The Gift

Words change their meanings, so we have to be careful about what we do when we approach icons in our prayer life, giving the pinnacle of everything in our lives to God alone, and not mistakenly to icons.

In this episode, on Forgiveness Sunday, we reach the elevation of the Gifts, offering Chris God to God the Father, His essence to His essence, not offering sweatmeats to placate an angry deity. When we ask forgiveness of each other, we are not saying sorry for individual behaviour. We have the opportunity to heal ancestral and cultural hatreds and oppression that we unknowingly repeat in our actio...

In this episode on the Sunday of the Last Judgement before Lent starts, we consider the nature of the bread that Christ blesses, and that we refer to in the Lord's prayer. It is the same essential bread that makes up the Body of Christ that is at once the body of Jesus, us as church and His presence in the world.

In this episode, on the Feast of the Prodigal Son, we look at the Dispensation, explained in detail by St Basil's liturgy, which is the centuries long loving response of the loving Father to us, the prodigal children who have squandered our inheritance as His children

In this episode, we focus on seraphim and cherubim, and other bodiless powers mentioned in the liturgy. It's hard to make sense of them without becoming superstitious. With the aid of Storm Ciara, Fr Timothy concentrates on the powers or characteristics of our relationship with God that they represent.

On the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, also coinciding with the Sunday of Zachaeus, we find that we can only encounter Christ when we are willing to say 'Blessed is he who comes in His name', in other words, when we see Christ in all those, like Zachaeus, who are despised by polite society.

In this episode, St John's liturgy provides us with his first full theological statement, not describing God's positive attributes, but apophatic theology is more familiar to Orthodoxy, describing that which God is not. We give thanks to God, however, that He emptied Himself of everything that He is not, to become Christ.

Let us lift up our heart: the ancient part of the liturgy refers to the lifting up of our soul, our whole life to God, a radical freedom in Christ to be Transfigured.

We have finally arrived at the anaphora, at the Baptism of Christ by John the Forerunner. Having seen the procession of Christ as the Gift in the Great Entrance, we become the Sacrifice of Praise, offering ourselves in Thanksgiving for Christ baptising His creation, turning back sin and restoring paradise. Let us, in awe and reverence, stand and attend to this moment.

As the Magi deal with Herod after their long journey, we consider St Paul's time in the desert after his encounter with God. We have encountered God incarnate, we mustn't now just brush that away, we should respond with our own time in contemplation.

Taking a long view on the Gift of His incarnation in the flesh, God has a plan, but not what we might think, and not a plan we frustrate by our sinfulness. God has worked through the centuries, through the prophets who didn't receive the promise, to prepare for His Nativity.

In this episode we look at the kiss of peace, and the secondary differences that we have to put aside to become of 'one mind in Christ' that we are able to confess the Trinity.

In this episode, on the Feast of the Conception of the Theotokos by our Patroness Anna, Father considers the placing of the litany of completion at the placing of the Gifts on the Holy Table, and the importance of us understanding that the Theotokos is not conceived immaculately, but lived spotlessly.

In this final episode on the Great Entrance, Fr Timothy notes the shift from the great and glorious procession of Christ in glory, accompanied by the heavenly host, carried aloft by the deacons, to being lifted down from the cross and carried by the noble Joseph and laid on the Holy Table as into the Tomb

In this second episode in the Great Entrance, we consider the priest's normally silent prayer 'No one is worthy' in the context of the woman who is healed of her 18 year infirmity and the Entrance of Mary into the Temple. We are made worthy by God, not because we are worthy, but because He makes us worthy. We become temples of the Living God, like Mary, entering the temple, became The Temple of th...

In this episode, we see the simple task of carrying the bread and wine as a heavenly procession of Chris the King, being borne aloft by cherubim and seraphim. Our simple gifts become the Gift. Let us be careful that we don't tear down the barns that Christ has built for us in His blessings to be replaced by the cupboards of our own making

In this episode we pause before moving on to the Cherubic hymn to remind ourselves of the purpose of liturgy and ritual, to tell us the story, to re-enact the history of the people of God over the centuries, across cultures. We also remind ourselves that Christianity, faith itself, is not a spiritual act but a public physical act of compassion.

In this final episode of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, before we move on to the Liturgy of the Faithful, Fr Timothy contemplates God freeing us from our chains, from our sinfulness, that we may be made worthy of the heavenly kingdom. He also notes again the importance of the antimens over which these prayers are made, the sign of the shepherds who guard our flocks. In times of turmoil, these she...

In this episode, which didn't end as planned, Father Timothy considers the first of the 'wisdom' prayers, which is actually a recollection of the 'blood sacrifice prayers of the old testament, but now placed in the context of the bloodless sacrifice of Christ. He connects it to the careful placing of the seed of the Spirit in every human, placing the burden on us all of tilling the soil of faith.

In this episode, Fr Timothy considers the crossroad in the divine liturgy where the catechumens are dismissed, where those who are called to life are called out of the crowd.

The Liturgy in Slow Motion #13:  The prokemenon: lining out, or building the body of Christ through songs and psalms

In this special episode, Fr Timothy talks to Professor Roy Robson, a church historian from Penn State University in America, who came to see the extraordinary Reitlinger frescos in our parish church. We were both quite excited about them!

After the celebrant has declared that the Kingdom of God is to be blessed, the congregation, led by the deacon, sing the first great Litany.  Fr Timothy considers the point of praying for peace, and describes what is being prayed for during the first Litany

In this second homily on the Divine Liturgy, Father Timothy considers the opening declaration, 'Blessed is the Kingdom', and how the saints act as sinews the Church, the Body of Christ, giving dynamic life to the skeleton bones of Bible, liturgy and hierarchy within the church, and giving living structure to our contemporary lives. We today are the flesh, but without bones and sinew, we are nothin...

In this episode, Fr Timothy marks the end of the Pentecost period, when we return to, and mark the rest of our lives according to, 'ordinary time'. But there is nothing ordinary about time when we have two words to use - chronos and kairos. We start the Divine Liturgy with the deacon informing the celebrant 'now is the perfect time to act, time to give the blessing'. A parishioner noted after the...