Anglican Ascetic

There are two things that stand out to me in our Gospel passage, about Jesus healing the paralytic. The first is that in healing the paralytic, Jesus recognizes not the faith of the paralytic but the faith of the people who brought Jesus to the paralytic. For as Saint Matthew records: “When Jesus saw their faith.” And the second is that the healing of the paralytic means for Jesus that the sins of...

“How do the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David?” Jesus asked. And then He said, “David himself calls Him Lord, how is He His Son?” The question of what it means for Jesus to be Son will be what we look at today. Two of our readings today speak of the title of Jesus which is “Son.” I am referring to the first reading, from 2nd Samuel chapter 7, and the Gospel passage from S. Mark chapt...

Today I want us to reflect on covenant as it is revealed in Holy Scripture. We hear of covenant directly in the reading from the prophet Ezekiel, wherein Christ says, “I will make my covenant of peace with them” (meaning the faithful of Israel), “It shall be an everlasting covenant with them.” Covenant is spoken of more cryptically in the other two readings. Paul refers to it when he speaks of “th...

The feast of Saint Michael and All Angels celebrates the ministry of the holy Angels, and does so straightforwardly. These creatures: made of spirit and fashioned without material bodies; these creatures, according to the Church Fathers, who were created by God before time, created in heaven, and who serve God in heaven and help and defend us on earth—we celebrate these Angels, the armies of Angel...

In audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly. A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 5:27 After healing the paralytic, Jesus went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi, sitting at the tax office; and He said to him, “Follow me.” And he left everything, and rose and followed Him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house; and there was a large company of...

From our patron, the holy apostle Paul, we hear teaching about living in community. The Christians in Galatia, as the Church in Galatia which Paul himself had planted, probably in the late 40s, needed to be taught about how to live in community in a Christian way. They needed to be taught, and we today need to be taught; because Christians always have to be taught how to live in community in a Chr...

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. John 3.13 Jesus said, No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have et...

We are observing in the Liturgy today a very old feast of the Church: the feast of adoring the Cross of Jesus Christ. And I am reminded about the message Bishop Greg Brewer offered to this parish at the Mass of my Institution as the Rector of St Paul’s, four years ago. His message was for St Paul’s to continue full throttle in what he called the charism of our parish, meaning the special gift this...

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 10.38 Now as Jesus and the disciples went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to ser...

One of the very ancient and beloved prayers of the Church that has to do with Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ, is called the Angelus prayer. And it is beloved because it is so simple and straightforward. If you have ever visited Rome in Italy, and spent any time there, you will have noticed that around 6 am and Noon and 6 pm, churches around Rome start ringing their bells for three...

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. We are to deliver 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. Life in Christ crucified and rise...

I begin my sermon today by again bringing before us the words I have often quoted from an English theologian. Those words are: “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...

This past Friday was the Feast of the Dormition and Assumption of Mary. Indeed the dormition and assumption of she whose title is Blessed Mary, Ever-Virgin, and she whose title also is Theotokos, which is Greek for “Mother of God,” sometimes translated as “Bearer of God.” It has been a view widely held across the Church both east and west from the early centuries that Mary, at the end of the cours...

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 6.43 In teaching His disciples, Jesus said: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure p...

Ever since Saint Mary Magdalene became aware that the man she took to be a gardener was in fact Jesus Christ, crucified and now resurrected, Christians cannot help but be caught up in the mystery of God. Awe, wonder, trembling. And this moment, depicted in our icon here, perfectly defines what mystery means: hiddenness which is revealed by God; Christ resurrected was hidden within a gardener, and...

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Mark, 8.1 In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far...

As I preached last Sunday, 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.” Baptism is a mystery enveloped in hiddenness and thus demands a whole life of response, a whole life of listening, reflecting, and discerning–a who...

This is a special episode because for the first time we are welcoming a guest to the show. Our guest is the Reverend Dr Greg Peters . Father Peters is the author of several books, including Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction , published in 2024, and it is this book which is the primary topic for our discussion in this Episode. Here is the Amazon link to Father Peters’ superb book, which I high...

My sermon two Sundays ago ended with a quote from an English theologian. He said: “It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.” By the Christian life, we are made more aware of a mystery. We are made more conscious of the truth: truth which is only revealed in Jesus Christ through the workings of the Holy Ghost. Whe...

A Lesson from the First Book of Samuel, 17.37 Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!” Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword over his armor, and he tried in vain to go, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, “I cannot go with these; for I am not used to them.” And Davi...

My dear brothers and sisters, hear these words: “In our religion, and in the worship which is the expression of our religion, we look out towards Eternity.” These are words of Evelyn Underhill. Evelyn Underhill was an Anglican spiritual writer. She lived in England, and died in 1941. Her writing was so powerful and voluminous that it is right to speak of her as a genuine spiritual mother. These wo...

Anglican Ascetic Podcast focuses on prayer life in the Anglican tradition—a tradition rooted in the New Testament Church, which became manifest when the womb of the Upper Room went Boom, into its sub-apostolic and patristic eras, and those following within the English lands, to the present moment. The material used in this episode is found below: Episode of Mere Catholicity I was interviewed: A pr...

We ask God in our Collect today to “make us to have a perpetual fear and love of Thy holy Name.” It bears exploring what “perpetual fear and love” refers to, what exactly the Church is talking about with these terms. This will be the theme of my preaching for the next number of weeks. Today, we hear our Lord speak a parable about the Kingdom of God. And, like all of Our Lord’s parables, what we he...

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. John, 3.9 Nicodemus answered and said unto Jesus, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye b...

Anglican Ascetic Podcast focuses on prayer life in the Anglican tradition—a tradition rooted in the New Testament Church, which became manifest when the womb of the Upper Room went Boom, into its sub-apostolic and patristic eras, and those following, to the present moment. The material used in this episode is found below: 1. A prayer of Blessed Jeremy Taylor, Bishop and Confessor (d. 1667):O Holy...