Anglican Ascetic

This is unedited audio of my Saturday parish class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. I take a close-reading approach to this kind of study, and I read aloud every word of the text. It is found in this volume which I suggest you purchase if you want to follow along in the most effective way.In this episode, we look at chapters 7-9. Enjoy!If you like this content, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscriptions go a long way towards supporting my online ministry. Click below to subscribe! Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

O Lord, from Whom all good things do come: Grant to us Thy humble servants, that by Thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by Thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.MARK 11:22-26Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Today concludes this sermon series reflecting on Christ’s taking of a Body, that is His “incarnation”: a word that means “becoming bodily.” This past week, this Thursday Scripture Study class completed its study of the First Book of Moses, commonly called Genesis. It was an exhilarating study for many reasons, and the study of this single book of Scripture took us fifteen months. Yes, we proceeded through the text slowly, but even as we finished this past week, there was a desire for it to have taken longer. The reason the study lasted so long is that we were reading Genesis the way Christ taught us to. That teaching is found in Luke 24.27, that the Church is to read Scripture to find Christ, because everything in Scripture is about Him, given to us so that we know Him more and more. This means Christ insists that we read Scripture (the Old Testament) spiritually, that is, according to the Holy Spirit, for as Jesus said in John 15.26: “the Holy Spirit will testify of Me” and in John 14.26: “The Holy Spirit will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” and in John 16.13: “The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth … and will glorify Me.” Reading Scripture the way Christ taught us demands patience, reflection, and openness of heart. Whereas read the news to be informed; we read Scripture to be transformed by the Holy Spirit Who helps us to see what, on the surface, does not seem to be there: Christ in Scripture (the Old Testament).One of the patterns of Genesis we noticed is that the text speaks of a figure which is called “the Angel of the Lord.” On the surface it seems to be an Angel such as Gabriel who speaks with the Blessed Mother in Luke’s Gospel. But a deeper reading suggests the Angel of the Lord is something else. In Scripture, the word “angel” simply means messenger. “Angel of the Lord” means “Messenger of God” or “He Who brings the message of the Father.” So in Genesis 16.7, the Angel of the Lord finds Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness. Hagar is the maid of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Hagar bemoans being rejected by Sarah, and the Angel of the Lord responds by saying “I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude. Hagar calls Him the “God Who Sees Me.” Hagar speaks of God, and this Angel of the Lord Himself speaks of powers that only God possesses (“I will greatly multiply your offspring”) and indeed these are words similar to those spoken to Abraham by God a chapter earlier.The Angel of the Lord appears again in Genesis 18. The three men, so we are told, who visit Abraham and Sarah at Mamre. Yet the text quickly shifts to referring to two of the men as Angels and one as the Lord, and to the Lord is attributed words that indicate the same divine powers that only Christ possesses–making Abraham a great nation, destroying Sodom, and more. This Angel of the Lord is described as walking and eating. He stands near to Abraham and Abraham stands near to Him.In Genesis 22, the Angel of the Lord again calls to Abraham from heaven, to keep Abraham from slaying his son Isaac. The text reads: “The Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time and said ‘By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven” and so forth. An Angel swearing to himself would be meaningless, an Angel swearing upon God carries heavenly meaning. The Angel of the Lord says “By Myself I have sworn.” This hints at Christ quite clearly.In Genesis 31, the Angel of the Lord says to Jacob “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to Me.” Notice “a vow to Me.” And there are many more appearances of the Angel of the Lord outside of Genesis: in the Book of Joshua to Joshua, in Judges to Gideon, to young Samuel in 1 Kings, and others. Isaiah (in the Greek Septuagint) speaks of the “Angel of Great Counsel” (Is 9:6). Perhaps the climactic appearance of the Angel of the Lord is in Exodus 3.2-6, Moses at the Burning Bush. The text says, “The Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush” and short while later, “When the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to see, God called to him out of the Bush . . . and he said, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” The Angel of the Lord says “I am the God of your fathers.”What this all points to is that the Angel of the Lord revealed in Scripture is Christ. As one Church Father wrote in the fifth century: “The whole passage at the Burning Bush shows that it was God Who appeared to Moses. But Moses called Him an “angel” [that is, “messenger”] in order to let us know that it was not God the Father Whom Moses saw, but the only-begotten Son.” More specifically, it points to Christ having a body and showing Himself to Hagar, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to Moses: that (in the words of a contemporary theologian) Christ “stood, walked, interacted with humans face to face, had conversations with them, touched them with His hand, and even ate with them.” These comprise a different kind of bodily appearance than that of Christ’s taking flesh from Blessed Mary for thirty-three years. Yet what is remarkable is that the bodily appearances described in Scripture, while very different from those in the Gospel in human flesh, are quite similar to those appearances of Christ in His Resurrection, during the forty days of Easter up to and including His Ascension. As Christ did in Scripture cryptically, Christ did with the disciples in His Resurrection, also cryptically and mysteriously: In His Resurrected and Glorious Body, He stood, walked, interacted with humans face to face, had conversations with them, touched them with His hand, and even ate with them. And the Resurrected Body looked different than the physical body than He had during His thirty-three years in flesh, and thus His presence was a mysterious presence that only the Holy Spirit made known and revealed to the disciples, such as in the breaking of bread in Emmaus, by the name “Mary” spoken to Mary Magdalene, and so on. Thus the Resurrection of Christ is, to paraphrase that contemporary theologian, the final fulfillment of a long series of bodily appearances in Scripture, and His fleshly life through His crucifixion. As the disciples of the New Testament were filled with the Holy Spirit, they came to understand Jesus as the Anointed One, as the Messiah, as the Christ, Who was seen and spoken with throughout Israel’s history, and Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

I began last Sunday a sermon series on the Incarnation of Christ, which I continue today and will conclude next Sunday. It is a deep dive into the fact, revealed in Genesis 1.27, that humanity is made in the image of Christ, Who Himself is the image of the invisible God, as Saint Paul teaches (Col 1.15); knowing as well that, as Paul taught in Hebrews 13.8, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is He Who revealed to Moses that His Name is “I Am,” also translated as, “The Existing One.” And where that led us is to the consideration that Christ, the I Am, the Existing One, same yesterday and today and for ever, always had a body–that His Nativity of the Virgin Mother was not the first instance of Christ having a human body. Paul calls Jesus Christ the Last Adam–last in the line of Adam (remembering that the word Adam means also humanity itself), so the finished revelation of humanity as a project of God that began in Genesis 1 with the making of the first, or initial humanity in Adam and Eve (Eve, whose name means “Life,” as she the mother of the living). Thus, we can say, following the teaching of Paul and what is revealed in Scripture, that God’s project of making the human being is framed on one hand by the making of the First Adam, and on the other by the completion and perfection of humanity which is Jesus Christ on the Cross; that God’s project reached its completion and perfection is what Christ means when He says in one of His final words, “It is finished.” Finished, completed, fulfilled is the revelation of humanity in its fullest and most sacred form: Christ on the Cross as the divine embodiment of love: of everything that can be in this world, Christ is on the Cross.So we have a line or lineage, a sacred lineage, of God’s project begun in Genesis and completed on the Cross (in John 19.30): First Adam (God’s first sketch of humanity) to the Last Adam (God’s full color and high-resolution image of Himself as Christ’s voluntary sacrifice: for Christ shows us what it is to be God by the way He dies as a human being; and God is love, and greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. God’s project begun in Genesis 1.27–“Let Us make man in Our image”–in the Father’s project of revealing Himself in Christ: of revealing Himself in Christ Who is the completed and perfected human image of God the Father Who is invisible. And it is a project that we see unfolding in Holy Scripture. Saint Luke points to it in the lineage he provides in Luke 3.23-38. Luke gives it to us starting at Christ, and working backward through time. 77 names from Jesus of Nazareth (the Last Adam) back to the First Adam. It is appropriate to tell the lineage backward because Christ is the starting point for understanding humanity, because in Him humanity is revealed in its fullness. The image of Christ, however, is imprinted upon the entire lineage. Adam was stamped in the image of Christ, but so was Seth, his son Enosh, then Cainen, and onward many generations, through Noah, his son Shem and onward; through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Judah and onward, through Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, and onward–all are being made, being created, being fashioned in the image of Christ. The names on the lineage of course are not the only holy people in all of human history: one of the holiest human beings in Scripture was Joseph, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, that is, of Israel. Perhaps more than any human described in Scripture, Joseph leads a holy life of moral purity, forgiveness, wisdom and leadership, faith in God’s promises, all of which are enabled by God’s favor and presence in his life. He is not listed in the holy lineage, and for that matter neither is Blessed Mary Theotokos, the Mother and bearer of God. Many other holy people are not in the lineage, because the point of Luke’s lineage is not to create a list of holy people (for some of the people on the list, starting with the First Adam, and including David and Judah and several more) had significant moral failings and serious sin). God’s project is His work in progress from Adam through many figures, and therefore through many eras and ages of time. God gives us freewill, which means that having the image of Christ in human bodies is not enough: there must exercise choices to achieve the likeness to Christ, to go along with the image. Because we are made in the image of Christ, we can speak of unity with Christ from our first breath of life. It is only through our choices to live according to Christ and seek to walk in His footsteps that we can conform to the likeness of Christ–that is, acting like Him, thinking like Him, and most importantly, loving like Him.All of this is to say, yes, Christ did have a body before His nativity: all human beings, by virtue of being stamped in His image, are His Body, although quite imperfectly, and in many humans at best only barely. But it is always barely, and never less, never nothing. As I said last Sunday, Christ’s incarnation, His taking of a Body, can be seen to be happening in the making of man in the image of Christ. This making starts with the image of Christ in all human beings, and by the Cross this making is made available to us because we can choose to love God and love our neighbor, the more we choose to do, the more we accrue mercy in our flasks: blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, taught our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, so that we can grow and be transformed by grace into the likeness of Him Who is the image of the invisible God, and Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

I am going to begin a two sermon series today reflecting on the fact that we are made in the image and according to the likeness of God. It such a rich and profound topic. Firstly I want to bring to our mind one of the characteristics of Jesus Christ that we must always remember is taught to the Church by Saint Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews. It comes in the thirteenth chapter, verse 8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” I say we must always remember this, for a specific reason. And that reason is that we are prone to forget it, or to not consider the profound implications of Paul’s teaching. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is both God and man yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is dying on the Cross yesterday and today and forever. Jesus Christ is being born yesterday and today and forever. Anything we say about Jesus is true of Him yesterday and Him today and Him forever. The list here could be very long.This is captured cryptically in what Jesus said to Moses at the Burning Bush: Moses said, “When I go to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers sent me to you, and they ask me, What is His Name? what shall I tell them? Jesus said in response: I am Who I am; which is also translated, I am the Existing One. He told Moses to say to the children of Israel, “The Existing One sent me to you.” He always exists, in the wholeness of Himself, as He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.I said this has profound implications. One of which is this, that Christ has always had a human body, has a human body now, and will have a body forever. And so, Jesus Christ’s Incarnation is the same yesterday and today and forever. His taking of human flesh has been from all time, is happening now, and will happen forever. This flies against the common understanding that Him having a body was only for the relatively short time that He walked on earth, usually construed to be thirty-three years. Before He was born of Mary, the common thinking goes, He had no body but was divine, fully God in heaven with the Father and Holy Ghost; then for thirty-three years He had a human body, which died on the Cross; and since His entombment and His resurrection and ascension, He again has no body. But His resurrection appearances were in a body which ate and drank and was able to be seen and touched and heard; it even had the wounds from His crucifixion on the body. All that is from the resurrection accounts in the Gospel. He had a Body then. Did He have a Body before His Nativity?Saint Paul calls Christ the “Last Adam,” and speaks of the man created in Genesis 2 as “the First Adam,” we would have to say, Yes He had a Body before His Nativity. And we know that the First Adam, along with Eve, was created in the image and according to the likeness of Christ. In their humanity, in their body, they were stamped in Christ’s image. A rubber stamp imprinted an image in ink onto paper, and the image comes from the design of the rubber die that the ink attaches to and by the force of the stamp is left on the paper. Adam and Eve, in fact all of humanity, are stamped in the image of the rubber die. The image is of Christ, so it must be that He exists, and that He has a Body, and that Body is imprinted upon Adam, else there would be no design on the rubber die to replicate. Christ’s incarnation, His taking of a Body, can be seen to be happening in the making of man in the image of Christ. Christ’s image is an image both divine and human. This was imprinted on Adam and Eve, and is imprinted on each one of us. In the words of Origen, century Church Father, “It is our inner man, invisible, incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal which is made ‘according to the image of God.’” What this points to is the deep spiritual revelation that, because each of us bears Christ’s image, that starting with our baptism, Christ begins to be born in us. All humans bear Christ’s image, as our inner world in our body. Being baptized, being born again, begins the process of reclaiming the likeness to Christ, which is our likeness to His holy virtue, which through discipline we learn to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. This is what Our Lord is after in His teaching in the Gospel when He says, “When a woman has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” This squarely aligns with the beginning of John’s Gospel, when John says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His Name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”In Baptism, we are taken into Christ, and therefore, Christ enters into us. We are made in His image in our inward body, and in Baptism He begins to grow in us, for He is born in us, that the life we live conforms in likeness to the image we are made in. We conceive the holy Jesus in our heart, and bear Him in our mind. We are His Body; He in us and we in Him. It is His Church and its members. For He is growing in each Christ’s heart and mind: growing, maturing, and thereby transforming us. Jesus, the true human being, the finished, perfected and completed human being, lives in us and feeds us sacramentally that we might grow into His fullness, into His completeness, into likeness with His sacred humanity: a humanity of sacrificial love that voluntarily lays down its life for others. This is the joy of being a human being in Christ, Who is the last human being, the perfected human being, the completed human being. He Who is the same yesterday and today and forever lives in us, that we can live in Him Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Our Lord Jesus speaks to us today. He says, “I am the good shepherd.” And it is a message that is particularly suited to Eastertide, and our celebration of Christ’s resurrection; that He has trampled down death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life. “I am the good shepherd,” He says. This is truly the good news of our religion: that Jesus is our Good Shepherd: that we can know Him, and that He always knows us. In the words of the Anglican priest Isaac Williams, “He that died for us, and gave us that proof of His love, has not gone away, and departed, and left us in the wilderness, but is even now with us as the good Shepherd.” As a Good Shepherd, our resurrected Lord is tender and affectionate with us; He guides us; He wants nothing but the best for us; He cares for us, so much so that when we are lost, He seeks us out, and rejoices when we find Him in His resurrected and glorified Body, and we are found by Him.“I am the Good Shepherd” is one of the seven statements by Jesus that are called His “I am statements.” These have that name because they follow the same form—I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth, and the life; I am the true vine; I am the door of the sheep; and I am the good shepherd. All of these I am statements are an echo of how God announced Himself to Moses at the Burning Bush: “Moses said to God, ‘Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’” Another, more literal translation is, “I am the Existing One.” Throughout scriptural history, there is a small, still voice that speaks—a voice of profound presence, of authority, of creativity—a voice that tells us who we are, a voice that teaches and guides, a voice that beckons us toward what He would have us do. A voice that has spoken through the prophets.The disciples who heard Jesus say He is the Good Shepherd are themselves devout Jews, and thus soaked in imagery of a “shepherd,” which is resonant throughout Scripture. Of course it is in the 23rd Psalm—our Good Shepherd makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us besides still waters, reviving our soul. In the centuries before the Incarnation of Christ, the People of God sang, “We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand,” a verse from the 95th Psalm which has carried over into the daily Christian Liturgy of Matins for two thousand years.Still deeper were they soaked in the image of the Shepherd through the Book of Ezekiel. This book of oracles, of prophetic preaching, was enormously influential from its inception, influencing other prophetic books as well as the New Testament Book of Revelation. It is from Ezekiel that we have the image of the four evangelists and their allegorical faces—Matthew the angel, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. It was published during the exile, the Babylonian captivity. Its primary themes include the defiling effect of sin by the people of God and God’s subsequent abandonment. That is a pattern the disciples recognized—how sin leads to feelings of abandonment by God—how sin crucifies Jesus, and Jesus had died and, it seemed, left them. Yet Jesus taught the Church to find Him in the opening of Scripture and breaking of bread. So the Church strives to receive the Eucharist properly and to search the scriptures with new eyes and ears of faith.The 34th chapter of Ezekiel has been powerful for the Church to understand Christ as our Good Shepherd. In Ezekial 34 are four oracles about shepherds, one after another. The first describes evil shepherds. The second describes the nation’s restoration with God as the true shepherd. The third again has to do with evil shepherds, and the final part predicts restoration under a new Davidic shepherd. Let me read portions of that fourth part:“I will save my flock, they shall no longer be a prey; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. . . .I will make with them a covenant of peace . . . And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. . . . And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.”Through this passage and the others, Jesus Himself speaks. The Church recognizes Christ the Good Shepherd in the prophecy of Ezekiel. They heeded His voice, for Christ speaks in and through Ezekiel – knowing truly they were the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. As are we.This is how our hope is strengthened. Despite the distortions of a fallen world surrounding us, and even the distortions of our own sinful ways, the voice of our shepherd calls to us. He makes known to us His grace, His love—that our lives are always in His hands. He died for us, and rose to eternal life for us—so that we with confidence can die daily to our sin, that as we seek to put off the old man of our unholy habits and desires, and put on the new man of Christ’s holy garments and thereby rise by Him, with Him, and in Him. And we rise as we receive the bread of angels, the food of heaven—given for our sake to actually make Him present again: present in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist, by which the Holy Shepherd of our souls feeds our souls with Himself: Christ our daily bread, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

