Anglican Ascetic

Saint Paul teaches us today about delivering to others what has been received. The gift of the Gospel brings with it the responsibility to proclaim the Gospel to others, which we do through the acts of mercy. But it is a responsibility born of grace: if we are thankful to God—if we are “eucharistic,” which means a life of thankfulness to God for everything we have because everything is gift—then how can it be but joy to share with others the grace we have ourselves received? Mary, after the annunciation, went with joy to Saint Elizabeth, and for both of these women, everything was gift: Jesus was gift to Mary; Mary was gift to Elizabeth; Christ’s presence in utero was gift not only to Saint John Baptist in utero, but was gift to all of them. All was joy; all was gift, and delivering to others what was received.To live eucharistically is to imitate the Saints in always seeking to deliver and pass on to others what we have received: we have received the innumerable blessings of the Gospel and we are to deliver the Gospel to others around us that they will likewise be blessed by Christ’s mercy, that others partake in this same Life in Christ crucified and risen. Paul spread the Gospel, despite his sinful background. The same applies for S. Mary Magdalene, a woman filled with seven demons before she met Christ and through Him was purged of her demons: she was so able to share the Gospel of the risen Christ that she is known as an apostle to the apostles. Saint Peter denied Christ three times, yet became the leader of the apostles proclaiming Christ crucified and risen to many lands.Yet today a great many Christians do not do this. What might hold us back? Something seems to keep us from sharing with others the Gospel light of Christ which we have received. Perhaps one cause is that people have not been taught of the necessity to imitate the Saints in proclaiming the Gospel. And in that case, it cannot be held against them, but rather against the priests of the Church, who are charged to teach their flock. The spiritual literature and wisdom of the Church over 20 centuries indicates an additional cause: having hangups that derive from personal sin. And most commonly in spiritual literature, the sin that is most discussed is pride. Perhaps it is some kind of pride within us that we must overcome in order to share the Gospel with others. Something about pride, and therefore something as well about humility (because humility is the antidote to pride).To begin, let us reflect on our Gospel passage. The parable we hear today is that of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. We are well familiar with this parable. And I want us to reflect on the parable again and do so along with the teaching from Paul. In the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector, we hear of the Pharisee who compares himself to others and finds himself best. In the words of Jesus at the end of the Parable, the Pharisee is the person who exalts himself. The Pharisee judges others and gives himself the prize. The Pharisee is the image of pride. Our Lord Jesus also presents to us the Tax Collector. The Tax Collector does not even raise his eyes to heaven, and only says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” He judges no one except himself, and again in the words of Jesus, the Tax Collector is he who humbles himself. “Everyone,” Jesus Christ says, “who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” The Tax Collector is the image of humility. And it is the Tax Collector who proclaims the Gospel.As we consider this parable, and think about our own lives, we are drawn to say “I will aim to be like the Tax Collector,” and indeed this is what Jesus expects of us. We are to seek to imitate the Tax Collector and in all things regard ourselves with deep humility. Yet as we consider this parable, we might also be drawn to say, “and I will not be like the Pharisee. I will not imitate him. He is not worthy to be imitated.” And while it is understandable to think this way, notice the holy trap our Lord laid for us: in trying to not be like the Pharisee, we unwittingly imitate him, because as the Pharisee looked at the Tax Collector and judged himself better than him, if we regard the Pharisee as a person inferior, we are doing what he does, even as we deride him. Striving to imitate the image of humility tempts us toward pride.I think what keeps Christians from sharing the Gospel with their neighbors is this kind of pride, the subtle pride of striving outwardly to be like the Tax Collector while secretly thinking ourselves to be special, with a quiet, even invisible, high estimation of ourselves. For us to be able to pass on the Gospel to others, for us to fulfill Christ’s commandment to proclaim the Gospel in our lives to others, we must show ourselves objects of Christ’s mercy and pity. This means having a constant sense of being a sinner; a constant sense of our need for a Savior, a profound sense of the mystery of God, and a deep sense of thanksgiving to God everywhere and in all places which is the eucharistic life. To truly share with others what we have received, yes, let us imitate the Tax Collector, like him we may long beyond all things for the mercy of God, which gives us peace: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This simple prayer inspired by the Tax Collector is the most used prayer by Christians. It recognizes the divine majesty of Christ; it receives the fact of His resurrection; it expresses our need for Christ through true humility; and it asks Him for mercy, which is what we need for salvation, and what we seek to share with others, for sharing mercy is evidence that Christ is resurrected. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner: Lord Jesus Christ, give us all mercy, O Holy One 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, Who on this day didst take to Thyself Blessed Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother of Thine only-begotten Son: grant that we who celebrate her glory may be aided by her prayers, and may come to share her heavenly and eternal joys; through the same The Son Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

This is unedited audio of my parish’s Saturday morning class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is currently reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. In this episode, we look at chapters 19-21. I take a close-reading approach to the text, 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. 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Graciously hear us, O God of our salvation: that, like as we do rejoice in the festival of blessed Clare of Assisi, Thy holy Virgin, so we may learn to follow her in all godly and devout affections; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

“It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.” This is important to always remember, because our God, being an awesome God, is greater than anything we can imagine. In the words of the great English monk and theologian, Saint Anselm, “God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” God is beyond the conditions of time and space; He is outside creation, beyond creation. And yet, wonder of wonders, our great and transcendent God makes Himself known by what He chooses to reveal: we know of God’s actions, His plan of salvation, His revealing of Himself in Jesus Christ, and the workings of the Holy Spirit. We know His actions which are revealed, but the very nature of God is beyond human language, beyond human comprehension, beyond human capacity. God is mystery.And yet the highest and most incomprehensible wonder is not merely that we can have relationship with God, but that the way we have relationship with God is through prayer. Thus it is to the mystery of prayer—even the sacrament of prayer—that we turn today.In our first reading, we heard the beginning of the beautiful prayer by Saint Solomon as he dedicated the Temple. It is a long prayer, and we heard just a part of it. Note Solomon’s words: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you!” There he articulates what we have been reflecting upon: the mystery of God, even larger than heaven and the highest heaven. Prayer is spiritual activity. Prayer is our lifting up of the heart and mind to the living God. In prayer, we lift up our heart to Him Who is above the highest heaven, by Whom and through Whom and in Whom all things are made. And prayer is not only expressed through words, but also by actions. Anything we do which is conditioned by awareness of Him and conscious relationship with Him is prayer. Anything we do for the glory of God, even the most menial task, itself is prayer. Prayer is our supreme activity because it embodies our relationship with God.In our Gospel account from Saint Luke, Jesus drove out those whose actions were not prayer. He drove out the money-changers and those vending various goods. They cannot be part of the worshipping community because, Jesus said, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” Therefore prayer is what is most fundamental about worship. Prayer makes a church legitimate in the eyes of Jesus Christ.Prayer has four characteristics. Adoration, thanksgiving, penitence, and petition. Adoration is simply beholding God, in awe and wonder and holy trembling: simply beholding God the Eternal, God the Incomprehensible, God the Perfect; God Who is Himself Holiness, is Himself Love, is Himself Beauty. We see this when Solomon says, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath.” There is nothing like God, anywhere; and Solomon begins his prayer simply beholding and adoring God. When we ponder the awesomeness of God, the magnificence of His Divine Majesty, we are offering adoration to Him.From adoring God flows thanksgiving. We are drawn into thanksgiving to God for Himself, for His mercy. We see this in Solomon’s prayer when he thanks God for “keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servant who walk before you with all their heart.” Furthermore, Solomon offers thanksgiving with the words, “You 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.” We give thanks to God not only for the many blessings of this life, but especially for Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son and Eternal Word; for His Nativity, His taking of our flesh and redeeming all of humanity; we give thanks for the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, Who teaches us all things and guides us into all truth, and Who reveals Christ to us in the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread. There is so much to be thankful to God for; so much that, as has been said, the primary sin is to not express our gratitude to God, to not simply say, “Thank you, God.”Penitence is to see God clearly and to see self clearly. And in this true vision of both God and self, and God and His people, we perceive the difference between God and us, and this difference is immense: He is Creator, we are creature, and each of us is one of countless creatures all created by the Divine Maker. This as well we see in Solomon’s prayer: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you;” and then in a penitential tone Solomon adds: “How much less this house that I have built!” Solomon understands deeply that God is Creator of all, and that which Solomon has built to be small and nothing next to God. Solomon sees things clearly. There is the old axiom “to know thyself.” Christians know ourselves to always be in need of a Savior, and this Savior is Jesus Christ and Him alone. To have this self-knowledge is what it means to be a sinner. A sinner is truly penitent, and the prayer of the sinner always reflects penitence: to be a sinner is to know oneself as always in need of Jesus, our Saviour, and His mercy, His loving-kindness, His steadfast love. This is to take on the attitude of the Tax Collector, the Publican. He said, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” He asks for God’s mercy. One does this out of true penitence, a true understanding of God and right-relationship with Him as His creature. This is humility. Penitence is being reality-based, and being reality-based, our penitence brings into focus the vocation God has given us.Petition grows out of the other characteristics of prayer. Adoring God, we realize that He is the source of all being, for which we are thankful; seeing self in His sight, we realize that without Him we are nothing and even worse than nothing. Laying ourselves down in penitence, seeing Him as Creator and ourselves as creature, thanking Him for all He is and all He does, we are encouraged to act upon the promises of our Lord and ask for the supply of our needs. This we see in Solomon’s prayer when he says, “Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that you eyes may be open night and day toward this house.” He also adds, “Listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.” We petition God, confident that He is but waiting for the cooperation of our desire to give more than we ask or think. We ask for recovery from sickness, safety from illness and danger, success in some project or venture, for ourselves or for others. We also can, and should, ask for spiritual gifts – for grace, the virtues of faith, hope and love, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit: asking for wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, reverence, and fear of God. These gifts from God transform our mind and heart into the mind and heart of Christ.Thus we see in Solomon’s prayer the fullness of all four characteristics of prayer, indeed the fullness of eucharistic life: adoration, thanksgiving, penitence, and petition. It is an example of robust prayer to God Who is beyond creation, beyond time and space, yet closer to us than our very breath and heartbeat, and Who makes Himself known to us through our heart and mind, and through all the creatures of creation, especially the human ones. So from our Collect: Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please Thee; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O GOD, who on the mount didst reveal to chosen witnesses thine only-begotten Son wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistering; Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may be permitted to behold the King in his beauty, who with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

