Besides Fr Gresham's church in east London, I also attended, for a few years in the 1980's and 1990's, Fr Michael Melrose's church in Victoria Park, Manchester. It was in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. I set out some of his sermons below. Fr Melrose died in 2009.
Below these I have set down a sermon about St Paul's Bow Common by Bishop Richard Chartres who, as Bishop of Stepney, often used to attend Tuesday early morning mass at St Paul's Bow Common, before he became Bishop of London.
FR MICHAEL MELROSE,
RECTOR OF ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM'S CHURCH, MANCHESTER, IN 1980's & 90's.
INTRODUCTION
I often used to 'write up' Fr Melrose's sermons after the service because they impressed me, and I considered them helpful. Going through old notebooks recently I came across these accounts, and so, though they are sometimes sketchy, I thought I would share them online.
I used quotation marks where the words are approximately as delivered by Fr Melrose. Also, a few times I copied text written by Fr Melrose from the weekly service sheet or parish magazine, which I have also set that out below.
When I returned to London to work, it was Fr Melrose who recommended me to try Fr Gresham Kirkby's church of St Paul's, Bow Common. For a few years I worked in both London and Manchester, and so intermittently attended both Fr Gresham's and Fr Melrose's churches.
At one of his final services at St Chysostom's, Fr Melrose told us there is a custom of ringing the church bell, and the number of chimes foretelling the years of the new priest's incumbency. So Fr Melrose decided to ring a good number of times. But, he said, after ten, the bell's momentum caused a few more dongs. So he thought it had accurately predicted his thirteen year stay with us.
Fr Melrose was a kind and humourous person; he was also scholarly. In bible study classes, a Greek New Testament would be open for reference beside him. In one of those discussions I asked him if taking communion did us good. He replied that it did God good. I am still thinking about that one.
He disapproved of the way Mancunians pronounced the church's name with the emphasis on the second syllable - 'sos' - of Chrysostom's, whereas the stress should fall on the first syllable.
Fr Melrose moved on to be the vicar of St Giles, Reading. Whilst in post there he died suddenly of a stroke at the age of 61yr in 2009.
Below are set out some of Fr Melrose's sermons from the early 1990's.
23/06/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
Fr Michael said we are all called to our separate vocations by God, none are better than any other, each differs in the details. "There is laughter in heaven at our curious attempts to follow God's will, and rejoicing when, with God's help, we pass through the eye of the needle to get to heaven." We can do nothing by ourselves, but anything with the help of God, he said. Jesus told the young man, if you want to enter into life obey the commandments.
In the June 1991 St John Chrysostom magazine Fr Melrose wrote:-
"Our daily lives need to be shot through with small occasions of devotion, with a constant reliance upon God's goodness, with a perpetual looking to divine grace for all our needs. God cares about the little things in our lives, just as much as the big ones. Indeed it is waiting upon God's help in small eventualities that trains us to seek His will in important matters. The spiritual pennies take care of the spiritual pounds. "What is least may be very little, but to be faithful in the least thing is something great," says St Augustine, echoing perhaps Our Lord's promise of the Great Reward to those servants who have been faithful in the little things."
30/06/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"We have always got to pray otherwise our faith will surely die. We have to pray communally in church, and by ourselves in private. Prayer is the way we have a relationship with God.
We have to be in contact with someone to have a relationship with them. In just the same way we have to pray to be in contact with God. If you have no contact with someone the relationship dwindles until it is just a happy memory.
We must use our intelligence to think about our relationship with God. And we must use our intelligence to understand and grow in our faith. And if we do not pray our intellectual grasp of our faith grows sere as a fallen leaf in autumn and it crumbles to dust."
14/07/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
Fr Melrose said we should take advantage of the gift of God of a mass for someone. All we have to do is ask. He said we bring to the ordinary Sunday mass many people in our prayers. "This is something we can do for them. To pray for someone is not a little thing, but a great thing. We can pray for someone as a sort of spiritual friendship."
(In the Summer 1991 St John Chrysostom newsletter Fr Melrose wrote,
"In the mass God is marvellously near, for it is the moment of His nearest approach."
and,
"The Mass is the most powerful means which God has given us to render Him honour, to thank him for his blessings, to obtain the favours that we want." )
04/08/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"Other people must see God in our daily actions, or how else are they to see God? And if they don't, it doesn't matter what we say we believe, they will not believe us. We must show God in our ordinary daily actions."