We have here in the north and south walls of the nave of the Stations of the Cross. There are fourteen in all. Through each one we follow Christ in His Passion. We accompany Him through the sacramental action of the prayer sequence, one station at a time. As we pray, we participate in the experience of the inward and spiritual grace of Our Lord’s Passion: His holy walk of voluntary sacrifice, all the way to the Cross, through His death on the Cross, and being laid in the Tomb.Our Liturgy in Holy Week and Easter proceed in the same way. We proceed by Stations. We started at the death of Lazarus and his resurrection. We continued to the Station of our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem upon the back of a donkey. Then to Maundy Thursday and our Lord’s institution of the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders. The next station was the Garden of Gethsemane in watching with Our Lord at the Altar of Repose and His arrest. Then on Good Friday, we were with our Lord as He was on the Cross, His dying on the Cross – these were during the Three Hours service. Then to His entombment, in our Tenebrae service. Finally to the Station of His resurrection through the Easter Vigil, which represents the finding of the tomb empty by the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women still in the dark of night, and this carries forth into Easter Day and the wider celebration of His resurrection by the apostles and disciples. Through it all, we were truly with Jesus and with His disciples, by means of the New Testament accounts, the Scriptural accounts, the Liturgy, the hymns and Sacraments.Today we continue to the next station. That next station is our Lord meeting the disciples in the Upper Room. He came to them on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews. And so let us put ourselves again into the story–or, rather, allow the Holy Ghost to lead us deeper into Christ’s mystery. We are in the Upper Room. We share the fear of what the chief priests might do next. We are confused, disoriented, and uncertain what even to do. And yet, we are in truly holy space, holy space like this nave, with this sanctuary. We have been here before: at the Last Supper and the teachings of Christ’s farewell discourse. This is Christ’s house; this is His Father’s house; this is a house of prayer. But … what to do? How to pray?Jesus enters. He came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Our Lord’s first words to them after His mighty resurrection were “Peace be with you.” This was the exchange of peace; the very same we exchange in Mass. He bestowed upon the Church His peace. This peace of heaven; this peace which passes all understanding; this peace spoken by Christ in His resurrected and glorious Body, a Body in which His hands and His side bore the wounds of His Crucifixion. And He said “Peace be with you” a second time. And He said, “As the Father has sent me, even so am I sending you.” To be sent is to become an apostle. The Greek word for apostles is ἀπόστολος, and it means a messenger, one sent forth. This moment, this Station, is beholding Our Lord and Savior commissioning the Apostles. Thus it is fitting for Jesus, in commissioning the Apostles, breathes on them and says to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” They are to be bearers of the Holy Spirit. They are made full of the Holy Spirit so that they can proclaim the Gospel to the world: to the Jews and to the Gentiles; their inspired voices to go forth into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. They are made full of the Holy Spirit as Blessed Mary the Virgin Mother was full of the Holy Spirit, as Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist were full of the Holy Spirit, as Simeon and Anna were full of the Holy Spirit. They were truly born not of the flesh nor of the will of man, but born of God, and thus sharers in Christ’s victory over death and the Devil. Christ Himself was alive and resurrected in the Apostles, thus were they able to proclaim the Gospel: forgiveness of sins, and the Gospel about eternal life in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.It was because they were full of the power of the Holy Spirit that Saint Peter’s preaching on Pentecost, which our first reading picks up just after Peter finished, was able to draw three thousand souls to be baptized on the day of Pentecost. The power of the Holy Spirit is to draw people to Christ, to life abundant in Him. And the power of the Holy Spirit drew the three thousand not only to Baptism but to life in Christ’s Body the Church: hence, the three thousand souls joined in with the liturgical prayer life of 120 Upper Room disciples. Saint Luke captures this when he writes, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers”–to those three modes of prayer: of life in community sharing the revelation proclaimed by the Apostles, of the Eucharist, and of the daily liturgy (that is, “the Prayers”). By this threefold pattern, called in Anglican tradition the threefold regula, we participate in the peace Christ bestows on His Church; we receive the peace that keeps our heart and mind nourished by the knowledge and love of God, of His Son Jesus Christ; by this pattern, this model, this rule or regula, the Holy Spirit is kept among us, that He, with the Father and Son, always remains with us, and in us, and we in Them.This is life in Christ, this threefold pattern of prayer: life in Him Who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. He rose again, that is, so that we could be capable of partaking in the divine nature, in the words of Saint Peter. Because of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, the dry land of our sinful and unholy life can become the green earth of the life of new spiritual creation in Christ. By this life in Christ, we put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, and serve Christ in pureness of living and truth. Thanks be to God for the witness of the Apostles, their courage, their fortitude, and their generosity in showing us what life of prayer in Christ looks like, that we can ever join them and the angel in their prayer and in their holy song; that through the threefold life of liturgical and sacramental prayer and fellowship, we can do all such good works as Christ has prepared for us to walk in; to be in Him, and He in us: Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

It is a great joy to share with you all in the heavenly peace brought into the world by Jesus Christ, on this the day of His resurrection. I want to welcome especially our visitors to this holy space on this most holy of occasions. It is a blessing to have you with us. You are always welcome to pray with us in worship of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we invite you to pray for us, and to join us every week in worship and fellowship, as this church in joy and humility continues to carry out the mission that God is calling us to perform in Volusia County. Our Lord’s Easter, our Lord’s Passover, in Greek His “Pascha,” is to us the feast of feasts and festival of festivals, as far exalted above all. Beautiful indeed last night were our splendid array and procession of light, which united us all together, lighting up the dark night with plentiful fires. The spreading of light from the Paschal Candle to everyone’s personal candle is a symbol of the great light, both the heavenly light that makes signals from above, shining on the whole world in its own beauty, and equally the light above the heavens, in the angels, in the Saints. It is the great light that seeks to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may always know that Christ is Risen.The Church as a whole—all two billion plus of us Christians alive today, along with the great cloud of witnesses of the Saints, along with the faithfully departed in Paradise, along with the countless Christians yet to be come—is always on mission. Our mission is to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to the Right Hand of the Father—in the words of Saint Paul, to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.” We seek, again following Saint Paul, “to set our minds on things that are above,” and “to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator God.” Our mission indeed is to be alive to God in Christ Jesus — alive to God as He lives and moves and has His being in and through all of His creatures, both great and small. And alive to Him, our mission is to love Him, and love Him as well as He lives in all people.Because He has ascended to the Father, He is available to us always and everywhere, to be praised, adored, worshiped and followed. He is available to us during our best moments, our “peak” moments on the mountaintop of joy and gladness. He is available to us in our darkest moments of pain, grief and anxiety, our “valley” moments when we feel the lowest of the low. And He is available to us in our every-day, mundane moments of normal life and normal routine and normal responsibilities and challenges. Indeed available to us so that in seeking Him, we may find Him, always and everywhere.Today indeed there is harmony in the world, for over these last 24 hours or so, the Resurrection has been experienced the world over, from one end of God’s world to the other, timezone by timezone, diocese by diocese, church by church, altar by altar. The whole earth has been trembling—first at the crucifixion of Christ on the cross, because we were there when we crucified Him. And now the earth is trembling not in pain and grief but in joy and harmony at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of God in Christ, who searches us out, and knows us: our holy God Who knows our downsitting and our uprising, and Who understands our thoughts long before we do.The stone has been taken away from the tomb. Brothers and sisters, the stone has been rolled away from the tomb not so Jesus can get out, but so that we might enter in. That we might enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, given to Him by the Virgin Mary, the holy mystery of Jesus Who is the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Let us enter this mystery of the empty tomb through compassion for Saint Mary Magdalene, even imagining ourselves with her as she stood weeping outside the tomb—indeed a flood of tears. A man she supposes to be a gardener—indeed it is Jesus not yet known to be resurrected yet in His great love tending to His garden of disciples—says, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?”—words that echo Jesus’s first words recorded by Saint John in the first chapter of his Gospel spoken to John the Baptist and other disciples, and words that have been echoing around the mind and memory of the Church ever since. “Whom do you seek?” Whom do we seek?And to the weeping, sorrowful Mary, filled with desolation that comes from loving Jesus yet not yet made aware of His presence, indeed like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Saint Luke’s gospel, “kept from recognizing Him,” Jesus speaks tenderly, clearly and profoundly as only He can. He said to her, “Mary,” and she recognized Him. She recognized Him because He reminded her of who she was, saying her name as only He could. He only said a word, and her soul was healed.Jesus tells us who we are, as well. He only speaks a word, and we are healed. We are healed in Him, thus we are people of His resurrection. We are born, not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. We are baptized into His body, to be forever members of His body. Brothers and sisters, let us ask for the intercessions of Saint Mary Magdalene, that we too might proclaim by word and example, indeed proclaim in all our lives, the simple, life-changing truth: “I have seen the Lord.” For only by Him are our lives made whole.For nothing is like the wonder of our salvation in Christ, mine and yours: all of us in Christ, all of our lives in Christ,, and Christ in all of us, in each baptized person Christ lives and moves and has His being, He through Whom all things are made and remade: Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father Almighty in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

It was the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee who went into the tomb. The stone was rolled away, but they did not find the body. What they found was new and utterly unfamiliar. And they were perplexed. And why wouldn’t they be? The mystery of their Master, their and our loving Lord Jesus Christ, took yet another turn. Jesus had lived and taught in such mystery—always confronting His followers with their own shadows, yet confronting always with love and presence that to not follow Him felt empty and wrong. It was the women who treasured and kept and abided in the words of Jesus—the women before the men for the most part. They had been taught, it seems, by Our Lord’s most blessed and chaste Mother: Mary, who was named by the angel full of grace. She too was perplexed when she was confronted by God’s truth: that He had made her the fullness of grace, and that she, who had known no man, would conceive in her womb and bear a son, and would call His name Jesus—He who would reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of Whose kingdom there shall be no end—that she would be the Mother of Son of God. At hearing this she was greatly troubled, we are told by Saint Luke. She too had entered into the new and utterly unfamiliar, a mystery of the same order as the cave on Easter Sunday morning. Since then the Church has been imprinted with this pattern which we have learned from God: when we are confronted by His presence, He very well might manifest Himself in the new and utterly unfamiliar. In some sense, this should be how we expect God to come to us—expecting, it seems, the unexpected, but also expecting to be perplexed, even troubled, and to have to grapple with something we feel ill-equipped to handle.What we should never be is scared; because we are always in God’s hand, and He is ever-watching over His flock like the Good Shepherd. Our job is to be faithful as God works the newness of His creation through His Son and through us. Our job is to be faithful: faithful in prayer and worship, in giving of ourselves to God and His Church, in giving of ourselves to others, for God lives in all those who are made in His image—and all people are made in His image, and so we are to give ourselves to whomever God calls us to serve, and do so with the joyful action of love. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son—that in giving Him to us on the Cross, we might be taught what true humility looks like: for our loving Lord Jesus is for all times the sacrament of humility, even so in the way we receive Him today in the most ordinary form of bread and wine: ordinary, simple, accessible: so humble as to be vulnerable, for we so easily forget that He is always with us in the Tabernacle. He became so vulnerable in His humility that He allows Himself to be forgotten in the Tabernacle, where He rests all but two days of the year.Brothers and sisters, let us always remember Him as He rests in perfect peace in our Tabernacle, consecrating this space as sacred, heavenly—everywhere there is a Tabernacle with the Blessed Sacrament, there is the holy land, there is the new Jerusalem. Remembering our Lord allows us to be formed by Him. This was the first teaching given to the women early on that first Easter Sunday morning: remember. Remember the words of Jesus, remember what He told you, remember—in other words, keep all the words of Our Lord in our heart, treasuring them, pondering them, like Blessed Mary taught the early Church to do.Brothers and sisters, it is a blessed Easter! Our Lord—truth Himself, truth incarnate— has overcome the sharpness of death, and has did open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. He opened the tomb not so that He could get out, but so that we might enter in: entering in by faith in Him, abiding in His words, that we might dwell in Him, and He in us. And abiding in us, fill us with hope, with peace, and with direction. He told the women to proclaim the Resurrection to the men. Let us be so emboldened to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in our loving and merciful actions to every person we meet—that the joy of Christ may be in their hearts; the joy of Him Who lives and reign with God Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end . Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