In the audio provided, both lessons are read, and then followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke, 16.1Jesus also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.A Lesson of Commentary by the Ven. S. BedeThere are those who know nothing of the innermost feelings of compassion and the works of mercy which are owed to their neighbours, and yet nevertheless consider themselves truly faithful because of their chastity, vigils, prolonged prayer, full faith, fasting, and other virtues that the love of God is accustomed to engender. But, as the Judge Himself attests, “One who is faithful in a very little,” that is, in the riches that ought to be shared with the poor man, “is faithful also in that which is greater,” namely in that impulse by which he desires specially to cling to the Creator and to become one spirit with Him. But he who neglects to dispense the temporal things that he possesses in the right way, deprives himself of the glory of eternal things about which he boasts. As Saint John says, “He who does not love his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he does not see?” (1 John 4.20) And as the same says: “If any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3.17)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 13 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

There is much to consider in the Epistle of S. Paul. While it may seem that there is a jumble of teachings, in fact there is a single link to bring each one together. This link is found in Philippians 2.12 with these words: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” With awe, wonder, and trembling, take up your salvation, he tells the Church. Now, “salvation” means health, specifically it means spiritual health. Thus Paul’s teaching is: “Work on your spiritual health, and do so with awe, wonder, and trembling before God.” By our work we will no longer be idolators, or sexually immoral, or habitual sinners. Instead we will be transformed by the Gospel, by Christ, by His grace.Salvation in heaven begins with working towards spiritual health in this life. And yet this working towards, or working out, of salvation means specifically our cooperation with the grace God gives to the baptized as our daily Bread: Eucharist, as well as that of Scripture, which make Christ known. The invitation Christ makes in John 1.39–“Come and see”—is the invitation to find Him in the opening of Scripture and to find Him in the Breaking of Bread. All of Scriptures (the books of Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms) are about Him, Jesus taught; and the consecrated Bread and Wine are His Precious Body and Blood. He is our salvation. So our working out of our spiritual health is the life of looking for Him in Scripture and Eucharist, and finding Him, and being fed by Him, transformed by Him, made holy by Him.Paul also teaches provocatively in his epistle. Paul tells us that while the children of Israel ate the same spiritual food, and drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that the Rock was Christ. He identifies in no uncertain terms the God of the Israelites as Christ. He says that the grace of Christ was available to the children of Israel following Moses. Nevertheless with most of them God was not pleased. God was not pleased because most of the children of Israel did not cooperate with the grace Christ made available to them. Instead of choosing Christ, they choose idolatry, the pineapples of sexual immorality, and disobedience of all kinds. God showed great tolerance for their sinfulness. God knows our human condition, for He is our creator. Paul as well emphasizes that God does know that we face temptations, and that God allows us to face temptations, to learn to endure them and to learn through the struggle how to choose God by cooperating with His grace, rather than our normal fleshly tendency to kick against the goads.What Paul intriguingly presents in this passage as the remedy for our salvation is the Eucharist. Just as the children of Israel drank from the spiritual Rock which was Christ, we drink and eat Christ in the Eucharist. And this for Paul is the process of working out and towards spiritual health, week in and week out. He says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” We find salvation, we find spiritual health, by means of the Eucharist, of Holy Communion, by means of receiving Christ’s precious Body and Blood. Receiving the Eucharist, for Paul, is not an option, but necessary for finding spiritual health. And again, eternal salvation in heaven begins with us receiving the Eucharist in this life. Being regular in receiving the Eucharist is part of our labor and work. This is attested to by the 3rd century Church Father, S. Cyprian of Carthage in his teaching on the Our Father prayer. S. Cyprian writes “Jesus makes it clear that those … who receive the Eucharist … are those who live.” “We ask that we be given our bread, that is Christ,” Cyprian says, “so that we may remain in Christ, and live through His sanctification”—live, that is, through the holiness and transformation fostered by the Eucharist received regularly.Our Lord also teaches on salvation, and does so cryptically, because it is told as a parable. In this parable of the shrewd servant, the servant cheats his master to make friends with the tenants. And, Jesus said, “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.” We would expect the master not to do so. Yet Our Lord’s parable finds light in the darkness, and teaches righteousness through an example of iniquity. The deeper message of this parable is that the children of Light, that is, the members of the Church, should regard their salvation with the level of priority as the children of this world do their worldly goals of wealth, fame, and possessions; as they struggle and fight for those, we should struggle and fight for our salvation. The seriousness with which the dishonest servant takes his cheating is an exact description of what God expects of the children of light, in order to obtain a far more important, an infinitely greater, and more noble object–spiritual health, the uprooting of sinful habits.And so, again, eternal salvation involves our work and our labors in this life to uproot out of our heart anything that gets in the way of our love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. We do this work and labor by cooperating with the grace of the Eucharist—of Christ in us, sacramentally—and by keeping commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, which He gave us as the gift of Himself in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, which is living eucharistically. We are to love God and love our neighbor like Christ loves us, and our work is to replace our unholy habits with holy habits that render our love for God and neighbor so robust that in our love, people see Jesus Christ Himself. Therefore towards our end which is heaven, and eternal salvation in Christ, let us indeed work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, and do so through the daily Bread which is Christ: revealed in Scripture and received in the Eucharist, cooperating with His grace by keeping of Christ’s word and commandments, which enable us to do all such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who gave Himself for us and for our salvation; 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

This is unedited audio of my parish’s Saturday morning class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is currently reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. In this episode, we look at chapters 16-18. I take a close-reading approach to the text, 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. 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Almighty and most merciful God, Whose Son didst vouchsafe to be received in the house of blessed Martha: grant we beseech Thee, at the prayer of her who lovingly welcomed HIm, that we of Thy mercy may be received into our heavenly home; through the same Jesus Christ Thy Son, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, Who didst vouchsafe to give grace to blessed Saint Anne that she might be worthy to bear the Mother of Thine only-begotten Son: Mercifully grant that we who rejoice in the observance of her feast day may by her intercession find favour in Thy sight; through the same Jesus Christ Thy Son, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

A Reading from a Homily by Kosmas Vestitor, a Byzantine lay preacher who lived in Constantinople and died circa 850.Today is the day that offers thanksgiving to the progenitors of the Theotokos, through whom the beginning of salvation for everyone has come about. Indeed, the festival of the parents is that of the daughter. For just as a child is glorified too in the glory of its mother, so also is a mother glorified in the blessing of a child. Today there is happiness in remembering the righteous with speeches of praise. It came to pass in times of old that there was a righteous man from the tribe of Judah named Joachim. He was a man distinguished in holiness and righteousness; a man who was notable in nobility and wealth; a man who was single-minded in his offerings of sacrifices; a man in every way well-pleasing to God; a man of the longings which come from the Spirit. For since he was childless and consumed with desire for a child, he fathered the bride of the Holy Spirit. As a man he truly achieved this, since God hearkened to his prayers and granted him the one who was “beyond all the tabernacles of Jacob,” or to put it another way, the daughter who is worthily deemed higher than all created things in heaven or on earth. And he had a pious wife, whose name was Anna, who also came from the royal tribe of Judah since she was a descendant of David. She was a woman who rejected all evil; a woman who lived faithfully before God with her husband; a woman who regularly attended the temple of God along with her own spouse, with prayers, fasts, and pleasing, bountiful gifts a woman who in unanimity of soul and bodily chastity always possessed constancy of understanding with her husband. For she was not mischievously transformed, like Eve, but was instead joined to her husband as a helper both in the living out of virtues and in daily supplications to God. For the two grew equally weary in their prayer of yearning for a child in the same way that a farmer, together with his wife, when they have worked some barren land, sow the seed and, through prayer, expect to gain a good crop of fruit. Anna lived not as Eve lived with Adam, but as one who shared in thanksgiving and worked with Joachim on spiritual good deeds; and she was truly a “better half ” who completed the union with her husband perfectly. For whereas Eve became the producer of pain for the world by means of the fruit of a tree, Joachim’s Anna represented joy for the Creator by means of the fruit of her womb.Continuing with the homily by Kosmas VestitorIt is well known to everyone that Mary the Theotokos was given the good news in the Galilee of the gentiles, in the house of Joseph the carpenter, who had been made the Virgin’s husband in order to ward off the devil’s deception. And again, it is clear that she gave birth to Christ in Bethlehem and that her native land happened to be the same city as that of her mother, just as the oration will demonstrate below. For Mary’s ancestral home was situated near the pool by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, according to the text, where Christ who was also our God raised up and cured the man who had lain as a paralytic for thirty-eight years, since he was about to go forth from that house symbolically as the Shepherd of rational sheep. For this reason the grace of baptism is also foreshadowed by the pool of water there, for the illness of chronic deceit that has paralysed the souls of men, just as in the functioning of limbs, has been healed by purification of the Spirit through water, just as the spiritual bread of life was leavened in the figure of Bethlehem. And here Christ was revealed in the form of an angel to Abraham, and he also wrestled with Jacob in angelic shape. For he is the One who came to bring good news to those who are far away and those who are nearby; he is the Gospel of righteousness; he is the One who carried out the commandment of the God and Father by means of angels; he is the “Messenger of great counsel”, to whom the Father became Counsellor and said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness”. He is also the Bread of true life which was predicted in advance by the name of Bethlehem; for “Bethlehem” means “house of bread,” which was baked in the ashes in Abraham’s tent, that is to say, bread which was leavened in secret, or the flesh of the Savior that was begotten from the Virgin and Theotokos, Mary. It is therefore fitting, on account of these things, to say that the Lord blessed the house of King David on account of his descendant, life-bearing Mary. He blessed the house of the righteous Joachim and Anna on account of their hallowed daughter. He blessed the house of Joseph on account of the bride, the truly pure and ever-Virgin Mother of Christ and Theotokos Mary, who had been entrusted in civil law to him alone. Hence, and on account of these things, thrice-blessed are the parents of the Mother of God, to whom the whole world is indebted! Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

