, 1984 in an Episcopal Church in Racine, Wisconsin. Therefore, on January 6, we not only marked Epiphany/Theophany, but we also celebrated 25 years of marriage. This is entirely appropriate; while this feast primarily commemorates the Baptism of our Lord, it also celebrates the Wedding at Cana.

We began the celebration with a liturgy, the Holy Qurbana (Eucharist), which included the Great Blessing of Waters, and followed this up with a service of blessing for marriage, including an exchange of rings, which our daughters, Larkin and Cary, provided for the occasion. This was followed by a reception.

We were privileged to have with us about twenty guests, including our assistant bishop, Andreas Mar Cassian and his wife, Amma (Mother) Caitlin of Kodak, Tennessee. Mar Cassian presided from the chair at the Liturgy, while Amma Caitlin celebrated the Blessing of the Waters. I was the celebrant of the liturgy and Cary, aka the Pious Reader Francis, served as Reader and Acolyte. Mar Cassian then renewed the blessing upon our marriage. Mar Cassian and I each preached short homilies.

Khouria Susan and I wish to thank all who attended and all who helped to plan and execute this celebration, especially our daughters, Larkin and Cary, their friends, Larkin’s special friend, Richie, and Mar Cassian and Amma Caitlin Turner. We love all of you very much and pray that you will be richly blessed in the coming year.

The following photos were taken by Audrey. Thank you, dear.

Mar Cassian, the Pious Reader Francis, and myself during the Liturgy.

From left to right, Khouria Susan, myself, Amma Caitlin, Pious Reader Cary Francis, and Mar Cassian, as the blessing of marriage begins.

Exchanging rings. Daughter Larkin is behind Khouria Susan.

We are truly blessed.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

"May he who, for the sake of our salvation, was born in a cave and lay in a manger, Christ our True God, through the prayers of his most pure Mother; of the holy, glorious, and all-laudable Apostles; of our Holy and God-bearing forebears; of the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna; and of all the Saints, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loveth humanity. Amen." - Blessing at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy for the Nativity of Christ, Byzantine Rite

An Old Post...

is generating some new conversation. Check it out:

VagantePriest: "What hath Rome to do with Salt Lake City?"

New Blog and Call to Prayer

(Phiro tip: De Cura Animarum)

I am adding a link to another blog on the right: "In Caritate Non Ficta", written by Philip Gerard Johnson. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Johnson was serving as an officer in the Navy until he was diagnosed with a brain tumor which is apparently inoperable. He has also been discerning a call to the Roman Catholic priesthood, of which he speaks here and he is scheduled for a needle biopsy on January 7, 2009.

Please keep Philip in your prayers and have him remembered at the altar. Visit his blog and leave a comment, letting him know that you are praying for him.

The Shack

Well, so much for agendas. When Advent began, a couple of weeks ago, I had laid out a plan for Advent blogging, focusing on the readings for the Sundays of the season. Life intervened, and here we are. It is almost the Third Sunday and I have yet to complete the post for the Second Sunday, concerning the “Announcement” to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, or Mother of God, of the impending birth of the Messiah. I had also intended to write posts about St. Nicholas (December 6) and perhaps some other Saints and manifestations of Saints, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose commemorations fall during the Advent season.

There is still hope for accomplishing some of this, but it is fading. In the meantime, a little book has come my way, something between a long short story and a novel, called The Shack, and it seems good to me to comment on it.

In The Shack, a middle-aged man, Mack, directly encounters the Triune God, who shows up in order to heal Mack of “The Great Sadness”, a chronic depression which has enveloped his life since his young daughter, Missy, was abducted and presumed killed while Mack and his children were on a camping trip a couple of years before. During this encounter with the Trinity, he experiences much that is healing, including being shown where his daughter’s body lies, and many of his questions are answered. In returning to his normal life, Mack, by revealing the location of his daughter’s body, is able to help the authorities catch the serial killer responsible for his daughter’s death, and he is also able to bring some measure of healing to his family, especially his older daughter, Kate, who feels responsible for Missy’s disappearance and death.

The author, William Paul Young, aka “Willie”, although somewhat younger than me, has a religious background similar to what I experienced as a young man, and some of the causes of pain in his life are apparently very similar to mine, in terms of both the consequences of his own behavior and the behavior of others; therefore, I strongly resonate with his practical understanding of God as Love, God as a Divine Community who always acts in love, even when that Community is angry at humans for the damage they are doing to themselves, each other, and the planet. And I actually know someone, a woman, who had a similar experience, not with the Triune God per se, but with Christ and His Blessed Mother. The results, for this woman, are also very similar to those in Mack’s life: positive both for herself and for those around her. So, even though this book is presented as fiction, this aspect is quite believable to me. There is also much about the theology which is very, well, Orthodox, concerning the nature of God and the Divine desire to be in relationship – communion – with all humans, for humans to share the Divine Life “face to face” and the role that Jesus, both fully God and fully human, plays in making this possible and actual. Given this, and given that this book can be a word of hope to people who are seriously hurting and may even be a salutary wake up call to people coming out of certain religious backgrounds, I am reluctant to critique in any way, but I feel I must.