PROPERS FOR HOLY WEDNESDAY (Bridegroom Services)MATINS: Lev. 16:2-24 | Jn 16 EVENSONG: Job 2:1-10 | Mt 26:6-16INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.COLLECT: OF THE DAY. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God: that we, who are continually afflicted by reason of our transgressions, may be delivered by the Passion of Thine Only-begotten Son: Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.A READING FROM THE PROPHET ISAIAH (50:4-11). The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God? Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who set brands alight! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the brands which you have kindled! This shall you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.TRACT. As the Lord was going to His voluntary Passion, He said to the Apostles on the way, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him. Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind. Let us be crucified with Him and die through Him to the pleasures of this life. Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say: I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, I shall raise you up to Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of Heaven.GRADUAL. Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.THE HOLY GOSPEL ✠ OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO S. JOHN (12:17-50). In those days, the crowd that had been with him when he called Laz′arus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see that you can do nothing; look, the world has gone after him.” Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Beth-sa′ida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew went with Philip and they told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honor him. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing by heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this to show by what death he was to die. The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said this, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him; it was that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe. For Isaiah again said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.” Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. And Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And he who sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me.”OFFERTORY SENTENCE. Thy Bridal Chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me.SECRET. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to accept these our oblations: and vouchsafe so to work in us, You Who show forth in a mystery the Passion of Thy Son our Lord, that we may by our devout affections receive the benefit of His redemption; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.COMMUNION SENTENCE. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.2ND POSTCOMMUNION PRAYER. O Lord and Master of our life! Take from us the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servants. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant us to see our own transgressions and not to judge our brother, for blessed art Thou, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

EVENSONG: Job 1:13-22 | Mt 24:3-35INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.COLLECT: OF THE DAY. O Lord God, Whose blessed Son, our Saviour, gave His back to the smiters and hid not His face from shame; grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

PROPERS FOR HOLY TUESDAY (Bridegroom Services)MATINS: Wisdom 2 | Jn 15 EVENSONG: Job 1:13-22 | Mt 24:3-35INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.COLLECT: OF THE DAY. O Lord God, Whose blessed Son, our Saviour, gave His back to the smiters and hid not His face from shame; grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.A READING FROM THE PROPHET ISAIAH (49:1-13). Listen to me, O coastlands, and hearken, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my right is with the Lord, and my recompense with my God.” And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” Thus says the Lord: “In a time of favor I have answered you, in a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, ‘Come forth,’ to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’ They shall feed along the ways, on all bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall smite them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be raised up. Lo, these shall come from afar, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.” Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted.TRACT. As the Lord was going to His voluntary Passion, He said to the Apostles on the way, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him. Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind. Let us be crucified with Him and die through Him to the pleasures of this life. Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say: I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, I shall raise you up to Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of Heaven.GRADUAL. Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.THE HOLY GOSPEL ✠ OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO S. MATTHEW (22:15-46; 23:1-39). The Pharisees went and took counsel how to entangle Jesus in his talk. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Hero′di-ans, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the money for the tax.” And they brought him a coin. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard it, they marveled; and they left him and went away. The same day Sad′ducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother must marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, to which of the seven will she be wife? For they all had her.” But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sad′ducees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet’? If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did any one dare to ask him any more questions. Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If any one swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it; and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechari′ah the son of Barachi′ah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”OFFERTORY SENTENCE. Thy Bridal Chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me. SECRET. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to accept these our oblations: and vouchsafe so to work in us, You Who show forth in a mystery the Passion of Thy Son our Lord, that we may by our devout affections receive the benefit of His redemption; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.COMMUNION SENTENCE. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.2ND POSTCOMMUNION PRAYER. O Lord and Master of our life! Take from us the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servants. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant us to see our own transgressions and not to judge our brother, for blessed art Thou, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

EVENSONG: Job 1:1-12 | Mt 24:36-26:2INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.COLLECT: OF THE DAY: Almighty God, Whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first He suffered pain, and entered not into glory before He was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the Cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

PROPERS FOR HOLY MONDAY (Bridegroom Liturgy)MATINS: Hos 13-14 | Jn 14 EVENSONG: Job 1:1-12 | Mt 24:36-26:2INTROIT. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.COLLECT: OF THE DAY: Almighty God, Whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first He suffered pain, and entered not into glory before He was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the Cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.A READING FROM THE PROPHET ISAIAH (42:1-9) Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to graven images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”TRACT. As the Lord was going to His voluntary Passion, He said to the Apostles on the way, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him. Come, therefore, let us also go with Him, purified in mind. Let us be crucified with Him and die through Him to the pleasures of this life. Then we shall live with Him and hear Him say: I go no more to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God, I shall raise you up to Jerusalem on high in the Kingdom of Heaven.GRADUAL. Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through Blessed Mary Theotokos, have mercy on us.THE HOLY GOSPEL ✠ OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO S. MATTHEW (21:18-43) In those days, as Jesus was returning to Jerusalem, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you a question; and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From men,’ we are afraid of the multitude; for all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. “What do you think? A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him. “Hear another parable. There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.” OFFERTORY SENTENCE. Thy Bridal Chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, but I have no wedding garment that I may enter. O Giver of Light, enlighten the vesture of my soul, and save me. SECRET. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to accept these our oblations: and vouchsafe so to work in us, You Who show forth in a mystery the Passion of Thy Son our Lord, that we may by our devout affections receive the benefit of His redemption; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.COMMUNION SENTENCE. Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. 2ND POSTCOMMUNION PRAYER. O Lord and Master of our life! Take from us the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servants. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant us to see our own transgressions and not to judge our brother, for blessed art Thou, world without end. Amen. 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Almighty and everlasting God, Who, of Thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon Him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of His great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of His patience, and also be made partakers of His resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.1st Reading: A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 21.29Jesus told the disciples a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees; as soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all has taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a snare; for it will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth. But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man.”2nd Reading: A Lesson from His Commentary on the Gospel of S. Luke by the Venerable S. BedeHe who desires to stand before the Son of Man and to serve Him day and night in His temple in accordance with Apocalypse of Saint John, which says, “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence,” and not to be cast off from His sight, cursed, into the eternal fire, ought not only to refrain from worldly allurements, but also to pray and to watch: and he should do this not on certain fixed days, but at all times, according to what the Psalm says: “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise will always be in my mouth.” For truly in this way he will deserve to dwell in the house of the Lord and praise Him eternally. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Today we have gathered at the beginning of our liturgy outside in the Resurrection Garden to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today He returns from Bethany, having raised Lazarus from the dead, and shared a meal with Saint Lazarus and Saint Martha and Saint Mary Magdalene, and been anointed by her with oil of spikenard. After this, He proceeds of His own free will toward His holy and blessed Passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation. He who came down from heaven to raise us from the depths of sin, to raise us with Himself, we are told in Scripture, above every sovereignty, authority and power, and every other name that can be named, now comes of His own free will to make His journey to Jerusalem. He comes without pomp or ostentation. As Isaiah says: He will not cry or lift up His voice, or make it heard in the street. In His incomprehensible power, Our Lord is meek and humble; He makes His entry in pure simplicity.Let us strive with all our energy to accompany Him as He hastens toward His passion, and imitate those who met Him, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to open ourselves before Him in worship by humility and trying to live to please Him. Then we shall be able to receive the Word at His coming, and God, Whom no limits can contain, truly abides in us.In His humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world which is held under the illusion of power by Satan. Christ is glad that He became so humble for our sake, glad that He came and lived among us and shared in our nature in order to raise us up again to himself. And even though we know that He has now ascended above the highest heavens – the proof of His power and divinity – His love for man will never rest until He has raised our earthbound nature from glory to glory, and made it one with His own in heaven. The Heavenly Man became man to make us heavenly.So let us spread before His feet, not garments or palm branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but let us spread ourselves, clothed in His grace, indeed clothed completely in Him. We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before Him. Now that the crimson stains of our sins have been washed away in the saving waters of Baptism and we have become white as pure wool, let us present the Conqueror of death, Who is Christ, not with mere branches of palms but with the real rewards of His victory: our selves, our souls and bodies, spread before Him as reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto Him. Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches as we join today in the children’s holy song: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.Let us show Him honor, not with olive branches but with the splendor of merciful deeds to one another. Let us spread the thoughts and desires of our hearts under His feet like garments, so that entering us with the whole of His being, He may draw the whole of our being into Himself and place the whole of His in us. He is coming Who is everywhere present and pervades all things; He is coming to achieve in us His work of salvation. He is coming Who came to call to repentance not the righteous but sinners, coming to recall those who have strayed into sin. Let us not be afraid, for God is in the midst of us, and we shall not be shaken.My brothers and sisters, let us receive Him with open, outstretched hands, for it was on His own hands that He sketched you. Receive Him who laid your foundations on the palms of His hands. Receive Him, for He our human flesh in all ways except sin, to consume what is our sins in what is His. “Be enlightened, be enlightened,” as Isaiah trumpets, for the light has come to us: the glory of the Lord has risen over us.What kind of light is this? It is that which “enlightens every man coming into the world.” It is the everlasting light, the light inaccessible, the timeless light revealed in time, the light manifested in the flesh although hidden by nature, the light that shone round the shepherds and guided the Magi. It is the light that was in the world from the beginning, through which the world was made, yet the world did not know it. It is that light which came to its own, and its own people did not receive it.Brothers and sisters, the Cross of Christ is the glory of the Lord. He, the radiance of the Father’s glory, even as He said when He faced His passion: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him, and will glorify him at once.” This glory is His lifting up on the cross, for Christ’s glory is His cross and His exultation upon it, for He says: “When I have been lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.” Let us be drawn to Him this Holy Week. Let us answer the call to watch, to wait for the Bridegroom. That when He comes He finds us awake, with our flasks of oil full from love for Him. That when He calls, He admits us to the wedding banquet because, full of oil which is His mercy, Which He has given to those who are merciful, He knows and recognizes us, and wants us to live with Him forever: He Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.(Adapted from a homily by S. Andrew of Crete, d. 740.) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Note: The liturgical celebration of the Raising of Lazarus is an ancient custom of the Church, preserved from the 4th century by the Orthodox Church. I have created “trial liturgy” for the adaptation, which I have used as “votive liturgy” over the past four years at my parish, always on the day prior to Palm Sunday. I have found it to be a remarkable liturgy to celebrate, and it is a perfect beginning to Holy Week, indeed an ideal complement to Palm Sunday, tomorow.Above is the sermon I preached for it this year (in fact, earlier today in morning liturgy). Below are the Propers for the trial liturgy. I share these in hopes of receiving public comment upon them; do note, I am aware that in Anglican Missal liturgy, the Gospel account from S. John about the Raising of Lazarus shows up for the Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent; so there is something of an overlap between that liturgy and the proposed Lazarus Sunday propers below.PROPERS FOR LAZARUS SATURDAYINTROIT. ANTIPHON. Ps. cxlii. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks unto Thy Name; which thing if Thou wilt grant me, then shall the righteous resort unto my company. VERSE. Ps. ibid. I cried unto Thee, O Lord, and said, Thou art my hope, and my portion in the land of the living. [all bow] Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. [all rise]Response: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. The Celebrant repeats the Antiphon.COLLECT: OF THE DAYO Heavenly Father, Fountain of all life, wisdom and knowledge: as Thy Son Jesus didst come to Bethany and ask, Where have you buried my friend, Lazarus; and shedding tears of tender love, didst call to him in Thy compassion, and by His voice didst raise him to life; give us in the tomb the assurance of our resurrection and the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope in the joyful expectation of eternal life in Thy heavenly kingdom; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.THE SECOND COLLECT: OF ALL LENTAlmighty and everlasting God, Who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.A READING FROM THE EPISTLE OF S. PAUL TO THE HEBREWS (12:28-13:8)Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them; and those who are ill-treated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never fail you nor forsake you.” Hence we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can man do to me?” Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.GRADUAL: PSALM 85You have been gracious to your land, O Lord, *you have restored the good fortune of Jacob.You have forgiven the iniquity of your people *and blotted out all their sins.You have withdrawn all your fury *and turned yourself from your wrathful indignation.Restore us then, O God our Savior; * let your anger depart from us.Will you be displeased with us for ever? *will you prolong your anger from age to age?Will you not give us life again,* that your people may rejoice in you?Show us your mercy, O Lord, * and grant us your salvation.THE HOLY GOSPEL ✠ OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO S. JOHN (11:1-45)Response: Glory be to Thee, O Lord.Now a certain man was ill, Laz′arus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Laz′arus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Laz′arus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, “Our friend Laz′arus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Laz′arus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Now when Jesus came, he found that Laz′arus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Laz′arus, come out.” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.The Gospel of the Lord.Response: Praise be to Thee, O Christ.OFFERTORY SENTENCE. Ps. cxxx. Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice. I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for Him; in His word is my trust. SECRET. O Lord, Who sufferest us to be partakers of Thy wondrous mysteries: grant, we beseech Thee, that by Thy mercy we may be absolved from all our iniquities, and defended against all adversities. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.COMMUNION SENTENCE. S. John xi. Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Laz′arus, come out.” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”2ND POSTCOMMUNION PRAYER.O Lord our God, Who hast fulfilled us with the bounty of Thy heavenly gifts: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may ever live by the partaking of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

We beseech Thee, O Lord, pour Thy grace into our hearts, that, as we who have known the incarnation of Thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an Angel, so by His Cross and Passion we may be brought unto the glory of His resurrection; Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

I spoke last Sunday in very high ways about the Eucharist. For example, I said that because Jesus Christ is the source and summit of our life, so the Eucharist, the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is the source and summit of our life. The Eucharist is Christ, and Christ is Himself the Eucharist. I also said that no matter what our feelings may be on a given Sunday, or a given Liturgy of the Eucharist on a weekday, the very nature of the Eucharist is that it is Christ’s most precious Body and Blood. The Eucharist heals us because Christ heals us, and He is the Eucharist. The Eucharist strengthens us because Christ strengthens us, and the Eucharist is Christ. The Eucharist showers us with heavenly love because Christ is Love, Who became man in holy sacrifice for us.That kind of understanding of the Sacrifice of Christ is central to a right knowledge about Jesus. He took our flesh so that He could dwell among us. He became flesh to dwell among us as the Eucharist, as the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of His Passion, indeed the Sacrament of His Sacrifice. Yet understanding that Christ indeed voluntarily sacrificed Himself took the Church time to realize. Really until Paul started writing his holy epistles–that is when the nature of Christ’s Sacrifice became widely known and widely understood. Yet, there are small hints that the disciples sensed, or better, glimpsed, some of this during Christ’s human life. Saint Peter said to Jesus, “To Whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” Peter also said of Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Certainly the Blessed Virgin Mary had a strong sense of Who her Son was, and Who He always will be. Saint Mary Magdalene and the other holy myrrh-bearing women had some kind of sense, as well. Saint John the Apostle, the beloved disciple, shared this sense with the holy myrrh-bearing women. Yet most of the disciples fled the Cross when Jesus was nailed to it; they would not have fled if they knew that the Passion of Christ was the most glorious sacrifice possible. They were confused and uncertain Who Jesus was, and uncertain of what His death meant. But somewhere, amid their confusion, there was a seed growing in them. This is how God works: He plants seeds in our heart that are intended to grow in us, so that we are able to conceive the holy Jesus in our hearts, and bear Him in our minds. It takes time, but the power of God’s seed is infinite. It always grows in good soil.In our Gospel account from Saint Matthew, the Mother of Saint John and Saint James, the sons of Zebedee, named by Jesus as the “sons of thunder,” speaks to Jesus. She is doing so because her sons asked her to. They had seen the Transfiguration of Jesus and it opened the eyes of their heart, and began to transform them. Seeing Jesus transfigured–this most glorious and mysterious event–meant a seed of glory was planted in the hearts of James and John. In seeing Him transfigured they also witnessed Elijah and Moses appearing, one on the right of Jesus and one on the left. They heard a voice from the cloud which overshadowed them, say, “This is my beloved Son, Hear Him!” And they were told by Jesus, as they came down from the mountain after the Transfiguration, to tell no one the things they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. What they saw left a mark on their soul. This is the seed that was planted. Direct experiences of Christ plant a seed in us.They wanted to be at the right hand and at the left hand of Jesus as He entered His kingdom. Why? Because they saw Moses at the right hand and Elijah at the left hand of Jesus as He appeared to them in His transfigured glory. That seed which was planted started to grow. They were filled with zeal, they were filled with a strong desire to be with Jesus. They wanted to imitate Moses and Elijah, two Saints of the Church, and to be able to speak with Jesus in His glory as Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus. James and John, in other words, wanted what we should all want. They had zeal which we should all have. They were filled with desire that we all should be filled with. And even us more so than them, because unlike them, we have the benefit of the New Testament writings and two thousand years of the prayer of Holy Church, and they did not. We have the Eucharist, and at that time, they did not.And because of this, we know something very important, that had yet to be revealed to John and James: to enter into the glory of Christ and be with Him requires that we choose to be with Christ in His Passion. We must choose to be voluntarily with Christ as He voluntarily offers His Body and Blood in holy sacrifice: doing so both as the Sacrifice and the High Priest Who offers the Sacrifice which is Himself. The new covenant is the covenant made with Christ’s Body and Blood shed in His Passion, which is the beginning of all creation. As Paul says, every time we receive the Eucharist, we proclaim Christ’s death. When we receive the Eucharist, we proclaim the Gospel, for Christ’s death means forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life–and this is the Gospel. Christ’s death, His Passion, is the source of all new creation, and the summit of earthly existences: for Christ is the Light of the world, through Whom all things are made, and all things through Him are remade. This is why the Eucharist, which is Christ, heals us, strengthens us, and showers us with heavenly benediction. Because of the Passion of Christ, He is able to live in us, and we are able to live in Him, Christ the King of all Creation, Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost: ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Every Lent, my parish—Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach—offers what we call “Lent Friday Worship.” The weekly festivity begins with Plainsong Evensong, and then is followed by Stations of the Cross, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, then to the parish hall for a community meal, and Rector Forum given by yours truly.This year I am focusing on the Epistle of Saint James. The aim is, by the end of Lent, to go through all of it, line by line, offering my reflective commentary along the way. And to aid the commentary I offer, I will also be consulting and sharing the commentary on this Epistle by the Venerable S. Bede, the great English Church Father.This final Session looks at James 4:7-end. Those verses are below.7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.CHAPTER 51 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. 4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. 8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.9 Do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door! 10 My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience. 11 Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment.13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.19 Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