A life of constantly reflecting on the fact of our Baptism means that everywhere and in all places Christ can be found, Christ can be heard, Christ can be spoken to, His divine majesty adored; and His mercy asked for and received. As Saint Paul writes in Galatians 3.27: “For as man of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Even as Moses writes: “The Word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart”: the Word being Christ, the Eternal Word of the Father. Recognizing this fact—recognizing this unsearchable gift—unveils for us the mystery of our existence in Christ, and His existence in us. And what happens to people when mystery is unveiled? What happens is that they are transfigured, and the eyes of their heart see in a new way—with the eyes of Noah after he leaves the ark and beholds a beautiful world, cleansed of evil and full of grace. This is what the upcoming Feast of the Transfiguration celebrates: that knowledge of the truth of Christ, fully God and fully man, opens the eyes of our hearts to see the uncreated light of heaven shine through Him. And this mystery of transfiguration matters quite a bit for our lives in the Church, as we will see shortly.I am going to bring Paul’s teaching today together with that of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. From Paul we have him exhorting and encouraging us to live according to the Spirit. To live according to the Holy Spirit. He says, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” And then Paul adds, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” That word “sons” can trip people up, so let me say firstly that “son” means sharing in the activity of something. It means sharing the nature of it. So “sons of God” means sharing and participating in God’s activity, indeed participating in Him Who shares Himself with us eucharistically as our Daily Bread. Mary Magdalene was participating in Christ’s glory on Easter morning in a manner which was eucharistic–for she was partaking of Him Who is the Eternal Bread of Heaven. Peter, James, and John participated in Christ’s glory at the Transfiguration, and their participation was eucharistic in the same way. To reflect upon Paul’s teaching that “All who are led by the Spirit of God are participating in God’s activity” is to perceive that Paul is teaching about the eucharistic life. Life led by the Spirit of God reveals Christ Whom we receive as heavenly bread. What hinders such life and impedes participation in this life is, according to S. Paul, living according to the flesh, according to self-centeredness, concupiscence, measuring one’s life by worldly values rather than holy values. To be led by the Holy Spirit requires the putting off of self-centered, worldly living, and instead thinking, living, and acting according to Christ’s sacred humanity. To be led by the Holy Spirit means we continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in.What we hear from our Saviour Jesus Christ in Saint Matthew’s Gospel is that we must beware of false prophets—that is, false teachers—and recognize good teachers, that is good Priests who preach the true Faith of Christ Crucified and Resurrected. Such people are, by definition, those who are led by the Spirit of God, participating in the redemptive stream of Christ’s living water. These people are not living according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And Jesus says, “You will recognize them by their fruits.” By the fruits, then, we recognize holy Preachers of the Word of God. What are the fruits by which we recognize holy Preachers of God’s Word? This is another mystery of God—the mystery of Him being known through preaching, through His chosen Preachers, those chosen and ordained to proclaim the faith of the Church through preaching. How do we recognize them? What fruits are we looking for?What we are looking for are preachers who have been transfigured by the Gospel, transfigured by the uncreated light of Jesus Christ, preachers fully led by the Holy Spirit. And the specific way to recognize holy preachers is that in them we see what are called the Fruits of the Spirit. There are nine Fruits of the Spirit, and these nine come from Paul’s teaching to us in Galatians 5:22-23. There is revealed to us that the Fruits of the Spirit are: Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering (patience), Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness (sometimes just faith), Gentleness (that is, meekness), and Self-Control (or temperance). These are qualities that people living according to the Holy Spirit show in their life, illustrate in their actions, their words, and exhibit as part of their personality. These are what we are to look for in Preachers, that we can separate and distinguish between true preachers and false preachers, between good and bad, between ones we should listen to, and ones we should not. Every healthy, godly tree bears good fruit that we must use to recognize the holiness of the tree. We look for in Preachers the qualities of Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control. By these, the mercy, love, and presence of Christ is revealed through the Preacher, through any truly Christian person. Holy preachers are those who themselves are transfigured. The nine fruits of the Spirit are the proof that the preachers have been transfigured by Christ and are being led by the Holy Spirit. And we therefore can have full trust in such preachers, that the Holy Spirit has filled that person, and that we can not only listen to them, but be led by them, for it is the Holy Spirit who leads us and guides us into all truth. We can not only listen to them, and be led by them, but in fact be fed by them, because what they preach is Christ crucified and resurrected; what they preach is Christ Who is the eternal Bread come down from heaven; what they preach is He Who is known by the opening of Scripture and breaking of Bread. Holy preachers preach only the Truth–Truth Who is Jesus Christ Himself, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, who didst vouchsafe to call blessed Mary Magdalene, by the voice of thine only-begotten Son, from the multitude of her sins unto the grace of repentance and the dignity of thy service: mercifully grant unto us; that, by her intercession and example, we may be delivered from the bonds of our sins, and may attain unto the glory of everlasting felicity. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

In the audio provided, both lessons are read, and then followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Mark, 6.35And when it grew late, the disciples of Jesus came to Him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late; send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat.” But He answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And He said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then He commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish He looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and He divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied.A Lesson of Commentary by the Ven. S. BedeJesus said to them: “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they knew, they said: “Five, and two fish.” By the five loaves of the Apostles, and two fish, the whole scripture of the Old Testament is signified. By the five loaves, namely the five books of the Mosaic law, by which the knowledge of divine eternity, the creation of the world, the course of the passing age, and the true religion of serving God became known to mankind. By the two fish, the Psalms and the Prophets are represented, which fed the people educated in the law of God with the new sweetness of grace from the promise of the Lord’s incarnation. By this threefold distinction of sacred Scripture, we are taught by the Lord’s authority that the entire series of the old instrument is comprehended. For appearing to the disciples after the resurrection, the Lord Himself said that “it was necessary that all things that were written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms concerning Me should be fulfilled” (Luke 24). And when He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and to hand them over, spiritually understood, to the faithful listeners, as though blessing the apostolic loaves and the fish, and multiplying them with the gift of internal sweetness, He ordered them to be distributed to the crowds. Well, according to the Gospel of John, the loaves, which signify the law, are reported to have been barley loaves, which is mainly the food of animals and mostly of rustic servants, because to those just beginning and not yet perfect listeners, harsher and more coarse precepts must be entrusted. For the natural man does not receive the things that are of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2). And therefore the Lord, giving gifts according to each one’s strength and always provoking toward more perfect things, first feeds five thousand with five loaves, second four thousand men with seven loaves, third entrusts the mystery of His flesh and blood to the disciples: at last He grants the great gift to the elect, that they may eat and drink at His table in His kingdom.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 13 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

I will begin this morning by again quoting from Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, among the most important Anglican voices of the 20th century. He said: “The life of a mature Christian is continually responding to the fact of our Baptism.” For him, Baptism means a new life of listening, reflecting, and discerning—a whole life of repentance and humility that the eyes of our heart which were blinded by sin and ignorance can be opened to see what was previously hidden, and to be fed and nourished by what was previously invisible and unknown to us. By Baptism we see and think differently.One of the mysteries the Baptism begins to unveil is the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which we receive only after we are baptized, thus the Eucharist, a profound mystery itself, is also one of the aspects of the mystery of Baptism and of baptized life in Jesus Christ. And we cannot help but be reminded of the Eucharist hearing of the feeding miracle in Mark 8, the feeding of the 4,000 which was itself not the Eucharist, but was remembered by the apostles proclaiming the Gospel as a preview of the Eucharist and Christ’s ability to endlessly feed us with Himself.In considering the Eucharist, the mystery of Holy Communion, it is helpful to bring to mind the traditional attitude of Anglicans toward the Eucharist, which is also the attitude of the undivided Church of the first one thousand years. Why do we believe that the bread and wine become Christ’s precious Body and Blood? Because Jesus said so. Simple as that. He said so, and He is the Son of God, through Whom all things are made: so what He says and does is true.This attitude is captured by the 17th century Bishop Jeremy Taylor. In his book, The Rules for Holy Living, he wrote: “Dispute not concerning the secret of this mystery, and the precision of the manner of Christ’s presence in it: it is enough for you that Christ shall be present to your soul, as an instrument of grace.” Anglican theology and practice has always accepted the doctrine of Christ’s real and actual presence in the Eucharist, that the Eucharist conveys to those who receive it in faith real and objective grace. We hear all of that in Jeremy Taylor’s teaching. But we also hear a strong caution to not dispute concerning the mystery of the Eucharist, nor struggle to understand how the bread and wine become Christ’s precious Body and Blood. Accept it is what Jesus said it is: His Body and Blood, and therefore accept the Eucharist as an objective means of grace, because He is presence and He always gives grace and mercy to those who seek it. The mystery of the Eucharist is really the mystery of Christ we receive in and through the Eucharist.We hear from Paul a variety of teachings about the mystery of God. As Saint Paul writes in Ephesians 3:5: “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” In Colossians 2:2-3: Paul tells us that he taught that we “may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” And earlier in Colossians: “this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” So to speak of the mystery of God, in such a way as to not provide easy answers to every question, is how Saint Paul himself taught. Paul sought to make us progressively aware of a mystery, which means becoming progressively aware of Jesus Christ: Him as God, Him as Man; Him begotten before all worlds; Him taking upon Himself our human nature; Him Crucified, Him Resurrected; Him Who died for our sins, Him Who is always alive.Paul taught profoundly about the mystery of Eucharist. These teaching most obviously is found in 1 Corinthians 11, and these words: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. In this first written teaching about the Eucharist that we find in the Church, we find Paul reiterating our Lord’s instruction: to receive the Eucharist for the remembrance of Him – that the remembrance of Christ is the purpose of receiving the Eucharist. And here it helpful to know that the word in Greek which is translated as “in remembrance” in English is anamnesis. There is no simple and elegant translation of anamnesis into English. Anamnesis in clunky English means something like “the making actually present again.” Thus “do this in remembrance of Me” becomes” “Do this—for the making actually present again—of Me.” The common English “in remembrance” might be the best choice of sub-optimal options, but it might make Christians think that the Eucharist is for simply remembering Christ, like we might remember our grandmother, or that one thing we did once when we were younger. It does not mean that. Jesus instructed us, and Paul reiterated for the apostolic Church, that in receiving the Eucharist we receive into our bodies His actual presence, the same presence as if He were standing among us and walking with us. Indeed the same presence of Christ that Saint Mary Magdalene experienced when she heard Christ call her name.My brothers and sisters, this is a mystery and we need not seek easy answers to the question of how it all works. Let our trust in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man, suffice for us. Jesus told us to eat and drink His precious Body and Blood which the Holy Spirit gives us through His transformation of bread and wine. So let us eat and drink and know His precious Body and Blood as His gift to us! Why is the bread and wine His Body and Blood? Because Jesus said so. In receiving the Eucharist, we are saying “I believe you, Jesus.” In receiving the Eucharist, we are saying, “I believe you are alive and resurrected in Your Church, of which You are the head.” In receiving the Eucharist, we are saying, “Thank you, Jesus. I believe you are alive and resurrected in me—in me, a member of Your Body the Church.” In receiving the Eucharist, we are saying, “Thank you Jesus, we love you, and we know that You love us also”—You, Who live and reign 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