18/08/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"Evil is defeated. It was defeated 2000 years ago when God sent his Son to Earth; Jesus overcame evil. Of course it is still lingering on Earth. But the defeat of evil happened 2000 years ago, and the results of that are only just being felt. God will always defeat evil.
The Holy Spirit shows up the root cause of things. And the root cause of much evil is man's lack of faith in God. That is the root cause of much evil, lack of faith in God."
24/08/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"It is good that we enter the faith as a child. But we shouldn't stay as a child. We should grow up. A sign that we need to develop or expand or move on is boredom. We should get to know Jesus more as our relationship with him changes and grows. Pray more, worship more."
01/09/1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"In the Gospel where Jesus is questioned, "Should we pay taxes?" Jesus carefully answered, "Who's head is on the coin?" Tiberius, Roman emperor. "Then give to Caesar what is due to Caesar, and to God what is due to God."
Just as we pay our taxes not because it is good of us, but because it is our duty, so we must give our due to God. That is our primary duty.
Thomas Moore said he hoped he was the King's good servant in all things, but he hoped he was God's servant first.
It is our first duty to worship, pray, and praise God. Our first duty, before we do anything else, is to God, because our life belongs to God."
06/06/1992 Fr Melrose sermon Pentecost
"The Holy Spirit comes into us to banish our fears. Our fear of ourselves - we know our own faults too well - we tell ourselves that we are not religious people, and we feel unable to answer God's challenge; we want to be safe, we never know where God will lead us.
The Holy Ghost removes this fear. Scripture says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
14/06/1992 Fr Melrose
"We believe in the God who is three in one, Father, Son and Holy Ghost in one person.
God made us out of an extension or surplus of his energy. Everything we are comes from him. We take part in this mystery, we approach this mystery, in the Eucharist.
We should pray and worship and live so as to make perfect his image in us."
21/06/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
Corpus Christi Sunday "Everything is from God, all we see around us. There is one Christ. Christ is in all of us.
Sacrifice - giving all until it is finished.
Our purpose is to be part of Christ's design. We are all used in his purpose.
When we take part in Communion, we enter into the deepest life."
19/07/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
In the Gospel reading Jesus healed the blind man sat by the road.
"He gets up and follows Jesus. He has a name - we are told it. First notice the road, the Way. We can sit at the side of the Way, but this is sitting on the side-lines of life. We sit on the side-lines and wait for something to happen. But this misses the point of life, which is to be lived.
Christian life has a goal. The Way is for progressing along. Jesus, if we turn to him, can heal our blindness and get us up and progressing along the way."
October 1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"After the first few years, when we grow to maturity, the history of our body is one of decline. Our strength and faculties lessen and fail. Personality and intelligence and charm are things of the first few years, and these also get less with age.
Inside, however, we should improve. And what should increase is greater. We should increase in holiness throughout our lives. We should live with God so his light can shine through us in the world."
Dec 1991 Fr Melrose sermon
"God shares not only in our happiness. Human life is necessarily also made up of a certain amount of stress. God shares also in our stress, and in our feelings caused by half-successes, or failures, or the unsatisfactoriness of it all. Take away this message"
My comment:- Why I liked the above sermon is that it is helpful. Fr Melrose is addressing our feelings about life, and telling us God will be with us, even in "the unsatisfactoriness of it all".
Epiphany Sunday 1992 Fr Melrose sermon
"Where is the epiphany star today? (The star that guided the wise men to Jesus.) It can only be ourselves. We must give out light. We must guide people to Christ.
It was foreigners the Lord chose to bear witness to Christ. We must bear witness to Christ, however far the journey is through which we come."
12/01/1992 Fr Melrose sermon (Last day (Sunday) of epiphany)
The Gospel was of John the Baptist baptising Jesus.
"The heart of the old Jewish religion saw that things had come into a bad way. People needed to turn around and make a new start. Jesus came to where the people were. He made something out of what they already had.
One of the difficulties of showing God to people is finding where people are, where or in what they really live. It is difficult to know where people really do live.
Sometimes people will show something real about themselves. It may be very little. It may be so small as to be hardly worth bothering about, you may think. But encourage that with simple conversation.
Sometimes people will show something real about themselves. Don't despise it. It is a start. God grows from very small beginnings.
Where there is some reality, there is where God starts. Start with what is shown."
My comment: In the above sermon Fr Melrose again tackles real life, giving guidance about how we are to interact with others; that we should value what is real in them.
St John Chrysostom's study group held by Fr Melrose. 15/01/1992
"When Jesus came to earth, eternity entered into time. This event can only be described in the language of the New Testament, and in no other way.