In our Epistle, Saint Paul speaks of our freedom. He says, “The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our Mother.” And he says at the end of the epistle, “Freedom in Christ as set us free.” In speaking of freedom, Paul means freedom from sin. He means freedom from sinful ways, sinful habits which are called passions. Paul means freedom from being a slave to sin, or a slave to the world. In the holy doctrine of Paul, when we are in Christ we are a new creation. In Christ the eyes of our heart see above the firmament into the heavenly places. In Christ the dry land of our sinful existence, the dry land of spiritual darkness becomes earth, becomes capable of growth, becomes capable of redemption, of being made right, because of the Holy Cross. Dry land cannot grow grass which bears seed; dry land cannot grow fruit trees bearing seeds in the fruit. When we are slaves to sin, we are in darkness, the darkness of the abyss. Christ brings us out of the darkness, because Christ is our light. And God parts the sea, He gathers together the waters so that dry land appears. And He calls us the dry land earth; He calls us “earth” and desires that we are good soil: this is the freedom we have in Christ, that being free, we can spiritually grow, that on the earth, which is to say in our heart, we can bear fruit and have seeds within ourselves, indeed that our heart can contain the seeds of all good works and virtues, that we can perform works of love and works of mercy, which are brought forth from the good treasure of our heart.Our Collect invites us to be comforted by the grace of Christ, that in our suffering we may be relieved by the mercy of Christ. And what can comfort us more than Christ Himself? Who can provide grace to us but Christ Himself? Who may bestow mercy upon us to relieve us from our suffering, our wounds, our hurts but He Whose very nature is mercy, Jesus Christ Himself? Our Lord Jesus gives us the peace which passes all understanding, and He does so by His presence. He does so personally for each one of His children. He does so personally for each of his parish churches as a Body, because we are His Body. We are in Him, and He is in us.And to His Body the Church He gives His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist. Saint John teaches us that Jesus Christ distributes Himself to those who were seated. The image of being seated most powerfully is given us in the image of Saint Mary Magdalene, seated at the feet of Jesus. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, she offers herself as a living sacrifice to God. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, she adores Christ, listens to Christ, and puts all of her focus on Christ. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, her heart is centered on Christ and His Sacred Humanity. In being seated, she is fed by Christ, as He fed the five thousand who were seated.In feeding us within Himself, Christ transforms us. We are transformed because the Sacrament of Christ’s Love, which is the Eucharist, fulfills its purpose in us. Receiving into our bodies Christ’s Body and Blood, we are drawn to become that which we receive: and we receive He Who is Love, so that we are drawn out of darkness, out of being merely dry land, to become fertile earth upon which the seeds of the Gospel grow into large trees bearing fruit. Christ’s Gospel seeds grow in our heart and transform our heart. Christ’s love envelops us and covers us and protects us. Christ’s love heals us, cleans us, and feeds us. Freedom in Christ means the ability to grow up to the fullness of the stature of Christ. Christ’s love perfects us; makes us more and more perfected; makes us more and more like Him.Because Jesus Christ is the source and summit of our life, so the Eucharist, the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is the source and summit of our life. The Eucharist is Christ, and Christ is Himself the Eucharist. Thus the Eucharist is itself the surest tradition, the one tradition on which we always can safely rely. Thus we adore the Blessed Sacrament. Thus we always allow the Blessed Sacrament to shower upon us heavenly benediction. No matter what our feelings may be on a given Sunday, the very nature of the Eucharist is that it is Christ’s most precious Body and Blood, which we receive irrespective of how we are feeling. The Eucharist heals us because Christ heals us, and He is the Eucharist. The Eucharist strengthens us because Christ strengthens us, and the Eucharist is Christ. The Eucharist showers us with heavenly love because Christ is Love incarnate, Who became man in holy sacrifice for us, and Who always lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Every Lent, my parish—Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach—offers what we call “Lent Friday Worship.” The weekly festivity begins with Plainsong Evensong, and then is followed by Stations of the Cross, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, then to the parish hall for a community meal, and Rector Forum given by yours truly.This year I am focusing on the Epistle of Saint James. The aim is, by the end of Lent, to go through all of it, line by line, offering my reflective commentary along the way. And to aid the commentary I offer, I will also be consulting and sharing the commentary on this Epistle by the Venerable S. Bede, the great English Church Father.This Session 3 looks at James 2:14 through 4:6. Those verses are below.14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.CHAPTER 31 My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. 2 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. 3 Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. 4 Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. 5 Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.See how great a forest a little fire kindles! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. 16 For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. 18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.CHAPTER 41 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:“God resists the proud,But gives grace to the humble.” Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Our patron, Saint Paul, has a word today about holiness. He teaches that God called us not to a life of impurity, but to a lift of holiness. That holiness is characteristic of our prayer life, indeed how we walk, so as to please God. Indeed, as David says in our Psalm: that we lift up our eyes to God, in Whom we put our trust: we are to lift up our eyes and gaze upon God that dwells in the heavens. Our lives ought be different than regular lives of non-Christians. So we will get into that more.We are to say unto the Lord: Lord, Thou art my hope, and my stronghold. And how do we say this but in prayer? Prayer is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, taught S. John of Damascus, 8th century Church Father. Lent is a holy season: because it demands prayer that is more intense; prayer that is more robust; prayer that is more regular, which is to say, more often and daily. Holiness makes up the Christian experience, and it must do so. Because as Saint Paul teaches in his epistle to the Hebrews, “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”This is one of the lessons our Lord seeks to teach us through the Gospel account from Saint Matthew. The thing to immediately notice in passage is the tension evident between the disciples and Our Lord Jesus. “Send her away, for she is crying after us,” they implore Jesus. But Jesus does not send her away, but rather listens to her, talks with her, and eventually praises her great faith, so much so that we are left with the impression that it was her great faith that healed her daughter from the demon, indeed exorcised her of the demon. The next thing to notice is the dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. After the disciples attempted unsuccessfully to command Jesus to send her away, He says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before Him – she knelt, that is, she worshiped – and she said, “Lord, help me. And He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus answers, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” It sounds on a plain reading that Jesus is being unloving at first and is trying to exclude the woman. But if that were the case, it would violate basic doctrine about Jesus, that His very nature is love and that His Mission from the beginning is always for the salvation of all peoples. So what is actually going on here?It is not Our Lord who is being taught about compassion and love, but rather the disciples and their hardened hearts, and by extension, us and our hardened hearts. Both of the seemingly inflammatory statements by Jesus—the first, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and the second, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”—reflect the exclusionary attitude of the Jewish religion of Jesus’s day, as well as the centuries prior. The Jews had been looking for a political messiah to restore political power to them and allow them to complete the rebuilding of the Temple and thereby overthrow their occupiers, the Romans. The last thing they wanted was a Messiah for all peoples Whose very showing of divine power was to die on the tree of the Cross—and be a voluntary failure according not to the illumined eyes of the heart, but rather according to the closed and blind eyes of the world. But it was always the plan of Jesus to show the world what it means to be God by the way He died as a human being. It was always the plan of Jesus to show His disciples that His strength is made perfect in His weakness; that His strength is shown to be divine amidst what seems by worldly standards to be weak. Jesus shows His disciples what it means to be God by the way He died as a human being.In other words, Jesus used this moment with the Canaanite woman to teach not her but the disciples words He had taught to Isaiah centuries before: “Foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the Name of the Lord, and to be His servants, every one who keeps the Sabbath, and does not profane it, and hold fast My covenant—these I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer.” (Isaiah 56.6-8)And this is what holiness means: God is at work in all people, with no exceptions. He was at work in the prostitute Rahab in our first reading, so much so that through her faith, Joshua led the sons of Israel through the Jordan into the promised land. God was at work in the Canaanite woman, so much so that through her faith not only was her daughter healed, but all Christians are taught about real holiness and real faith. Recognizing that God is at work in all people means our heart and mind are holy, that they are partaking of the living water springing up into life eternal, indeed participating in the celestial water which is above the heavens. Such a heart and mind have been applied to lofty and exalted things, and able, as Saint Paul teaches, to regard no one from a human point of view, even to put on the mind of Christ, which we all are called to do – to love as Christ loves. All by the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Every Lent, my parish—Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach—offers what we call “Lent Friday Worship.” The weekly festivity begins with Plainsong Evensong, and then is followed by Stations of the Cross, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, then to the parish hall for a community meal, and Rector Forum given by yours truly.This year I am focusing on the Epistle of Saint James. The aim is, by the end of Lent, to go through all of it, line by line, offering my reflective commentary along the way. And to aid the commentary I offer, I will also be consulting and sharing the commentary on this Epistle by the Venerable S. Bede, the great English Church Father.This Session 2 covers the Epistle of James, chapter 1 verse 11 through chapter 2 verse 13. Those verses are below.11 For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits.12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; 20 for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.CHAPTER 21 My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. 2 For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” 4 have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?5 Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? 7 Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; 9 but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. 11 For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

O Lord, Who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey Thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to Thy honour and glory, Who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

The conclusion of my sermon for last Sunday had these words: In hearing and reflecting upon the profound account given us about love in the example of Jesus Christ, we may well feel overwhelmed at our great lack of it, as we come to fathom what true love is, and measure ourselves by Our Lord’s perfect pattern. Our great relief now, in Lent, and all our days is to understand that we live in Him: so we with confidence and humility look to Christ in prayer; in prayer with regard to every particular of our daily short-comings; and what we derive from examining our vices and sins, and thus our falling short of Christ’s expectation of us. In Christ we have the assurance that if we are faithful in Him and genuine in our desire to follow Him, to put off our old man and put on the new garments of Christ, if we are like the blind man who simply cried out to Jesus and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” He will hear us. This is why Jesus entered into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. He did this not for Himself, for He is the Sinless One. He did this for us, that we would always know that He hears us in prayer, and understands what we are going through in our lives. After all, Jesus is the Son of God; Jesus and the Father are One. And in being the Son of God, the Eternal Word of the Father, He made a clear-cut decision to go into the wilderness for a very definite purpose. Jesus took on the Devil in the wilderness because He sought the Devil out. There was no question as to who would win this battle. Christ had already won the war, because He is God and the Devil is not. The Devil had lost long ago, had lost to Archangel Michael and his holy Angels fighting under their general, Jesus Christ. The Devil and his angels were thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. This is what Moses described in Genesis chapter 1, verse 4: “God separated the light from the darkness,” the darkness that was over the face of the deep abyss of hell. The word “darkness” in Genesis 1 refers to the unholy angels of the Devil, and the Devil himself. They were separated from God’s grace by their own demonic pride, and now cover the face of the deep abyss of hell. Hence the Devil appears already in Genesis 2 to Eve and Adam, already the face of darkness, of temptation. Christ had already won the battle against the Devil, and so His entering into the wilderness was to show His disciples, to show us, that Jesus Christ conquers. And so do we, if we imitate the Archangel Michael and fight the devil under the banner of Jesus Christ.We do this in our prayer. The battle is unseen warfare in our heart. Our weapons are the weapons of righteousness as Saint Paul teaches in the Epistle: purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God. We must have these weapons of Christ. Without them, we stand no chance against the temptations of the Devil. These weapons of righteousness are weapons of Christ Himself. With these weapons, the darkness of the unseen warfare is brought into the light of Christ. From these weapons of righteousness flow grace, by which we are able to triumph over every evil. We are able to wield these weapons if we no longer live to ourselves, but unto Him Who died for us and rose again. Without Christ, the weapons are too heavy for our frail bodies of little strength. With Christ, He lifts them, He wields them, because Christ is our strength and our shield.We possess these weapons as the fruit of faith in Christ. He will use them through us because Christ always hears us if we call to Him in faith, in love, in zeal, out of our yearning for Him: His presence, His peace, His power. We know He hears us because in keeping His words and keeping His commandments, Christ dwells in us – for He taught this very thing, and taught it many times. And because He dwells in us, we dwell in His defense, under the defense of the Most High, under the shadow of the Almighty.Let us say unto the Lord: Lord, Thou art my hope, and my stronghold. And how do we say this but in prayer? Prayer is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, taught S. John of Damascus, 8th century Church Father. Let us truly pray, by lifting our heart and mind to God this whole season of Lent. This is what makes Lent a holy season: that our prayer is more intense, that our prayer is more robust, that our prayer is regular, which is to say, daily. Let us this Lent read and meditate upon God’s holy Word more than we usually do. Let us this Lent worship in the Liturgy more often than we usually do. By increasing the intensity of our prayer and the frequency of our prayer, by increasing our attendance and participation in Liturgy, we allow Jesus Christ to join us in our hearts, and transform us so as to win the battle against the Devil and his dragon-like angels: because our God is an awesome God, He is Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Every Lent, my parish—Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach—offers what we call “Lent Friday Worship.” The weekly festivity begins with Plainsong Evensong, and then is followed by Stations of the Cross, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, then to the parish hall for a community meal, and Rector Forum given by yours truly.This year I am focusing on the Epistle of Saint James. The aim is, by the end of Lent, to go through all of it, line by line, offering my reflective commentary along the way. And to aid the commentary I offer, I will also be consulting and sharing the commentary on this Epistle by the Venerable S. Bede, the great English Church Father.This Session 1 covers the background of James and the Epistle, and then looks at the first eleven verses of chapter 11. Those verses are below.CHAPTER 11 James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad:Greetings.2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.9 Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, 10 but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away. 11 For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Almighty and everlasting God, Who hatest nothing that Thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