The book, of course, is a story of an extraordinary encounter with God; thus, it might not be expected to deal so much with the ordinary means by which we experience the Divine. Unfortunately, however, words several times put into the mouths of the Divine Persons specifically reject the cornerstone of these ordinary means of encountering God: “no ritual”. Thus, for example, while there is an incident in the book in which Mack consumes bread and wine given him by the Divine Persons, it is explicitly stated that he eats and drinks “without ritual”. And, under other circumstances, things are purposely changed up, done differently than before, because there is “no ritual”.

For me, this is extremely problemmatic, and not just on an abstract level. You see, I do encounter the Triune God, the God "of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," every time I celebrate the Eucharist, every time I participate in any way, and I know I am not alone in this. The Eucharist – and the other Christian Mysteries – have been healing forces – healing encounters – with “the Great I Am”, for me not only on a routine, theoretical basis, but especially when I have been at my lowest, when, frankly, suicide has presented itself as a viable option. Yes, I’ve been there: it is not simply that I have a professional interest in defending the Mysteries. If I had not encountered the Love which is God in these Mysteries, I would not have embraced the historic, Apostolic Christian Faith, let alone become a priest.

There IS ritual and, as it turns out, the reasons for this have a great deal to do with the way humans are created. Thus, since we are, after all, made in the image and likeness of God, this must also have something to do with the communal love which is the Divine Nature, the eternal dance of mutual submission – kenosis – which the book rightly highlights. We certainly see ritual in created nature which itself “declares the glory of God”. Consider the repetition: day succeeds day; month follows month; season follows season; year follows year. We could also multiply examples from human interaction: however, the basic point is simply that there is no relationship without ritual, and ritual is a means, an extremely basic means, by which we initiate and reinforce relationships. Therefore, I would invite Willie and all of his readers to begin experiencing relationship with the Divine in those rituals which God has given us precisely for that purpose, especially the ritual of the Eucharist, in the context of a Church, a Christian community, where the Apostolic “Rule of Prayer” has been preserved.

"Yes, but is it bread?"

A post by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod writer at Getreligion, discusses an article (with video) in the Boston Globe, featuring The Cavanagh Company, a Rhode Island-based firm that makes unleavened hosts for the Eucharist, as used in Latin Rite Roman Catholic Churches as well as Anglican and Lutheran congregations. Cavanagh, “the Microsoft of altar breads,” apparently has an 80% market share.

First, let me make clear that neither I nor the ACCA are inherently opposed to the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. We take the view that bread, any bread, whether leavened or unleavened, is valid matter for the central celebration of the Christian faith, while also noting that for our Armenian brethren, both Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholic, unleavened bread is normally used to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. Pluralism is proper here, at least between Rites, in that the use of leavened bread is rooted in one sort of symbolism, unleavened in another, and both are informed by the Gospel: Christ is free of “the leaven of the Pharisees” while at the same time, He is the new leaven which causes “the whole lump to rise”. I also have to say that I am impressed with the Cavanagh family’s development of technology which allows them to mass produce a product that is edible, reasonably bread-like, and largely crumb-free, which is always a concern with altar bread. It is not easy to make such unleavened bread. Believe me, I’ve tried, and the results have not been edible. Futher, unleavened bread is a great deal easier to work with once it is consecrated, especially when it comes to the reservation of the sacrament.

One bit of irony, however, has to do with the idea that Cavanagh communion bread is “untouched by human hands” prior to its being used to celebrate the Eucharist. Consider the prayer with which the bread is offered, in the contemporary Roman Rite, during the “Preparation of the Gifts”:

“Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer which earth has given and HUMAN HANDS HAVE MADE. It will become for us the bread of life.” (Emphasis added)

The bread and wine are means by which, in the Eucharist, we Christians offer ourselves, our world, and our work to God. This is why, in Eastern Christian circles, it is normal for the Eucharistic bread (leavened in most Eastern Christian traditions) to be made by a priest or by a member of the congregation. I myself make leavened eucharistic bread for use on special occasions. Further, there are still Western Rite convents and monasteries which make unleavened altar breads. For these monks and nuns, this work is both ministry and means of support, and it certainly involves "the work of human hands". Another institution which makes these breads is St. Michael's Bakery, in the Netherlands. Started as a school for the deaf in early 19th Century, it now provides occupational therapy to those in need. St. Michael's altar breads are available in the United States here (from a company which also sells Cavanagh breads).