Eternity entered into time so that time could enter into eternity when Christ came again. The '2nd Coming' is now regarded as a process; part accomplished, part in the future." (This teaching corresponds with that of Fr Gresham Kirkby, who said the 'Second Coming' began at the resurrection and ascension of Our Lord, and continues as a process, completed at the end of time.)
Fr Melrose stressed how Elijah, Moses and Jesus had to suffer in this life. He said what is good enough for Our Lord is good enough for me. "So if God wants us to suffer, it is important to bear our suffering."
1992 January Fr Melrose wrote in the Parish Magazine:-
"The Mass is a remembrance of the passion of Christ, a solemn adoration of the Divine Majesty, a most acceptable thanksgiving to God, a powerful means of obtaining forgiveness of our sins."
19/01/1992 Fr Melrose Sunday sermon
"God gives you sometimes a person you can immediately get on with.
Philip of Sicily had a gift of knowing someone's character immediately. He could therefore speak to them on their level.
We learn about someone from the way they observe someone else, the way they listen, the way they ask questions, and other characteristics."
26/01/1992, Sunday, St John Chrysostom's Patronal Festival sermon. Fr Melrose
"St John Chrysostom lived and worked in Constantinople when it was the world capital city. He was violent in the expression of his faith, and in action and word on its behalf.
A city on a hill, surrounded by city walls, can be seen from far off. We return to its safety.
We must find safety in God, and be at home there. We must dwell in God, and rely only on him.
We must be a walled city showing itself on a hill. Others must be able to find safety in us.
It is our life's work to learn and do and fulfil God's will for us."
After the service there were refreshments for the Patronal festival. I talked with Miss Leech, a long-time parishioner. She was christened at St John Chrysostom's church, Victoria Park, Manchester (Fr Melrose's church) 70 years ago. She said her father was interested in the question of churches named for St John Chrysostom. There were not many of them. He found there only six such churches in England: one was in Birkenhead, and another was in Birmingham.
09/02/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
"The wisdom of the ancients is essential and important. But more essential and important is the foolishness of God.
Jonah was a fool, he was a comic character, he was a failed back-street prophet. But still God used him. Despite himself, God made him go to Nineveh. He would rather have done anything than go into the city and make a fool of himself.
In order to reveal his true nature God died on the Cross. A paradox. God cannot die. God, who has no beginning and no end. God, who cannot suffer change. God died as a criminal, as a (?)failure. God made a fool of himself on the Cross in order to reveal his true nature."
16/02/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
(The Gospel reading was of the man who sowed on stony ground, and good ground etc.)
"We put effort into various things. For instance reading about something we are interested in. Or a friendship. Or a new project. Sometimes we get little return. Sometimes we get very little return. Sometimes we get a great return. It is hard to imagine a hundred-fold return.
Our first vocation is to let Christ be formed in us. That is our agenda. Before any vocation of work, or anything else in our lives, our first duty, our first vocation, is to let Christ be formed in us.
Inside ourselves we may have stony ground. We may have shadow areas; perhaps areas we may prefer to keep like that. But we must keep nothing back. We must offer everything up to God in prayer and in the Eucharist. Then he will do the rest. He will make us grow like a tree.
We, us here, must be his saints. This we must do inside ourselves; before the upkeep of the church fabric, before the decade of evangelism. Before all else, we must let Christ be formed in us. That is the first thing on our agenda."
23/02/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
(The two readings of the mass were the Old Testament reading of the man asked to bathe 7 times in the river Jordan to cure him. In this old testament reading the man demurred at first at immersing himself in the Jordan. In the New Testament reading Jesus healed a man by putting his fingers in the man's ear and by using his saliva.)
"This was the ceremony, the drama of healing. Physical actions and the senses were involved.
We have to be involved in the drama of our own redemption by and through Christ. There are two characters involved, ourselves and God.
We have to go through the drama of our own redemption in all the little actions of our lives. All of our lives, all aspects of it, all the trivial details, have to be offered up in this drama. We must be involved physically and in every way."
A prayer of St John Chrysostom's in the Prayer Book, p79
"Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise, that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests; fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen."
01/03/1992 Fr Melrose sermon
(Gospel reading:- the woman caught in adultery.)
" "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." They all depart. Jesus says to the woman, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more."
Jesus wants us not to dwell on the past, but to go forward in life. Jesus was the only man where God's judgement and his mercy met. Let us focus on the point where mercy and truth meet. Do not dwell on the past. Go forward, focussing on Jesus."
