The Domestic Church

The basic unit of Christian community is a household, in whatever form it may be. We tend to think of being in Christian community as members of a parish church, but the domestic church—the church of the home—should be our primary place of prayer. The home as well as the parish should be active agents in the Christian formation of adults and children. We must create a Christian culture in our home; a culture of prayer, and worship, and joy, and true fellowship, and love. Where the Church is lacking, it is usually true that Christian homes are lacking also.

Starting where we are usually means starting from scratch. We want our homes to be places of Christian practice, but it can be difficult to know how to begin. Here are some ideas:

(1) Pray together. It sounds easy, but it is often the most difficult thing to begin. Start simple. Say a quick blessing before meals. Pray with each other before bed, or before or after dinner. Say the Lord’s Prayer, and some other prayers as convenient. Look in the Book of Common Prayer on page 136 for some short orders of prayer for individuals and families. If you’d like a longer form of prayer that includes readings from scripture, turn to the Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, which is found in the prayer book in both Rites One and Two. Many people pray these offices daily, and they have been the life blood of holy men and women since the time of the earliest Christians.

(2) Study Holy Scripture together. Ask your priest how to use the Daily Office Lectionary if you’d like selections for each day, or simply bring home your Sunday bulletin and study the lessons appointed for the week. When you get into the habit of praying together, you can begin to include readings for each day.

(3) Set up a household Altar. Make a place in your home that is set up specifically for prayer. Having a prayerful focus helps keep families praying together. The household Altar doesn’t need to be complicated, either. You could use a small table against the wall and add a holy image, like an Icon of Our Lord or the Blessed Virgin, or a crucifix. Make sure your household Altar has a prayer book (or several), a bible, and perhaps some candles to be lit during the daily prayers. Some household Altars have a small font for holy water and a censer to burn incense. If you don’t have much space, you only need a corner or even a shelf. (Mine is in a room that doubles as a guest bedroom as well as an office!)

(4) Have your home blessed by a priest. Most parish priests (me included) would be delighted to bless your home. You don’t need to make it a large production, either. Traditionally, homes are blessed annually at Epiphany each January, but any time of the year is appropriate.

(5) Observe the Feasts and Fasts of the Church year. On Holy Days, have special prayers at your household Altar and celebrate with a special dessert or a fun activity. Deepen your household devotion with special prayers and observances in each season of the Church year, like the Advent Wreath. Make the life of your family reflect the rhythm of the church year.

(6) Observe Name Days and baptismal anniversaries. Since my patron is Saint Timothy, commemorated on January 26th, I always make sure to celebrate the day in some way. I was baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter, and give thanks each year on Easter Eve with special prayers. Some churches give the family a baptismal candle when a child is baptized. Burn it on the household Altar on special days to remember the gift of our baptism.

The domestic church is at the heart of being formed as a Christian. We can never expect our children to continue in the faith unless we make our faith a real, daily commitment and practice it together as part of our regular round of activities. More than that, the domestic church begins to infuse all the other household activities with the joy and peace of prayerfulness, transforming our families and our lives into the true light of Christ.

God Spake These Words

On the Fourth and Fifth Sundays in Lent, we at St. Paul's will be reciting the Decalogue as part of the opening devotions of our worship. The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, are the historic presentation of the ethical Law of God given to Moses on Mount Sinai. As Christians, they show us the righteousness of Christ: when we say that Jesus Christ was perfect God and perfect man, we are saying that he perfectly obeyed His Father's law. He never put any god above God His Father. He never made anything an idol or took God's name in vain. He kept the sabbath day holy (despite arguments to the contrary from the religious elite of his day). He honored his mother and father, and so on. In this way, the Decalogue shows us what Jesus was like; it shows us his perfection both as God and human being.

The Decalogue also shows us our need for Christ. When we recite these commandments, we are confronted by the reality of our sin and our inability to keep the Law. The Decalogue shows us who we are apart from the saving love of Christ, and our deep and tremendous need of Christ's offering of Himself to fulfill the Law, allowing us to be the redeemed people of God.

Jesus' life, death, and resurrection demonstrate the love of God for we who continually miss the mark. The Decalogue reminds us, as we need constantly to be reminded, that Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us as the perfecter and redeemer for we who are imperfect and in such need of His redemption.


Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee!

Absalom Jones

Episcopal Life Online has a good article on the relationshiop between Absalom Jones, the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church, and Benjamin Wynkoop, the man who legally owned him for thirty-eight years of his life. You can read it here.

Thoughts on worship.

As I have been preparing to instruct those who assist in worship this coming Saturday morning, a thought has occurred to me: what I consider to be fairly simple instructions (not much different from the way we already do it), would be considered far too fussy by many. In many places, we in the contemporary church have confused authenticity with sloppiness.

The problem goes far beyond the out-moded "High Church/Low Church" identifications, or even the "traditional/contemporary" divide. As a graduate of VTS, I have seen both low church and contemporary worship executed with dignity, simplicity, and reverence. It might not be my cup of tea, but I can respect it. What sets me on edge is worship that fails to communicate beauty and reverence as an offering to God and a reflection (albeit imperfect) of God's love for us.

St. Jean Vainney said, "If we truly knew what happens in the Eucharist, we would die--not of fear, but of love." The Eucharist is God's offering of Himself for us and within us; a gift we receive each time we approach the Altar. God's gift in Jesus Christ merits our very best, our praise, joy, adoration, reverence, love: our all.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: O come, let us adore Him!