O Lord God, Who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send Thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever lives is counted dead before Thee: Grant this for Thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Last Sunday’s sermon finished with these words: In addition to the liturgical life and the Sacraments, the Church has always taught of the necessity of examining our conscience, and doing so regularly. Preparing for Lent is a time to examine our conscience. It is a time to take inventory about ourselves. It is a time to take inventory about our habits, and whether we have unholy habits, unholy vices, that keep us from being good soil. To borrow from Saint John: If we say we have no vices, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our vices, God who is faithful and just will uproot from us our vices, and cleanse us from the unrighteousness of our vices. Today, on the Sunday before Lent, the Church sets before us the subject of charity, the older translation of the more modern word “love.” The Church does this to remind us that all works of repentance, of turning to God, are not of Christ unless they begin and end in the love of God. This is why our Lord teaches us not to “pleasantly regard” God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength, but to love Him. And for holy doctrine on love, let us turn to our patron, Saint Paul, and 1 Cor. 13.It has been said that the thirteenth chapter of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians is the most important chapter of the Bible. The reason such a high claim is made about this chapter, which is our Epistle reading today, is that it teaches us two fundamental things. The first is that it teaches profoundly about Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. And the second is that it teaches us how to respond to Christ’s blessed Passion and precious Death. In understanding Paul’s holy doctrine of love, we know more about Christ and we know more about ourselves—more about our Saviour and about being His disciples—more about our King and about what it means to be crowned—about the Perfect Love of Jesus to which we aspire to imitate in our lives every day.We know that Paul’s doctrine of love teaches about Jesus Christ and Him crucified because, as Paul says of love, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” This describes perfectly our Lord, Who bore all our sins on the Cross, believed all that His Father had given Him, hoped for the salvation of all, and endured spitting, mocking, torture, and disbelief in Him all while keeping in Himself the peace which passes all understanding. In support of this, we have Saint John, who said, “God is love.” The Father is love, the Son of God is love, the Holy Ghost is love. And we know that Jesus is Himself the perfect pattern of love again from Saint John, who records our Lord saying, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” We are His friends, because all that Jesus heard from His Father He has made known to us.As Paul’s doctrine on love teaches us about Jesus, his doctrine teaches us about ourselves as disciples of Jesus. Again our Lord’s commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and … that Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are to love the Father and we are to love our neighbor. In both cases we are to imitate our Lord’s love for the Father and our Lord’s love for every human being. No matter what words we say, without love we are nothing. No matter what wisdom and knowledge we might have, without love we are nothing. No matter what we do, even if we give our body to be burned, if we do not have love, we are nothing. This is simply to say with with love we have life in the Holy Spirit, but without love we are spiritually dead, as if we never knew of Jesus, nor He us. Jesus told the five foolish virgins “I do not know you” and shut the door to them because they did not have love and perform acts of mercy, acts of love, in their life.In hearing and reflecting upon the profound account given us about love in the example of Jesus Christ, we may well feel overwhelmed at our great lack of it, as we come to fathom what true love is, and measure ourselves by Our Lord’s perfect pattern. Our great relief now, in Lent, and all our days is to understand that we live in Him: so we with confidence and humility look to Christ in prayer; in prayer with regard to every particular of our daily short-comings; and what we derive from examining our vices and sins, and thus our falling short of Christ’s expectation of us. In Christ we have the assurance that if we are faithful in Him and genuine in our desire to follow Him, to put off our old man and put on the new garments of Christ, if we are like the blind man who simply cried out to Jesus and said, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” He will hear us. Jesus Christ has taught us that all our doings without love, without charity, are worth nothing; with love we can move mountains. So Almighty Father and our God, send Your Holy Ghost upon us, and pour into our hearts the gift of Christ’s mercy, the gift of divine love, which is the true bond of peace and all virtues—strengthen Christ in our hearts, that we may continue to conceive in our hearts the Eternal Word of the Father, Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the same Father and the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

We have heard the parable of the Sower and the Seeds many time. It bears asking, why does our Lord Jesus give us emphasis in His parable of the Seeds and the Sower to the material into which the seed is planted? He not only lists the different material in sequence – path, rock, thorns, and good soil – but He attaches specific symbolism to each one, which we see in His explanation to the disciples. Jesus is at pains to specify the differences in the material that receive the Word of God. Why is He at such pains? What is He after? Does He want the Word of God to be received on path, rock, or thorns? Clearly He does not. He wants the Seed to be received by good soil. So we need to think deeply on this.Towards doing so, let us remember that the purpose of the three Gesima Sundays is to prepare us for Lent. To prepare us to take on what Lent is all about. And what Lent is all about is the inner world of the heart, where unseen warfare happens between the Devil and the Holy Angels, even the Devil and Christ Himself.What the Gesima season invites us to recognize is that to fully attend to the unseen warfare, we must go on pilgrimage: indeed, that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage to the heart, and through the heart to Jesus Christ, and through Christ to the Father. The pilgrimage of Pre-Lent is a call to spiritual labor, through which we must love our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is our strength, our Saviour, our fortress. Hence we ask in our Collect, grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity. It is Christ Who defends us. It is Christ Who shields us. It is Christ Who takes us under His wing and protects us.We must take comfort in Christ’s protection, my dear brothers and sisters. Who else can protect us? Who else by Christ has the words of eternal life which shield us from our adversaries? And it is through taking comfort in Christ’s protection that we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable before Him. Being vulnerable before Christ means we recognize our weaknesses – it means we recognize our failings – our shortcomings – our reliance on vices, what the New Testament writers call “passions,” and are our unholy habits of thought and action. It is because of our vices that we are led to commit sin. Vices lead to sins that we commit, either in the action of our mind or in outward deeds. This is how we must understand our weakness: unholy habits are rooted deeply in us, and we cannot help ourselves.We need Jesus Christ. Only a Saviour can rescue us. Only a Saviour can uproot our unholy habits by His grace and by His transforming Holy Spirit. To be a sinner is to be a person who is aware that he or she is in need of a Saviour. This is humility, this is being reality-based: we cannot save ourselves, we cannot uproot our unholy habits that lead to committing sin without Jesus Christ, Who is our only Saviour, and the Saviour of all who put their trust in Him and Him alone.To have that attitude, to have that outlook, to be reality-based as a way of life, is the attitude and outlook of humility and all Christians aspire to attaining this attitude and outlook. We do not start there after our Baptism. We must grow spiritually to attain that attitude, as our everyday attitude; we must grow spiritually after Baptism to attain that outlook, as our everyday outlook. Baptism is necessary as the first step towards dying to self and taking on the resurrected life of Christ as our own life, but we must be trained, disciplined, and made fit for true humility.This is what our Lord is after in His parable of the Seed and the Sower. We are all striving to be good soil. We are striving to be those who, after hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. The Church teaches we can get there in this life, we can become good soil through the liturgical and sacramental life of worship in the Church. But often we are not the good soil, but may be the thorns, who hear the Word, but as soon as they go on their way the are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, so their fruit does not mature. We may even be on the rock, who are joyful when they hear the Word, but because they do not have root, when they are tested by life they lose the Word and fall away from Him. We even might be on the path, who hear the Word, but the Devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts, because they have not learned how to reject the Devil’s invitations, and have rather suffer from all sorts of vices that they have yet to ask God to remove.And so, in addition to the liturgical life and the Sacraments, the Church has always emphasized the importance of examining our conscience, and doing so regularly. Preparing for Lent is a time to examine our conscience. It is a time to take inventory about ourselves. It is a time to take inventory about our habits, and whether we have unholy habits, unholy vices, that keep us from being good soil. to borrow from Saint John: If we say we have no vices, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our vices, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our vices, and cleanse us from the unrighteousness of our vices. All of this through Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly beseech Thy majesty: that, as Thy only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple in substance of our flesh, so we may be presented unto Thee with pure and clean hearts; through the same Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

As we are using the traditional Western lectionary for our worship on Sundays and Holy Days, we have come upon that portion of the liturgical year known as “Gestimatide.” The purpose is to both lift up the eyes of our soul to Easter in the distance, and prepare us for the Lent and the disciplines of reading Scripture, prayer, self-denial, and fasting. It is to move our liturgical contemplation and prayer for the season of Epiphany (which is focused on the manifestation in our midst of God the Son, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man) towards the focus of Lent, which emphasizes the inner world of the heart, where unseen warfare happens between the Devil and God’s Holy Angels, even the Devil and Christ Himself.What the pre-Lent season of Gestimatide invites us to recognize is that to fully attend to the unseen warfare, we must go on pilgrimage: indeed, that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage to the heart, and through the heart to Jesus Christ. The three Gesima Sundays function as a call to pilgrimage, a call to spiritual labor, always a pilgrimage and labour of love, and of loving our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is our strength, our Saviour, our fortress.This emphasis on pilgrimage comes out in the short passage from 1st Corinthians chapter 9. He speaks of spiritual pilgrimage as a race, and Paul wants us to run the race that we might obtain the prize. The prize is being crowned in the glory of heaven; the prize is that upward call to life eternal in heaven, receiving the same crown as the Saints have already received. That crown is the imperishable wreath Paul speaks of. And so we must run this race, says Saint Paul, and the way we run the race is through discipline of the body and self-control. Every athlete, he says, exercises self-control in all things. So should every disciple. Whereas disciplined self-control by athletes involves muscles and joints, disciplined self-control by Christians involves the heart, and seeks to open the eyes of the heart, open them and keep them open.This is because we are frail creatures living in a fallen world; we live among the unholy angels which have fallen to our state of existence, and we are everywhere surrounded by evil and temptation. In this fallen world our hearts are often blind. Blindness of the heart is what the Church calls the inability to perceive the divine presence of God among us, and inability to understand the truth about God and our relationship with Him. From time to time, we all suffer from this condition. We all can suffer from blindness of heart in our lives. And this is because, living as fallen creatures in a fallen world, we make choices that separate ourselves from the grace of God, and this can lead to being plagued by vice and sin. Part of preparing for Lent is being sober about the human condition, and especially sober about oneself. Vices, or what is called in the biblical literature “passions,” are unholy habits of thought and action. We all have them, and often our vices are so deeply rooted that we have a very difficult time uprooting them. We are plagued by vice, and we are plagued by sin. Sin is where we knowingly act, whether in deed or even in action of our mind, in a way contrary to God’s will. We all sin, and often our sin is a product of the vices we have, our unholy habits. To be sober about ourselves is to be reality-based, and being reality-based is one of the definitions of humility. As Saint John so piercingly wrote: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” And, he could have added, “If we say we have no vice, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” But Saint John immediately adds, “If we confess our sins, God Who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”This is why we are given the Parable of the Vineyard on this first Sunday of Gesimatide. There is much symbolism to it. The vineyard symbolizes the task of following God’s commandments. The labour symbolizes our present life. The labourers represent people that in different ways are called to the fulfillment of God’s commandments. And by different ways, it means they are called in different times of their life: some recognize their call early in their life; some in the middle of their life; and others closer to the end of their life. The grumbling that is described as coming from the mouths of those hired first represent the vices of indignance, of envy, of jealousy, and the like; all of which are related to pride and forms of it. These are very ordinary vices, and these are common to the experience of the Christian life. The vast majority of Christians do not suffer from spectacular vice and sin; rather, the vast majority of Christians are very unspectacular and boring in their pride. As the Venerable S. Bede teaches, among the words of faith humility reigns in a special way. What counters pride and prideful vice is faith in God and trust in His goodness, trust that His goodness will deliver us, will save us, from our vice and sin. With our faith in God strong and our trust in Him full, our life in Christ becomes humble, recognizing that we depend on God for everything: our very life, all good things that we do, even every breath we take – all depends upon God and on Him alone. To know this is humility. What counters pride and prideful vice is trust Christ and loving Christ, and seeing Him as our strength: seeing Him as our rock: seeing Him as our defense: seeing Him always as our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Who always hears our voice, for He is God, He is our Rock, He Who dwells in us and we in Him, and Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

O God, Who, by the preaching of Thine apostle Paul, hast caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we beseech Thee, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show forth our thankfulness unto Thee for the same by following the holy doctrine which he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Brothers and sisters, today we hear of transformation. Saint John tells us of a miracle, indeed his first one. Our Lord Jesus Christ performed a miracle in which water is transformed into wine: delicious wine, not the stuff that gets you drunk and gives you a headache the next day (or worse), but what is immediately recognized as good wine. What our Lord Jesus Christ did, He did at Cana in Galilee, and in doing so, He manifested His glory. And it made His disciple believe more in Him, for we are told by Saint John the beloved disciple, “His disciples believed in Him.” Even here, we see Saint John teaching us that in receiving the Eucharist, our belief in Christ should increase, for we know His power is in us. Saint John relates this Miracle at Cana in the second chapter of his Gospel account. The disciples are following Jesus because of the amazing word of endorsement proclaimed by Saint John the Baptist, which takes up much of the first chapter. The disciples had heard John Baptist’s testimony: “Behold the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world” – the very same testimony which calls us to receive Christ in the Sacrament of His Humanity called the Eucharist. John Baptist gave more testimony about Jesus: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him.” The Holy Spirit had told John Baptist this would happen, and it indeed did happen. And John said, “I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” At the time of the Miracle of Cana, the disciples embraced Jesus because John the Baptist called Him the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world – which means Jesus is the Lamb of God, Who removes all separation between us at the God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.Jesus said to His disciples that He would make them fishers of men. John the Baptist’s testimony had caught fish. By the mere teaching of the Lamb of God, John had reeled in Saint Andrew, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Peter, Saint Philip, and Saint Bartholomew (who is also named Nathanael). Ancient church tradition also indicates that Saint Simon (often called the Zealot) was present as well at the Wedding of Cana – indeed that Simon was from Cana, and was the bridegroom at the wedding where the Saviour performed this miracle of transformation; that after witnessing the miracle of the water turned into wine, he became a zealous follower of Christ, and for this reason is known as Saint Simon the Zealot. That Saint Simon in his discipleship of Jesus was zealous, or full of zeal, for Christ made him full of the Holy Spirit. In changing water into wine, He changed the water of Simon’s ordinary life into the wine of divine love.The 19th century Anglican divine Father John Keble preached these words about the wedding at Cana: “The turning water into wine at a marriage feast, came first among our Lord’s mighty works: why was it, as S. John calls it, the beginning of miracles? It was so, because it was in a special way a sample, a taste, a glimpse, of that power which is at the bottom of all miracles: the power which keeps up the ordinary course of the world, and works such astonishing changes in it.” Then he added: “When we think of this marriage feast in Cana, let it put us in mind that Jesus Christ is in our feasts, is with us wherever we are, and in all that we do, turning our water into wine, our earth into heaven, if we prevent Him not by our sins.”Let us be the water that Christ turns into wine. Let us be changed from odorless, ordinary water to sweet-smelling wine of heavenly vintage. Let us be transformed by Christ from our old selves of sin into our new life in unity with Christ. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to show the transformative power of Christ to the world through the examples of our own lives. As Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 2: Let us be “the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” Let us be known for the love we show to our fellow Christians, and to the world: let us be transformed, let us allow Christ’s miracle happen in our hearts, so that, just as all gathered in Cana for the wedding knew of Christ’s power and glory, that through us, and through our zeal for knowing and loving Jesus Christ, the world knows Christ and sees the glory of Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