March 1992 Wednesday bible study
Fr Melrose quoted Rabbi Hillel (?) from the first century , who said, regarding loving your neighbour, "Never do anything to anyone you would hate to have done to yourself."
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The Bishop of London's Sermon (Bishop Richard Chartres) at St Paul's Bow Common 50th anniversary, 29/04/2010
"I am the ghost of Christmas past. Tomorrow Duncan (Fr Duncan Ross, parish priest of St Paul's, Bow Common, in 2010) is the ghost of Christmas present but you are the spirits of the Christmases to come.
St Paul's was dedicated in 1960. There were stirring events internationally. Harold Macmillan made his Winds of Change speech in Africa. It was also the year of the Sharpville massacre in South Africa. Then the population of Africa as a whole was a mere half of the population of Europe. The situation today is that there are about a billion Africans and 738 million Europeans.
In the UK with the assistance of the Bishop John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, Lady Chatterley's Lover was rehabilitated and sold 200.000 copies on day 1 of publication.
The first three women priests were ordained in the Church of Sweden. Archbishop Fisher visited the Pope, the first such contact for 500 years.
Gresham Kirkby was a part of this ferment. He researched the emerging expressions of the liturgical movement in Europe and came back unimpressed. Then in partnership with some gifted artists and architects {and how good it is to have the message from Bob Maguire and the presence of Charles Lutyens} he created this church to serve the needs of this parish but also to be a sign of a greater transformation than that wrought by post war redevelopment; the breaking in of the Kingdom of God. "This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven." (These words are inscribed around the entrance door of St Paul's.)
St Paul's opened its doors however at the beginning of a forty year period of institutional introversion when with some honourable exceptions the Church lost its nerve; was fidgeting with its structures and internal business and was getting used to operating at the margins of the public square exclusively for those who had religious tastes and needs.
Drawing on a well of corybantic Cornish defiance {was he really the last survivor of the Helston Floral Dance of 1924}, prayer, discipline, music and a positively Tolkeinesque and deeply unfashionable use of pipe tobacco, Gresham laboured with great integrity to do justice to the sense that the Kingdom has already broken through in the work and teaching of Jesus Christ; that Jesus calls us to a transformation of the world and not merely a spiritualised description of it or an elaborate mythology; that the Lord's prayer is intended to pray down the Kingdom into the present; that we are in a zone of struggle and sacrifice with the principalities and powers still in possession of the surfaces and spaces of our world; that there will be a profound transformation which will be consummated in a renewal of creation. "To me", (Fr Gresham) said, "the Kingdom of Heaven is the great existing reality which is to renew the earth."
The Bishop of London, Montgomery Campbell didn't like it and when he came here fifty years ago he said, "We come here not to criticise but to perform a duty".
I come in humility and gratitude to recognise and celebrate an authentic vision. Much that was created and expressed in the 1960's has not stood the test of time. Love divorced from sacrifice has been unmasked as mere sentiment. Many of the buildings of the decade are already being torn down to all but universal rejoicing.
St Paul's and the life it has incubated is an exception. It was a genuinely radical vision which went beyond fashion.
Famously the design for this church sprang from the question, "What will Christian worship be like in the year 2000?"
Keith Murray and Robert Maguire used industrial materials. There is the concrete and copper font. St Paul's speaks of the everyday. It speaks of the provisional. This is a tent for a pilgrim people who have no abiding city here. But at the very heart there is the seed of new social/spiritual order. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ brings us into a new relationship with God and with one another. The blood of Jesus Christ enables us to live like family although we are not blood relations.
The sacrifice takes us to the heart of the spiritual life. By going beyond ourselves in Christ we become more truly ourselves. By losing ourselves with him we find ourselves. The City of God has its foundations in the blood given, the blood of Jesus Christ and those who participate in his sacrifice. All are equal and participate of their own freewill which is why there is no squire's pew here and no heirarchical arrangement of the furniture.
Well, the year 2000 has arrived and it cannot be said that we have realised the vision but St Paul's not only survives but continues to disturb and inspire. Under Duncan Ross and the community that worships here now the gate of heaven has been thrown open in ways that would have been hard to predict in 1960. I remember vividly Sharmiana (an exhibition of Asian tapestries in St Paul's) and studying the preparations for the new Mission Action Plan. I see from your proper spiritual ambition that you are worthy inheritors of the vision.