Another bit of irony in this article has to do with the attitude apparently taken by members of the Cavanagh family to their product: “no reverence”. “Until it’s consecrated by the priest, it’s just bread,” they say. The problem here is that bread, any bread, is potentially the Body of Christ. Therefore, it, and by extension, all food, is to be treated with a certain amount of deference, especially bread which is being made specifically for the Eucharist. Contrast this attitude to that of a Russian immigrant women, once employed in a fine restaurant. She left this job shortly after starting because she was required to dispose of bread left uneaten by the patrons. “I have to throw away the Body of Christ!” All bread is potentially the Body of Christ, all wine His precious blood. This is directly related to the Christian giving of thanks, not just in the Eucharist, but before consuming any food or drink.

First Sunday of Advent and Commemoration of St. Andrew

One of the ways in which the ACCA manifests the Western Christianity in its DNA is by the fact that it celebrates Advent as a season which is only four weeks long as opposed to the six weeks which are the general norm for the Eastern Christian rites. However, like our more mainstream brothers and sisters of the West Syriac rite in the Indian Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the Maronite Church, the focus of our Advent observance is upon the “Happy Announcements” which precede the birth in the flesh of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ. As it happens this year, the First Sunday of Advent and St. Andrew’s day coincide. This is not entirely problematic, given that St. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, is the “first called” of the Apostles (John 1:35-42) and it is he, Andrew, who introduces Peter, who eventually becomes the first, the leader, of the Apostles, to the Lord. We also note that Andrew first encounters Jesus through John the Baptizer, the forerunner, whose mission it was to announce the coming of the “Lamb of God,” the Messiah.

The main focus of today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1:5-25) for this First Sunday of Advent is the announcement made to Zechariah, the Baptizer’s father, that he, Zechariah, an elderly man married to an elderly woman, Elizabeth, was about to become a father for the first time. Now Zechariah was a priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, and it had fallen upon him to enter the Holy Place to offer incense, as was done twice daily. As Zechariah is burning incense before the Lord, an angel, who turns out to be Gabriel, appears to him. Gabriel tells Zechariah, that this child, this firstborn son, is to be called John. Gabriel continues:

“And you will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth;
for he will be great before the Lord,
and he shall drink no wine nor strong drink,
and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,
even from his mother's womb.
And he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God,
and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Eli'jah,
to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,
and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

Zechariah does not believe the angel and is made unable to speak until the child is born.

But then, of course, John IS born, Zechariah’s power of speech is restored, and he speaks prophetically of the newborn laying before him:

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people,
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies,
and from the hand of all who hate us;
to perform the mercy promised to our fathers,
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath which he swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,
through the tender mercy of our God,
when the day shall dawn upon us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace."

We find these events foretold in one of the Old Testament readings given for this Sunday, Malachi 3:1-4: “Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.”

So John comes “in the spirit and power of Elijah” to “prepare the way of the LORD.” Who is “the LORD”? None other than the eternal God, “the Holy One of Israel”. The Messiah is the Eternal God come in flesh and blood. He is “Emmanuel,” “God-with-us”. He is the “Word of the Lord” who comes to Jeremiah and all the prophets, who comes as “the Son of Adam” to the Apostles.

In the other Old Testament reading given for this Sunday, Jeremiah 1:4-9, the LORD calls the prophet Jeremiah, who, like John the Baptizer, is consecrated before his birth to see the living God and to announce what he has seen. Jeremiah, like all prophets, including John and his father, Zechariah, has “the word of God” placed in his mouth. This is reminiscent of our Lord’s words to the Apostles, “Do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:17)

Apostles, who are themselves prophets, are sent to speak in the power of God, to speak as they are given to do so. As St. Paul writes in the reading from Romans (10: 10-18) for St. Andrew, “how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news” and, from Psalm 19: “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world”. They, too, speak of what they have seen, heard, experienced, their encounter with God, God with a human face. Over these 2,000 years, their message has come down to us in the Church, and we have heard and responded. In responding, we too experience the living God.