When Jesus was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.(Saint Mark 10:17-22) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

“It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.” These words of a 20th century British theologian (Kallistos Ware) speak directly to the theme of these Sundays after Trinity, which is the “Eucharistic Life.” What that theologian teaches is that by the Christian life, we are made more aware of a mystery. In the Church, we find many things that are characterized as “mystery.” And that is because in the Church, the word “mystery” connects with revelation. To say that Christianity is mystery is to say that Christianity is a revealed religion. In our Christian life, we are made more conscious of the truth which is only revealed in Jesus Christ through the workings of the Holy Ghost. When the Church speaks of “mystery,” it does not mean puzzle or conundrum. People read mystery novels, like Sherlock Holmes; people watch television programs and movies that are under the category of “murder-mysteries.” But “mystery” in the Church does not mean either of those. Mystery in the Church means truth that is only revealed to the people of God when it is God’s plan to do so. The life of a Christian, being a continual initiation into the reality of Pentecost, is the life whereby through the Liturgy and Sacraments, through repentance and humility, we are made more and more aware of truth that is revealed; of truth that is hidden; of truth that defies the constraints of human language.There is perhaps no better illustration that Christianity involves profound mystery than the Sacrament of Baptism. As the Baptismal Liturgy expresses: in the water of Baptism we are buried with Christ in His Death; by the water of baptism we share in His Resurrection; and through the water of Baptism we are reborn by the Holy Ghost. The Sacrament of Baptism means being born again, to continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Our sin is forgiven, we are given an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love God, and the gift of joy and wonder in all our works. In Baptism, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever. In Baptism, we are made one with Christ, a member of His Body the Church, and members one with each other in Christ, Who is our Head. In Baptism the Saints of old become our friends, our colleagues, our family, our fellow war-farers. We are able to recognize plainly the fact of Christ in them. Saints of the Church are both Christ’s (with an apostrophe s; that is, belonging to Christ), and they are christs (plural, as in little christs). Like the Saints, through Baptism are able to walk in the newness of life, united with Christ in His resurrected and glorified Body. And when we are baptized, we are able to feed on Christ: feed on him through faith in Holy Communion, and through Him revealed in Scripture: Christ is the Bread of Life, He is our daily Bread, and through baptism, we eat He Who is our life, our health, and our salvation. We eat Him that we might fully become Him Who we eat.In Christianity, there is a close connection between the words “mystery” and “sacrament.” The Greek word mysterion means a hidden truth or secret that God has now revealed—especially His plan to save us through Jesus. The early Church used this word for the special church rituals like Baptism and Eucharist, seeing Baptism and Eucharist as visible signs that make God’s invisible grace real to us. When the Church in the West began using Latin, they translated mysterion as sacramentum, which became the word “sacrament.” The Church of the East continues today to call these rites “the Mysteries,” while the Church of the West calls them “Sacraments.” Both words basically mean the same thing: holy actions that hide and reveal God’s presence and power at the same time. They not only reflect the Gospel, but Baptism and Eucharist are the Gospel: the good news of being joined to the Body of Christ, and the good news of being fed by Christ so as to more become Christ.In our selves, Christ wants us to see the mystery of Himself. He wants us to become aware of the mystery, the sacrament, of Christ in us. The mystery of Baptism led the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century, blessed Michael Ramsey (who died in 1988), to write: “The life of a mature Christian is continually responding to the fact of our Baptism.” Only a mystery enveloped in hiddenness demands a whole life of response, a whole life of listening, reflecting, discerning, and doing. The fact of baptism demands, in the words of Saint Paul, that we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. As Paul teaches, our old self has been crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin, indeed that we are set free from sin. Set free and enabled to love everyone without condition; free and enabled to bless those who abuse us, strike us, or take from us; free and enabled to love our enemies, do good, lend, and expect nothing in return. We are enabled to live eucharistically: everywhere and in all places giving thanks to God. We are enabled say with the Prophet Job: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.” To live within the revealed mystery of Christ is to live sacramentally; it is to live baptismally, and it is to live eucharistically, which means a life of thankfulness to God. in the words of another 20th century British theologian (Alexander Schmemann): “All that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical Language, this means He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’ Man is a hungry being. But he is hungry for God. Behind all the hunger of our life is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him.” Indeed a desire for Jesus Christ Himself, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

In the audio provided, both lessons are read, and then followed by a homily by yours truly.A Lesson from the Gospel According to S. Luke, 5.1While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear the word of God, Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”A Lesson of Commentary by the Ven. S. BedeThe Lake of Gennesaret is called by the Greek word, “Gennesar, (meaning) its water is not spread out flat like a pool, but is stirred by frequent breezes, sweet to taste, and good for drinking. This lake or sea signifies the present age, the Lord standing by the sea, when, after overcoming the mortality of fleeting life in that flesh in which He suffered, He entered upon the stability of eternal rest. The assemblage of crowds is an allegorical figure of the nations rushing together to Him in faith, as Isaiah says, And all nations shall flow to it, and many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord (Is 2:2-3). The two ships placed by the lake symbolize circumcision and lack of circumcision. Jesus is well said to have seen them, because among both people the Lord knows who are His, and he conveys their heart from the billows of this age to the calm of future life, by seeing them as it were coming towards the firmness of the shore, that is, by seeing them with the mercy of His heart. The fishermen are the preachers of the Church, who convey us are caught in the net of faith, and brought up from the deep to the light, like fish to the shore, and so to the land of the living. For like the nets of the fishermen, certain sayings of the preachers are complex in order not to lose those whom they have caught in faith. When Peter says, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets,” we see that unless the Lord illuminates the heart of the pupils [disciples], the teachers labours [useless] in the night. Unless the tools of disputation are let down at the word of divine grace, the preacher hurls the javelin of his word in vain, because the faith of the people springs not from the wisdom of logical terminology, but from the gift of a divine calling. When Our Lord says, “from now on you will be catching men,” the Lord explains that just as now he catches fish with nets, so in the future he will catch men with words. And the Lord also explains that the whole order of this action shows what is done daily in the Church.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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Saint Luke tells us that after Saint Peter saw the great catch of fish, he fell down at the knees of Jesus. And in falling down, Peter said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Luke tells us that Peter was astonished. And who, brothers and sisters, would not be astonished? Peter was an experienced fisherman, surrounded by many such fishermen. They know the waters; they know when it is time to fish, and time to call it a day. But after Jesus had ceased speaking, Christ said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Peter here does not openly resist or debate Jesus. He follows Our Lord’s command, but not before saying, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” Peter has faith: calling Him “Master,” and doing what Our Lord commanded. Perhaps Peter said these words to save face in case no fish were caught; that the other fisherman knew the command to let down the nets came from Jesus, and not from Peter. Peter’s faith in Jesus is growing (for how many of us would be comfortable calling anyone “Master” in public?”) yet a garden-variety self-centeredness is still at play. And we would expect this of him, and of all the disciples. They are still learning about Jesus, and they are still learning how He fulfills the Law, and fulfills Scripture. Jesus never expects His followers to understand everything about Him immediately; He knows we have to grow in knowledge of Him, and through growing in knowledge, growing in faith.Yet also, there are moments described in the Gospel that show Christ’s power; that show Him teaching with such authority unseen by anyone before: and this was one of them. Upon His Word, a great shoal of fish was brought in, so much so that their nets were breaking. And what’s more, all the fish filled two boats, and they began to sink. Just as the new wine of the Gospel would make old wine skins explode, and therefore need new containers, the tried and true boats were not sufficient to handle the fruits of the Gospel: a new boat would be needed, which is the Church, the ark of salvation. And so it was in witnessing all this, that Peter was astonished, and he was moved to fall down at the knees of Jesus and say, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Yet what, we must ask, is the reason that Peter says he is sinful? Where specifically was his sin? Was it distrusting Jesus? But Peter did trust Jesus. Was it being still a prisoner of self-centeredness? Maybe, but it was not a serious case of self-centeredness. And, realistically speaking, would the self-recognition of this drive Peter to say “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord?” It would drive us more plausibly to say, “Lord, forgive me.” “Lord, I am sorry.” Or something more to scale. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” is way out of scale, given the faith and obedience demonstrated by Peter. What is really going on in Peter and his reaction?The answer is that, as what happened to Saint Paul at his conversion, Peter is starting to perceive the Divine Majesty of Jesus Christ. This upends Peter’s life and mindset. This is the same realization that Saint Paul had at his conversion. Or Isaiah when he saw the seraphim singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” When Jesus confronts us with Himself, the Truth frees us, but in freeing us, it also disorients they way we live and the way we think. Paul was so disoriented that he was blind until his baptism, and then spent three years in the Arabian desert lands to find a new orientation entirely in Christ. Peter is experiencing the same thing; whereas Paul went blind and numb, Peter with a different personality than Paul, was repentant in its primary sense: experiencing awe before the King of Creation and His miracles. The miracles of Christ are signs of divine power, and they are to teach, not merely astound. The nets were full of fish because creation is a continuous process of love, not a system of infallible laws, and the Creator incarnate in Christ has the right to change the process as the artist, and only the artist, has the right to alter his own picture: prayer controls matter. It has been revealed that Christ transfigures reality, and because of that, Christ makes all of creation sacramental. Christ redeems creation, and we know that because Christ offers to God material objects … that they may become part of Christ’s sacrifice, that, being offered to God, they may be transformed by the divine acceptance. Here Christ offers fish and nets and boats, so that for us to see our Master at work, we may be drawn into awe at Christ’s Divine Majesty, and drawn into new life and new mindset of thanksgiving: the life and mindset which is eucharistic, because “eucharist” means thanksgiving.The eyes of the heart of Peter, like the eyes of the heart of Paul, were being enlightened by Jesus. The Light of Christ was blinding them both, overwhelming them both, and throwing them both into awe and wonder. And so it was for this reason that Peter said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Peter was overwhelmed, he needed to be alone; he was truly starting to understand what his brother Andrew had first told me: “We have found the Messiah (which means Christ).” Peter had heard this, but was now inwardly digesting that Jesus is the Savior. As we receive the Eucharist this morning, let us do so knowing that what we inwardly digest is Jesus Christ, through Whom all of creation is made and recreated. We offered bread and wine to God so that He would transform them: God takes the bread and wine, and He recreates, redeems, and restores the bread and wine, and returns them to us as Jesus Christ, the King of Creation, the Eternal Word, the only-begotten Son of God: 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee, without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us Thy mercy; that, Thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.In my sermon today during our midweek liturgy, I preached on this pericope from St Matthew 17:11-18:And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elijah truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elijah is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.And during my preaching, I referenced this teaching from the 12th century Church Father, S. Hugh of St Victor, who is pictured below: “The good Word and wise Life that made the world is perceived when the world is contemplated. The Word itself cannot be seen, but the Word both made what can be seen and is seen through what He made.” (On the Three Days, 1.1) Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