Washing Off the Ashes

Fr. Chris wrote an interesting post on the issue of washing off the ashes after Ash Wednesday. I happened to preach on exactly the same thing at our Ash Wednesday Masses at St. Paul's. Here are some excerpts from my homily:


Ash Wednesday is uncomfortable for some people. I suspect it has a lot to do with today’s Gospel and it’s warning, “Beware of practicing your piety before others,” and the fact that we are then sent out with the visible sign of the cross on our foreheads. One church I know goes so far as to have moist towelettes available at the door!

But Ash Wednesday is uncomfortable for other reasons, too. My first few years as an Episcopalian I cringed each time the priest marked my forehead with ashes and told me to “Remember that you are dust, and to dust shall you return.”

But as my life changed, I heard Ash Wednesday differently. When I began to deal with the death of loved ones, this reminder of mortality changed for me. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust shall you return.” It became a sort of comfort to remember that I was—am—dust, to be reminded that it is the way of all flesh to return to the earth, and finally, to our Creator.

Lent, and especially Ash Wednesday, keeps us honest. We can’t hide from the fact that we are mortal, formed of the earth, and that we will return to the dust. We can’t hide from the fact that Scripture warns us against being pious for the sake of being seen, and at the same time expects us to practice our faith and to not be ashamed of it. The Christian faith is full of tension. Our Lord said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” but he also said, “He who does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Ash Wednesday brings the tension of the Christian faith to the forefront of our minds. The three Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving force us to ponder these things. What are our obligations as Christians, and as a Christian community? What do we need to take on and what do we need to let go? How do we live the life of faith? These are the questions Lent brings, questions steeped in tension and complexity, and we need to take them seriously.

The Good News for us is that even though Lent brings tensions and questions about how we are called to live out our faith, it also brings us the promise that through all the spiritual work—and because of that work—we eventually come to resurrection, deep in the heart of God.

The 'Other' Blog

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The Second Day of Lent

Now quit your care and anxious fear and worry;
for schemes are vain and fretting brings no gain.
Lent calls to prayer, to trust and dedication;
God brings new beauty nigh; reply, reply,
Reply with love to love most high!

To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes,
Or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent’s goal;
But to be led to where God’s glory flashes,
His beauty to come near: make clear, make clear,
Make clear where truth and light appear.

- Percy Dearmer

The Carmelite Vocation

Tonight I am sleeping in the guest house of a convent; specifically, a Carmelite monastery for women: Episcopal Carmel of St. Teresa. I have been a friend of the community ever since my friend John (an Oblate) introduced me to it two years ago. I have been a Priest Associate of the community for a little over a year. (An Associate is basically an "Official Friend" of the community and a member of the extended family. Oblates are men and women who live in the world but live the Rule of the community at the same time; in specific paths of daily prayer, study, and support.) Today I was elected to the Board of Directors. That means, basically, that I continue to do what I have been doing: supporting the community in prayer and in tangible ways as I am able. The vocation of a Carmelite nun is to be a hidden, silent missionary praying for the church, and in a sense, being the prayerful heart of the church. It's a wonderful thing to know that I and my parish are prayed for each day at the Carmel. Carmelite nuns are contemplative, enclosed women who strive to be best friends of one another by loving one another as Christ loves us. They're pretty awesome.

This community is the first of its kind outside the Roman Catholic church, which is doubly awesome. We desparately need people whose ministry is to pray for the church. In the Anglican Communion--and specifically in the Episcopal Church--we need it now more than ever.

Of your charity, pray for Sister Teresa Irene, OCD, the foundress of the community; and for women to be drawn into the Carmelite life of prayer and contemplation, joy and praise, to the Glory of God. Amen.

Candlemas

For most people, Christmas is over on December 26th. However, in the Christian tradition, Christmas is a season that lasts twelve days, concluding with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. The full cycle of feasts related to Christmas lasts forty days, only ten days less than the season of Easter. The Christmas cycle concludes today with Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple. This day is traditionally the day candles are blessed for use in the church for the rest of the year, giving the day the name Candlemas, meaning the "candle Mass."

The feast commemorates Mary and Joseph's visit to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Law of Moses stated that each firstborn male was to be presented in the Temple as holy to the Lord. The Law also stated that ritual sacrifice must be made forty days after birth in order for the mother to be purified.

It is difficult to imagine that Mary would need to be purified from such a birth as the birth of the world’s Savior. What can we say of this birth except that it ennobles Mary and elevates her, "higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim," and makes her the queen of saints and Bearer of God? But come to the Temple she did, and with St. Joseph her spouse, presented the Messiah to those who waited for Him so passionately. The aged Simeon and Anna recieved Jesus in the Temple, and recognised Him as the Christ, the Messiah, who brings light to the world. When Simeon takes the infant Jesus into his arms from the hands of Mary, he says,

Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel. (Luke 2: 29-32)

A hymn prescribed for the Vespers of this feast in the Orthodox Church says:

Today the gate of heaven swings open,
for the Word of the Father,
who has no beginning,
has had a beginning in time,
without any loss of his divinity:
offered by a Virgin Mother,
as a child of forty days,
to the Temple of the Law.

Today we commemorate the coming of light into the world in the form of the infant Messiah, Jesus. As the candle's flickering light pierces the darkness, Christ illuminates our lives. We follow that divine light and present ourselves in the temple, following a promise far more beautiful and complete than any other: the promise of new and everlasting life through Christ’s own life, and death, and resurrection.



The Collect of the Day

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly beseech thee that, as thy only‑begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented unto thee with pure and clean hearts by the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.