Advent, the season of arrival, the time of announcement, is a hinge upon which, in the present, swings past and future. The Lord who comes to us today in Word and Mystery, in proclamation and celebration, is He who has come and is to come. He has come in creation, in the encounter with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; He has come in the giving of the law, in the calling of the prophets. He has come as Jesus the Messiah. The Kingdom is present because the King is present: “change your minds and believe the Good News!” If we do so, then we too will be empowered to speak, to tell what we have seen and heard, to announce what we have experienced; in so doing, we will know that the Spirit of our Father speaks through us.

(Scripture quotations are from the RSV)

Happy Nameday, Andreas Mar Cassian! Many years!

Thanksgiving 2008

It is quiet this early Thanksgiving morning here in central South Carolina, the sun rising above the trees outside my east-facing window immediately to my left, and yes, Khouria Susan, it's a little chilly. The turkey is cooking, and Susan is resting. Junior was unable to come home from Chicago and my brother-in-law and his family were also unable to come down from Virginia. However, our older daughter will join us a bit later, so Thanksgiving this year will be small, just the three of us.

As I have done so many times at quiet holiday moments, I am wandering a bit through old memories, memories of Thanksgivings past, celebrations in my native Northeast Montana, in Milwaukee during my largely misspent college career, memories of other times and other places.

One such memory, from the Marquette/Milwaukee years, involves the microwaving of a turkey at a favorite Wells Street watering hole, Jim Hegarty’s Irish Pub. After an hour or two and many beers later, we then took it home, to our dilapidated college student ghetto flat, and put it in the oven for a while. In the end, that was one tough, undercooked bird. A great memory, but a lousy meal. Other memories, from childhood, have to do with inviting neighbors, three retired bachelor farmers (only one of whom was Norwegian), to share our family table. That made six: mom, dad, yours truly, and Ray, John, and Herman. There was snow on the ground and it was more than “a little chilly”, but that was always the case at Thanksgiving, fifteen miles south of the Canadian border, with nothing but a couple of barbed wire fences between us and the North Pole, a mere 2,500 miles away.

Another set of memories, sparked by Deacon Greg Kandra, are not related specifically to the holiday of Thanksgiving. Deacon Greg has posted, here, a clip from “Godspell”, a production made possible by the Jesus Revolution of the early 1970’s, the latter a phenomenon that shaped my life profoundly, as did the related neo-Pentecostalism of Charismatic Renewal. What is fascinating to me is the extent to which these movements continue to impact American Christianity up until this moment, from the upheavals within Anglicanism to the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy to the ever-shifting foci within Roman Catholicism to the founding of the Charismatic Episcopal Church and similar Independent Catholic bodies as well as the emergence of Churches such as the ACCA.

One specific memory that I have in this regard concerns a prayer group/Bible study hosted by a Roman Catholic couple in my hometown, Scobey “Lake Wobegone” Montana. They had been introduced to charismatic renewal by way of the Cursillo movement. I was 14 or 15 at the time, and this prayer group included, at various times, Methodists, Lutherans, members of the Assemblies of God and even, from time to time, my own father, an Evangelical Wesleyan, who consistently cast a decidedly jaundiced eye at mainstream denominations, especially the Roman Catholic Church. On this particular evening, I do not recall who was present, except for the host couple; however, at some point, in walked a Roman Catholic priest, a native of the area, and his father. I had never encountered a priest so closely before. He said little but, as I recall, prayed profoundly. Something stirred within me: a calling. I did not know how or where this calling would be played out, but somehow, at a very deep level that was only semi-conscious, I knew. I was called: this Charismatic, Evangelical Jesus Freak nerd, a son of the radical Reformation if there ever was one, was being called to the sacerdotal priesthood.

Years later, my colleague, Andreas Mar Cassian, and I were discussing our respective youths, his in East Tennessee, mine in NE Montana. He was raised Baptist. Avva Andreas asked me, “What did you want to be when you were 14?” “A priest,” I replied. “Me too,” he said.

Of course, it all seems so much more clear-cut in retrospect. However, on that Winter night, in an aging mobile home in NE Montana, a seed was most definitely planted.

And there were other seeds: having a pastor introduce me to Ignatius of Antioch from the pulpit of the Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation which was my primary church home as a child and teenager; attending a Latin wedding Mass; and, at age 7, encountering the witness of a large, devout Roman Catholic family, especially through its sons who were close to me in age and who, even though very young themselves, were willing and quite able to explain to me the basics of the Apostolic Faith in its Roman Catholic iteration, including, as I vividly recall, the three types of baptism: water, desire, and blood. I have long since lost touch with them, Brian, Johnny, and Michael, but I pray for them regularly, and I hope they have perservered in their faith.

For all of this, and for so much more, especially for my family, friends both past and present, and for my Church, I give thanks this day. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may God remember us all in the Kingdom of Heaven.