O God, Who didst bestow upon Thy blessed Apostle Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and didst appoint unto him the high priesthood for binding and loosing: vouchsafe, that by the help of his intercession we may be delivered from the bonds of our iniquities; Who livest and reignest with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

In our readings today from Proverbs 1, the 84th Psalm, and Romans 12, we have such golden wisdom. What we hear is for us, in the words of Proverbs, graceful garland for our head and pendants for our neck. These are such as ornament a Bride, and we are a Bride; for the Church is the Bride of Christ and Christ is our Bridegroom. By our Baptism we are married to Christ. Indeed being a Christian is as a Bride loving her Bridegroom. To be a Christian is to desire God, as a Bride desires her Bridegroom. In the words of 4th century Church Father Saint Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Saint Basil the Great, “The true vision of God consists in this: that the soul that looks up to God never ceases to desire Him.” This is captured in the 84th Psalm: “My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.” And we know that if we love God, if we love our Bridegroom Jesus Christ, then we will keep His words, and treasure His words. Thus the place of Scripture is seen: in Scripture are the words of Christ, and we love Him if we love His words; we love Him if the words of Scripture become our treasure, our prayer, our contemplation. By keeping the words of Scripture, the words of Christ, we cannot be conformed to the world, in the words of Saint Paul; Scripture transforms us by the renewal of our mind it demands.Scripture is given to us by God in the same manner as Proverbs is described in the first verse: “To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity.” By Scripture we learn about Christ. We learn about Christ and how He expects us to live. We learn about Christ in Scripture, and what it means for Him to be the Son of God Who speaks throughout Scripture. To realize that it is Christ Who says in Genesis, “Let there be Light” – that it is Christ Who speaks to Moses at the Burning Bush – that it is Christ Who calls Abraham – Christ Who speaks to Isaiah and the prophets, and through them He speaks. To realize this and ponder this deeply in our heart – to understand, as Jesus Himself said, that Moses wrote about Christ; that before Abraham was, Christ is – this throws us into wonder and awe, as well as trembling. Such as what “fear of the Lord” means: wonder, awe, and trembling combined. And it is this state, the state of holy fear, that is the beginning of true knowledge of Christ.This is the state that the teachers in the Temple were in as they listened to 12 year old Jesus Christ. Mary and Joseph found their Son, and in finding their Son, then found the Temple priests and scribes “amazed.” In this boy they heard wisdom and understanding beyond the telling. He was teaching them. And He taught Mary and Joseph, who had searched for Him, to always find Him in the Temple, which is His Father’s House. “Why were you looking for Me?” He asked. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He taught Mary and Joseph this so that they would teach this to the Church at the right moment for the Church to receive this teaching.And let it be known, that this is teaching for us. For we are the Temple, as Saint Paul teaches: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.” We are the Temple, the Temple of the Holy Spirit Who Himself reveals Christ to us: reveals Christ in us. God has caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the knowledge of His glory in the Face of Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son. Our task is to perceive Christ’s Face. Our task is to perceive Christ in us, and we may know what things we ought to do, and that we may have the grace and power to faithfully fulfill what Christ expects of us. Christ seeks to speak to us. Are we listening? He Who has the words of eternal life is speaking to us. Are we listening? He Who seeks to transform our mind is speaking to us. Do we have a desire to enter into His courts, and a longing to rejoice in the living God? Let us ornament ourselves with Scripture, and let us not be foolish but wise, to hear Christ in Scripture and increase in learning about Him Who made us and sustain us, and feeds us: Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

To celebrate at the beginning of the Epiphany season the Baptism of Jesus is an ancient liturgical custom. It is among the most ancient liturgical feasts of the Church, predating any liturgical celebration of Christ’s Nativity—meaning, it is older than the Church’s celebration of Christmas. And the Church’s liturgical art in icons of Christ’s baptism dates as far back as the early 200s. What all this tells us is how important the Baptism of Jesus Christ by the hand of Saint John the Baptist is to the life of the Church.The season of Epiphany weaves together several events of Christ’s life: His Nativity, the visit of the Magi, the beginning of His public ministry, the manifestation and revelation of God as Trinity, finding of Jesus in the Temple at age 12, the miracle at the wedding of Cana—in a grand sequence of liturgical celebration. These events have in common the one radical change that had come upon the world: God had united Himself to mankind to show mankind how He has overcome the dominion of evil and death and to give to mankind the Holy Spirit. The Evangelists do see Our Lord’s baptism as a kind of beginning. Evidence of that includes the fact that S. Mark’s Gospel account in effect begins with the Baptism; that His Baptism is the first earthly event described in S. John in his Gospel; and that S. Peter declares in the Upper Room after the Ascension, in Acts 1, that witnessing the Baptism is necessary to be considered to be the replacement of Judas in the ministry of the Twelve Apostles.This importance of the event in the River Jordan is shown also because, historically, the event is named the Theophany, the showing-forth of God. It is the first public revelation of God as Trinity. Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed by the Father to be His beloved Son, with the Holy Spirit alighting upon Christ as a dove and anointing Him, all before the eyes of the heart of Saint John the Baptist. Perhaps the aspect of the Baptism most pregnant with significance is that of the Holy Spirit. For one, the Holy Spirit affirms that Jesus is in fact the Christ, the prophesied Messiah. Anointing in the Old Testament brought about the descent of the Spirit of the Lord to consecrate someone as a prophet, priest, or king. In 1 Sam. 16, Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed David in the presence of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David.Secondly, the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ like a dove. A dove is a gentle, soft, tender bird. In the Song of Solomon the lover associates her beloved with the dove, as beautiful, lovely, perfect, flawless. The dove is also associated with innocence; it is guileless. In Christ’s own words: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as a dove.” Thus to associate the Holy Spirit’s descent with a dove at Christ’s baptism says much about the nature of His coming messianic ministry. It can be seen to describe the tone of Christ’s whole ministry upon earth. He will not be a military commander, conquering the occupying Romans with force as so many contemporary Jews expected the Messiah to do. Instead, Christ is being anointed to conquer with love, and ultimately, with His own sacrifice on the Cross.Another aspect of the dove is that it was one of the creatures that Jews were allowed to offer for sacrifice at the Temple. Thus the descent of the Holy Spirit like a dove hints at the future sacrifice of the Messiah, though not for Himself, nor only for the Jewish people, but for all. He is both the Sacrifice and He who sacrifices.Another is that a dove brought to Noah the olive branch as evidence that the waters of the great flood were subsiding and therefore that salvation and a new world were at hand. This tells us that Christ’s coming was to usher in a new life, a new creation, a new way of being. Just as Noah and his family entered a world full of grace, so do Christians through Baptism.Lastly the Spirit remained upon Christ, something John the Baptist saw with his eyes. John the Baptist says that it had been revealed to him that he could identify Christ as the one upon whom he would see the Spirit not only descend but also remain: in John 1.33: “The one who sent me, to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” In the Old Testament, the Spirit would descend upon the prophets to inspire them temporarily, but in the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell permanently within Christians.And because the Holy Spirit dwells permanently with those who are baptized, the Sacrament of Baptism gives us the forgiveness of all our sins, sins both original and actual, and gives us the very life of God, which is life in the Holy Spirit. The sacrament of Baptism incorporates us into Christ and makes us members of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the Body of Christ, and therefore sons of God by grace. And because of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the baptizes, it is possible to receive the Eucharist and the other Sacraments—Confirmation, Confession, Matrimony, and Unction–and live the grace-filled life. As Christ gave Himself to the waters, Baptism confers on us Jesus Christ Himself, and our new birth in Him.Let us therefore, dear brothers and sisters, celebrate this great event of spiritual revelation, the public coming-forth of Christ, the Theophany of God the Trinity, and the descent of the Holy Ghost, in Whom we live and move and have our being, all in praise of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, to Whom belongs all glory, dominion, and power, and Who reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Today I am interviewing Nathaniel Marshall. Nathaniel recently gave a lecture called “On the Vocation of Lay Reader” for the conference “Called & Consecrated” in Fresno, California. We talk about the the Lay Reader in the Church, and then meanders into other topics. Nathaniel and I have known each other for about ten years. Thus while I expected our conversation to be lively, I personally found the topic of Lay Reader to be especially intriguing.Nathaniel is a husband and father, a plumber by trade, a plumbing instructor by day, and a seminarian and postulant to holy orders in the Reformed Episcopal Church. He and his family worship at Christ the King Anglican Church in Marietta, Georgia, and live just a bit north in Acworth. He is an Oblate of St Benedict with St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, and has written about the intersection of Benedictine spirituality, the Book of Common Prayer, and manual labor for Christianity Today, The North American Anglican, and his own Substack newsletters: The Blue Scholar and diacoNate. He tweets here.Nathaniel is a Fellow with the Akenside Institute for English Spirituality and serves as the series editor for the works of Father Andrew, SDC. (The first reissued work is Our Lady’s Hymn, and it can be purchased here.) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

We hear today the Gospel from the holy Evangelist Saint Matthew, which reminds us of Our Lord’s return from Egypt to Nazareth. Because of this, it seems fitting to reflect today on a great Saint who is one of the main characters in the events of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s nativity, including what we just heard, yet who seems nearly forgotten amid the unspeakable glory of the Eternal Word of the God taking human flesh from His mother, Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin. And that great Saint is Joseph. It has been pointed out by a contemporary Anglican bishop that while the amount of spiritual literature about Virgin Mother Mary would fill a decently sized library, the amount of literature about Joseph might fit on a postcard. That is not as much of an overstatement as it might seem. So let us endeavor to paint a simple portrait of Joseph, that we might see Christ’s glory in him.This Joseph, the husband of Mary, is described by Saint Matthew as “being a just man.” This is but a few words. Yet in the context of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, they are quite weighty. The great Church Father S. John Chrysostom wrote about this description of Joseph in this way: “By a just man in this place Matthew means him that is ‘virtuous in all things.’” That is very high praise: not virtuous in some things; not virtuous in many things; rather Joseph is virtuous in all things. To paint more lines in this portrait of Joseph, let us compare Joseph being called “just” with the scriptural person of Job. There, the word “just” is used to describe Job. About Job we find the Hebrew word for “just” is translated into English as “blameless and upright.” Joseph, in being just, is therefore rightly understood to be blameless and upright. This means he is full of integrity with a high sense of morality, fairness, ethical correctness and righteousness in conduct. As Job is described as fearing God and shunning evil, so is Joseph. As Job is described as a man of prayer, worship, and compassion, so is Joseph. All of this is to understand Joseph as a “mensch,” which is a Yiddish word that means everything we have said thus far. It is among the highest of compliments in Yiddish.This is important because it is sometimes the case that in reading Matthew’s account of the early days of Mary’s pregnancy – when he writes that “When Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to send her away quietly”—there are some who interpret this as Joseph believing Mary to have committed adultery and selfishly wanting to distance himself from Mary to save his own reputation. But such a view cannot be true if one understands Joseph to be a just man. Joseph is blameless and upright, having a high sense of morality, ethical correctness, and all the rest I said a moment ago—no, that is not what is going on with Joseph at all.And here a great detail often overlooked: that when Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he at the same time found out that God is the cause of her pregnancy: “she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.” Knowing this, our portrait of Joseph sees him as totally focused on how to follow God’s will; and while the angel Gabriel did speak to Joseph and give him instructions as to how to proceed, Joseph’s immediate impulse holy and just: it was to protect the reputation of Mary and her integrity, because in ancient Jewish society, women becoming pregnant before marriage means deep shame and scorn upon that woman and her being shunned, not allowing her to be part of the worshipping community.We must notice as well the high sense of obedience that Joseph displays. Obedience means both to follow the commandments of God, and even in the deeper sense, to listen to God. In all moments Joseph is described in the Gospel, he never disbelieved God’s message about Mary, and he responded fully and completely to Gabriel’s guidance given to him, both in the moment I just described, and in the moment we heard in our Gospel passage today. Gabriel, speaking for the Holy Spirit, said, “Rise, and take the child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel.” In perfect obedience, Matthew says about Joseph that “He rose and took the child and His mother, and went to the land of Israel.” And then Gabriel spoke again in a dream to warn Joseph away from Judea and towards Galilee, the city of Nazareth. Joseph’s perfect obedience protected and guarded Mary and her Holy Child Jesus.Having painted a holy picture of Joseph already, I want to complete this portrait by sharing what another Church Father, the Venerable S. Bede, has to say about Joseph. Bede calls Joseph symbolic of spiritual teachers; he does so as a kind of aside during his commentary on the infancy narrative in the Gospel of Luke. Bede writes that that when the Shepherds who watched their flock by night themselves were obedient to God to look for the Holy Child and entered Bethlehem, in finding the holy family, the Shepherds found Mary as the symbol of the virginal beauty of the Church; and they found Joseph as the symbol of spiritual teachers. And of course Joseph is a spiritual teacher, because of what he had experienced of God’s actions in and through Mary, and even more so, that Joseph had experienced so much of God’s actions in and through Jesus Christ. His whole being – body, mind, and soul – was drenched in the power of the Holy Spirit, in ways we must call both transformative and mystical.It is for all these reasons that within the life of the Church, Joseph is held up as a model. And in fact he is seen as a model in several ways. He is the model man, a man who follows Christ; he is the model husband, for his devotion to Mary; he is the model father, who helped bring through childhood and into adulthood He through Whom all things are made; and by extension, relating to Holy Order, he is both the model priest and the model bishop, for his life of holy sacrifice, witness to Christ, and guardianship of the the Church which was the Holy Family. Other than Mary, no one experienced the mystery of Christ’s Nativity and early life as profoundly as Joseph did. All of Joseph’s moments with Jesus and Mary were fully sanctified, fully holy, fully mystical. God wished to entrust the beginnings of our redemption to the faithful care of Saint Joseph. And for this we must marvel and venerate Saint Joseph.Let us ask the intercession of S. Joseph that may we cooperate in the work of salvation with the same faithfulness and purity of heart that inspired him in serving the Incarnate Word, and we may walk before God in the ways of holiness and justice, through the example and intercession of Saint Joseph; that like him, we all may be made worthy to receive the promises of Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

