Anglican 'Covenant'

More dismal observations here: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10463

Anglican 'Covenant'

For a penetrating observation on this recent failure see: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10432

Brother Roger from the Encounter with God SU notes

'Taizé - that little springtime.' This was how the community first set up by Brother Roger in 1940 as a place of sanctuary for refugees fleeing the Nazis has been described. It now welcomes more than 100,000 young people each year from all around the world, who come to 'grasp the mystery of faith'. Inspired by the example of his grandmother, who had done similar work in the First World War, 25-year-old Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche cycled all the way from his Swiss homeland to the front line in France. When the work become too dangerous, he returned to Geneva where he became president of the Association of Christian Students and began to establish the pattern of meetings for young people that characterises Taizé today.
Brother Roger was born in 1915, the ninth child of Swiss Lutheran pastor Karl Ulrich Schütz and his French wife Amelie. He grew up in a loving home, the cherished youngest brother in a mainly female household. Watching his sisters work together gave him his first ideas about living in community, but it was while he was incapacitated
by I'll that he became convinced he should follow the monastic path.
He studied reformed theology at Strasbourg and Lausanne and then, with the help of three friends who became the first brothers in Taizé, began to clarify the themes that would characterise their community life.

From these simple origins something amazing emerged. Since the late 1950s thousands of young people have flocked to Taizé to take part in the thrice-daily meetings of music, prayer and silence. Meanwhile some brothers take the essence of Taizé to every continent on 'pilgrimages of trust on earth', while others live among the poor in the slums of Manila, Mexico City, Dakar, Kolkata and New York. Moving letters describing their meetings can he found on the Taizé website at www.Taizé.fr, as can samples of the distinctive chants and short daily readings from one of Brother Roger's best-loved hooks, 'Peace of Heart in all things'.

Brother Roger wrote more than 20 books, two of them with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with whom he shared a deep compassion for the
poorest of the poor. His nine awards include the 1974 Templeton Prize, the 1988 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education and the 2003 Dignitas Humana Award.

One of Brother Roger's most significant achievements has been a remarkable rapprochement between the Protestant and Catholic churches. He said: 'I found my own Christian identity by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone. ' Today Taizé is an interdenominational and international community. Its 120 monks are Protestant and Catholic and come from many lands, as do their thousands of visitors.

Over the years, Taizé music, Bible readings and prayers have become ever shorter
and simpler. Brother Roger was concerned that nothing should come between
the worshipper and 'that relationship of love that the presence of the Holy Spirit offers in prayer'.

Two quotations from Peace of Heart in all Things illustrate how profound this method of communicating God's intentions can be:

'Jesus, Love of all loving, you were always in me and I was forgetting you.
You were in my heart of hearts, and I was looking for you elsewhere.
When I kept myself far from you, you were waiting for me.
And now I dare to tell you:" Christ, you are my life."'

'God of mercy, when it is hard for us to trust in you, why should we worry?
Being in your presence in a peaceful silence is already praying.
And you understand all that we are. Even a sigh can be a prayer.'

So how can it be that this man of peace was murdered so brutally in his own
church on 16 August 2005? The event sent shock waves around the world.
One brother said: 'He was not killed for a cause that he was defending.
He was killed because of what he was.' As Brother Roger himself said:
'So it becomes clear that faith - trusting in God - is a very simple
reality, so simple that everyone could receive it. It is like surging upwards
again and again, a thousand times, throughout our life, and until our very last breath.'

Venetia Horton


1 Books, CDs and DVDs are available from Decani Music Oak House, 70 High Street, Brandon, Suffolk IP27 OAU, UK (Tel 01842 819830), or from Redemptorist Publications, Alphonsus House, Chawton, Hampshire GU3 3HQ, UK.

God showed up ???

The other day one of my clergy colleagues on Facebook was waxing lyrical over a conference of leaders that he had attended - and then at the end he wrote 'And God showed up!' To my way of thinking this is a dreadful statement to make. It suggests that God was otherwise somehow absent until the participants did something or were sufficiently attentive to make Him take some notice of them. It denies the very understanding of Christianity - not to mention the other world religions that worship a single deity - that God is everywhere present at all times and is all powerful. Omniscient and Omnipotent. It got me thinking of some of the other challenges of worship services and gatherings in Church circles.

Somehow we have got away from the idea that God is sovereign and in charge of His world and does not need us to somehow conjure him up. We find this reflected in churches where the ceremony has got to be exactly right or the music has to be of a particular kind or somehow he can only respond if we yell at him or sing very loudly or that He is not present if nothing spectacular happens - and even when the spectacular does happen as one can view on a number of tele-evangelists' programmes one is left with the sneaking feeling that it is all rather contrived and that God has little to do with it.

I realise that some of the differences in worship styles stem from cultural differences and therefore I do not expect necessarily that Nigerians will want to worship with a loud organ and traditional hymns - though some do - and not all British people would want to be totally solemn. And many will have experienced what I saw on more than one occasion in Ireland of a clergyman appearing from the vestry during the first droning hymn to plough his way through an entire service of morning prayer without apparently communicating with the people or God, only to disappear back into the vestry during the last hymn - one almost wished, never to be seen again!

Perhaps the real point of my thinking - or rambling thoughts, is that the gathered congregation really need to be coming together with a sense that they will be worshipping the Living God who is indeed Omniscient and Omnipotent. Without that sense of His presence, from the very commencement of the proceedings, then a worship service however culturally appropriate will be much more a 'celebration of the divine absence' rather than the divine presence.

Begone? !

So with the help of a newly acquired Manchester A-Z we found St. Aidan's Antiochian Orthodox Church in Clare Road, Leavenshulme. "All services in English", "All Welcome" the notice board prclaimed. I had read the priest's blog since last year and had often found his thoughts helpful and from time to time bits would work their way into my sermons. As we arrived the churchwarden welcomed us and ushered us in to join the dozen or so people who had been there for Mattins. The (not young) cantor was doing a wonderful job chanting all the various items, which he then continued through the whole of Divine Liturgy also- a marathon task. I wondered if there would be a sermon or not and then it came after many preliminary prayers and the reading from Acts and the Gospel of Mark about the 'mryhh-bearing women' going to the tomb. Fr. Gregory challenged us to what we did with our sorrows - wallow, relish or bring them to Jesus for him to deal with?

And so the service proceeded, by this time standing room only. Then came the shock- after Prayers for the Catacumens - they were summarily dismissed and someone was meant to ensure they had gone! Seemed such a contrast to "All Welcome"! Nobody seemed to leave. At communion time we did not attempt to receive in order not cause offence, but the (African?) young man next to us was not receiving either as he was 'not ready'. So a puzzle, which no doubt an Orthodox believer will readily explain. On a very positive note to end my wife remarked how all the service was totally aimed at God and his glorification. So much 'worship' is all about us... But then Orthdoxy does mean 'right glory' and it is Father Son and Holy Spirit, One God in glorious splendour whom we are meant to be worshipping.