“Judge not, and you will not be judged.” Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teaches this to us. In teaching this, Christ gives us a commandment about life in eucharistic community—how to live in community—a community the nature of which is people in prayer and celebrating the Eucharist: that we are not to judge. While it may not seem the case, in fact this is a teaching shrouded in the mystery of God: for this teaching seems contrary to the actions of Him Who, for example, drove the money changers out of the Temple for their inappropriate behavior, having, it seems, judged them to be unfit for worship in the community. And so, because of this seeming contradiction, continuing our reflections in Trinitytide on the “eucharistic life,” we look at the mystery of life in eucharistic community.“Judge not, and you will not be judged.” It is short; it has a ring to it. Yet, despite its brevity, is its meaning straightforward? Are we to turn a blind eye to sin committed by others? Such as in our parish family, are we to pretend someone sinning is not in fact sinning? Or that, despite the fact that certain persons in a community are sowing dissension and discord in the congregation, it is all good? Or that what such a person is doing is their business, and not for us to take mind about? It seems like it could be about that, does it not? Judge not this person’s sinful behavior, and you will not be judged, seems like what Jesus is teaching. Judge not and you will not be judged sounds like accept and tolerate and look the other way.Yet we see in the teaching of Saint Paul, who because of the gifts given to him by God has always been recognized by the Church as proclaiming the Gospel and sharing true teachings not of himself but of Christ, that Paul had no patience for people sinning within the parish community. We need look no further than Paul’s first epistle to the church in Corinth. In it he clearly called to task all sorts of misbehavior: anyone sowing divisions within the parish; persons engaging in sexual immortality; appealing to a secular court instead of settling disputes within the parish community; disunity at the celebration of the Eucharist; speaking in tongues, and more. Paul is calling out sinful behavior, and he is calling out unacceptable behavior, of this there can be no question. Furthermore, respecting sexual immortality, Paul writes in 1 Cor 5:4-5, “In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, along with my spirit, within the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”Does Paul teach us to accept, tolerate, and look the other way? Clearly Paul is not. Does this conflict with Jesus’s commandment, to judge not? It seems to, but in fact, there is no conflict. What Paul teaches is to discern sinful behavior. To see it for what it is. Discern sinful behavior: meaning to perceive, to recognize, to distinguish and discriminate between sinful behavior and godly behavior. The Devil wants us to accept, tolerate, and look the other way. To discern sinful behavior is not to judge, but rather to see clearly, by the light of Christ and His virtuous life which we are to imitate. Without the light of Christ, we cannot distinguish right from wrong, instead relying on whether something is legal or illegal according to civil law, or simply our personal opinion and personal morality. We are to look to Christ, for He reveals the life of virtue, the life of godly behavior. And when a person not only falls short of that, but chooses to fall short, choosing to sin–knowing what the life of Christ is and choosing to live contrary to His life—we are to recognize this, and we are not to ignore it. We are to not pretend it is not happening, but make it known in the community in appropriate ways.Judging a person is something different than all this. We are not to judge. Judging people is not Christian, according to our Master Jesus Christ. The act of judging happens when, after having discerned a person’s behavior is unholy, we then pile on with pronouncements and condemnations, whether out loud or silently in our heart. We see such a person as inferior to us, that is, we imitate the Pharisee instead of the tax collector. We put ourselves in the place of God. As Saint James writes in his epistle: “There is one lawgiver and judge, He who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor?” It is very often the case that when we judge another person, we have projected our own sins and inadequacies onto the other person, and in judging that person, we therefore judge ourselves. We have not taken the log out of our own eye; we have not confessed our sins to God and received sacramental absolution.It takes restraint and it takes faith to live in Christian community with our eyes open. Ultimately we are commanded by Christ to trust God entirely despite witnessing sinful behavior in the community. And this is a mystery, the mystery of life in community. We are to suffer, in community, knowing that we are sinners and every person in the parish is a sinner; suffering that we sometimes sin, and they sometimes sin; we are to endure the faults and sins of others. The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a club for the spiritual elite.Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Because of His voluntary sacrifice of Himself on the Cross, which is love in perfect expression, ultimate expression, we have the Eucharist to feed us, to love us, and to give life to our community. All of the baptized are fed and loved by Christ in the Eucharist, so that being in communion with the baptized through Holy Communion, His relationship with us is profound and intimate. Because of the Eucharist, God can become our life, and all of our life can become His life lived through us and through our body. In community, we must ever remember that God already knows everyone’s sins, that God already knows everyone’s heart. In community we must ever remember that God is at work in the heart and mind of every person to bring them to repentance, to confession, to humility and honesty before Him. Within the mystery of God is the mystery of trusting Him that He is in control, that unto Him all hearts are open, all desires known, and from Him no secrets are hid. An open secret in parish life is that there are never easy answers to people who habitually act poorly in a parish community. While we are to discern what this behavior is, and never approve of it or condone it, we are not to do God’s work of judgment, but instead abide in the mysterious work of God, which happens in community through the community’s life of prayer and thanksgiving to God: that is, through its eucharistic life. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Because Christ’s mercies upon sinners never cease, nor should ours. “I came that they may have life,” Jesus said, “and have it abundantly”—through the same 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

I am pleased to report that the 2026 Breck Conference on Martin Thornton was a great success! Attendance was high—the most attendees of any Breck Conference to date. The pre-conference, which I co-led, delved deeply into aspects of Martin Thornton’s life and pastoral and ascetical writing. The conference had superb presentations by the speakers, focusing on matters pertaining to four Thornton texts: English Spirituality, The Purple Headed Mountain, Pastoral Theology, and Christian Proficiency. The conference concluded with a robust panel discussion between the speakers and the attendees. All the while the gathering worshiped according to the Prayer Book pattern: daily Matins, Mass, and Evensong, with fellowship at meals and elsewhere. My own talk looks at the text English Spirituality, but that is preceded by a long look at Martin’s biography, which is about 2/3rds of the talk. Besides covering the major touch-points of his life, I also looks at his "Beech Tree Experience” of God in his late 20s, and takes a deep dive into its significance for his Christian identity, his priesthood, and his writing. The rest is given to the theological context of English Spirituality and aspects of the book itself: how to understand the book in terms of purpose and genre, how to use the English school of spirituality, the significance of Margery Kempe to this school, and Thornton’s proposal for devout experiment to synthesize the ascetical teachings of Margery Kempe, Jeremy Taylor, and Hugh of St Victor.I am grateful to Father Greg Peters, the Breck Conference Chair, for his leadership and for co-leading the pre-conference with me. Likewise I am grateful to Bishop Stephen Scarlett, Father Cole Hartin, and Father Thomas Buchan for their talks. The conference papers will be published in a book that is aimed to be released by the end of 2026. There you will be able to find and read the final text of my talk and those of the other speakers. Meanwhile, let us continue to learn from Martin Thornton, the great Anglican theologian—Let us pray that, if it be God’s will, the fama sanctatis (reputation for holiness) of Martin Thornton grow by His grace, that the Church may one day more fully recognize what the faithful already sense in their hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