In much of what has been written about the past the accent has been on the horizontal relationships which the church and its liturgy have revealed. Now at the end of the first decade of the 21st century it is time to recognise the way in which St Paul's does justice to the vertical; to the ascent to God which draws the fragments and atoms of this earth and its people together.
Recently, Lord May, a former President of the Royal Society and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, a self-proclaimed atheist who says that he experienced an "inverse epiphany" at the age of 11, suggested that "God" might be needed to evoke an appropriate response to the various challenges currently facing humanity.
If the reference to God is edited out of our perspective then the world simply becomes a theatre of human willing. We come regard ourselves as gods and our wills as sovereign. We no longer experience ourselves as participants in an animated universe but as detached exploiters of mere matter. Dominance is substituted for connectedness in our relations with the world around us. Choice becomes the highest good and not what we choose.
Jesus Christ "the icon of God"; and the corner stone upon which the spiritual temple is built, came in the form of a servant to convey the truth that the first step in becoming a human being is to refuse to be a little god - the theme of that marvellous chant from the letter of St Paul to the Philippians.
St Paul invites us to a great humility which must embrace a care for the frail and the poor of the earth and a detestation of every form of slavery and oppression. Genuine conversion to the way of Jesus Christ consists in turning away from the deifying of our own will; turning away from life as a consumer of the world and turning towards being a communicant; a citizen and a contemplative.
Will the Church in these new circumstances be enabled to become what it was intended to be - a school of relating in which God meets us and draws us into a communion with him and with one another and revises our understanding of what is valuable in life through his human expression Jesus Christ? Will the Church become a foretaste of a new way of being in the world in which we become increasingly aware that loving our neighbour today involves a care for the Creation and a care for vulnerable communities of those least able to adapt to the economic and environmental changes that are occurring?
It is undeniable there has been a certain loss of nerve in the Church, even an excessive desire to entertain rather than insist on a radically different way of life. But this church is one of the places where we can with seriousness explore the consequences of the great crisis of the 21st century: an interlocking crisis in which denying God; despoiling the earth and diminishing humanity are an anti-trinity which we are called upon to unmask and against which we are called together to struggle, as members of the body of Christ. The dance goes on. The vision is renewed and we can see in a new way "how awesome is this place; this is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven."
The Rt. Revd.& Rt. Hon. Dr. Richard Chartres KCVO
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From the Bishop of London's, Bishop Richard Chartres', article on the back page of Link magazine, Easter 2003
".....The impact on the planet, our common home, of the project of growth without limit with no end in view beyond the process itself cannot be ignored any longer.
...the Christian faith promises new life to those who open themselves up to God, who pass through the way of the Cross, emptying themselves, so that they can be filled with life that flows from the Godhead.
....Lent is a time for opening ourselves up to God by reducing the over-stimulation and the daily bombardment of images from which so many of us suffer.
We reduce the stimuli by not reading so much, watching so much or consuming so much in order to attain a transparency through which God's light can shine.
We reduce our intake and throw some ballast over the side so that we can climb more easily into the atmosphere of God.
We live more frugally and simply in order to tighten the drum-skin so that God's beat can be heard more clearly in our lives.
We cultivate emptiness so that we can be filled. We come to God especially in the second half of life by subtraction rather than addition.
...Fasting with prayer is the fresh and ancient discipline of the Church, which is being rediscovered in our own day. Fasting with prayer can make us more profoundly aware of food as a gift from divine love rather than fuel for insatiable craving. Joy and a greater sense of freedom should be among the fruits that follow.
......Lent is the time for fasting and prayer especially on Wednesdays and Fridays, in solidarity with the whole Christian community, living and departed. This communal effort saves us from thinking of our own ascetic heroism.
We also fast not only for ourselves but so that the love and light of God can more profoundly penetrate the world of which we are an infinitesimally yet infinitely precious part."
(ends)
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From an undated notes of a homily by Bishop Richard Chartres, so my recollection of his words:-
"If we just remain amongst ourselves, a spiritual in-crowd, we shall shrink. We must build bridges outwards to others.
It is no good running around ever more frenetically, like bluebottles in a jar. We must pray. Everything that lasts comes out of prayer.
Prayer is the enemy of the illusion that we can change the world without changing ourselves. We can't.
God is not a construct we can hold in our intelligence. Prayer is attention to God. If we want to serve at a deep level we must let our service come out of prayer. In prayer we open ourselves to God, and the prayer is ever more simple and ever costlier.
Our opportunities to serve one another are immense. Our opportunities to pray for one another are immense.
