O Clavis David

Isaiah 22:22

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Darkness is our prison. It is the jail we scape to in our fear, in our anxiety, in our frustration. In that dark place, we find temporary relief. We find ourselves holding onto our blemishes, our warts, out imperfections. We clutch them close in the dank lightless place we call shelter. And in that place, we convince ourselves that our inperfections don’t exist.

Jesus, the Key, opens the door to our prison. We find, as we grope toward the door way, we do so reluctantly. Our prison has become the closest place to home we know. It has become as familiar to us as our own bodies.

Jesus, the Key, destroys that prison as soon as we exit it. He tears open the doors, pulling it from its hinges. He dismantled the walls, the floors, every last stone. The doorway through which we walked into the Light is truly the gateway to compelte and glorious freedom, And in that place of freedom, we discover that what we once were ashamed of, has, in this Light been made perfect and beautiful.

O Radix Jesse

Isaiah 11.1, 10

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.


O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.


“Plants are the center and source of life,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomoew wrote. “Plants are the wisest of teachers, the best models. Their roots dig deep, while their reach is high.”

We, too, are rooted deeply into our humanity. We are who we are through our roots. Still, rooted as we are to our humanity and this earth beneath us, we also reach high. We also strain, in our rootedness, toward the Goal of our existence.

Jesus, rooted in humanity and still encompassing everything from above, nourishes us from both below and above. We, unworthy of it, find ourselves fulfilled by this life-giving Presence we longed for, but didn’t ask for; hoped in, but couldn’t find the words to speak with our own lips.

O Adonai

Isaiah 11:4-5; 33:22

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Fire burned and did not consume the bush. From that fire, Adonai spoke to Moses and called him by his name. In that place where bush, fire and Adonai met, even the ground beneath Moses became too holy for his feet.

In Jesus, our humanity, fire and Adonai once again meet. From that confluence, Adonai still calls to us by name and speaks to to us with a voice more familiar than our own. And when we turn toward this calling, we know without being told that the very ground of our lives has become more sacred than we have ever even imagined.

O Sapientia

Isaiah 11:2-3; 28:29


O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.


We live in an intellectual half-light. Not a complete darkness, but a perptual dusk of sorts. We have a vague awarenss. For the most part, however, wisdom eludes us. We have moments of brilliant clarity. We have precious moments in which everything falls perfectly into place. Thosee moments are, sadly, for the most part, few and far between.

In Jesus, our Wisdom, we find wisdom with no elusiveness. In Jesus our Wisdom is the sun-like wisdom that burns away the dusk, the midnight and the pre-dawn of our ignorance. Jesus, our Wisdom, truly comes to us where are are—in the half-light of our intellegence—and teaches us. He teaches us by not only the Word that comes from his mouth, but by the example of his Presence among us.

III Advent

December 14, 2008

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11; Canticle 3; 1 Thes. 5.16-24


Today is Gaudete Sunday. This is probably my favorite Sunday in one of my favorite liturgical seasons. Traditionally, on Gaudete Sunday, we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath. This pink candle is a sign to us that the shift has happened. Now there are more candles lit than are unlit. The light has won out and the darkness is not an eternal darkens.

Gaudete means “rejoice” and we should do just that on this Sunday. We should rejoice in the light that is winning out. We should rejoice in the fact that darkness has no lasting power over us.
This Sunday sets a tone different than the one we’ve had so-far in Advent. We find that word—rejoice—throughout our scriptural readings today. It is the theme of the day. It is the emotion that permeates everything we hear in the Liturgy of the Word on this Sunday.

In our reading from the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah, we hear

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God;
In our Epistle, we find even Paul rejoicing. “Rejoice always,” he writes to the church at Thessalonika .

And in our canticle, we find that beautiful song of joy, the Magnificat—Mary’s rapturous song of rejoicing.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

This emotion of joy is something we oftentimes take for granted. Let’s face it, joy doesn’t happen often enough in our lives. It is a rare occurrence for the most part. And maybe it should be. It is certainly not something we want to take for granted. When joy comes to us, we want to let it flow through us. We want it to guide us and overwhelm us. But we often don’t think about how essential joy is to us.

Joy is essential to all of us as Christians. It is one of those marks that make us who we are as Christians. If we look closely at the lives of the saints, they are the ones who show us the way forward. And they are the ones who are marked with joy. They are the ones who have let joy come upon them and transform them. They are the ones who, even in sometimes overwhelming and frightening times, when overcome by darkness and despair, have still let joy come to them and be present in them.