On these Sundays after Trinity, I will be reflecting on the Eucharist. We are eucharistic people, we are part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church because the Eucharist is necessary to our life in Christ; because the Eucharist is never considered optional, but required of all Christians to receive who are able to do so. Over the Sundays after Trinity I will be looking at the Eucharist from different angles, always looking for perspectives on the Eucharist that edify us, that is, build up our house, our heavenly house—for we, as Saint Paul teaches, are living Temples of the Holy Ghost our Comforter.I concluded my preaching last Sunday with these words: The Eucharist must always remind us of Christ’s love; and in receiving the Eucharist, we are fed so as to be able to continue to live in His love made available to us—in our heart and soul—which is fully realized and received when we imitate Christ and love others. The Eucharist is a heavenly banquet. In receiving the Eucharist we are participating in heaven, because we are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, Who has ascended to heaven; Who shares Himself with us from His ascended and heavenly existence. What we are to imitate of Christ is His love, His Divine love. And it is divine love that is shown on the Cross of His Crucifixion. As Saint John writes in our Epistle: “By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Christian life, which is life in liturgical community that worships Christ at its center, which is fed by Him Who is our daily Bread, being rooted in Christ known through the power of the Holy Spirit, is rooted in Christ’s revealing of love through the Cross. This is why Saint Paul teaches that “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” Because the Cross of Christ is love in perfect form, our receiving of the Eucharist truly happens when Christ’s love shows forth from us towards others.Notice the how Saint Paul regards the Eucharist. “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup,” he says, “ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” In speaking about the Lord’s death, Paul is describing the essential and highest truth of Christianity: that the Cross of Christ is glory, is salvific, and transcends the conditions of time and space. And with this transcendent truth, Paul associates the Eucharist. The glory of the Cross is associated with the truth of the Eucharist, the fact of the Eucharist, the meaning of the Eucharist. Certainly the Eucharist is a Sacrament of Christ’s Love, but we can also speak of the Eucharist as the Sacrament of Christ’s Death, which reveals His love. Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say “For as often as you hear a sermon, you do show the Lord’s death.” Some people might think preaching is more important that the Eucharist; Paul would disagree. Nor does Paul say, “For as often as you simply attend Mass, you do show the Lord’s death.” Some people might think the most important thing is simply being present at a church service; Paul would disagree. Nor does Paul say, “Whenever you decide to receive the Eucharist on your own personal schedule, you do show the Lord’s death.” Some might think that receiving the Eucharist is something they do every once in a while, whenever they feel like it, whenever they do not have a better offer; Paul would disagree.And so does Christ. We heard His parable today about the great banquet. We heard the excuses people made in the parable: “I must go out and see my new field”; “I am going to look at my oxen”; “I just got married”–what great reasons, obviously, to not receive the gift of the great banquet that was prepared for them. The clear inference of Christ’s parable is that the heavenly banquet should be the highest priority of the people invited to attend. Should celebrating the perfect expression of love which is the Eucharist ever be less than the highest priority for us? This is why Paul teaches what he does. The Eucharist can become our highest priority when we see it intimately tied into Christ’s sacrificial and voluntary offering of Himself for us our of His love. We show the Lord’s death–which is His perfect love–when receiving the Eucharist through the channel of the Church becomes the source and summit of grace in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

This is unedited audio of my parish’s Saturday morning class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is currently reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. In this episode, we look at chapter 15. I take a close-reading approach to the text, 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. 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Having worshipped through Pentecost, completed on its Octave Day, Trinity Sunday, we have now finished the portion of the liturgical year which celebrates of the events in the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ that make up the greater part of the Creeds: the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed: these the Liturgy has lived into. For what the Liturgy starting in particularly in Advent sets before us in an orderly manner are the highest Mysteries of our Redemption by Christ on earth, till the day He was taken up into Heaven (Christ’s Ascension), with the sending down of the Holy Ghost from the Father, through Christ, at Pentecost. Having reflected and adored the Blessed Trinity, the Liturgy now proceeds through the Sundays after Trinity in a way that seeks to edify us, that is, build our house up—for we, as Saint Paul teaches, are living Temples of the Holy Ghost our Comforter. The liturgy in this season of Trinitytide seeks to provide us, and make known and available to us, Christ’s Gifts and Mercies; that having oil in our lamps, we may be made more ready to meet the Bridegroom at His Final Coming, and be allowed by Him to enter the heavenly banquet. Throughout the Liturgy of Trinitytide (the green season) we are provided echoes and reflections upon the Mystery of Pentecost (the life of the Spirit): because Christian experience is a continual initiation into fact of Pentecost.The Christian life is life in community with Christ present among us as He was in the Upper Room Church of Jerusalem with the 120 apostles after His Ascension. Christ’s Ascension gives us the divine knowledge that Christ is everywhere all the time. He is everywhere, generally, because Christ abides in us, the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us makes the Divine Majesty of Christ known, makes us aware of Christ’s presence and majesty, indeed recognizing Christ means the Holy Spirit has revealed Him to us. This is all very personal; Christ is known through our inner perception by the eyes of the heart, the ears of the heart, the taste of the heart, the touch of the heart, even as fragrance perceived by, one might say, the nose of the heart.Yet we know that Christianity is life in community. Saint John says to us today: “Beloved, love one another.” We cannot love another in isolation; we cannot love the poor man Lazarus from a distance; we cannot love Lazarus (who is always symbolic of people poor in knowledge and love of Christ) if we live in such a way that we separate ourselves from his world. Not only can we not love Lazarus alone, but we cannot learn humility when we are alone and isolated—and humility is the primary Christian virtue: the queen of virtues. It takes participation in a Christian community to learn humility; it takes participation in a Christian community to love Lazarus with the love from God, the love by which we are reborn as children of God. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, so that in dying on the Cross, the true nature of love would be revealed: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The glory of the Cross is that it is an icon of love: love that gives life—as Saint John says, “God sent His Son into the world, that we might live through HIm.” We live in Christ’s love; without it, we are spiritual corpses, without light, without salvation. Without Christ’s love, we are the pitiful Rich Man in a life of torment in Hades.Christian life in community, being rooted in Christ known through the power of the Holy Spirit, is rooted in Christ’s revealing of love through the Cross. This is why Saint Paul teaches that “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” Life in community, fed by Christ our daily Bread through the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread—is life in eucharistic community, for we receive life in Holy Communion. But this life is Christ’s love revealed on the Cross. We show the Lord’s death in and through our love for others. The Eucharist must always remind us of Christ’s love; and in receiving the Eucharist, we are fed so as to be able to continue to live in His love made available to us—in our heart and soul—which is fully realized and received when we imitate Christ and love Lazarus with the love He showed on the Cross: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for—not the world, not “humanity” in the abstract, but Lazarus: the poor man laid at the gate before us covered with sores and desiring to be fed. To ignore him is to ignore Christ; to feed him, and clothe him, and care for him and love him is to love the very 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, Who in a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of Thy Passion: Grant us, we beseech Thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of Thy redemption. Who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever, one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

This is unedited audio of my parish’s Saturday morning class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is currently reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. In this episode, we look at chapters 13-14. I take a close-reading approach to the text, 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. 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

We beseech Thee, O Lord, to grant unto us Thy servants the gift of Thy heavenly grace: that as the Child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin was unto us the beginning of salvation, so the devout observance of her Visitation may avail for the increasing of our peace; through Jesus Christ Thy Son, 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Our Lord Jesus speaks cryptically. And He speaks cryptically to Nicodemus today, saying, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Paul said that the Kingdom of God is within us, so unless someone is born again, one cannot see truly within, it seems. But not having that teaching, Nicodemus is confused by this teaching. I think we would have to admit that all of the disciples, besides I think Blessed Mary, would also be confused. Jesus does clarify His teaching when He adds, “Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” Jesus further adds that being reborn is being born of the Holy Spirit. And so we have from our Lord a teaching about the power of the Holy Spirit and about life in the Holy Spirit. And this accords with ancient doctrine of the Church: that we worship the Father, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit produces the Christian life.The predominant character of the Coming of the Holy Ghost on the Day Pentecost is one of explosive spiritual energy—truly divine power—coming upon the 120 disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem through the unity of their prayer which treasured in the words of Jesus in their hearts as He revealed Himself actually present to them through the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread. This is the birth of the religious life of the Church, celebrated last Sunday and completed today on Trinity Sunday, the Octave Day (that is, eighth day) of Pentecost. The womb of the Upper Room went boom, and the boom of the explosive spiritual energy of the Coming of the Holy Ghost is so strong that nearly two thousand years later in an area of the world over ten thousand miles away from Jerusalem the religious life in our parish is enabled and lit up by the same Upper Room energy of the Holy Ghost.We, as the 120 apostles two thousand years ago, seek a personal relationship with Jesus in our hearts; we seek to follow Him; we seek to serve Him; we seek to be transformed by Him. We, as the Upper Room apostles, are enabled by the Holy Spirit to recognize His presence in Scripture proclaimed; we know Him in Holy Communion and receive Him in Holy Communion; and we, like them, like all Christians, seek to order our lives around the Mystery of Christ—ordering our lives personally and domestically, and also ordering around Him our interpretation of the world, our relations with the world and the people and creatures in it. There is no fundamental difference between what we do in our parish and what the Upper Room church did in Jerusalem. They are our contemporaries in the Christian life, as we all live as one Body in Christ on the Day of the Lord. The Church is really a continuous Pentecost, and the life of a Christian is a continual initiation into the reality of Pentecost which is the Church.The Coming of the Holy Ghost lit a fire in the hearts of men and women, and the fire in their hearts is the fire in our hearts. And this fire is love for God, a burning heat for Jesus Christ. The Coming of the Holy Ghost causes the hearts of people to seek Christ crucified and resurrected, to look for Him, to yearn for Him. And all of this amounts to living life in such a way so as, in the words of Saint Paul the Apostle, to be led by the Spirit of God. In all things, Christians are able to be led by the Spirit of God, because His very nature is to lead into Truth, Who is Christ. Human beings are by our nature drawn toward what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful; and all that is good, all that is true, and all that is beautiful is of God.Where we go wrong, and where humans have always gone wrong, is we often have the habit of defining what constitutes the good, the true, and the beautiful in selfish and self-centered ways. The name for this in the Church is concupiscence, which is the tendency towards appetite for personal, carnal satisfaction. This is what Saint Paul refers to in his epistle to the Romans by the technical and scriptural phrase “living according to the flesh.” To live selfishly, to live self-centeredly, to live as if you are in charge and control of things. To live pridefully is to live according to the flesh. To need to be in control is to live according to the flesh. This way of living leads to spiritual death—and many of us know firsthand what living according to the flesh means, and the dead-ends, depression, and confusion that ensue. It very much feels like slavery, to use Saint Paul’s term: bondage, to our own frailties, our own temptations, our own stupidity.To this comes the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His Gospel is a message of hope; the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a promise of freedom whereby the chains of self-centered concupiscence are unshackled from our heart, and because of being freed from what enslaves us, our hearts learn to beat with the heart of Blessed Mary in His Church. To live with this hope is to constantly be born again, and reborn in the Holy Spirit of God the Father through Jesus Christ, by Whom we reinterpret our lives, reinterpret our priorities, reinterpret the situations in which we make choices–the life produced by the Holy Spirit.As our Lord Jesus Christ ever teaches us, God loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Being led by the Spirit of God is how we come to receive the testimony of Christ, to receive the Gospel—not in superficial ways, but receiving the Gospel that our heart is transformed, illumined, and on fire for Him that the fire that warms us, we can share with others in the world, that they might share in the transforming heat of Jesus Christ, who is the Light of the world, and Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the blessed and most glorious Holy Trinity, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