It is the fourth day of Christmas, and there are eight days to go until the Christmas season starts to blend into the season of Epiphany. And I will tell you that to the best of my memory, while I grew up knowing the carol, The Twelve Day of Christmas, probably through watching television as a kid, Christmas in my childhood and young adulthood, even well after college and getting married, Christmas was never more than Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In my family it was go to church on Christmas Eve, come home and open presents and have dinner. Then wake up on Christmas Day and drive several hours to see relatives; then open more presents, drive home and that was the end of Christmas.It was not until we had reached our fourth child, which coincided with joining the Anglican Church in a parish near where we lived in suburban Chicago, that we came to start to see the value of Christmas being 12 days long. Even before kids Christmas was getting exhausting from traveling from one house of relatives to another, but once we had children, well, something had to give. We became tremendous advocates to all our relatives to the incredible virtues of not trying to jam pack everything in that first 36 hours. Let’s get together on December 28 instead. It is still Christmas, it is the 4th day of Christmas, and Christmas is 12 days long.But it all honesty, it took quite a while longer before the 12 days of Christmas turned from being twelve days of cheese, wine, crackers, salami, and cookies into really paying attention to the liturgical kalendar and what it has to say about the meaning of Christmas. It probably took my ordination to the priesthood, and being the person responsible for the parish liturgy, for reality to take. And when looking at the Twelve Days of Christmas and engaging liturgically and devotionally, especially that of the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 8th days, the reality of these days, as the kids say, hits different.The 2nd Day of Christmas is given over to S. Stephen’s martyrdom, the stoning which follows the testimony he gave at the mock trial he was forced to be a part of. The 4th Day is given over to the Holy Innocents, the young male children murdered by Herod, along with their weeping mothers. The 5th Day, while less celebrated, remembers the martyrdom of S. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 12th century, and the 8th Day (the Christmas Octave Day) focuses on the Circumcision of Christ, seeing it as a pre-figure of His Crucifixion. So much for a boozy and cheese-filled Christmastide.Why does the Church celebrate these feasts and their very difficult narratives? Is it to sober us up? In a way, yes, it is. What I mean is that the joy and holy revelry of Christmas and the birth of the Holy Child Jesus, while always central to Christmas and encouraged by the Church, must never reach such heights of sugary emotionalism so as to be ungrounded by reality. And the ground of reality is this: Christ was born into a world of darkness. Christ was born into a world soaked in demonic temptation. Christ was born into a world of evil. Christmas demands that we are honest about this.Certain Jewish people of what S. Luke in Acts 6 calls the “synagogue of the freedmen” lied about S. Stephen and murdered him by stoning, with the assent of young Paul, in an effort to thwart the Jews converting to Christianity. Herod, after hearing the reason for the Magi’s coming to worship the King, lied to the Magi and in an angry rage put to death male children, in an effort to maintain his kingly power. Jesus was born not into a world not in which the hearts of all human beings are filled with peace and light, but into a world in which the hearts of all human beings are filled with sin and darkness. Christ reveals the Light that enlightens every person, but first His light meets the darkness and evil of people living in an environment of fallen, evil angels. This is the world that Christians are called to convert, by being in the world but not of the world; being in the world and being of Christ, the Saviour of all people.Without question Stephen and the Holy Innocents are in heaven. They are Saints of Holy Church and live in the fullness of the heavenly peace of the Holy Trinity. And yes, Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and all the Saints are singing and singing joyously, as we sang on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They join the angelic choir singing “Holy, holy, holy,” with the sound of the voices like many waters, like thunder, like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. They have been redeemed and are praying for us, that, like them, we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Worthy of the promises of He Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

I want us to reflect upon the words of the blessed evangelist John concerning the eternity of the Word, that is, concerning the eternity of Christ’s divinity, in which He remained, and remains, always equal to the Father. As a privilege, I think, of John’s singular focus on Christ, John grasped the hidden mysteries of Christ’s divinity at a more profound level and, thanks be to God, he was able to disclose these hidden mysteries to others. After all, at the Last Supper, it was who John leaned upon the breast of the Jesus, which teaches us in figurative language that John drank the draught of heavenly wisdom from the most holy font of Jesus’s breast, and did so in a more outstanding way that the other evangelists. After all, John is called the beloved disciple for a reason.In the symbolic representation of the four animals, John is rightly matched with the flying eagle. The eagle, indeed, is said to fly higher than all other birds, and is said to direct its sight toward the rays of the sun more piercingly than all other living things. The other evangelists (Ss Matthew, Mark, and Luke), as though they were walking with the Lord on the earth, explained brilliantly Christ’s emergence in time, along with His deeds in time; but they said relatively little concerning His divinity. It was John, as if he were flying to heaven with the Lord, who expounded relatively few things concerning Christ’s acts in time, but recognized the eternal power of Christ’s divinity, through which all things come into being, and he handed this on in writing for us to learn. Whereas the other evangelists bear witness that Christ was born in time, John bears witness that this same Christ was in the beginning, saying, “In the beginning was the Word.” The others record His sudden appearance among human beings; John declares that He was always with God, saying, “and the Word was with God.” The others confirm that He is a true human being; John confirms that He is true God, saying, “and the Word was God.” And the others testify to the wonders which Christ did as a human being; John teaches that God the Father made every creature, visible and invisible, through Christ, saying, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made.”And to a remarkable extent blessed John, at this the beginning of his Gospel account, properly imbues us with the faith of orthodox belief concerning the divinity of the Savior, even anticipating false doctrine taught in the later centuries of the Church. For example, false doctrine taught by the 4th century priest Arius (called the Arianism heresy), who said, “If Christ was born, there was a time when He did not exist.” John refutes this beforehand with his first utterance when he says, “In the beginning was the Word.” He does not say, In the beginning the Word began to be, because he wrote in order to point out that Christ’s coming into being was not from time, but that He existed at the emergence of time, and so that through this wording he might point out that Christ was born of the Father without any beginning in time.In the same way there was the 3rd century priest and theologian named Sabellius (with the heretical doctrine called Sabellianism or “modalism”), which denied that the Holy Trinity is three Persons, and said, “The same God is Father when He wants to be, Son when He wants to be, Holy Spirit when He wants to be; nevertheless, He Himself is one,” that is, one Person and not three. Rebuking this error, John says, “And the Word was with God.” For if the One was with the Other, unquestionably the Father and the Son are two, and not one as if He Himself were sometimes the Father, and sometimes the Son, and sometimes the Holy Ghost. And likewise against other heretics did John speak and, by the grace of God, condemn ahead of time.In a profound way, the evangelist describes Christ’s two natures, namely the divine nature (in which He always and everywhere remains complete) and the human nature (by means of which He appeared to be contained by place when He was born in time), saying He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world knew Him not. He came into His own home, and His own people received Him not. (The evangelist says “the world” to mean human beings deceived by love of the fallen world under the control of Satan, and by being attached to creatures have turned away from acknowledging the majesty of their Creator.) Indeed, Christ was in this world and the world was made through Him because He was God, because He was complete everywhere, because by the presence of His majesty He ruled and held together what He had made. He came into His own because when He was born He appeared through His humanity in the world which He had made through His divinity. He came to His own home because Christ deigned to become incarnate in the nation of Judaea. And so He was both in the world and He came into the world. He was in the world through His divinity; He came into the world through His nativity. My dear brothers and sisters, we who today celebrate this glorious human nativity of our Redeemer, must always embrace His divine nature as well as His human nature with a love that is not yearly, but continual—we must continually embrace His divine nature, through which we were created when we did not exist, and His human nature, through which we were recreated when we were lost. And so, for this reason, the Word became flesh, that is, the Word became bread, that is, became Sacrament and dwelt among us, so that by keeping company with us in His human being become bread become Sacrament, He would be able to unite with us; by speaking to us He would be able to instruct us and present to us a way of living; by dying He would be able to struggle for us against the enemy; by rising He would be able to destroy our death—and so that through a divinity coeternal with the Father’s, He might raise us to divine things by bringing us back to life interiorly through the Sacrament, that in feeding us with Himself He might grant us forgiveness of sins and at the same time the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that through the seven Sacraments He might not only lead us to see the glory of His glorified and sacramental humanity, but also show us the unchangeable essence of His divine majesty, in which He lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.(Adapted from a homily by the Venerable S. Bede, Gospel Homily I.viii) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

My dear brothers and sisters, Christ is born; let us give glory. Christ is from the heavens, let us go to meet Him. Christ is on the earth, let us be lifted up. Sing to the Lord, the whole earth. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice, for the heavenly One is now earthly. Christ is in the flesh, exult my dear brothers and sisters with trembling and with joy. Exult with trembling, because of sin. Exult with joy, because of hope. Christ comes from a Virgin; let us all practice virginity, which is humility of a heart that loves God above all else, that Christ being born in our heart, can be born in the hearts of others through our love and adoration of Him. Who would not love and adore He Who is Alpha? And who would not love and adore He Who is also Omega?Again, this night, this day: Christ is born, Christ is born this day. And again, the darkness is dissolved, again the Light is established. Let the people sitting in the darkness of ignorance see a great light of knowledge. “The old things have passed; behold, all things have become new.” The letter of the law falls away; the spirit of the Law is revealed; the shadows have been surpassed, for Truth Himself has entered after them. The world above must be filled. Christ commands, let us not resist. All nations, clap your hands, He told David in the Psalm. For to us a Child is born, and to us a Son is born, the power is on His shoulder. For He is lifted up along with the Cross, and He is called by the name “angel of great counsel,” and that of the Father. Let John Baptist yet proclaim, Prepare the way of the Lord. Let us all proclaim the power of this day. The fleshless One takes flesh; the Word is made material, the invisible One is seen, the impalpable One is touched, the timeless One makes a beginning, the Son of God becomes Son of Man. Jesus, Christ, the same yesterday and today and for the ages. As Paul says, He is stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. In all things He becomes a human being, except sin. He was conceived by the Virgin, who was purified in both soul and flesh by the Holy Spirit. He comes forth, God with what He has assumed (which is the flesh of His mother). O, the new mixture of Spirit and flesh! O this blending in paradox! He Who Is (as He named Himself to Moses) has come into being, and the uncreated is created, the uncontained is contained.The One who enriches becomes poor, He is made poor in our flesh, that we might be enriched eternally by Him. The Full One empties Himself; for He empties Himself of His own glory for a short time, that we may participate in His glory may be full in us. What great mystery is shown to us this day: We being born to participate in the likeness, made so by God, but not keeping that likeness, for it was defaced and disordered through our disobedience and sin; we are redeemed by Christ Who participates in our flesh both to save the likeness with the image and to make flesh immortal.Let us welcome His nativity in our hearts that our hearts leap for joy, if not indeed like John Baptist in the womb, and then like David danced when the ark came to rest in Jerusalem. Let us revere the birth through which we have been released from the bonds of birth. Let us honor little Bethlehem, which has brought us back to paradise, and bow before the manger through which we who were without true knowledge have been fed by the Word. Let us like the Ox know our owner, and like the donkey know our master’s crib. And let us run after the Star, and bring gifts with the magi: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, as to a king and to a God and to one dead for our sake. Let us with the shepherds give glory, with the angels sing hymns, with the archangels dance. Let there be a common celebration of the heavenly and earthly powers. They rejoice and celebrate with us today, if indeed they love mankind and love God.Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the Light of knowledge and the Light of pure Love; for by it, those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to adore You, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know You, the Dayspring from on High. O Lord, glory to You! Christ is born today, let Him be manifest to us with the impossible radiance of the uncreated Light in the very eyes, and skin, and body, and voice of this Holy Child, Jesus Christ our Saviour, to Whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all glory for ever and ever, world without end. Amen. (adapted from Oration 38 by S. Gregory Nazianzus “On the Nativity of Christ”) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

Jesus Christ is always the Coming One. As He said in S. Matthew’s Gospel: “Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” He is always the Coming One because through the Holy Spirit He fills all things, is all in all. Christ is present everywhere and in all places, and has been since the beginning of time itself, for He made time.And in this season, we know that the eyes of all wait upon Jesus Christ. Indeed, the eyes of the world, the whole world, wait upon Jesus Christ. For in but a few short days comes the festival of our redemption, the festival of the redemption of the whole world, Christ’s holy Nativity: the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by His most loving presence, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of His mother blessed Mary, was born of her in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man. All eyes are on Jesus Christ because of His Nativity, according to the flesh: that which redeems all humanity, indeed redeems the whole world.So poignant is the word today of the Apostle Paul: rejoice! Hence he says rejoice in the Lord always. Why would he have us rejoice? Because the Lord is at hand. Because the Coming One Who is Christ is coming to comfort us. He is coming to reveal His glory. And in revealing Himself, He gives to us His true peace, the peace which passes all understanding, the peace of heaven. He gives us His true peace—which is Him, for as Paul says to the Ephesians, Christ Himself is our peace—He gives Himself as our peace that we would live in Him and He in us. Christ seeks to fill all things living with His plenteousness. He seeks to fill all things with His blessing. He seeks to fill all things with Himself, that He might be all in all, that all things might be in subjection under Him.We know that the glory of the Lord is revealed, as Christ spoke through Isaiah. We know His glory is revealed, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken, and He has spoken clearly: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel. Emmanuel, which means, God with us.And He shall be with us, on the great festival of our redemption. He shall be with us through the proclamation of the apostles, whose names are written on the walls of Jerusalem above, which is our heavenly citizenship. The apostles proclaim, This is Christ the King, this holy Child is the Son of the Highest, Who comes to us on donkey and foal. To this holy Child has been given the throne of His Father, David. This holy Child reigns over the house of Jacob forever. Of the Kingdom of this Child there will be no end. This holy Child is the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.And He shall be with us, on the great festival of our redemption, through Scripture opened to Him, in all its pages. For every word of Scripture, what we call the Old Testament, concerns Christ. He comes to us as our daily Bread to be read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested. Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, speaks through all pages of Scripture, that through preaching and prayer we know Him, even He Who passes all our understanding, He Who while conceived in the womb of Blessed Mary, yet the whole world cannot contain.The Word became flesh and blood that we can receive His previous Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, administered by holy priests. The Word became Sacrament and dwelt among us. The Word became Sacrament in order that He might dwell in us, for we receive Him—all of Him: body, soul, and divinity—in the consecrated and transformed Bread and Wine, the true Body and Blood of Christ: that we might become what we receive.(In the words of 20th-century Anglican divine Austin Farrar): Advent is a coming, not our coming to God, but His to us. We cannot come to God, he is beyond our reach; but He can come to us, for we are not beneath His mercy. As S. John teaches, we do not rise to God, but He descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ, in the holy Child about Whom the whole host of Angels sing: that we shall be His people, and He everlastingly our God, our God-with-us, our Emmanuel. He will so come, but He is come already, He comes always: in our fellow-Christian (even in a child, says Christ), in His Word, invisibly in our souls, more visibly in the Blessed Sacrament. Opening ourselves to Him, we call Him in: Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord; O come, Emmanuel: come, He Who is our Saviour, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