You often hear me commend The Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. In Lesser Feasts and Fasts, we commemorate our saints in the Episcopal Church—those people who have shown themselves to us as examples of positive Christian living. What a lot of people who enjoy Lesser Feasts and Fasts don’t realize is that there are actual criteria for people to be included in the calendar of saints in the Episcopal Church and thus, to be included in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. These guidelines are actually included in the very back of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. For a person to be considered as a “saint” in the Episcopal Church, they must have a heroic faith, love, goodness of life, service to other for Christ’s sake, devotion, Recognition by the faithful and historical perspective. They also must have “joyousness”

The guidelines go on to say: “As faith is incomplete without love, so does love involve ‘rejoicing in the Spirit’—whether in the midst of extraordinary trials, or in the midst of the ordinary rounds of daily life. A Christian may not fail in the works of love, but still lack the joy of it—thereby falling short of true Christian sanctity. Such joy, however, is as much a discipline of life as an emotion. It need not lie on the surface of a person’s life, but may run deeply and be discerned by others only gradually.” (p. 487 Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006)

I love that definition of joy. I want to repeat two parts of this definition:

First, “Such joy… is as much a discipline of life as an emotion.” Joy is a discipline It is a discipline that we must cultivate. And sometimes, cultivating joy in the midst of overwhelming sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression can seems overwhelming and impossible. That’s why it is a discipline. When things like sorrow or pain or loneliness or depression descend upon—and they descend upon us all—we need to cling to joy. We need to search deep within us for that joy that we have as Christians. That joy comes when we put our pains into perspective. That joy comes when we recognize that these dark moments that happen in our lives are not eternal. They will not last forever.

That, I think, is where we sometimes fail. When we are in the midst of those negative emotions in our lives, we often feel as though they will never end. We often feel as though we will always be lonely, we always be sad, we will always mourn.

But as Christians, we can’t allow ourselves to be boxed in in such a way. As Christians, we are forced, again and again, to look at the larger picture. We are forced to see that joy is always there, just beyond our grasp, awaiting us. Joy is there when we realize that in the midst of our darkness, there is always light just beyond our reach.

Second, “[Joy] need not lie on the surface of a person’s life, but may run deeply and be discerned by others only gradually.”

Abbot Philip Lawrence, OSB, the Abbot of Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico, shares a wonderful reflection of a young Vietnamese monk who recently died at the monastery at age 38. Abbot Philip writes, “My memories of [Brother John Dat] in the week before I left for Italy are all memories of joy and gladness. Brother John…seemed to have in that week some inner experience of happiness and it just sort of shone out of him. For an abbot to have a monk die is like losing a son in many ways. For the community it is like losing a brother. Such losses bring us always before the face of God. Such losses ask our hearts: Do you believe in the resurrection of Christ? If Christ has risen from the dead, then our brother has risen with him now. And Christ has risen and our brother will rise with Him and we can rejoice even when our hearts are sad at his sudden loss.”

That image of Brother John’s joy and gladness as being an inner experience that shined out of him is exactly the kind of true joy that is being commended to us in the guidelines for saints in The Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Joy doesn’t mean walking around smiling all the time. It doesn’t mean that we have force ourselves to be happy at all times in the face of every bad thing. If we do that, we become nothing more than a programmed robot or a trained puppy. True joy comes bubbling up from within us. It comes from a deep place and it permeates our whole being, no matter what else is going on in our lives or in the world around us.

In the Magnificat, our canticle for today, we find Mary singing this glorious song. Those words: “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” sums up in such beautiful language this kind of joy that runs deep. It is a joy that comes from deep within our very essence—from that place of our true selves. And it is a joy that allows us to say with humble confidence (and not arrogance): let life throw at us what it will. Even in the face of everything terrible or sad, I will rejoice.

Advent is, essentially, a penitential season. It is a season in which we acknowledge, honestly, that we have failed. It is a time for us to recognize that we are slugging through the muck of our lives—a muck we are, at least in part, responsible for. But Advent is also a time for us to be able to rejoice even in the midst of that muck. It is a time for us realize that we will not be in that muck for ever. The muck doesn’t win out. The joy we carry deep within us wins out.

So, as we gather together this morning, and as we leave here this morning, let us remember the joy we feel at seeing this pink candle lit. We have made it this far. The tide has shifted. The light is winning out. The dawn is about to break upon our long dark night.

As you ponder this, as you meditate on this, as you take this with you in your hearts, pay special attention to the emotion this causes within you. Embrace that welling up of joy from deep within. And let it proclaim on your lips the words you, along the prophet Isaiah, long to say:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God;

The Conception of the B.V.M.

December 8, 2008

Luke. 1. 26

In the Anglo-Catholic tradition, today is the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Roman Catholic tradition, it is the Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M. For me personally—it’s my birthday.

I have always considered myself fortunate to celebrate my birthday on such a beautiful feast day of Our Lady. As I look back over my spiritual life—all the way back to when I was thirteen and first called to the Priesthood on the Feast of Visitation of the B.V.M.—I realize that Mary has been present with me every step of the way. There she was at every turn, at every trip-up, at every long stretch. Her presence in my life was, in my spiritual eye, always a purely blue, purely gentle and warm and maternal presence there on the fringes.