This is unedited audio of my parish’s Saturday morning class in which we study Scripture with the help of the Church Fathers. This class is currently reading On the Lord’s Prayer by S. Cyprian of Carthage. In this episode, we look at chapters 10-12. I take a close-reading approach to the text, 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. 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Almighty and everliving God, Who through the Book of Common Prayer hath restored the language of the people in the prayers of Thy Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with understanding, that we may worthily magnify Thy holy Name; 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

O God, Who by the learning of blessed Bede, Thy Confessor and Doctor, hast made Thy Church illustrious: mercifully grant unto Thy servants, that we may ever be illuminated by his wisdom and aided by his merits; through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

The actions of the Holy Spirit are always powerful when He is acting. He is always dwelling in the baptized, but His power may or may not be working. But when He manifests His power, things explode: and so the womb of the Upper Room went boom. To those that believe in Christ, to those who abide in Him, to those who keep His commandments, Jesus said “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” The hearts, and mind, of the Upper Room apostles were full of the Holy Spirit, full of Christ, full of the Father. They had all become like Blessed Mary at the Annunciation: full of grace because their souls were overshadowed, their hearts illumined by the Holy Spirit, because in their nine days of religion in the Upper Room with one accord having devoted themselves to prayer, they had conceived the holy Jesus in their hearts, they had bore Christ in their mind. Having been told by Jesus to wait in the Upper Room to receive the Holy Spirit, on Pentecost He came in all power: in staggeringly explosive energy: the womb of the Upper Room had done gone boom.The Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father, and proceeds from the Father: proceeds, that is, from the He Who is the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life at Pentecost comes and gives life to the Church. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no Church, for without Him we walk not in light, but in darkness, confusion, and alienation. As S. Paul says, it all depends on what our mind is set: to set the mind on the flesh is death, Paul says; but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Because with the Holy Spirit, through His life and peace, we can see Christ, see Who He is, see the Father in Him, see His Victory over Satan, proclaim His Holy Name, and be remade inwardly by Him into His image.This is all an incredible marvel, and absolutely astounding. With the Holy Spirit, the life of the Church is revealed publicly. This Church is not some mere social assembly of persons who share common social interests, but rather is the Body of Christ, animated by the Holy Spirit, called to manifest divine love in the world. And this Body it is that Christ ordained to continue what began in Him: He ordained them to continue to do the works that Christ does, His ministry of reconciliation; to continue His ministry of transformation through repentance and illumination; to continue His ministry of drawing all people to Himself. This Body: the 120 apostles of the Upper Room Church, which, through the nine days together in one accord in prayer, were born into the world. And this Body proclaims, as Saint Peter did in his Pentecost preaching, that Jesus Christ the Crucified One is also Jesus Christ the Resurrected One, and that this Jesus is Lord and Christ, the one revealed through the opening of Scripture and the breaking of bread.Pentecost is described in the 110th Psalm: “In the day of Thy power shall Thy people offer themselves willingly with a holy worship: Thy young men come to Thee as dew from the womb of the morning.” That womb of the morning is the Upper Room, endued with the anointing oil of the Holy Spirit, the 120 apostles and then the 3,000 souls baptized that day given the power of the Holy Spirit to offer themselves willingly with a holy worship to Christ. To find Pentecost itself described in the Old Testament itself is a great wonder that unwinds chronological time. Finding Christ in the Old Testament (in Scripture) and finding Him in the Breaking of Bread is what the Church does because Jesus taught His Church this very thing; eating Christ in Word and Sacrament fundamentally defines the Christian Church, and gives the Church its identity.Stating these as necessary fundamentals is no overstatement: it is seen in the New Testament directly from Saint Luke’s hand. That at Pentecost, the life of the Church was revealed, and that life is continuing in what began in the Upper Room: continuing, that is, steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. Christianity is this religion. Christianity is Pentecost, and Jesus Christ, Who in giving His life for us trampled down death by death and upon those in the tomb bestowed life, expects of His Bride to continue in His abundant, pentecostal life through the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.The Church is really a continuous Pentecost, and the life of a Christian is a continual initiation into the reality of Pentecost which is the Church. The Day of Pentecost is the Day in which we live and move and have our being within the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit constitutes the Church as the Body of Christ, and thereby bears witness to and makes known through the opening of Scriptures and breaking of bread Jesus Christ the Crucified and Resurrected One; so that the Father can be revealed through Christ and only through Christ. And so to receive the Holy Spirit is to be continually inspired by His power shown through the Upper Room Saints, to our all our worship as joining into theirs, and through communion with them (by their guidance and example) growing in holy fear which is the beginning of wisdom, embracing the religion revealed on Pentecost as the means by which we yearn for the spiritual milk of the Word – to receive the Holy Spirit happens as we allow our hearts to dwell always in the Upper Room: to receive the Holy Spirit and be filled ever-more by Him; that our sense of Christ’s ascended presence is transparent, unmistakable, and living. And that we not merely say, but truly know, ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God, and hence truly Sons of God, who yearn for the spiritual milk of Christ, that our illumined hearts may truly be on fire; on fire because of Our Lord Christ Jesus dwells in us: 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Father Fraser graced me with the opportunity to preach in this pulpit many times as a seminarian, and I think once or twice as a Deacon before we left for my first parish, downstate in Pekin and Morton. The first homily was for the Baptism of Christ by the hand of S. John the Baptist, aka the Theophany. I believe that morning I said everything that could possibly be said about the momentous event. The homily lasted over 29 minutes, and if you are really lucky this eulogy just might come in just under that.My family and I were parishioners at St Paul’s, Riverside from Nov. 2009 through June 2016. We started just days after my daughter Marla was born. Father Fraser was my mentor from the first time I set foot in St Paul’s through even his final days before he died. He texted me less then four weeks before he died. Pardon me while I say this directly: Father Fraser taught me everything about Christian life: how to be Christian, how to be Catholic and Benedictine, how to be Anglican, and what it means to be an Episcopalian; how to be a laic, a priest, a rector. When I started at St Paul’s, I was in significant ways in the wilderness, and within a short time, I became (in the words of my daughter Marla) a “hard-core Anglican.”Father Fraser mentored me on all channels: directly, through the formation class he taught “Adult Theology Class,” which was for other parishioners weekly over two years (or so he said); for us it was weekly over four years; pastorally, through regular spiritual direction; liturgically, through the very holy manner in which he celebrated the Mass and preached; and less formally in the hundreds of conversations we had, during coffee-hour and, in many cases, over the phone. He taught me what it means to be God-centered in all things. He taught me what devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints means. He taught me what it means to be a Priest, in terms of pastor, liturgist, sacramentalist, and teacher; and he taught me what it means to be a Rector, both administratively and pastorally, as he saw the Anglican Rector as a contemporary adaptation of the Benedictine Abbot.He taught me about the glories of the Anglican tradition and the glories of the Episcopal Church, as well as the current troubles that plague both and make life in the contemporary Episcopal Church as an orthodox-catholic a challenge. He taught me how to see the Anglican tradition as part of the Church: part of, that is, the historic, sacramental, apostolic Church that naturally finds its places alongside the Roman and Orthodox traditions; thus he taught me how to be at peace as an Anglican–how like Elijah to see the wind, the earthquake, the fire outside of the cave, but through it all, how as an Anglican to hear the still small voice of God. He taught me about English change-ringing, because of the set this parish possesses. He taught me about the brilliance of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which all of my children have gone through, and which we have started at my current parish. He understood the parish also from the perspective of organizational dynamics, and shared much wisdom about how to recognize and handle different dynamics common to parish life. He taught me about the central importance of parish culture. He also taught me about the 7 Ecumenical Councils, holy icons, monasticism, and many aspects of spirituality.He welcomed my aspiration to priesthood–when I first told him, only after three months at the parish, he said, “Matthew, do you think that I am surprised?” He encouraged me to start theological study, first at Catholic Theological Union (in Chicago) and then, also, Nashotah House, guiding me successfully through both master’s programs, which I did concurrently. He helped us discern God’s calling to my first cure in Pekin, Illinois, helping us to overcome the unknown and our resistance to leaving Chicago. His words “You never go home” still ring in my soul. He advised me when I was discerning God’s call to my current parish in Florida. He also strongly encouraged my study of Martin Thornton. He called me a “Martin Thornton junkie.” This parish here exemplifiesMartin Thornton’s vision of a godly parish, and Father Fraser encouraged me, as a budding adult catechist, to follow Thornton’s idea of “devout experimentation” in the classes I started very early to teach her. Besides preaching and teaching, he encouraged me to be a lector, altar server, thurifer, member of the altar guild, scheduler for the liturgical ministers, and bell ringer. My seven years here was the closest I got to a curacy, and it was often intense.In short, Jesus Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit operating through the Rector of this holy house, Father Fraser helped me see God’s purpose for my life; he helped to turn my life around, and that of my wife as well, and tilled the soil for my children to grow up as devout Anglican Christians. His spirit is active in my life to this day, and in my family. He was a force of nature.I have been asked many times why I chose the Episcopal Church. And I have said, many times, that I did not choose the Episcopal Church. God drew me to St Paul’s Parish in Riverside, Illinois–only God, and Him alone. I grew up ELCA, and upon heading to college, began a 17-year wilderness period before God led me to St Paul’s. I had never