The Confirmation of St John the Baptist

SS Mary and Elizabeth wearing episcopal chasuble and pallium
Mosaic in the Basilica of Parenzo, Croatia, 540 AD

At this feast [the Visitation], the Blessed Virgin performed two principal functions of Jesus’ apostles: she carries knowledge of Jesus Christ to St. Elizabeth and sanctifies the soul of St. John. ‘Teach all nations and baptise them’, Jesus Christ ordered his apostles. ‘Teach them’. It indicates the faith and the light which they have to carry everywhere. ‘Baptise them’. This signifies the sanctification of souls. It is true that the Blessed Virgin’s words had the effect in John of the sacramental words of baptism, sanctifying him and doing even more, ... namely what confirmation brings about in the hearts of Christians who, illuminated by reason, receive the fulness of the gifts of the Holy Spirit who illumines them and takes possession of them, who guides them and consumes them in perfection and fulness of holy love.

The Blessed Virgin, as Bishop in the Church, sanctified the son of the highpriest Zachariah. She sanctified St. John and through the imposition of her power, using her right as Mother of God and spouse of the Father, she imprinted the Holy Spirit on St. John...

Recueil, manuscript in Saint Sulpice, Paris

Generous contentment

To a romantic imaginative mind at least, the Roman claims stand out in a very obvious manner, and the English deficiences are quite confessed and palpable. "Yours," they will tell us, "undeniably is the poor, the homely, the unattractive side of the alternative. Who would wish, if he could choose, to be a member of a smaller and comparatively disunited body, instead of the largest and most compact of Christian communities; to be doubtful where others feel certain? Who would not have God's Saints, and their miracles, disclosed to him, rather than regard them as so many unrevealed mysteries? Who would not possess rather than want an entire and definite system of doctrine, and a poetical ritual, extending through all parts of life? Who, if he could help it, would acknowledge such as the Tudor monarchs and their favourites, as framers in any sense of the religious system he lives under?" In these and many more instances, which Roman Catholics are never tired of alleging, let it be granted that we stand, prima facie, in a position more or less humiliating: I say, that to acquiesce in it, because it is providentially our own position, - to be dutiful and loyal amid the full consciousness of it, - savours of the same kind of generous contentment, as the not being ashamed of lowly parentage, nor unloving towards a dull, monotonous home.

John Keble, 1792-1866

Pray for the Primates at Emmaus

Pray for the Primates, both present and absent:

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that, as there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all; so we may henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Accession Service, 1714

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony VI

Spiritual direction is itself central to English spirituality, not only as pastoral practice but also as the source and inspiration of ascetical theology. The English system has developed through the centuries, not out of monastic order but from empirical guidance of individual people. The Celtic penitential discipline was intensely personal and strictly private; St Anselm was a renowned spiritual guide; all the fourteenth-century writings were addressed to, or compiled by, anchorites or anchoresses; they are personal instructions, not monastic rules. Caroline ascetical and moral theology largely arose through the guidance of individuals, or through the private discussion of sermons by small groups.

If the phrase "spiritual direction" has come to acquire an authoritarian, Counter-Reformation taint, it is due to the confusion between their dogmatic and juridical, and our empirical, methods.

These six characteristics, and their numerous corollaries, combine to form an English school of spirituality of incalculable worth to Christendom.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony V

But here and throughout, formal private prayer, at set periods and according to some plan, remains subserviant to habitual recollection. It is in the streets of King's Lynn and Norwich, on roads and ships and pilgrimage, that Margery's vivid meditations and colloquies take place. Even with the English anchoress, like the Benedictine monk, it is constant recollection of Christ's presence, rather than formal meditation, that links up the Offices and liturgy.

The Caroline emphasis is also on a total Christian life in the world, supported by the liturgy, especially by the morning and evening Offices, but here the moral element, the practical doing of God's will, is much more pronounced than the affective. We shall see that neither recollective technique is wholly satisfactory, and that if modern Christians are to live continually in their faith they must be guided by a combination of both fourteenth- and seventeenth-century practice: the one supplies what the other lacks.

It is here and in the preceding characteristic that the meditative methods and techniques of Counter-Reformation spirituality can be either a blessing or a curse. Sensibly used, they can help us to a more vivid sense of the presence of Christ and to a more intimate understanding of his mind, to be carried over into habitual recollection. An undisciplined enthusiasm for these methods which detracts from recollection, or worse still supplants the daily Office, ends in chaos. Parts of the teaching of St Ignatius Loyola supply something useful which the English tradition lacks, while the complete Exercises form an ascetical system incompatible with our own.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony IV