We must find some way to show the love of God that we receive in prayer out to the world. We must also serve people with deeds."
(ends)
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The Bishop of Stepney's address (Bishop Richard Chartres) May 1992
At the first service of the new bishop of Stepney, Richard Chartres, his address included the exhortation, that if you had wounds, if someone had hurt you, then rejoice. He said this boldly. He explained that it is through your wounds that the Holy Spirit can enter into your life to change and heal you.
And in another sermon (?date) Bishop Richard Chartres said the following:-
"Today, in the world, process is masquerading as an end, progress is masquerading as an end.
...the Church is concerned with depths, not with surfaces. It is concerned with the formation of Christ in us, so that Christ's plan for the world will be brought into being. This is the end we work for.
..We must, by prayer, worship and the Eucharist, and by study of Scriptures and following Christ's teaching, bring about the formation of Christ within us. This has to be a slow and gradual process. By forming Christ within us, we bring into being the future around us.
All the peoples throughout the globe grow in brotherhood and concord as each forms Christ within them.
Christ told us, "I am with you always, even to the end of time." "
************************* (end of Bishop Richard's sermon) ***********************
Some time after this I happened to read the novel, "What's Bred in the Bone" by Robertson Davies. On page 12 the following passage, which echoes the highlighted words in Bishop Chartres' sermon.
"....What we call luck is the inner man externalised. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can't be the whole explanation. But it's a considerable part of it."
And the author Ben Okri, in his novel "Songs of Enchantment", is writing out similar ideas in this passage on page 290 (ppb version):-
"...He saw the hidden realities of our thoughts and actions, and their immediate consequences which lurked besides us, waiting for the confluences of time when they would become real and irrevocable. He saw how we created our lives with our thoughts, how our thoughts created our realities, and how we carry around with us the great invisible weight of all our thoughts and actions and secrets. He saw a world co-existent with ours where all our secret selves were real and visible."
In a 1992 radio interview an octogenarian female traveller (didn't record her name) said, "You become what you think."
In Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' (15/04/2021) Henri Nouwen's "Thinking doesn't make new living; living makes new thinking", was quoted.
Aristotle wrote that the way to make a 'just' man, is to do 'just' acts; and likewise, a 'temperate' man, to do 'temperate' acts.
However, William Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican front line chaplain during the First World War, wrote that, "It is what you worship, rather than what you will, that makes you what you are."
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Fr Christopher Colven, St James Spanish Place, London
From Fr Colven's weekly vicar's letter, St James, Spanish Place, London, for 6th Sunday of Easter, 2012.
"......it seems to me the answer is a much more radical one, and lies where it has always been - in the individual quest for holiness of life. ..... Cliche'd 'solutions' are no substitute for the daily struggle for conversion, for living the life of the virtues, for opening ourselves to the action of Grace. ...."
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From Fr Christopher Colven's "The Rector writes ..." column in the weekly newsletter, St James, Spanish Place. Date (?) 21/05/2019
" ..... There can hardly have been a time in the long history of the Church when its priesthood has been so denigrated or questioned. It would be wrong to look outside to try to explain away what has happened. The weakening of the struggle for personal holiness, combined with a diminishment of pastoral zeal, can be seen as an attempt to identify with the realities of a secular society, but allowing the world to write the Church's agenda is to play a risky game, and as Benedict XVI has recently reminded us, it comes at a high price.
........ I remember a conversation with Cardinal Hulme in which he said that the older he got the more conscious he became of the many individuals he had failed. I can identify with his sentiments. .......... the vocation to priestly ministry is a tremendous gift and privilege - something which although received in frail, earthen vessels still retains the touch of divine authenticity.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen (Patriarch of Constantinople in the 4th century) offers these thoughts: 'we must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others: we must be instructed to be able to instruct; become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others; be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently. I know whose ministers we are, where we find ourselves and where we strive. I know God's greatness and man's weakness but also his potential .....'
Karl Rahner ..... wrote a reflection, 'The man with the pierced heart', relating the priesthood of Jesus to those whom the Church needs to ordain. 'Tomorrow's priest will be the man with the pierced heart, from which alone he draws strength for his mission. With the pierced heart, pierced through by the godlessness of life, pierced through by the folly of love, pierced through by lack of success, pierced through by experience of his own profound unreliability. I say he is the man with the pierced heart because he is to lead others to the very core of their existence, to their inmost heart,' .......Out of suffering and humiliation come the green shoots of new life. ...."
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The poet William Wordsworth wrote,
"Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more; ..."
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