Throughout the hard times, throughout the set-backs and the spiritual stumblings, I more often than not sought refuge in that presence and took great consolation in it. And I also found great consolation in the fact that one did not have to be a Roman Catholic to have such a deep and abiding devotion to her.

As for the particulars of this feast—this feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary—I have always been ambivalent. I have tried to avoid getting into discussions about whether she was conceived without sin or not, whether she remained a virgin or not. Ultimately, talk of that sort seems so trashy and uncouth. But I have recently cherished something Beverly Donofrio (author of Riding in the Car with Boys) wrote in her wonderful memoir, Looking For Mary: Or, the Blessed Mother and Me. Donofrio writes:

Yes. The Church needed Mary to be a virgin…Her womb may have been a walled garden, but it was graced with fertile soil where something new and unexpected could grow; her abiding virginity was a sign that even the impossible is possible with God.

That’s what makes this feast day so wonderful for me. Maybe she wasn’t conceived without sin. Maybe she didn’t remain a virgin. Maybe even there was no virgin birth. But, I always love the “what if.” These issues of Mary’s virginity are chock-full of “what ifs.” What if she was all of those things? If she was—as she would be the first and quickest to remind us—it wasn’t Mary who did it. If she was all of those things, it was God who did it. It was God who made these wonderful things happen in her. And if God did it, then truly “the impossible is possible with God.” Isn’t that what we all believe anyway? Isn’t that what we all cling to and hope in? Isn’t that what makes our faith in God true faith?


There is a beautiful litany included in the Manual pilgrims to the shrine at Walsingham use. In that Litany, there is a beautiful prayer I return to again and again. I return to it again on this beautiful Feast day of Our Lady’s Conception—and my birthday.

“O Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of life,
as you overshadowed Mary that she might be the Mother of Jesus our Savior
so work silently in my heart,
to form within me the fullness of his redeemed and redeeming humanity.
Give me his loving heart,
to burn with love for God and love for my neighbour;
give me a share of his joy and sorrow.
his weakness and his strength,
his labour for the world’s salvation.
May Mary, blessed among women,
Mother of our Saviour,
pray for me,
that Christ may be formed in me,
that I may live in union of heart and will
with Jesus Christ, her Son, our Lord and Saviour.

II Advent

December 7, 2008

Psalm 85. 1-2, 8-13

The writer on one of my favorite blogs—Joe Versus the Volcano—shares the following insight this past week:

“I remember,” he writes, “a....priest (who was more Catholic in his theology than most Catholic priests I’ve come across), saying that the Second Coming happens every time the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ on the altar and we receive Him in holy communion.”

I touched on this thinking a bit last week, but it’s always good to think about it again. No matter where your Eucharistic theology might lie—whether you believe wholeheartedly in the “Real Presence” of Jesus in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist or that what we do is merely symbolic of his Body and Blood—the fact does remain that something very important happens here, at this altar every Sunday as we gather. We experience, in a very unique and wonderful way, the Presence of Christ when we gather together at this altar and share these common and very simple and vital gifts of bread and wine. No matter what you believe about how Jesus is present to us at this moment, he is present. He does come to us here and we do feel him present—in the bread, in the wine, in the presence of those who gather with us and who kneel beside us at the rail.

Now, I make no secret of my belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I truly believe that Jesus is present in a unique and beautiful way in the bread and the wine we share with each other. I also believe that Jesus is uniquely present even in the reserved sacrament we place here in the aumbry.

There is a reason we keep the sanctuary light lit before the aumbry. It reminds us that Jesus is present here in a special way. I love driving past St. Stephen’s at night and seeing the deep red glow of the sanctuary light shining through the windows. It is a very visible and meaningful reminder to me that Jesus is present here in a very real way. During Good Friday and Holy Saturday, when the Eucharist is removed from the aumbry and that sanctuary light is extinguished, it too reminds us of Jesus’ presence among us and the absence of that presence when we commemorate that time he spent in the tomb.