The foundation of Christian life is the liturgy, seen as both Mass and Office, from which flows personal devotion based on the Bible. Neither the Regula nor the Prayer Book have much to say about private prayer except to assume and encourage it: there are no "methods". That the Carolines returned to the principle of liturgy directly inspiring devotion, and strongly insisted on the private use of the Bible, is common knowledge. It is not such common knowledge that "meditation" on the Gospel narrative played an equally large part in the spirituality of Margery Kempe and Julian. On the seventeenth century, C. J. Stranks writes: "Thus the idea of God in the worshipper's mind, when he addressed himself to prayer, was that which he had learned from the Bible. The rare use of a crucifix, or sacred pictures, compelled him to make his own mental image." Whether or not Margery and Julian were thus compelled, they certainly made their own mental images! They had to learn what they could of the Bible from the Dominican and Franciscan preachers (Margery found a priest friend to read it to her) while their religion remained centred on the Mass and the lay Office of Our Lady. Fourteenth-century England plainly needed, and must eventually have demanded, both a common Office and a vernacular Bible: Reformation or not, it is but the logical development of their spirituality.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony III

Flowing from these two characteristics, comes a unique humanism and a unique optimism. The harsher elements of St Augustine (regrettably the better known part of his ascetic), or of Carmelite and Carthusian religion find little place in English spiritual writing. Yet it is neither sentimental nor lax. The agonizing penitence of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich is as plain as can be, but so is the tremendous virtue of unquenchable hope: "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". The Caroline moralists must be technically grouped as "rigorists"; like their fourteenth-century ancestors they make no bones about the hardship along the narrow way, but a calm optimism still reigns. The Middle English writings in particular, give rise to a whole new spiritual vocabulary of a pronounced "domestic" flavour, while the satanic sulphur and fiery brimstone analogies, or the Christian militarism so loved by St Ignatius Loyola, are very rarely found. St Benedict's family theme remains constant: it may be a hard home but it is not a barracks.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony II

 
There is a strong pastoral insistence on the unity of the Church Militant, wherein a deep family relationship exists between priest and layman, monk and secular; hence the Englishness of the Gilbertines and Margery Kempe's Norfolk. Our distrust of clericalism and authoritarianism is no shallow - or modern - trait, but the result of a long pastoral heritage, based on the doctrine of the Body of Christ. When the squire objects to the parson's biretta and lace cotta, or the Churchwarden rejects the advice of the vicar, we are inclined to say that they do not understand the Catholic faith and have no respect for the priesthood. That may be true, but their attitude is not wholly inconsistent with a truly theological tradition: Margery Kempe would agree with them, so would Richard Rolle, and possibly Aelred of Rievaulx as well.

The principle underlies the ascetical structure of the Book of Common Prayer. Seen as a system, not a series of services, it is the common basis for the Christian lives of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Superior of Mirfield, and all the schoolgirls who were confirmed yesterday. It embodies the pastoral spirit and domestic emphasis of the Benedictine Rule.

It follows, logically and inevitably, that Anglican spiritual direction must be empirical, not dogmatic; not as something amateur or watered down, still less because it is rather nice that way, but because our spirituality demands it.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

Anglican Spiritual Patrimony I

An extraordinary consistency in maintaining the speculative-affective synthesis; the theological and the emotional, doctrine and devotion, fact and feeling. This, I suggest, is the deepest meaning of the Anglican via-media; it is the insistence that prayer, worship, and life itself, are grounded upon dogmatic fact, that in everyday religious experience head and heart are wedded. English Christianity has consistently rejected the ecstatic, spectacular, and baroque, not because they are "Roman", or because of "superstition" and "enthusiasm", or even because "one should not go too far" - they are but passing manifestations - but because of this deep-rooted ascetical principle, of which our saints and teachers will never let go. On the other hand (one obvious exception notwithstanding) we have never been happy with the cold rationalism of an Abelard.

The supreme exponent of this spiritual harmony is St Anselm. Our greatest single work, illustrative of it, is probably the Revelations of Divine Love, in which Julian of Norwich combines the most vivid, most disturbingly affective meditation on every distressing detail of the Passion with almost a treatise on the doctrine of the Atonement. The strain continues with what the Prayer Book so simply calls "true piety and sound learning", but we must be careful to interpret "and" as a conjunction of synthesis, not of duality: to be a trifle pedantic, true piety "with", "from", or "based upon" sound learning would be more accurate.

Martin Thornton, 1915-1986

During a time of leave-taking

I joy, dear Mother, when I view

Thy perfect lineaments and hue

Both sweet and bright.

Beauty in thee takes up her place,

And dates her letters from thy face,

When she doth write.

A fine aspect in fit array,

Neither too mean, nor yet too gay,

Shows who is best.

Outlandish looks may not not compare,

For all they either painted are,

Or else undrest.

She on the hills which wantonly

Allureth all, in hope to be

By her preferr'd,

Hath kiss'd so long her painted shrines

That ev'n her face by kissing shines

For her reward.

She in the valley is so shy

Of dressing that her hair doth lie

About her ears;

While she avoids her neighbour's pride,

She wholly goes on th' other side,

And nothing wears.

But dearest Mother, (what those miss,)

The mean thy praise and glory is,

And long may be.

Blessed be God, Whose love it was

To double-moat thee with His grace

And none but thee.

George Herbert, 1593-1633