heard of “the Episcopal Church” nor “Anglicanism.” The Holy Spirit led me there through my wife’s inquiry as we walked by it one day in 2009, “Have you ever checked that place out?” I looked at the sign, which read, in large letters, “Saint Paul’s Parish” and in smaller letters “Anglican/Episcopal - Benedictine.” I said, “No, and I don’t know what any of those words mean, either.” It is my absolute, firm conviction that God, by means of the then-anonymous guiding of the Holy Spirit, led us to this very hold and unique Episcopal parish as part of my, and our, vocation.What led us to stay was the sense of holiness that pervaded the liturgy, community, church grounds, and buildings. I was looking for God, and I and my family found Him here, and were here found by Him. To paraphrase Saint Paul in 1 Cor 14, we we began worshipping here, instead of finding a church assembled and speaking in tongues–for we had visited many churches prior to St Paul’s and found nothing but people speaking in tongues (let the reader understand)–instead of that, we found the church, it was assembled and speaking prophetically. Christians in this place spoke freely about how God was present in their lives; people like Helen Jablonski, of blessed memory, and many others. And so coming here, we fell on our face (me literally), and we worshipped God, and we declared, and continue to declare, that God is really here among us.I will say a couple more things. Father Fraser, unsurprising to many, encouraged my family’s devotion to icons, as well as nurtured the interest in Gregorian plainsong that I already had. Yes it was the icons installed in the nave and sanctuary. Perhaps more importantly, it was the parish’s tradition of giving an icon to every household annually on All Saints’ Day that was the seed. Today my family has over 100 icons in our house, and my eldest daughter is studying iconography with the foremost iconographer in the western world, Aidan Hart. Even our two youngest children, Martin and Hildegard, 8 and 3, have a devotion to icons. Martin loves St George, and whenever Hilda sees an icon of the Theotokos, she points and says “Mama.” As far as plainsong, I already had a devotion to plainsong before joining St Paul’s; but the commitment there to plainsong in the liturgy and Father Fraser’s encouragement, greatly increased that. My family has chanted Matins and Evensong daily in the home, and has for nine years. We do so several times a week in services in our current parish. This is owing in large measure to Father Fraser.Finally, while I knew him for only 16 years (one says “only” when one is talking about a man who was rector of a parish for 42 years, and started four months before I was born; something Father Fraser never failed to allow me to forget), I think two factors are central to understanding the trajectory of his life. One is that his father was an Episcopal Bishop, and the other is that during seminary his dogmatic theology professor was Anglican Father John Macquarrie and his ascetical professor was Orthodox Father Alexander Schmemann. The first, his bishop dad, exposed Father Fraser to an awareness of the Church that few have: seeing it from the perspective of a bishop gave him much wisdom and instinctual brilliance, which Father Fraser regularly imparted to me, quite intentionally he said. And, the traumatic childhood he had, which was not his fault, wounded him so deeply that he had a significant, and often hurtful, and occasionally nasty, temper throughout his adult life. This is not my story to tell. But according to what his priest in Raleigh preached at the funeral, Father Fraser was deeply aware and deeply regretful for all the bridges he burned throughout his life. If we know nothing else about his condition at this moment, we can know that all the fear that he lived with his whole life has by Christ been taken away; divine healing for him, and, perhaps divine healing for us. The other factor–the two seminary professors he had at the height of their own theological brilliance–without question enlightened the eyes of his heart, and did so in mystical ways. Both priests, as well as their teaching, imprinted Father Fraser’s sensibility with a profound holiness which was palpable to most everyone that met him, and especially members of this church, and was I think the primary influence the holiness of his liturgical celebration and his commitment to Benedictine spirituality. He was a man brilliant (and a man tortured) and his own devoutly experimental model for the Anglican parish so that survives and thrives in a secular era is prophetic, and as this parish continues to show, is attainable, and let us hope, reproducible in all corners of the Anglican world. Thomas Augustus Fraser the third, today we pray for you. We ask as well that, as you are in the nearer presence of Christ in paradise, that you pray for us. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Our liturgical celebration today is again a “station liturgy”—the station of the Sunday after the Ascension of Jesus, that is, day three of nine that the 120 apostles were in the Upper Room before Pentecost, we are drawn into the Upper Room, as if were are among the 120 apostles worshiping, as Saint Luke says at the end of his Gospel account, “with great joy, continually in the temple praising and blessing God.” It was liturgy, it was fellowship—as it is in every Christian temple ever since, including our Christian temple, under the patronage of S. Paul here. This is how we put ourselves into the Upper Room, by recognizing in a very deep way what we are doing here is what they were doing there; and in fact, continue to do with us: praise and bless God in liturgy and fellowship, participating in the Holy Ghost Who gives life to liturgy and fellowship.We know the Holy Ghost was present, because Jesus said He would be. Jesus said, “When the Helper comes, Whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about me.” The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, and through the Son, and the primary activity of the Holy Ghost is to bear witness to Jesus. To the Church in the Upper Room, to the church in New Smyrna Beach, the Holy Ghost reveals Christ to us. The Holy Ghost makes Christ known. Without the Holy Ghost, we cannot know Christ as anything but a man in history. To know Christ not merely as man but as God, as the Eternal Word of the Father, the only-begotten of the Father, before all ages—to know Jesus as the Christ, as Lord, as the Son of the living God, to have ourselves a living relationship with Christ: all of this requires the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost establishes the Church, because without the Holy Ghost, there is no Christ to be found in the Church, because Christ is only known by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. Where the Holy Ghost is, there is the Church. Where the Holy Ghost is, Christ is known.If Christ is known in a Christian community such as ours, then we speak rightly of Christ being among us. And if He is among us, then we recognize Christ’s existence as a living existence, all through the working of the Holy Ghost. This is why Jesus so often spoke of Himself using the phrase “I am”—I am the vine; I am the good shepherd; I am way, the truth and the life; I am the bread of life, and so on; in Scripture God also is recorded to have spoken this way, such as when Moses learned that God’s name is “I am whom I am.” The gift of eternal life through Christ, the goal of which is to behold God face to face, transfigured along with Him, our own being within Christ’s transfigured Self: the revelation of Christ is a participation in His I Am-ness, a participation that begins really and actually in this life in the Holy Ghost, and happens through the Sacraments liturgically celebrated, and continues into the next, whereby we are invited to continually grow in God’s love and service. Each eucharist we celebrate is like another rung up the ladder to our goal, the divine reality in community with the triune God. Each Eucharist we receive allows us to become what we receive more and more, that we say with Saint Paul, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” “Yet,” he adds, “not I, but Christ liveth in me.”This is the mystery of the Upper Room Church of Jerusalem, that of 120 souls who began to dwell in Christ, and He dwelling in them. How this happened is that they prayed with one accord in the sacred space Jesus appointed them to after His glorious Ascension. We are told that they prayed together with one accord—meaning, firstly, liturgically, and secondly with one heart, with one central purpose: adoration of Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God. We are told that they were full of joy, indeed full of grace. The simplest way to understand ‘one accord’ is to see that the Upper Room Christians had all taken on the heart of the Theotokos: that the beating of her heart became the beating of their one heart.Blessed Mary was with the Church in the Upper Room. And as the 120 began to share together in the joyful recognition that Jesus is their light, Jesus is their salvation, and that the I Am-ness of Jesus is with them in the Upper Room, with them wherever two or three are gathered, with them in their heart whenever they call upon His most holy Name for mercy, with them in Holy Communion, with them through Scripture and the preaching of their brother and sister apostles (preeminently in the preaching of the Twelve)—as they began to share together in the joyful knowledge that Jesus is the Way, is the Truth, is the Life, every word of Mary (the bearer of God, or in Greek: the Theotokos) shined with the glow of her Son Jesus Christ, her Saviour and ours. For who can doubt that in the Upper Room, as all the other apostles looked to her as Mother, that she shared about her Son, especially the profoundly mysterious moments early in the life (the Annunciation, her Visitation with Elizabeth, the Nativity, the Presentation, and the losing and then finding of Jesus in Temple). Who can doubt that her stories had transfiguring power upon them, for the very reason that they had experienced His blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension. The key for them to eternal life is the key for us: having in daily remembrance of the presence of Christ everywhere and ordering our lives—ordering our every day—around Jesus and His most holy Name, for this is how the Church renders unto Jesus most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by Him.This unfathomable recognition, indeed the true Mystery of Christ, is summarized by Saint Peter: for he said, “The end of all things is at hand.” For us, Christ showed Himself holy (which is His end), that we might become holy through Him (that is, that we might attain our end, which is in Him). And the Christian living with her end in Christ, and living with Christ’s end, was Mary. She understood that all of what He revealed to the world during the years of His most holy human life was, and is, for our sakes. All that He reveals is Christ’s gift to us: to serve one another, and that in everything we do, God may be glorified. Christ’s gift is to us, that we might be transformed, our hearts illumined and on fire, with true knowledge of Christ’s presence everywhere and in all places that, as Saint Paul teaches, we may rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us. This is why our Lord ascended: that in seeking Him, we might find Him, and find Him everywhere, that as we behold the face of every human being, we might see a face being made into the image of Christ, into the image 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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that since we do believe Thy only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually dwell, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen. Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe

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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/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 anglicanascetic.akensideinstitute.org/subscribe