At the same time, having professed my belief in the Real Presence, I just as quick to say that I am not a stickler as to the particulars of how Jesus comes among us in the Eucharist. I just read a wonderful new book by the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, called Encountering the Mystery. In this book, Patriarch Bartholomew talks about how important mystery is to the Orthodox understanding of God. He writes:

“The sacraments are the Church’s way of restoring the intimacy between God and the world…They are gifts from God, given in order to appropriate wholeness through transformation. Orthodox Christians in fact prefer to speak ‘mystery’ rather than ‘sacrament’… In this respect, every aspect of divine life is sacramental. Mystery is that sacred space or moment when humanity and creation encounter the transcendent God.”
(Encountering the Mystery p. 86-87)


And that is how we should approach the Eucharist as well. Each Sunday, we gather here and witness a mystery. We, together, participate in something that we might not understand and we might not fully appreciate. But it is, as we all realize, important and wonderful and beautiful.
In what we do here at the altar, we experience Jesus. We see Jesus, we feel Jesus, we taste Jesus. As the contemporary Italian saint, St. Gaetano Catanoso (1897-1963) said, "If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus, we can find it in the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host".
So, in a very real way, the anxious waiting we are doing during this season of Advent is like the anxious waiting we should do when coming to this altar. It all about anticipation. It is all about our deepest hopes and desires being realized. And they are realized—in Christ. Because they are realized in Christ, we find them realized whenever we encounter Christ.

As I said last week, the Advent of Christ’s coming happens again and again in our lives. Whenever we meet Christ—in the hedges and the highways, as Bishop Frank Weston once proclaimed to us, in the naked and sweated—we find Jesus coming among us yet again. Or, as Patriarch Bartholomew writes in Encountering the Mystery:

“[The Eucharist] challenges individuals and communities to work for a just society, where basic food and water are plentiful for all and where everyone has enough.”

Whenever we meet Christ in the Eucharist, we emerge transformed. We are not the same people were before Communion. We are a people challenged to then go out and share this Communion with others in whatever way we can.

What we are longing for in this season is not something vague and distant. It is not something so mysterious that we can’t fathom it. Rather, what we long for is, truly, fulfillment. It is the fulfillment of all that seems to be missing in us. It is the fulfillment of our anxieties and our frustrations and our depressions and our hopelessness.

In a very real way, the words of our psalm today give voice to what we are unable to say in our hope. When we hear those words,

Truly, [your] salvation is very near to those who fear [you], *
that [your] glory may dwell in our land.

To fear God doesn’t mean to live in fear. It simply means an awesome respect and wonder for God. And for those of us who have such a respect for God we will find God’s glory in our midst. In the Eucharist, in this bread and wine, in this tabernacle, in this unique and real Presence we experience here, we find truly that God’s glory is not out there somewhere—in some distant heaven. Rather, God in Jesus, has come to us and remains among us in a very real and tangible way. In this Eucharist, God’s glory truly does dwell in our land and we are fortunate to be able to partake in it. In God’s Presence among us, we realize, if we truly open ourselves to this experience, that our frustrations, our depressions, all of our spiritual and psychological pains have been healed and our longings have been realized. We don’t need to look anywhere else than right here. And, in that moment of realization, only poetry can truly express what we feel.

In this psalm, we find that lovely verse:

Mercy and truth have met together; *
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. In that phrase we are able to find joy bubbling up from one’s lips and it being captured in words. In that meeting of righteousness—of what we know is true and right—and peace—that sense of quietness and confidence within us—we know God is present.

Truth shall spring up from the earth, *
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

Before we celebrate the Eucharist together, during the offertory, after the gifts of bread and wine have been brought to the altar, you will see me praying quietly to myself as I touch the bread and the wine. The prayers I pray here are not secret or private. They are just prayers of offering. When I hold the bread, I pray,

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

And when I hold the wine, I pray,

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, the fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.

In the Eucharist, in these gifts of the earth—this bread which the earth has given and this fruit of the vine—in them, Truth—Jesus himself being the Way, the Truth and the Life—springs forth. The very world in which inhabit—and not just this physical earth, but the our spiritual world, the world of our very essence and existence—will proclaim the truth of God’s Presence among us.

The LORD will indeed grant prosperity, *
and our land will yield its increase.

The truth we have realized is that our fulfillment is only in God. Only in God will we find our anxieties quieted, our hopes realized. At the altar, when we share this bread and wine with one another, we know what true spiritual increase means.

Righteousness shall go before [the LORD], *
and peace shall be a pathway for [God’s] feet.

It’s all right here—in this beautiful poem. What we do here at the altar is important. It is vital to our understanding of ourselves as Christians. It is a wonderful and glorious mystery that we shouldn’t try to pin down and analyze too deeply. We should rather accept it and delight in it and let us fill us and fulfill us.

In these days of Advent, as we prepare to remember Jesus’ first coming among us, our time at the altar should take on special meaning and precedence for us. We should give true and deep thanks for the opportunity to have Jesus come to us in such a unique and wonderful way. And as we come to the altar, with our joy bubbling up from within us, with our anxieties and fears and depressions allayed by the healing balm of this bread and wine, of the healing Presence of our God, we too are able to proclaim with honesty and truth,

You have been gracious to your land, O LORD, *
you have restored the good fortune of Jacob.

You have forgiven the iniquity of your people *
and blotted out all their sins.