We hear John the Baptist telling his disciples to go and ask Jesus if He is the One. It is important to know that this is not John showing a lack of faith in who Jesus is, but quite the opposite. Remember he has known Jesus for 30 or more years by this point. They grew up together; John knew Mary and Joseph. John is trying to spur his disciples to see in Christ what he already knows of Christ: that He is the one, that He is the Saviour. So John tells them to go, and then they ask, and Jesus responds. And look at all the things that Jesus tells them to say to John: all the healing, the miracles, the good news. Jesus and John are doing a tag team to inspire the Gospel proclamation in these people, that they would go and proclaim what Jesus is going in the world, which is what Jesus had them do. John already knew, and Jesus did this so that they would begin to learn about the need to proclaim the Gospel, to proclaim that Jesus Christ is King. That what this moment is about; it is easy to misunderstand it. It is not that John lost is faith, his faith in Jesus Christ was strong to end, for after all, he was beheaded and Jesus spoke such high words about him, which we hear in the Gospel. Jesus Christ was, for John the Baptist, his King. Jesus Christ is our King. Of that we must never have any doubt. Things in the world we can doubt, we can question, we can critique. Things of the world can be suspect; for the world is fallen and under the power of the Prince of Darkness. Yet of Christ, none of this applies. He is our King, He is our Saviour, He is the Coming One. He has forever won the victory over the Prince of Darkness. He is ever seeking to come to us, every day. This is why He came to visit us in great humility; this is why He will come at the end of days to judge both the quick and the dead; this is why He took our human flesh and nature upon Him, so as to be able to come to us in His glorified and sacramental Body as our daily Bread, received through the opening of Scripture and the Breaking of Bread.We saw this in the teaching of the first two Sundays of Advent. The 1st Sunday of Advent dramatically illustrated that Christ is the Coming One by the Gospel reading of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem upon the donkey and a foal, in which we are the citizens of heavenly Jerusalem to whom Christ is coming. And the Second Sunday of Advent emphasized His coming to us in the opening of Scripture: that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them: Christ our daily bread known through Scripture unveiled.Today we hear Saint Paul teaching the Church that he and the other priestly ministers of Christ are servants and, more poignantly, are stewards. Paul, the other apostles, even John the Baptist, sent by God to go before Christ to prepare the way in our hearts for Christ’s coming to us, are stewards, Paul says, of the mysteries of God. “Mysteries” comes down in the Latin then English lineage of our scriptural translations, is in Greek the same word as Sacraments. So the priestly ministers of Christ are stewards of the Sacraments of Christ; are sacramental stewards. This is an important teaching for Paul, which is why he gave it to the Church in Corinth and to the whole, universal Church.Why is it an important teaching for the Church? It is because Christians need to know, and ever remember, that what priests do is make Christ known. They do so in their sacrificial ministry of the sacraments. They make Christ known through the sacrament of Scripture in their preaching and in their teaching. They make Christ known through the act of blessing; while all Christians can and should offer blessings to each other as an act of devotion and goodwill, only blessings offered by Priests truly convey heavenly grace, sacramental grace. And Priests make Christ known through the sacramental rites both in the Liturgy and flowing from it. In the Liturgy priests are stewards of the dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, as well as the sacraments of Matrimony, Confession, Unction, and with the help of the Bishop, Confirmation. Bishops make possible these sacraments just mentioned, as well as the sacrament of Holy Orders. Each of these is a means and channel of saving grace. Christ is the Coming One through the Sacraments, through the Sacraments which are His chosen and instituted channels. To be sacramental stewards means the Priest preserves the proper understanding and practice of the Sacraments, through his teaching and ministry.As Jesus taught His disciples to regard S. John the Baptist differently and uniquely, the Church is to regard priests differently and uniquely. Priests are set apart, which is what consecrated and ordained means. They are called to be servants of Christ so as to know Him profoundly, not merely for their personal benefit, but for others: that they are able to fulfill their calling to be effective stewards of the mysteries of God, of the sacraments of God, of that which is necessary spiritual food for the salvation of Christian disciples. Jesus and Paul want the Church to regard priests as means by which Christ comes: means by which Christ nourishes His disciples with Himself.Christ the High Priest offers Himself eternally, the ordained priesthood makes Him present in the liturgy through the sacrifice offered by the priest, and all believers participate in this sacrifice by offering their lives, transforming the world through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit working through them. Priests are necessary to God’s plan of salvation, which is why the Church has always had them, and evidence of the existence of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons is shown in the New Testament and in the earliest documents we have, documents dating to around AD 100. Let us pray for the priests of Holy Church, that it may please God to illumine all Priests with true knowledge and understanding of His holy Word, that both by their preaching and living, they may set forth God’s Word, and make Christ known: always that Jesus transform those men called to the priesthood, that by Christ working through them, the hearts of the disobedient are turned to the wisdom of the just, and turned to follow Christ as their Saviour, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

In the audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 21.25Jesus said unto his disciples: “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”A Lesson from Commentary by the Ven. S. Bede (On Luke 21.26)I believe that this statement points to the advent itself of the Judge, when, according to the parable found in another passage, all the virgins, both the wise and the foolish, are aroused by an unexpected cry and trim their lamps, that is, they inwardly count up their deeds, for because of them they await with the greatest fear the outcome impending at that very moment of the eternal Judgment. For up to this point nearly the whole world is going to act without any fear of the Judge, as the Apostle Paul witnesses, who says: “When people say, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” So then, with the fear and expectation of the strict Judgment coming upon the whole world, many who seemed to flourish in this world will wither away when they realize that they are without good fruit. Then the faith that had bloomed without works, probed by the fire of the just Judge, will shrivel up. It is no wonder that human beings, who are earthbound either by nature or by understanding, are disturbed at His Judgment, at the prospect of which the very powers of heaven themselves, that is, the angelic powers, tremble, as the blessed Job also attests, who says: “The pillars of heaven tremble and are struck with fear at His rebuke.”If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

I concluded my preaching for the First Sunday of Advent with these words: “The knowledge that Christ is always the coming one is why Christianity is at its heart a holy mystery, shrouded at every turn and in all things by mystery. The holy apostles, whose names are inscribed on the walls of the foundation of heaven, preached Christ the Coming One so that all who hear it with faith may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to mystery of Jesus Christ: celebrating, savoring, and wondering at our Lord Jesus, Who comes to us through the Holy Spirit: living and moving and having our being within the Kingdom of God.”Advent as a whole is about looking for God’s coming now in our souls by grace, to quicken and heighten our awareness of His presence here and now. After seeing on Advent’s First Sunday how Our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem represents His desire to enter our heart through preaching of the apostles and drive out from His Temple (which is us) all that is not prayer, it is fitting that the Second Sunday of Advent is particularly given over to celebrating, savoring, and wondering at the fact that Christ always seeks to come to us, to come into His Temple which is us, through Holy Scripture—as Saint Paul says, how Scripture, previously veiled and not able to be fully understood, is now unveiled by Jesus Christ through the Cross.This is why we have the Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent, a famous and beautiful Anglican collect, which I will read again: “Blessed Lord, Who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: grant that we may in such wise (wise is the old word for way: that we may in such way) hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.” So much in this Collect. Through the Scriptures, inwardly digested, Christ is known. He is known, in our Lord’s words in our Gospel passage, “with power and great glory.” Indeed, Christ took on our human nature in significant part because in doing so He would be powerfully and profoundly known through the opening of Scripture: the opening of it, and our reception of Him, inwardly digesting Him because as He said, “I am the Bread of life.” This Bread, our daily bread, is received both through opening Scripture and by the breaking of bread. And we know Christ, the Eternal Word of God, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, took on our human nature to be known and received as our daily Bread because on the very day of His Resurrection, He taught the disciples to interpret Scripture as always concerning Him and to receive Him in the Eucharist. He taught them to seek Him so fervently that despite heaven and earth passing away, His words are so digested so as to never pass away.This gives the interpretation of Paul’s teaching in our Romans epistle: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction.” What kind of instruction? Paul specifies and says, “that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Because Christ is our hope, then we are to read Scripture to know Christ in the Scriptures, and in knowing Him in Scripture, we may together with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Paul says that Christ took on our human nature, the nature of a servant, to show the truthfulness of God the Father. In reading Scripture – in marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Christ as He is known through Scripture – the root of Jesse will come, and through His coming by the opening of Scripture, the God of hope will fill us with joy and peace, that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may abound in hope.Let us “inwardly digest” Christ through Scripture. The Anglican Divine blessed John Keble has this to say about “inwardly digesting”: “When something is digested, it agrees with him, nourishes him, is changed, as it ought to be, into the substance of his body. So the word and commandments of God, made known in Holy Scripture, are inwardly digested, when a man so receives them, as that they shall enter into his character, become, as it were, part of himself. How may that be? There is but one way. We must actually do as God bids us.” In the words of Saint James, we must not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. To be a doer of what God commands us to do, and what He reveals of His Son through Scripture as our daily bread, is what it means to inwardly digest. Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction – our instruction in how to pray, how to love, how to worship, how to be humble, how to be a disciple, how to live a godly life of Scripture and Sacraments through the Liturgy: how to live, so as to be taken up into the life of the Holy Spirit, as He teaches us all things and guides us into the Truth Who is Jesus as He seeks to come to us and be known through the opening of Scripture and the Breaking of Bread: He who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the same Holy Spirit: ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

In the audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Mark 1.1The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight—.” John the baptizer appeared in the desert, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”A Lesson from Commentary by the Ven. S. Bede (On Mark 1.3 and Homily 1.1)John cries out in the desert because he announces the consolation of redemption to the forsaken and desolate Judah. What he cries out, however, is revealed when it is added: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Whoever preaches true faith and good works, what else does he do but prepare the way for the Lord to enter the hearts of the listeners, so that the power of grace may penetrate, the light of truth may shine, and make straight paths for God, by forming pure thoughts in the mind through the word of good preaching? . . . It was in the desert that John gave his own baptism and proclaimed the baptism of Christ. Moreover, he lived his whole life in desert places from the time that he was a boy. This was so that as a first-rate teacher he might add the force of his example to what he was proclaiming in words; and as one who was persuading his hearers to forsake their sins in repentance, he might himself turn away from the vices of sinners, not only by mental punishment, but even by his physical location. Symbolically, the desert where John remained separated from the allurements of the world designates the lives of the Saints, who, whether they live as solitaries or mingled with the crowds, always reject the desires of the present world with the whole intention of their minds. They take delight in clinging only to God in the secrecy of their heart, and placing their hope in Him. If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

The First Sunday of Advent among other things reminds us that we at St Paul’s follow the traditional one-year lectionary for the Scripture readings for Sundays and Holy Days throughout the year. This we are doing with the permission and encouragement of Bishop Justin Holcomb, which is required. We are one of three parishes in our diocese doing this three-year experiment. While we are relatively unique in today’s Episcopal Church to be using this lectionary, we are well in line with English tradition going back to the 600s and officially as recent as 1979, when the present Prayer Book introduced a brand-new lectionary, much to the chagrin of many longtime Anglicans in the Episcopal Church.I mention this upfront in my sermon as a way to acknowledge, as I did last year, that the Gospel reading today might be disorienting to hear. The Entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem we normally hear during Holy Week, for this episode in the life of Christ is the kickoff to Palm Sunday and the procession we make from the Resurrection Garden outside into our Church, holding blessed palms and singing All Glory, Laud, and Honor. The entrance into Jerusalem of our Lord on a lowly donkey is one of the stations that make up the liturgical extravaganza of Holy Week: one station to the next, from the Raising of Lazarus to the Raising of Christ in His glorious Resurrection. In hearing this Gospel today, at a great distance liturgically from Holy Week, the point of it being the Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent is not to think so much about Holy Week. But if that is not the point, what is the point? In what way are we to understand our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem and then into the Temple?Whereas in Holy Week on Palm Sunday we read of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem in the literal way, and focus on that literal reading, as we hold blessed palms and accompany Him, in Advent we must read it on the spiritual level, as symbolic of our spiritual life, which is the life of receiving Christ into our mind and heart. For this we ask these questions: what is the Jerusalem into which Christ enters, and what is the Temple? Unsurprisingly, Scripture provides answers that illustrate the profound symbolism of this passage in Advent.To identify what Jerusalem is, we have Saint John and the Revelation which He recorded. Revelations 21:14 speaks of the New Jerusalem when it reads: “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Christ enters this Jerusalem – and on the walls of its foundation are the names of the apostles.As far as the Temple, Saint Paul teaches what the Temple is. The Temple is us. As he said to the church in Corinth: “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” He also said, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.” And he said, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.”Thus we put the symbolism together in this spiritual interpretation. Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, as read on the First Sunday of Advent, is His entry into the hearts of the faithful through the Gospel proclaimed by the Apostles. His coming into the Temple is His coming into our inward contemplation, into our soul, into our heart. And this matches the Collect prayer for all Advent, that “Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.” The living Church and its lively faith rests on apostles and their apostolic proclamation, which makes Christ known to us and shows that Christ is always the Coming One, seeking to come to us, in every moment of every day of our earthly life. All God wants is the human heart, and He comes to our heart on a lowly donkey.Christ seeks to enter our heart through the preaching and teaching of the apostles recorded in the New Testament, and He desires to drive out from the Temple (which is us) all that mucks it up and gets in the way of us perceiving Christ the King of all Creation and King of us. He demands that His house, that is, His temple, that is His Body, which is us, to be a house of prayer. Hence we must keep the commandments as Saint Paul writes to us today in his epistle the Romans: let us love our neighbor as yourself, which sums up the Law, as Jesus taught, indeed because love fulfills the law. This is what keeps our Temple clean, and allows us to recognize Christ Who is the Coming One, coming to us, or in Paul’s phrase: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” Nearer to us, because Christ has come closer to us, having cast off the works of darkness which we wore as newborns babe in Christ having put on more of the armor of light.Recognizing that Christ is always the Coming One is the basis of life in Christ’s Kingdom. The Advent season as such is the time to consider God’s coming to his people: to look into the Church’s memory of the first coming of Jesus; a time to look ahead to the Second Coming, the consummation of history in the return of Christ as Judge. But, primarily, it is about looking for God’s coming now in our souls by grace, to quicken our awareness of His presence here and now. He is the Coming One by means of the opening of Scripture and by the Breaking of Bread. He is the Coming One through the Liturgy of the Church, which arranges Scripture and provides the Sacraments. The knowledge that Christ is always the Coming One creates a truly lively faith, a life in the Holy Spirit: a life of constant wonder, constant awe, ever looking for the divine presence in our heart and in the world, and a constant openness to divine disclosure. The knowledge that Christ is always the coming one is why Christianity is at its heart a holy mystery, shrouded at every turn and in all things by mystery. The apostles, whose names are inscribed on the walls of the foundation of heaven, preached Christ the Coming One so that all who hear it with faith may be caught up in the life of wonder, awe, and openness to mystery of Jesus Christ Who comes to us through the Holy Spirit: living and moving and having our being within the Kingdom of Christ the King: He Who is before all things, and in Whom all things hold together, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the same Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe

In the audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel according to 2 Chronicles 6.13Solomon knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward heaven, and said, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart, who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him. You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day. Now therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to sit before me on the throne of Israel, if only your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk in my law as you have walked before me.’ . . . O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place. And now arise, O Lord God, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. Let your priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let your saints rejoice in your goodness.” As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”A Lesson from a homily by the Ven. S. Bede (II.24)We should not pass over without comment the fact that during the dedication of the temple, when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrificial victims. Now we are the burnt offerings and victims of the true Solomon; all His elect are the burnt offerings and victims of the most high King, of Whom Saint Peter says, ‘Christ died once for our sins, the just for the unjust, so that He might offer us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.’ The heavenly fire is the flame of extraordinary love, with which the citizens of the heavenly fatherland rejoice always to burn as they behold one another’s happiness and their Maker’s glory. Thus it is that a certain choir of the heavenly powers, which from their unique nearness to their Maker burn with immeasurable love, are called by the special name ‘Seraphim,’ that is, ‘burning’ or ‘on fire.’ . . . When the time of our resurrection comes, and faithful servants have entered into the joy of their Lord, the flame of true love which the angelic powers now burn will engulf their minds also, as they behold the vision of their Redeemer.If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe