Today the Anglican calendar commemorates John Keble (1792-1866), whose 1833 Assize Sermon is generally reckoned as the jumping-off point of the Oxford Movement.  He wrote a number of theological treatises including a translation of Irenaeus, a critical edition of the works of Richard Hooker, and several of the Tracts for the Times.  But his greatest fame was as a poet.  The Christian Year, a poetic anthology dealing with the feasts and seasons of the liturgical calendar, appeared in 1827 and achieved great popularity, going through numerous editions for the rest of the 19th century.  He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1831-1841 and spent the last thirty years of his life as vicar of Hursley, a small country parish.  Keble College Oxford was named in his honor.

Keble wrote a number of hymns  and these are probably how he is likely to be known by the average Anglican.  The following translation of Phos hilaron, made from the Greek in 1834, gives a taste of his talent as a hymnographer.

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Hail, Gladdening Light

Hail, gladdening Light, of His pure glory poured,
Who is immortal Father; heavenly blest;
Highest and holiest--Jesus Christ our Lord!
Now are we come to the sun's hour of rest;
All times are ordered in Thy Word alone,
Therefore the day and night Thy glories own.

The lights of evening now around us shine;
We hymn Thy blest humanity divine;
Worthiest art Thou at all times to be sung,
By grateful hearts, with undefiled toungue,
Son of our God, Giver of life, alone!
Therefore shall all the worlds Thy glories own.

Today's Daily Office readings contains one of my favorite passages, Romans 8:19-23:  "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."

This passage underpins Christian eschatological thought, which occupies a preeminent place in the theology of the Eastern churches.  Metropolitan Kallistos Ware addresses this topic with his usual clarity in The Orthodox Way (revised ed, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995), pp 136-137.  His notion that post-resurrection life is not just for people, but for animals and the whole created order as well, adds a powerful spiritual element to our thinking about ecological issues.

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"At the resurrection", state The Homilies of St Macarius, "all the members of the body raised; not a hair perishes" (compare Luke 21: 18).  At the same time the resurrection body is said to be a "spiritual body" (see ! Cor 15:  35-46).  This does not mean that at the resurrection our bodies will be somehow dematerialized; but we are to remember that matter as we know it in this fallen world, with all its inertness and opacity, does not at all correspond to matter as God intended it to be.  Freed from the grossness of the fallen flesh, the resurrection body will share in the qualities of Christ's human body at the Transfiguration and after the Resurrection.  But although transformed, our resurrection body will still be in a recognizable way the same body as that which we have now:  there will be continuity between the two...

..."A new heaven and a new earth"[Rev 21: 1]:  man is not saved from his body but in it; not saved from the material world but with it.  Because man is microcosm and mediator of the creation, his own salvation involves also the reconciliation and transfiguration of the whole animate and inanimate creation around him--its deliverance "from the bondage of corruption" and entry "into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 8:21).  In the "new earth" of the Age to come there is surely a place not only for man but for the animals:  in and through man, they too will share in immortality, and so will rocks, trees and plants, fire and water.

Gregory of Nyssa (335-384), whose feast is observed today by the Episcopal Church, is one of the great theologians of the Christian East;  in recent years his fame has spread westwards.  He had nine siblings, two of whom were Basil the Great and Macrina.  He left behind a large corpus of writings and was influential in formulating the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.  One of his major contributions to spirituality was the concept of epektasis.  Meaning roughly "upward striving", the notion first appears in Paul: "Forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth [epekteinomenon] unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark" (Phil 3:13).  The upward striving towards God is incremental and never ends, whether in this life or the next.  Seen in this light, theosis means that people get more and more like God but without, however, attaining God's transcendence.  This contrasts with Platonic philosophy, itself very influential in Eastern Christian theology, which regarded stability as perfection (many references to an unchanging, passionless God) and change as a sign of imperfection.

One place where Gregory discusses epektasis is in his Life of Moses (many editions), a recasting of the patriarch in terms of Christian mysticism.  A sample appears below. 

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For this reason we also say that the great Moses, as he was becoming ever greater, at no time stopped in his ascent, nor did he set a limit for himself in his upward course.  Once having set foot on the ladder which God set up (as Jacob says), he continually climbed to the step above and never ceased to rise higher, because he always found a step higher than the one he had attained.

...He shone with glory.  And although lifted up through such lofty experiences, he is still unsatisfied in  his desire for more.  He still thirsts for that with which he constantly filled himself to capacity, and he asks to attain as if he had never partaken, beseeching God to appear to him, not according to his capacity to partake, but according to God's true being.

Today our Eastern Orthodox friends celebrate the First Sunday of Great Lent, also known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy or the Triumph of Orthodoxy.  It is preeminently an affirmation of the role of icons in Christian life, following the long and debilitating struggle over iconoclasm.  An informative reference to the subject can be found here on the site of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America.

Below can be found a quote from the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea, 787), which summarizes the Eastern Christian teaching on icons quite succinctly.





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We define that the holy icons, whether in color, mosaic, or some other material, should be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on the sacred vessels and liturgical vestments, on the walls, furnishings, and in houses and along the roads, namely the icons of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, that of our Lady the Theotokos, those of the venerable angels and those of all saintly people.  Whenever these representations are contemplated, they will cause those who look at them to commemorate and love their prototype.  We define also that they should be kissed and that they are an object of veneration and honor (proskynesis), but not of real worship (latreia), which is reserved for Him who is the subject of our faith and is proper for the divine nature.  The veneration accorded to an icon is in effect transmitted to the prototype; he who venerates the icon, venerates in it the reality for which it stands.

One aspect of the turbulent history of Anglicanism in 17th-century England was the so-called "Laudian" movement.  Essentially it was an attempt to reform the Church of England along sacramental, patristic and catholic (emphasis on the small c) lines.  It was the project of men such as Andrewes, Cosin, and Laud; the latter became Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I and used his authority to promote this agenda.

Laudians strove to recover the spirituality of the ancient and medieval church and to express it liturgically in conformity to canon law and the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer.  These norms were widely ignored, especially by those of the Puritan persuasion.  With regard to public worship, Laudianism translated into ornately decorated churches with railed altars against the east wall, use of the Prayer Book for all services, trained choirs of men and boys, and clergy in copes or at least surplices.  These liturgies were actually carried out in a few places, mostly chapels royal and private chapels of sympathetic bishops.  However, they seldom trickled down to ordinary parishes.  The elitism inherent in the movement was exacerbated by the unpopularity of Laud and his king, and things came to a crashing halt when the archbishop was arrested, and later beheaded, by the Puritan-dominated parliamentary faction.  It is interesting to speculate that if Laudianism had become more widely entrenched at the parochial level, it would have preempted the rise of Tractarianism, at least in the form it actually took in the 19th century.

The Hackney Hub, a site advocating a non-Anglo-Catholic type of high churchmanship, has some interesting and comprehensive posts on Laudian ritual which are linked to here and here .  I reproduce below an eyewitness report from a hostile Puritan which nonetheless captures the flavor of Laud's worship.

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He does not say the mass indeed in Latin:  but his hood, his cope, his surplice, his rochet, his altar railed in, his candles, and cushion and book therein, his bowing to it, his bowing, or rather nodding at the name of JESUS, his organs, his violins, his singing-men, his singing-boys, with their alternate jabbering and mouthings (as unintelligible as Latin service), so very like popery.

A very useful liturgical resource is the Smells and Bells site maintained by Roman Catholic scholar Matthew D Herrera.  It contains a comprehensive article outlining the ways in which incense may be used in Christian worship as well as its scriptural and theological justification.  The article contains some good quotes by Monsignor Romano Guardini which I reproduce below.  As an added treat, I could not resist including a video of extreme censing, the famous botafumeiro in Spain's cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.


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The offering of incense is a generous and beautiful rite.  The bright grains of incense are laid upon the red-hot charcoal, the censer is swung, and the fragrant smoke rises in clouds.  In the rhythm and the sweetness there is a musical quality; and like music also is the entire lack of practical utility:  it is a prodigal waste of precious material.  It is a pouring out of unwithholding love...


The offering of incense is like Mary's anointing of Jesus at Bethany.  It is as free and objectless as beauty.  It burns and is consumed like love that lasts through death.  And the arid soul still takes his stand and asks the same question:  What is the good of it?


It is the offering of a sweet savour which Scripture itself tells us is the prayers of the Saints.  Incense is the symbol of prayer.  Like pure prayer it has in view no object of its own; it asks nothing for itself.  It rises like the Gloria at the end of a psalm. in adoration and thanksgiving to God for his great glory.

 

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the sayings of the Desert Fathers, those bold spiritual pioneers who protested the increasing coziness of the Church with the Constantinian empire by seeking a more authentic Christianity in the wastes of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria.  It is too easy to overlook the fact that this movement included many women, living as solitaries or in monastic communities.  A good antidote to this ignorance is Laura Swan's The Forgotten Desert Mothers (Paulist 2001).  Swan, the prioress of St Placid's Priory in Olympia, Washington, has combed through the patristic literature and has put together a pretty complete catalog of the holy women mentioned therein.  Sadly, the actual words of only a few are preserved, but we can look below for a small sample.  The sayings of Syncletica (pictured in the icon) and Macrina especially stand out; the latter was the sister of both Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, being the actual founder of the community where they received their monastic formation.

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Amma Syncletica
In the beginning there are a great many battles and a good deal of suffering for those who are advancing towards God and afterwards, ineffable joy.  It is like those who wish to light a fire; at first they are choked by the smoke and cry, and by this means obtain what they seek (as it is said:  "Our God is a consuming fire" [Heb 12:24]):  so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work.
It is good not to get angry, but if this should happen, St Paul does not allow you a whole day for this passion, for he says:  "Let not the sun go down" [Eph 4:25].  Will you wait till all your time is ended?  Why hate the one who has grieved you?  It is not this person who has done the wrong, but the evil one.  Hate sickness but not the sick person.
There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time.  It is possible to be a solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of personal thoughts.

Amma Theodora
Another of the old ascetics questioned Amma Theodora saying, "At the resurrection of the dead, how shall we rise?"  She said, "As pledge, example, and as prototype we have him who died for us and is risen, Christ our God".

Macrina
It is you, O Lord, who have freed us from the fear of death.  You have made our life here the beginning  of our true life.  You grant our bodies to rest in sleep for a season and you rouse our bodies again at the last trumpet.
You have given in trust to the earth our earthly bodies, which you have formed with your own hands, and you have restored what you have given, by transforming  our mortality and ugliness by our immortality and your grace.
May you who have power on earth to forgive sins, forgive me, that I may draw breath and that I be found in your presence, "having shed my body and without spot or wrinkle" in the form of my soul, and that my soul may be innocent and spotless and may be received into your hands like incense in your presence.